Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 1

Mark Zuckerberg has sat down with Vayner Media CEO Gary Vaynerchuk on November 12, 2021, to discuss the next platform shift called the Metaverse or Web 3.0.

Zuckerberg is at the helm of what was formerly called Facebook, and is now Meta, and explains why he thinks the Metaverse is the next big thing on the technological advancement horizon. Zuckerberg explains that, simply put, the Metaverse is a combination between augmented reality and virtual reality. "Virtual reality" can be easily defined as being in an entirely digital world that you can interact in, and "augmented reality" is the virtual world projected onto the world that we see today.

The head of Meta says that the company is investing $10 billion dollars into the future of the Metaverse and that money will be going towards connecting people via this new digital experience. Zuckerberg recounts the timeline of the internet, with its beginning primarily being text-based to its transition to mobile phones with cameras and the shift in focus images. Zuckerberg says that video format is primarily how we share social experiences and that the Metaverse will be what's next.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has sold over half of his Microsoft shares, with Nadella offloading 838,600 shares across November 22 and November 23, 2021.

The 838,600 shares were sold in a price range between $334.37 and $349.22, with the 838,600 shares sold bringing his total Microsoft share count to 831,000. This means the Microsoft CEO has dumped over half of the stock he held in Microsoft, and there's no news about it.

The only pieces I could find was somewhere reputable at least, with Seeking Alpha only highlighting that the CEO of Microsoft selling over half the shares he holds in the company he literally runs, in a single sentence: "The shares were sold in a price range from $334.37 to $349.22, bringing his total share count to 831K shares". While CNBC reported: "Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella disclosed the sale of 839,000 shares in an SEC filing, leaving him with ownership of 831,000 shares following that transaction. Microsoft fell 1% in the premarket".

NVIDIA has just reported an absolute monster quarter, with Q3 FY22 numbers boasting a huge $7.1 billion in revenue for the 3-month period -- representing a gigantic 50% year-over-year increase over the same quarter of the previous year.

The company beat analyst expectations yet again, with NVIDIA smashing gaming revenue once again -- up a huge 42% from the previous year with $3.22 billion in revenue. NVIDIA's also gigantic data center business absolutely thrived during the quarter, setting a new record $2.94 billion in revenue -- up 55% from the previous year.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang explained: "Demand for NVIDIA AI is surging, driven by hyperscale and cloud scale-out, and broadening adoption by more than 25,000 companies. NVIDIA RTX has reinvented computer graphics with ray tracing and AI, and is the ideal upgrade for the large, growing market of gamers and creators, as well as designers and professionals building home workstations".

The race towards 5nm was pretty quick but the race to 3nm is going to be even quicker, with Apple scooping up most of the 3nm node pie from TSMC and now rumor has it AMD is going to be Samsung's first 3nm customer.

A new report from DigiTimes says that the relationship between Apple and TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) is forcing AMD's hand in cozying up with Samsung for its supply of next-gen 3nm chips. Not only is AMD looking to get 3nm chips out of the Samsung ovens, but Qualcomm is reportedly getting 3nm chips from Samsung, too.

Samsung Foundry is expected to make 3nm chips for both AMD and Qualcomm, while TSMC will make 3nm for Apple. We should see TSMC begin production on its 3nm node in the second half of 2022, and inside of future Apple devices in late 2022 and early 2023. TSMC has been very forthcoming with its roadmap, with TSMC boss Dr. C.C. Wei talking about its new N3 and N3E nodes.

We heard rumors but now we have confirmation: TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) will be making a big new $7 billion chip fabrication plant in Japan, with an investment of Sony included.

The PlayStation giant will be chipping in $500 million out of the $7 billion, with construction of the factory slated to begin in 2022 and will be complete in 2024 according to Sony and TSMC. Sony and TSMC explained: "The fab (plant) is expected to directly create about 1,500 high-tech professional jobs and to have a monthly production capacity of 45,000 12-inch wafers".

Japanese industry ministry officials said that they want the world's No.1 contract chipmaker, so this case TSMC, to build plants in order to supply the required chips for Japan's electronic device makers (mostly Sony) and auto companies (the second-largest customer). We all know the issues between the US and China, with Taiwan and Japan right in the middle of the mess.

TSMC has approved a further $9 billion in capital expenditure that will be spent towards building the very best chip manufacturing plants in the world -- a continuation of what TSMC already does -- and will expand into the US and Japan, expanding out from Taiwan.

At least a portion of the $9 billion investment will go into the new chip plants overseas, with TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) pushing down into the Ant-Man-style world of 3nm. TSMC will have its 3nm chips ready for a trial production run in 2H 2022.

TSMC is on the 5nm node right now, which we're seeing made into Apple's new MacBook Pro laptops with the super-impressive M1 Max and M1 Pro SoCs. TSMC is hard at work on continuing the work on 5nm which includes the newer N4P node, which is the "third refinement of the 5nm process family" and has up to 22% more power efficiency, and up to 11% performance improvements over the first-gen N5 node.

We all know videos where the dislike count is higher than the like count, especially on some videos released by corporations -- and especially since Joe Biden became President -- there are a lot of videos with more dislikes than like and now YouTube is doing something about it.

The company says that the dislikes on YouTube will not be seen by the world, but the dislike button itself would remain. This means that you can still click or tap on the thumbs down button, which will let the creators behind the video know that you didn't like it, but no one else will know that you didn't like it.

Earlier this year, YouTube removed the dislike counter on videos... and while you've been free to like and dislike videos on the platform, now you simply can't. Well, you can -- but no one else will see it other than the content creator. YouTube also added that it has talked with small content creators, and said some of them felt like they were being targeted with dislike attacks -- more so than larger creators.

TSMC is quite ahead of the game but Samsung of all companies knows this, and now the South Korean giant is tripling down on its chip production manufacturing.

During a recent Samsung earnings conference call, Samsung executive Han Seung-hoon explained: "We plan to expand our capacity about three times by 2026 to meet customers' needs as much as possible by expanding capacity in Pyeongtaek as well as considering establishing a new plant in the U.S."

Samsung is already finalizing its $17 billion chip manufacturing plant in Texas, but also pushed into a huge $151 billion chip manufacturing deal that would last through to 2030. It's good to see that Samsung is not just wanting to expand its operations in South Korea, but a new plant in the US as well.

We all know SpaceX and Tesla Motors founder and CEO Elon Musk is a troll at heart, and if he wasn't busy -- hell, he is busy with running those companies -- and yet he continues to troll away.

His latest time in the headlines today is after the director of the United Nations' food scarcity organization, the UN World Food Program (WFP), said that 2% of Elon Musk's wealth could solve world hunger. Musk replied: "If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it. But it must be open source accounting, so the public sees precisely how the money is spent".

In 2020, the UN WFP raised $8.4 billion and yet couldn't solve world hunger... and now Musk has called them out very boldly here, and now the WFP needs to reply on how exactly it would solve world hunger for $6 billion. Hell, if they can reply, Musk will sell Tesla stock right now and pay for it.

If you purchased Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC) a week ago... hell, just a couple of days ago, you'd be laughing all the way to the bank right now.

President Donald J. Trump announced his new social media company, TRUTH Social, in the last 24 hours or so, and was announced that Trump Media & Technology Group and Digital World Acquisition Corp. have entered into a definitive merger agreement that makes TMTG into a publicly listed company, subject to regulatory and stockholder approval.

Between then and now, just 24 hours or so, Digital World Acquisition Corp. stock has skyrocketed from around $10 or so, through to a huge $105 representing an increase of 1000% or more. We're talking crazy manic meme-level crypto gains, but in the "real-world" of stock trading. DWAC stock skyrocketed 357% just today, which is crazy.