 | Dec 23, 2024 | | | | | | Welcome back! Donald Trump dismisses the idea that he has ceded the presidency to Elon Musk. Palantir and Anduril may form a consortium with other tech firms to bid for government defense contracts. Trump announces his new picks for roles related to crypto and AI.
| | | | As Elon Musk plays a growing role in Washington, President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday wanted to remind Americans who the top boss is. "No, [Musk is] not going to be president, that I can tell you," Trump told an audience of conservatives at a conference in Arizona. He further dismissed the idea that he had "ceded" the presidency to Musk. Trump's remarks were a remarkable sign of how much sway Musk has swiftly attained in the last few months. Since Musk helped Trump win reelection, the two have appeared to share a happy honeymoon period, and Musk had a major role in reshaping last week's emergency funding bill. With those efforts, Musk has left the incoming Congress, which Republicans will control, with a clear image of himself. "We have a president, we have a vice president, we have a speaker. It feels as if Elon Musk is our prime minister," Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Republican, told CBS on Sunday. | | | | Palantir and Anduril are part of a group of defense and technology companies that may join forces to bid for government contracts that traditionally go to older blue chip firms. The consortium could also include SpaceX, OpenAI, billionaire Alexandr Wang's ScaleAI and Saronic, a maker of autonomous ships. They hope to seize a piece of the U.S. federal government's $850 billion defense budget, which America has customarily doled out to firms like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing. The group could unveil some agreements as soon as next month. The consortium's creation would further mark the expanding influence of private-sector tech in Donald Trump's new White House and the overall boom in defense startups over the last decade. | | | | President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday added to the ranks of his tech and science advisors, including nominating a longtime AI advisor, Michael Kratsios, to run the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy. In addition, Trump said Bo Hines, a 29-year-old North Carolina Republican, would run the "crypto council" helmed by venture capitalist David Sacks. Trump also said Sriram Krishnan, an Andreessen Horowitz GP who is leaving the firm, would serve as a senior advisor on AI. The Information previously reported Krishnan's departure and talks with the new administration. Another investor, Founders Fund and PayPal co-founder Ken Howery, has been given a U.S. ambassadorship with the Kingdom of Denmark. Howery was the U.S. Ambassador of Sweden during Trump's last presidency. Scott Kupor, a managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz, has been elected to serve as the Director of the Office of Personnel Management, Trump said in a post on Truth Social. The Office of Personnel Management works on tasks such as recruiting new government employees and providing resources for employees of the federal government. | | | | NSO Group, the Israeli company behind Pegasus spyware, violated U.S. federal and state laws when it hacked WhatsApp to surveil more than 1,000 users of the messaging app in 2019, a federal judge ruled on Friday. The decision is seen as a major win for cybersecurity activists who have raised concerns about NSO Group. The breach affected prominent users including journalists and government officials. In 2021, the Biden administration blacklist the Israeli firm, NSO Group, and banned the U.S. government from purchasing any of its technology. A jury trial next year will decide the damages that NSO Group must pay WhatsApp. | | | | OpenAI on Friday announced the next generation of its o1 reasoning model, which takes more time to "think" about questions users give it before responding. The model is called "o3." OpenAI had to skip "o2" due to a potential copyright or trademark conflict with O2, a British telecommunications service provider, The Information previously reported. o3 and o3-mini, a smaller version of the reasoning model, scored impressively on several math and coding benchmarks, as well as another benchmark meant to test how well AI models perform on tasks that humans excel at. During a livestream, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman asked safety and security researchers to apply to test the new models before they are released. The company plans to release o3-mini at the end of January and the full o3 model shortly after, Altman said. | | | | Google on Friday proposed that it be required only to tweak its default distribution contracts with companies like Apple and Samsung in order to remedy what a federal court has ruled is an illegal monopoly in search. This proposal is a far lighter punishment than the remedy put forward by the Department of Justice, which wants the search giant to be broken up. Google paid more than $26 billion in 2021 for its distribution deals, according to court testimony in 2023. Google proposed that rather than eliminate default distribution contracts entirely, it offer companies choices like different default providers on different devices and the ability to change default providers at least every 12 months. Under Google's proposed remedies, it would also not be able to require Android partners to license Search in order to use other Google products. Google argued that Judge Amit Mehta's ruling this fall that Google's search engine was an illegal monopoly dealt solely with its default distribution contracts with companies like Apple, Samsung and mobile carriers. Therefore, Google argued, the Justice Department's proposals—which include that Google be forced to sell its widely used operating system Android and Chrome browser, in addition to other changes to Google's behavior—are too extreme. Mehta has scheduled hearings for April on the two sides' proposed remedies and has said he aims to issue a ruling in August. Google has said it will appeal Mehta's initial ruling that Google Search was an illegal monopoly, which it can only do once he has issued the remedies. | | | | After a two-year court battle, a federal jury largely ruled in favor of Qualcomm in an intellectual property dispute with Arm Holdings. Arm, which licenses its chip designs to companies such as Qualcomm and Apple, claimed that Qualcomm had improperly used intellectual property that Arm licensed to a startup, Nuvia, before Qualcomm acquired Nuvia in 2021. The decision clears the way for Qualcomm to continue selling chips for personal computers that it had created using Nuvia's technology without needing to renegotiate its licensing agreement with Arm. But the jury did not reach a unanimous verdict on Arm's claim that Nuvia had breached its license with Arm. The verdict largely resolves a long legal battle between Arm and one of its largest customers. Arm's share price dropped by nearly 2% in after-hours trading following the decision, while Qualcomm shares traded up by roughly the same amount. "The jury has vindicated Qualcomm's right to innovate and affirmed that all the Qualcomm products at issue in the case are protected by Qualcomm's contract with Arm," a Qualcomm spokesperson said in an emailed statement. A spokesperson for Arm said that the company was "disappointed that the jury was unable to reach consensus" on the claim involving Nuvia and intends to seek a retrial. | | | | Shivakumar Venkataraman, OpenAI's search chief, has departed, seven months after joining the company to help lead the development of search and artificial intelligence for enterprise customers. The departure, which Venkataraman and OpenAI confirmed, comes days after OpenAI made web search in its ChatGPT chatbot available to all users, and several months after it announced a prototype of the feature, dubbed SearchGPT. The company has also spoken about the importance of selling to large enterprises—in part so it will be able to hit its growth goals, including reaching $100 billion in revenue by 2029. In a previous interview with The Information, OpenAI chief commercial officer Giancarlo "GC" Lionetti said that the company has been winning new contracts with healthcare, manufacturing and legal companies, shifting its base from startups and individual users. It's unclear where Venkataraman, a longtime former Google executive, is going next and who will be replacing him. Venkataraman reported to Srinivas Narayanan, the vice president of engineering who leads the search team, according to a spokesperson. OpenAI has had a string of departures in 2024, including cofounders Ilya Sutskever and John Schulman, CTO Mira Murati, GPT inventor Alec Radford, as well as safety and product leaders. | | | | Netflix has secured the U.S. rights to exclusively stream the 2027 and 2031 FIFA Women's World Cups, a major step forward in the video giant's expansion into live sports. This is the first time Netflix has bought out all of the rights in the U.S. on a specific tournament. Netflix and FIFA did not disclose the value of the deal. Under the terms of the deal, Netflix will air every match of the international soccer tournament in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, providing both English and Spanish language broadcasts. Netflix will also produce documentary series in the lead-up to both tournaments in an effort to promote the games and the players. The 2027 edition of the tournament will take place in Brazil, while FIFA has yet to name the host country for the 2031 tournament. Netflix has been gradually expanding into live sports after long avoiding such programming due to its high licensing costs. On Christmas Day, it's set to air two exclusive NFL games, which the company hopes can drive more viewership and time spent on its service, as well as provide a boost for its advertising business. The FIFA Women's World Cup is one of the top tournaments in sports and has proven to be popular in the U.S., particularly as the women's national soccer team has dominated the tournament over the past three decades. | | | | The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued payments network Zelle and three of the banks that operate and own it, JPMorgan, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, for allegedly failing to prevent widespread fraud on the platform. The CFPB said customers of the three banks had lost more than $870 million over the seven years that Zelle has existed. The agency said customers who complained about being victims of fraud were largely denied help and in some cases told to contact fraudsters directly to recover their funds. The three banks also allegedly failed to properly investigate complaints or reimburse customers, while Zelle was accused of failing to stop criminals from making multiple accounts at different banks that use Zelle, or restrict their actions by sharing information about known crooks. | | | Popular articles By Jon Victor and Kevin McLaughlin
By Anissa Gardizy and Kevin McLaughlin
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