Behind the tech layoffs, Nvidia CEO's fear, Microsoft stock's new high: Tech news roundup

For the past two years, it’s been a ghost in the machine of American tech.

Between 2022 and today, a little-noticed tweak to the U.S. tax code has quietly rewired the financial logic of how American companies invest in research and development. Outside of CFO and accounting circles, almost no one knew it existed. “I work on these tax write-offs and still hadn’t heard about this,” a chief operating officer at a private-equity-backed tech company told Quartz. “It’s just been so weirdly silent.”

Read More

Apple’s (AAPL) first-generation iPhone entered the U.S. market in June 2007, joining other mobile devices that offered limited web browsing, email, and multimedia capabilities. As Apple’s flagship smartphone, the iPhone has seen an evolution in design, functionality, and performance, shaping the way people interact with technology.

Read More

Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang may run one of the most important companies in the world, but he can’t credit his success to the power of positive thinking.

Read More

Meta (META) believes that the source of 97% of its revenue can be fully automated by AI: its ads.

By the end of 2026, Mark Zuckerberg’s company will employ AI to work with brands to create their own advertising — imagery, video and text — and then target them to specific users on Meta platforms, according to The Wall Street Journal. The ads could even be made specific to geolocation and time, reflecting local scenery or weather conditions in the imagery.

Read More

Microsoft (MSFT) stock just clocked an intraday record on Thursday ($468.49), a milestone that caps off the company’s aggressive AI moves — and even more aggressive expectations. Wall Street isn’t just rewarding Microsoft for showing up to the AI race, it’s pricing in a future where the company leads the pack.

Read More

Meta (META) has secured a 20-year agreement with Constellation Energy (CEG) to purchase nuclear power from the Clinton Clean Energy Center in Illinois, as it works to secure more energy for its growing AI operations, the company said Tuesday.

Read More

A brain-computer interface (BCI), a fusion of man and machine, has sparked human imagination since the Industrial Revolution. This week, the small field of BCI developers — which includes Elon Musk’s Neuralink — was joined by Texan company Paradromics, who successfully installed its Connexus BCI in a patient undergoing epilepsy resection surgery at the University of Michigan.

Read More

Even Donald Trump’s sons are finding their family’s crypto business a bit cryptic.

Both Eric and Donald Trump, Jr. denied any involvement in a Trump-branded crypto wallet launched this week by Magic Eden, an NFT marketplace that teamed up with GetTrumpMemes.com, the company behind the $TRUMP memecoin. GetTrumpMemes.com is owned by Fight Fight Fight LLC, a subdivision of CIC Digital that sells Trump-branded cologne and gold sneakers; both own 80% of the $TRUMP token supply.

Read More

As ChatGPT approaches its third anniversary this fall, OpenAI announced that the chatbot has spurred a 50% increase in paid users since February.

COO Brad Lightcap told CNBC (CMCSA) that the company now boasts three million users shelling out cash for its Enterprise, Team, and Edu platforms.

Once the revolutionary chatbot captured the public’s imagination in late 2022, OpenAI began rolling out versions specific to sectors like finance, health care, and post-secondary education.

Read More

Reddit is taking Anthropic to court, alleging that the AI startup helped itself to the platform’s vast library of user-generated content — after saying it wouldn’t.

Read More