 | Feb 28, 2025 | | | | Supported by  | | | | | TGIF! Meta plans to launch a standalone AI assistant app. Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia joins the Department of Government Efficiency. Microsoft asks President Trump to roll back Biden-era chip export restrictions.
| | | | Meta Platforms is planning to launch a standalone app for its Meta AI chatbot in a bid to compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT, CNBC reported, and also plans to test a paid subscription version. Launching a separate app would put Meta on a level playing field with its rivals in artificial intelligence. Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI have each released apps for their AI chatbots. Google also integrates its Gemini chatbot in products such as Gmail. Meta has so far relied on putting its Meta AI into its social media apps but creating a standalone app could increase the chatbot's usage. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said he expects Meta AI to be the "leading AI assistant." A new Meta AI app may not be the only new app Meta introduces this year. The Information reported on Wednesday that Instagram was considering launching an app for its short-form video feature Reels. | | | | Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia has joined Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency to work on "improving the slow and paper-based retirement process" for federal employees, Gebbia announced on X Thursday. Gebbia, who is on Tesla's board of directors and reportedly has a close relationship with Musk, said in his post that he had been looking for his "next digital design challenge" since leaving his operating role at Airbnb in 2022, and will work on improving "the user experience within our government." Beyond those statements, it's not clear exactly what his role will involve. Gebbia did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Musk's DOGE team, which is staffed with many young engineers, has been making dramatic cuts across the federal government, triggering protests and lawsuits from federal employees. In November, when Donald Trump announced DOGE, Gebbia—a former Democrat who voted for Trump in the last election—posted on X: "Historic corporate turnaround about to take place: DOGE." | | | | Microsoft called on the Trump administration to roll back Biden-era rules that restricted the export of cutting-edge chips used to train and run AI models. The rules, which restrict the shipment of graphics processing units made by Nvidia and other leading chipmakers to certain countries around the globe, is impeding Microsoft's plans to build datacenters in countries like Poland and India, company president Brad Smith said in a blog post on Thursday. The Biden-era rule enacted last year divides countries into three tiers, with the heaviest restrictions on chip exports placed on third-tier countries like China and Russia, and limits on how many chips can be shipped to second-tier countries including Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore. Smith said that Microsoft supports the restrictions on tier-one countries but decried that the rule "puts many important U.S. allies and partners in a Tier Two category," arguing that the rules were hampering Microsoft's ability to build data centers in those countries that would rely on materials exported from US manufacturers. Microsoft has been lobbying the Trump administration in recent months as it seeks fewer restrictions on building new datacenters to run AI applications. Microsoft plans to spend $80 billion on datacenters this year, with more than half of that spending in the US, the company has said. | | | | Google cofounder Sergey Brin urged employees working on the company's AI models and apps to return to the office "at least every weekday" and to work 60 hour weeks in order to win the race to artificial general intelligence, The New York Times reported on Thursday. The message does not replace Google's official policy of in-office work three days per week, but it signals how senior Google veterans are calling on employees to work with more urgency as it competes with startup rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic. Last year, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt told a Stanford class that Google's work-life balance and remote work policy had put the company behind OpenAI, comments he later recanted. Brin has been more active at the company working on AI since OpenAI's launch of ChatGPT. In his message this week, Brin also told employees to be more efficient by using Google's AI for coding and said that AI improving itself would lead to artificial general intelligence, according to The New York Times. Coding assistants have been a major priority for Google, OpenAI and Anthropic. Last year, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that more than a quarter of code at Google is now written by AI, and Google this week released a free version of its Code Assist product. | | | | The Federal Reserve's outgoing banking regulator Michael Barr defended its approach in supervising banks' activities in crypto, amid growing calls from the crypto and banking industries for an overhaul of regulatory guidance on crypto. Barr said banks provide material and important services to the crypto industry by allowing companies to exchange dollars to settle crypto transactions, and the Fed monitors that activity from "a safety and soundness and financial stability lens." The Fed, however, doesn't tell banks whether to serve a customer or not, he said. Crypto advocates said federal banking regulators' current guidance caused "de-banking" of crypto firms and deterred banks from offering crypto-related services themselves. Barr said the Fed set up a dedicated program in 2023 to supervise banks' involvement in crypto and fintech, which helps provide clarity and responsible innovation. Currently, there are 22 firms under the supervision of the "novel activities program." | | | | Apollo Global Management is in talks to lead a $35 billion debt financing by Meta Platforms to build data centers in the U.S., according to a Bloomberg report. The move comes as Meta discusses building a large data center campus, which could total $200 billion given the size of the project and its power requirements, The Information reported Tuesday. An Apollo spokesperson declined to comment. Meta's financing of AI data centers through firms like Apollo is somewhat unusual, given Meta has hefty cash holdings it could use for such projects. The largest buyers of Nvidia graphics processing units for AI data centers, such as Amazon Web Services, Meta and Microsoft, have been using their balance sheets for such endeavors. Meta has already told investors it plans to raise its capital expenditures this year by around 70% to as much as $65 billion, in part for AI data centers. During the recent AI boom, debt financing for data centers has largely been raised by startups or smaller AI data center developers such as CoreWeave, and the financing they've raised has been geared toward specific sites and chip purchases, costing several billion dollars apiece. OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank, however, are in the process of raising financing for their Stargate data center joint venture, which would likely require a minimum of tens of billions of dollars of debt. | | | | Payments processing firm Stripe said it had struck a deal with investors to finance a tender offer for current and former employees to sell shares at a valuation of $91.5 billion valuation, only a little way from its peak valuation of $95 billion reached in 2021. Stripe's valuation had fallen to $50 billion in March 2023, after rising interest rates dampened growth of its business. But its business had shown signs of recovery. The fundraising confirms a report in The Information earlier this month. Stripe also published an update on 2024 results, reporting that its payment volume rose 38% last year to $1.4 trillion, putting it a little behind PayPal which reported $1.68 billion. Stripe keeps a small share of that payment volume. The company said it was profitable last year and expects to also make money this year. It noted that it ploughs back its profits into R&D. | | | | The CEO of one of the biggest advertising companies, WPP, said that clients have returned to Elon Musk's X in the past few months, the Financial Times reported today. WPP CEO Mark Read told the news outlet that X has seen more advertising since the election, though did not comment on why ad spending has gone up. The comments are the latest sign that X may have begun a turnaround in its ad business, which went into free fall after Musk bought the company then known as Twitter in late 2022. Advertisers fled the service after Musk relaxed content moderation rules. In response to the advertiser defections, Musk last year sued a group of advertisers for allegedly colluding to boycott X. Some of the advertisers listed in the suit, such as Mars and Nestle, were WPP clients in the past couple of years. | | | | The Federal Aviation Administration is considering terminating a $2.4 billion contract with Verizon—to upgrade the agency's communications platform for air traffic control—and awarding the work instead to Elon Musk's Starlink, according to the Washington Post. Granting the contract to Musk's company would pose questions around conflict of interest given Musk is leading an effort to cut costs across the federal government. The FAA also regulates SpaceX, which owns Starlink, and previously fined the company. Musk has recently used his social media platform X to criticize Verizon, posting on Monday that "The Verizon system is not working and so is putting air travelers at serious risk." The original Verizon deal to build a new system for the FAA was awarded in 2023, with a 15-year term, and would be difficult to unwind. On Tuesday, Joseph Russo, a Verizon executive vice president, reportedly commented at an event that Verizon's system was expected to be operational soon. The FAA told the Washington Post Wednesday that "no decisions have been made" over the contract. | | | | Warner Bros. Discovery's direct-to-consumer segment, which includes its Max and Discovery+ streaming services as well as the traditional HBO network, continues to grow but was unable to offset the ongoing decline in the company's traditional TV business during the fourth quarter of 2024. The DTC segment generated $2.7 billion in revenue during the quarter, up 5% from the previous year. Revenue for WBD's traditional TV business, however, fell 5% year-over-year to $4.8 billion. This was driven by a 17% decline in advertising revenue, which totaled $1.6 billion during the fourth quarter. WBD ended 2024 with 116.9 million subscribers within its DTC segment, adding 6.4 million in the fourth quarter. In a shareholder letter, WBD executives said they are now on a path to reach at least 150 million total DTC subscribers by the end of 2026. The company had previously said it was targeting $1 billion in DTC earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization this year. The DTC segment generated $409 million in adjusted earnings during the fourth quarter, up from a loss of $55 million the previous year. WBD CEO David Zaslav also hinted that the company may not be a huge bidder for upcoming live sports rights, including for Major League Baseball and the UFC. "We do not need any more sports, anywhere in the world, to support our business," he said. Original movies and TV shows that Warner Bros. owns, such as the upcoming Harry Potter series, are more valuable to the company, he added. | | | | | Popular articles
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