Reddit is now crushing it thanks to AI
When Reddit filed to go public in early 2024, I thought its valuation seemed steep. According to Reddit’s S-1 , the company had made $804 million in revenue in 2023, up ~20% from the year before, but ...
Snacks Mix: Alphabet and McDonald's earnings, how Reddit and Snap are riding the AI wave, and Sherwood's new audio project
Nia Warfield and Jack Raines run through this week’s market maze, with earnings reports from Big Tech and Big Burger, plus some fun social media case studies on AI implementation and a new audio proje...
AI is good for Meta’s workers, for now
For the first time in almost two years, head count grew year over year. The company now has 72,404 employees, the most since the second quarter of 2023. The head-count growth was “primarily driven by...
AI used to transcribe medical visits is having wild and sometimes spooky “hallucinations”
“ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info,” reads a warning at the bottom of OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4o chat interface. That message is there because many of today’s AI tools are prone to “hallucinati...
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Our Q&A with SoundHound AI’s CEO Keyvan Mohajer
SoundHound — perhaps best known for the tune-recognition app that went live 2010 — has been around for a while. But since it went public via a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, in April 20...
Facebook is paying for journalism again
Meta has struck a deal with Reuters to use its news content in responses to questions posed to its AI chatbot, Axios reports , marking its first AI news deal. For those old enough to remember, the co...
IBM falls because clients like AI way more than consultants
Shares of IBM fell as much as 8% in after-market trading after Big Blue posted sales figures modestly below Wall Street’s estimates before paring those losses to 2.8% as of 5:20 p.m. ET. Within its bu...
Consultants keep winning the AI wars
In late June, we discussed how consulting firms had quietly become the big winners of the AI boom. Accenture generated $900 million, or an annualized $3.6 billion, in GenAI bookings in Q3, compared to...
OpenAI's new product could undercut its own investors
In between raising $6.6 billion from investors and shedding senior executives as it attepts to morph into a for-profit company, this week OpenAI announced a new editor that could hurt some companies’ ...
Welcome to the era of stock-picking AI chatbots
If you ask ChatGPT, “Which stocks should I buy,” the chatbot will reply with something like “I'm unable to provide specific stock recommendations as I'm not a licensed financial advisor.” (This is a v...
Final Boss: A talk with Duolingo’s Luis von Ahn
Co-inventor of the Captcha . MacArthur genius grant awardee . His elegant crowdsource-assisted digitization of the New York Times 150-year archives became the basis for a technology he ultimately sold...
Teenagers are using AI to learn math and science from celebrities
Few people can make as much of an impact on your life as a good teacher — the kind who makes learning delightful and fun, imparts valuable knowledge, and, above all else, prepares us for the world tha...
OpenAI’s 1 million Enterprise users don’t come close to covering its massive costs
OpenAI now has more than a million ChatGPT Enterprise users . Hurray! Sort of. That sounds great until you realize how much OpenAI is spending on operating costs: up to $7 billion this year on trainin...
AI-generated police reports: What could go wrong?
Police body cam manufacturer doesn’t want to get left behind in the generative AI scene. Politico reports that at least seven police departments across the US are using the company’s Draft One softwa...
Apple is trying to bring its relationship with OpenAI to the next level
To make up for trailing its peers in AI , Apple partnered with OpenAI earlier this summer in order to put ChatGPT on its iPhones. Now it seems Apple would like to take the relationship to the next lev...
The most unlikely companies employing AI
Companies need not be in tech, or even tech-adjacent, to take part in the AI hullabaloo . In fact, part of what’s contributed to AI’s buzz is the potential to use the technology anywhere. Still, it ca...
Companies are talking about AI considerably less than before
The first quarter of this year was a record for big companies mentioning AI or artificial intelligence on their earnings calls. The second? It appears to have declined or at least plateaued (while the...
Three-quarters of founders in the latest Y Combinator cohort are working on AI startups
If you want to understand the extent to which artificial intelligence (AI) has gripped Silicon Valley, look no further than the latest cohort of Y Combinator. For nearly two decades, Y Combinator has ...
Walmart’s ad business: A thin slice with fat margins
makes money selling a dizzying array of products and services. The company operates 10,500 stores in 19 countries. 240 million customers shop its physical stores and websites. It collects fees from ov...
Most companies aren’t talking about AI
Given the fever pitch at which everyone and their grandpa is talking about AI — not to mention spending money on it — it might surprise you to know the majority of big companies are mum on the subject...