Good morning, Quartz readers!
Here’s what you need to know
Microsoft’s new AI division has a new leader. Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of the startups Inflection AI and DeepMind, was selected to become CEO.
Shell is quadrupling its EV charging network. The British oil giant is making the change while getting rid of 1,000 of its 46,000 global retail locations.
Reddit’s IPO goal is measly compared to other social media platforms. The company is worth a lot less than when household names like Facebook and Twitter went public.
Nordstrom is considering going private (again). The retailer’s stock spiked yesterday on the news, which would be its latest attempt to leave the public market since 2018.
Very big lines for very big GPUs
Nvidia’s “very big GPU” Blackwell is here, and it’s big in a lot of ways: speed, efficiency, and price. Naturally, the world’s top tech companies with the deepest pockets are already lining up to get their hands on it.
Nvidia’s “Woodstock of AI” event continues tomorrow, and here’s what we’ll be watching. (Check out our full event rundown here, everything you need to know about Blackwell here, and how Wall Street responded to the new chip).
Wednesday, March 20
⚠️ Cyber-war. David Reber, chief security officer at Nvidia, will host a panel on what cybersecurity leaders at companies and organizations should know about mitigating risks of generative AI.
🇫🇷 M-ai-s oui. Mistral AI’s chief executive Arthur Mensch will deliver a talk on what the French OpenAI rival has learned while training its generative AI models, Mistral and Mixtral, along with what it’s expecting for the rest of the year.
🫥 Now you see it. Graham Brookie, vice president of the Atlantic Council, will host a fireside chat with Nvidia deputy general counsel Iain Cunningham on the challenges of AI-generated deepfakes and disinformation.
Tail lights once caused a riot
If you think that’s the only fascinating fact about the lights on the back of our cars, you are truly, flagrantly, wildly mistaken.
The Quartz Obsession podcast is back for season 7, and we kicked off with a surprisingly spicy episode about tail lights. Host Gabriela Riccardi talks to Jason Torchinsky — co-founder of The Autopian — who drives us all down the bumpy road of tail light innovation and introduces us to the beautiful philosophy that all those signals are really a way that human beings care for each other.
Oh, and also there’s some dramatized noir crime fiction. You’re going to want to listen.
🎧 Check it out now on Spotify | Apple | Google | Pandora
👓 Prefer reading your podcasts? We’ve got the transcript right here.
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⭐ A physicist wants to change your perspective about our place in the universe
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✈️ A timeline of United Airlines’ really rough month (so far)
😬 The bankrupt crypto firm Genesis will pay the SEC $21 million over its lending program
🐶 Starbucks’ strategy on pup cups and free water isn’t budging
Surprising discoveries
The Feds have hired a company to figure out if it’s possible to make a railroad on the Moon. One ticket for the Lunar Landscape Express, please.
Starbucks may not be done with its pup cups, but it is done with the metaverse. Caffeine just doesn’t hit the same when you can’t actually drink it.
Unilever lost its Ben & Jerry’s sweet tooth... The consumer goods conglomerate is getting out of the ice cream biz.
…and Subway lost its taste for Coca-Cola. It’s Pepsi from here on out (at least the next 10 years).
A blueberry the size of a ping pong ball was harvested in Australia. We wouldn’t recommend substituting the world’s biggest fruit of its kind in any game.
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Our best wishes for a productive day. Send any news, comments, leftover Unilever Ben & Jerry’s, and leftover Subway Coca-Cola to talk@qz.com. Today’s Daily Brief was brought to you by Susan Howson and Morgan Haefner.