• Monday • February 24, 2025

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    New York Times

    Apple Vows to Build A.I. Servers in Houston and Spend $500 Billion in U.S.

    The Company Pledged the Multibillion-Dollar Investment Over the Next Four Years and Said it Would Create 20,000 Jobs

    Days after Apple’s chief executive met with President Trump, the company said on Monday that it planned to spend $500 billion and hire 20,000 people in the United States over the next four years and open a factory in Texas to make the machines that power the company’s push into artificial intelligence.

    “We are bullish on the future of American innovation, and we’re proud to build on our longstanding U.S. investments,” Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said in a statement. The company made similar, smaller pledges during the Biden administration and Mr. Trump’s first term, though it has not yet followed through on some of those promises.

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  • Monday • February 17, 2025

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    Industry News Source

    AWS Remains $330bn Cloud Market Leader, Driven by AI Growth

    Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Outpaced AWS in Percentage Growth Terms During the Fourth Quarter

    Amazon Web Services retains its position as the cloud infrastructure market leader, as spending reached US$330bn in 2024 amid increased demand for AI services, according to research from Synergy Research Group. The research found Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud outpaced AWS in percentage growth terms during the fourth quarter, though AWS maintained its market share at 30% compared to Microsoft’s 21% and Google’s 12%.

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  • Tuesday • June 25, 2024

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    Reuters

    Cash-strapped Stability AI raises $80 mln with new CEO and board

    Stability AI Said on Tuesday it Has Raised Funds and Appointed Industry Veteran Prem Akkaraju as its Top Boss

    New CEO Akkaraju, former chief of visual effects company Weta Digital, has also invested in the company, which makes an artificial intelligence image-generation tool that rivals those made by Google and OpenAI.


    Stability AI, which has also released AI models to generate audio and video using text prompts, named former Facebook President Sean Parker as executive board chairman of its board. Greycroft cofounder Dana Settle, General Partner of Coatue Management Colin Bryant and Akkaraju were also added to Stability AI’s board.

    The firm has raised about $80 million in funding, according to a person familiar with the matter, from a group of investors including Coatue Management, Lightspeed Venture Partners and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

  • Friday • June 7, 2024

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    Reuters

    ByteDance plans $2.1 bln investment in Malaysia for AI, minister says

    ByteDance Will Also Expand its Data Centre Facilities in Malaysia’s Johor State

    “This additional investment by ByteDance will undoubtedly help Malaysia achieve its target of growing the digital economy to 22.6% of Malaysia’s gross domestic product by 2025,” Tengku Zafrul said in a post on X. The announcement follows similar large investments in Malaysia by other tech giants in recent months. Last month, Google said it was planning a $2 billion investment to develop its first data centre and Google Cloud region in Malaysia, while Microsoft said it will invest $2.2 billion to expand cloud and AI services.

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  • Friday • May 17, 2024

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    Reuters

    Microsoft offers cloud customers AMD alternative to Nvidia AI processors

    It Will Also Launch a Preview of New Cobalt 100 Custom Processors at the Conference

    Microsoft’s clusters of Advanced Micro Devices’ flagship MI300X AI chips will be sold through its Azure cloud computing service. They will give its customers an alternative to Nvidia’s (NVDA.O), opens new tab H100 family of powerful graphics processing units (GPUs) which dominate the data center chip market for AI but can be hard to obtain due to high demand.

    To build AI models or run applications, companies typically must string together – or cluster – multiple GPUs because the data and computation will not fit on a single processor. AMD, which expects $4 billion in AI chip revenue this year, has said the chips are powerful enough to train and run large AI models. As well as Nvidia’s top-shelf AI chips, Microsoft’s cloud computing unit sells access to its own in-house AI chips called Maia.

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  • Wednesday • May 15, 2024

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    Techcrunch

    Netflix to take on Google and Amazon by building its own ad server

    The Announcement Signifies a Significant Shake-Up in the Streaming Giant’s Advertising Approach

    Netflix announced during its Upfronts presentation on Wednesday that it’s launching its own advertising technology platform only a year and a half after entering the ads business. This move pits it against other industry heavyweights with ad servers, like Google, Amazon and Comcast.

    The company originally partnered with Microsoft to develop its ad tech, letting Netflix enter the ad space quickly and catch up with rivals like Hulu, which has had its own ad server for over a decade. With the launch of its in-house ad tech, Netflix is poised to take full control of its advertising future. This strategic move will empower the company to create targeted and personalized ad experiences that resonate with its massive user base of 270 million subscribers.

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