| Thanks for reading The Briefing, our nightly column where we break down the day's news. If you like what you see, I encourage you to subscribe to our reporting here. Greetings! If ever there was a moment for Alphabet to spin off Waymo, it would be now. Optimism about self-driving cars is back, driven (sorry for the pun!) by the very real success Waymo is having with its robotaxi service in markets like San Francisco. Elon Musk's high-profile presentation last fall about Tesla's robotaxi plans has surely fueled the new energy. The upbeat sentiment was palpable this week at the Consumer Electronics Show, according to my colleague Wayne Ma, who is in Las Vegas (here's his dispatch today). While self-driving cars have been a feature at CES for many years now, the sector has had its ups and downs—the amount of time it took to get the technology right dashed early hopes. But as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in his Monday keynote at CES, "After so many years, with Waymo and Tesla's success, it's very clear [autonomous vehicles] have finally arrived." Anyone wanting to understand Nvidia's future path should watch Huang's keynote, by the way, as it demonstrates the breadth of his ambitions—which definitely include self-driving cars, as well as robotics more broadly. Wayne says robotics has been another big theme at CES this week. Industrial robots—those working in factories—are nothing new. But AI promises to make humanoid robots (of the kind that featured in Tesla's presentation last fall) a reality. Huang was definitely promoting that idea on Monday, proclaiming that the "robotics era is just around the corner." If there was a sector where attitudes were a little less upbeat, it was augmented reality and virtual reality. Attendees confessed to Wayne that growth in AR/VR headsets continues to fall short of expectations. AR/VR folks shouldn't despair too much—as the self-driving–car industry demonstrates, good things come to those who wait (at least if the technology improves). Shares of companies that sell the hot category of weight loss drugs known as GLP-1s—think Ozempic knockoffs—got pummeled on Wednesday after this report in The Information highlighted the impact of marketing changes by Meta Platforms that could affect the category. As the story explained, Meta—parent of Facebook and Instagram—plans to restrict the use of data, such as health-related information, for ad-targeting purposes. That could raise marketing costs for firms like Hims & Hers Health, whose revenue has been rocketing thanks to the popularity of its GLP-1 drugs and heavy marketing on Meta. Hims & Hers Health's stock fell 7% on Wednesday, while Weight Watchers parent WW International dropped 13%. WW has lately leaned into GLP-1 as well. The winners from this shift could be Reddit, Snap and YouTube. Our story said healthcare advertisers, who may shift money away from Meta, are experimenting with spots on those three platforms. So if you wonder why you're suddenly seeing a bunch of ads about weight loss drugs, there's your answer. - Microsoft is planning to cut less than 1% of its 228,000 employees in the coming months, according to someone briefed on the plans. The layoffs will be based on performance and are likely to affect divisions across the company.
- President Joe Biden's administration is planning one last set of sweeping restrictions on the sale of Nvidia's artificial intelligence chips, Bloomberg reported. The report implied the latest restrictions would block sales to companies that are based in China but operate globally. The administration has struggled to prevent Chinese companies like ByteDance from accessing advanced AI chips.
- Livestreaming e-commerce platform Whatnot raised $265 million in new funding, boosting its valuation to $4.97 billion.
- Google Cloud has appointed Francis deSouza, a software industry veteran and former senior executive at cybersecurity provider Symantec, to serve as its chief operating officer, he announced in a LinkedIn post.
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