Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 13

Elon Musk had some choice words to say about advertisers on X, where he said: "go f**k yourself" to anyone trying to blackmail him financially, in regards to the recent advertising boycott on X.

During the recent 2023 DealBook Summit in New York just hours ago, Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk sat down with journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin. The topic quickly turned to the recent advertiser boycott on X, where Elon said: "If somebody's gonna try to blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go f---yourself."He sat there for a minute while thinking, smirking, and then said in a more heightened voice:"Go. F---. Yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is."

He added: "That's how I feel... don't advertise" with people in the crowd laughing at Elon's response.

NVIDIA has recently posted record revenue numbers with a mind-boggling 1259% increase in net income year-over-year, with the CEO of TSMC now saying that NVIDIA will be the leader in the semiconductor business.

The news from NVIDIA and its revenue of $18.18 billion for Q3 2023, representing a 206% increase from the same quarter last year, and a 34% over Q2 2023. NVIDIA is an AI-focused company at this stage, dominating the AI GPU business with its H100 and upcoming H200 AI GPUs.

But now NVIDIA has the blessing of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and its CEO, Mark Liu, who recently said during a lecture by the Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce that NVIDIA will soon lead in revenue in the semiconductor industry against its competitors like Intel, Samsung, and more.

NVIDIA's revenues spike by 206% on the back of strong demand for AI compute solutions.

NVIDIA's latest Q3 FY24 results have been supercharged by AI, with the company reporting an incredible 200%+ jump in overall earnings. In the quarter from August - October, NVIDIA raked in a record-breaking $18.12 billion in total revenues across all segments, helping push total nine-month revenue to a whopping $38.81 billion.

NVIDIA's data center segment pulled in the lion's share (80%) of earnings, delivering $14.5 billion revenue on the back of strong demand for AI solutions. Cloud service providers made up half of these earnings whereas internet providers and enterprise comprising the latter half.

The artificial intelligence industry has been rocked over the last couple of days as the leading company, OpenAI, had its CEO ousted by its board of directors.

Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI, the developer behind the highly popular AI chatbot ChatGPT, was fired from his position at the company and was quickly snapped up by Microsoft to run its entire advanced AI research division. However, 700+ of the 800 employees at OpenAI wrote a letter to the company's board of directors demanding Altman be reinstated to his position, or they would walk off the job and go straight to Microsoft, along with Altman.

Currently, Altman is reportedly in "intense discussions" with OpenAI's board of directors on his return to the company, with, at the time of writing, no official confirmation as to whether he will be reinstated. So, where does the letter fit into this? Elon Musk took to his personal X account to share a letter penned by former OpenAI employees and sent to its board of directors. The letter outlined several concerns and requested the board conduct an internal investigation into the allegations and take appropriate action.

NVIDIA is embroiled in a lawsuit from Germany-based automotive technology company Valeo Schalter und Sensoren, after an ex-Valeo and now NVIDIA staffer screen-shared during a meeting with "ValeoDocs" in a file and even Valeo code... all shown in a video meeting by accident.

It all started with a video call that software developer Mohammad Moniruzzaman was on, with Moniruzzaman joining NVIDIA back in 2021 after leaving German-based Valeo Schalter und Sensoren. He happened to be in a meeting between 4 people at Valeo, and 4 people from NVIDIA, as well as himself.

Moniruzzaman was finishing up showing a PowerPoint to everyone on the call when the screen-sharing function he was using allowed everyone to see what was showing on Moniruzzaman's entire screen, not just PowerPoint. As he minimized the PowerPoint presentation, what the video call participants saw was shocking: he had code from Valeo and a file description that said: "ValeoDocs".

Elon Musk has taken to his personal X account to announce that X Corp will be filing a lawsuit against Media Matters and all those that participated in what Musk describes as a "fraudulent attack on our company".

The controversy began when the owner of the social media platform formerly called Twitter, now called X, replied to a post that stated Jewish communities support "dialectical hatred against whites". The divisiveness of this post had more fuel added to the fire when Media Matters, a nonprofit media watchdog group, published a story that reported X was placing ads next to pro-Nazi content. The initial post from Musk led to reports of major advertisers temporarily pausing advertising expenditure with X, which was further exacerbated following Media Matters' report.

Musk took to his personal X account with a response to these reports, stating that as soon as the courts open on Monday morning, X Corp will be filing a "thermonuclear" lawsuit against Media Matters and "ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company". Musk followed up with another post, adding, "Their board, their donors, their network of dark money, all of them ..." The lengthy statement that Musk had attached to his post claims Media Matters' report attempted to "misrepresent the real user experience" on X, "undermine freedom of speech," and "mislead advertisers".

A legend of the cannabis community has hung up his boots when it comes to lighting one up, as Snoop Dogg has announced he has given up smoking altogether.

Calvin Broadus, more commonly known as Snoop Dogg, took to her social media channels, Instagram and X, to announce that he has quit smoking after having "much conversation with my family". The 52-year-old musician was synonymous with cannabis, even becoming an icon of the cannabis community for his constant use of it wherever he went.

Due to his close association with cannabis, many fans were shocked to hear that Snoop Dogg has stopped smoking, and it seems that same shock has made its way to the stock market.

The advertising situation over at X has seemingly taken a hit, with multiple publications reporting that Apple has joined a few other big-name brands in pausing advertising expenditure on Elon Musk-owned social media platform X.

A new report from Axios has detailed the events that have taken place over the last few days, explaining that the problems began when X owner Elon Musk replied to a post that claimed Jewish communities support "dialectical hatred against whites." These reports indicate that Musk's response to the aforementioned post, "[y]ou have said the actual truth," has led to big advertising brands such as Google, Amazon, Disney, IBM, Oracle, and now Apple being pushed to stop ad expenditure.

X is now attempting to clean the PR nightmare up with an executive speaking to Axios on Thursday night, saying internally X has scanned the accounts mentioned in a Media Matters report that showed ads by Apple, IBM, Amazon, and Oracle next to far-right posts. X's response to these now swept accounts is, "they will [no] longer be monetizable" and a "sensitive media" label will be placed on the specific posts in question.

In open court on Monday an Alphabet witness said that Google pays 36% of its search advertising revenue from Safari directly to Apple, which equates to billions of dollars per year.

This information surfaced during a court battle between Google and the Department of Justice that is claiming Google has a monopoly on the Search Engine market. The jaw-dropping figure came from Alphabet's expert witness Kevin Murphy, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, and was used to fight the Justice Department's claims that Google has a stranglehold on the both the Search Engine and advertising markets.

Notably, this figure wasn't expected to be revealed in court as both Google and Apple have made efforts to keep any of its search engine deals under wraps, citing potential anticompetitive effects. So, what is the agreement? It's quite simply. Google is paying Apple to keep Google Search as its primary search engine on Apple's Safari app, which comes pre-installed on every Apple device.

AMD has posted its latest financial results for Q3 2023, with the $5.8 billion 4% year-over-year growth attributed to Ryzen and "record server processor sales," according to AMD Chair and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. Like many other big tech companies, AMD is riding the wave of AI with its new MI300 chips set to drive sales to $2 billion in 2024.

"AMD Instinct MI300A and MI300X GPUs are on track for volume production in the fourth quarter to support deployments with several leading HPC, cloud, and AI customers," the Q3 earnings report writes. The company's Data Center segment showed flat year-over-year growth but is expected to grow as the company's new CPU and AI hardware takes hold.

The biggest growth sector for AMD was the Client segment (where most enthusiasts reside), with revenue up 42% year-over-year, driven by Ryzen mobile processor sales. AMD specifically highlights the success of its AMD Ryzen 7000 Series CPU in the mobile space as driving growth.