Software

Meta investors take wins now, forget about later

1 Feb 2024

The company is paying its first ever dividend just as politicians are on the warpath: a senator this week said CEO Mark Zuckerberg had blood on his hands. DC dysfunction protects investors for now. But safety issues dent its reputation, and political shifts will be a problem.

Apple’s AI absence may be its advantage

1 Feb 2024

Microsoft and Alphabet pepper quarterly results with the promise of artificial intelligence. The $2.9 trln Apple barely mentions it. The risk is a giant missed opportunity. But its gadgets may indirectly benefit, and without the ballooning capital expenditure at peers like Meta.

Alphabet may envy Microsoft’s AI Midas touch

31 Jan 2024

Massive expectations of how artificial intelligence will reshape technology have boosted both companies’ valuations. But comparing their latest results suggests the $3 trln software firm run by Satya Nadella is moving quicker and more decisively to turn its bets into gold.

Big Tech and AI get too close for comfort

29 Jan 2024

Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia and Alphabet alone contributed about a third of the $70 bln raised by data and artificial intelligence startups last year. Some of the investments could turn into revenue generators. Mounting regulatory and financial risks also might offset the benefits.

Amazon’s investors can chill with M&A freeze

29 Jan 2024

The e-commerce giant scrapped a $1.4 bln deal for Roomba maker iRobot after regulatory opposition that suggests future deals, no matter how small, will be seen as problematic. Given Amazon’s track record with past tie-ups like Whole Foods, though, some restraint could be welcome.

IBM boom suggests a lack of pattern recognition

25 Jan 2024

AI is thriving, says CEO Arvind Krishna. Investors responded by giving IBM shares their best day in 23 years. Yet the tech firm’s reported numbers are pedestrian. Until the benefits show up in top-line growth, IBM’s promise remains – in AI-speak – a hallucination.

Tesla’s secret weapon: US automakers’ flaws

24 Jan 2024

The $650 bln electric-car maker’s fourth quarter continues to show the strain of stalling growth and falling prices as Chinese rivals rise. A long-sought cheap model is a ways off, but boss Elon Musk has one big fillip: old-guard rivals are still behind in his home market.

Venture capital’s facelift shows modest scars

24 Jan 2024

Growth-company investors are paying higher prices, new data suggests, even if dealmaking overall is still muted. Interest is shifting to areas like AI and manufacturing. The result is a new look for the recovering startup ecosystem, albeit with a little less youthful vigor.

Capital Calls: SAP, Abrdn

24 Jan 2024

Concise views on global finance: The German software giant is cutting 7% of its workforce, sending shares to an all-time high; outflows at the British fund manager accelerated in the second half of 2023, exacerbating the company’s effort to turn itself around.

Capital Calls: Microsoft’s Russian hacker

22 Jan 2024

Concise views on global finance: The $3 trln tech firm disclosed that a nation-state hack accessed leaders’ email, saying it showed the need for potentially “disruptive” measures. It’s a worrying acknowledgement of the still-vague costs of geopolitical tensions for tech giants.

Spirit deal loss eases anxiety for everyone else

16 Jan 2024

A judge grounded JetBlue’s $4 bln purchase of the ultra-cheap carrier. The defeat avoided a potentially unprecedented intervention by regulators that would have clouded the industry, while affirming antitrust blowback. But Spirit’s shares halved, for good reason.

Chiplets-to-chips future featured in $35 bln deal

16 Jan 2024

Semiconductor designer Synopsys is buying Ansys, a firm which helps integrate systems. The buyer’s rich stock price should make an estimated low return tolerable. But the key is the future of the chip business: fancier technology requires more integration.

Fujitsu’s tricky UK dilemma: double or quits

12 Jan 2024

The $29 bln Japanese firm’s faulty accounting system led to the convictions of Post Office workers. With 7% of global sales in Britain, Fujitsu may need to offer compensation. But if its reputation means it can’t secure future state contracts, that might not be worth it.

Carta gives startups an unwanted SVB refresher

10 Jan 2024

Growth companies closely guard details of their investor base, so the misuse of such data by a16z-backed Carta is a big blow. Startups may conclude that vital functions are best entrusted to bigger, more regulated firms. It’s not the first time they have received that warning.

HPE’s Juniper deal magnifies power of competition

10 Jan 2024

Buying the networking-gear maker for $14 bln is designed to cash in on AI growth. Despite riding the internet boom, however, Juniper has generated less than half the return of the S&P 500 Index since its IPO 24 years ago. It’s a timely lesson on how robust rivalries erode profit.

AI startups’ key challenge is creativity, not cost

9 Jan 2024

Developing humanlike models is notoriously expensive. In this Exchange podcast, venture capital investor Konstantine Buhler of Sequoia Capital discusses how new breakthroughs are starting to lower costs and how that presents opportunities for challengers like OpenAI.

Mobileye’s bullwhip will come for Nvidia too

4 Jan 2024

The maker of chips for autonomous-car systems warned that customer stockpiling would hit first-quarter revenue. Gluts are inevitable across the industry, but this one sent the Intel-backed company’s shares down 25%. AI-semiconductor suppliers are bound to face similar surpluses.

New York Times arrives in new tech with AI lawsuit

28 Dec 2023

The 172-year-old newspaper publisher is suing OpenAI and its backer Microsoft for alleged unauthorized use of its articles to train chatbots. It could help compel tech companies to pay publishers for news content, shifting a modicum of power back to the battered media industry.

Gen Alpha will tire of living online

26 Dec 2023

As kids born since 2010 age into the digital world, their fatigue from being forced online will prompt backlash similar to Gen Z. Both will become smarter about the implicit agreement of trading services for data and make life more difficult for companies from Alphabet to OpenAI.

China policy risk returns as stock market grinch

22 Dec 2023

Shares in Tencent and NetEase plunged after surprise new curbs from Beijing on video-game spending and rewards. It smacks of President Xi Jinping’s crackdowns on private tutoring, tech and other sectors – and gives overseas investors another reason to be wary jumping back in.