 | Mar 13, 2025 | | | | | | Happy Thursday! The Federal Trade Commission continues its antitrust probe into Microsoft. Intel shares soar on new CEO appointment. Binance raises $2 billion from Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund MGX.
| | | | The Federal Trade Commission is continuing its broad antitrust probe into Microsoft that it opened last year, and has in recent weeks met with representatives of other companies to ask about Microsoft's conduct, according to someone involved in the discussions. The move indicates that FTC commissioner Andrew Ferguson, a Trump appointee, is carrying on the agency's line of scrutiny of Microsoft that was opened by Lina Khan, his Biden-era predecessor. The fact that the probe is continuing was first reported by Bloomberg. The probe is far-reaching and questions whether Microsoft has used the breadth of its business to gain an unfair advantage in markets including cloud computing and business software. FTC regulators have questioned Microsoft's software licensing practices, as well as its $13 billion investment in OpenAI, The Information previously reported. The probe, which began last year, reflects the FTC's effort to gather evidence before deciding whether to formally charge Microsoft with anticompetitive behavior. | | | | Intel named former Cadence Design Systems chief Lip-Bu Tan as its new CEO, sending its stock up 12%. The appointment follows the departure of Pat Gelsinger as CEO in December as it struggled to compete in the market for artificial intelligence chips and its stock price tanked. Tan had stepped down from Intel's board in August 2024, reportedly following clashes with Gelsinger over the latter's costly plan to reverse the company's fortunes. According to Reuters, Tan was one of multiple candidates Intel's board of directors approached in December about succeeding Gelsinger, as was Matt Murphy, CEO of rival chipmaker Marvell. | | | | Binance, the world's biggest crypto exchange, announced it has received a $2 billion investment from MGX, an Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund. The minority stake in Binance marks the first crypto bet by MGX, which has invested in artificial intelligence startups including OpenAI and Anthropic. It's also the first institutional investment Binance has received to date. Binance said it currently employs about 1,000 of its 5,000 global workforce in the United Arab Emirates. | | | | Google on Wednesday announced two new artificial intelligence models to power robots, built on top of its most recent main Gemini model. In a press release, Google said that one of the models combines vision, language and physical action capabilities; the other has advanced spatial understanding. In pre-recorded demo videos, robotic arms did tasks like folding paper into origami, packing a lunchbox and placing fruit into moving bowls. Google has long tried to develop robotics, to mixed success. Its latest announcement comes amidst a surge of interest in applying AI to build general purpose robots that can complete a range of tasks, as Google's models seek to. OpenAI has also discussed making a humanoid robot and rebooted its internal robotics software unit last year, but hasn't yet released anything. | | | | The U.S. Federal Trade Commission asked a judge on Wednesday to delay the start of a trial in its case alleging that Amazon unlawfully tricked people into signing up for Prime subscriptions, then withdrew the request later in the day. In a Seattle federal court hearing on Wednesday, the FTC asked for a two month delay to the trial, which is due to begin in September. FTC lawyer Jonathan Cohen said in court that the FTC is facing staffing and budget issues. "There is an extremely severe resource shortfall in terms of money and personnel," FTC lawyer Jonathan Cohen said, according to Bloomberg. "The resource constraints are severe and really unique to this moment." Several hours later, the FTC withdrew the request and said it could meet the original schedule, Reuters reported. The brief request came as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency are making deep cuts across the federal government, including through buyouts and layoffs at agencies. The FTC's suit against Amazon, which was filed in 2023, accuses the company of violating consumer protection laws by using deceptive tactics to encourage people to buy Prime memberships and making the subscriptions difficult to cancel. It's separate from the FTC's broader antitrust suit against Amazon that's due to go to trial in 2026. | | | | Niantic, the creator of Pokémon Go, is selling its games business to the Saudi-owned mobile developer Scopely for $3.5 billion. In addition, Niantic shareholders will receive $350 million in cash from Niantic's balance sheet as part of the deal. As part of the transaction, Niantic is spinning out a new company, Niantic Spatial, that will concentrate on artificial intelligence-powered mapping technologies that Niantic has been developing. Niantic Spatial will have $250 million in capital, $200 million of it from Niantic's balance sheet and $50 million from Scopley. John Hanke, the CEO of Niantic, will also lead Niantic Spatial. Niantic previously started as a project inside Google and was spun out almost a decade ago to develop augmented reality games. | | | | Alibaba Group said Thursday that it will overhaul its Quark artificial intelligence search app for consumers in China and turn it into a broader all-purpose assistant powered by the company's own Qwen AI models. Alibaba, a leader in China's market for enterprise AI models and apps for businesses, is trying to increase its presence in the fiercely competitive market for consumer AI products by enhancing Quark's capabilities. In the consumer segment, Alibaba is struggling to catch up with ByteDance, which operates China's biggest AI chatbot app, Doubao, and DeepSeek, whose app surged in popularity last month. Until now, Quark has been using the app's own AI models known as QuarkLLM, but Alibaba will revamp the search app by powering it with the company's flagship Qwen models instead. Alibaba said the new Quark will be able to help execute tasks ranging from academic research to medical diagnostics to travel planning. Alibaba originally launched Quark in 2016 as a web browser, but the company later turned the product into an AI search app as it began to focus on generative AI. | | | | Marc Lore's food delivery company Wonder has acquired the media company Tastemade for $90 million, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. Tastemade, which produces food, travel and home videos, had raised more than $130 million from investors including Amazon, Comcast and Goldman Sachs, according to Pitchbook. Tastemade co-founder and CEO Larry Fitzgibbon will join Wonder, where he will help integrate the service into Wonder's other businesses by, for example, letting customers order food that appears in videos, according to the report. Lore told the Journal that the acquisition will help Wonder, which also owns Grubhub and Blue Apron, become an artificial intelligence-driven "super app" for food. "We'd be able to check your health through a bunch of diagnostics, allow you to set your health goals and your budgets, and then autonomously feed you breakfast, lunch and dinner from the assets that we've got," he said. | | | Popular articles By Jessica E. Lessin and Erin Woo
By Cory Weinberg and Anissa Gardizy
By Natasha Mascarenhas and Stephanie Palazzolo
| | | | | Opportunities Empower your teams to stay ahead of market trends with the most trusted tech journalism.
Learn more
Reach The Information's influential audience with your message. Connect with our team | | | | | |
0 comentários:
Postar um comentário