OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s ongoing effort to fund a new initiative to produce chips to power artificial intelligence has graduated from a billion-dollar venture to a trillion dollar undertaking that aims at nothing less than “to reshape the business of chips and AI,” per recent reports. The United Arab Emirates has joined the list of sources of potential funding for the global project, which seeks to remedy the tight supply of AI chips that Altman is said to view as an obstacle to OpenAI’s effort to develop artificial general intelligence, which he defines as “systems that are generally smarter than humans.” Read more

Apple has reportedly sold about 200,000 Vision Pro units since its U.S. release February 2, the day before the tech giant’s quarterly earnings showed net sales increased by 2 percent to $119.58 billion for the three months that ended December 31. It was the company’s first quarterly revenue increase in a year, driving $33.92 billion in profit for the period, a 13 percent uptick year-over-year. Apple has yet to release official numbers for the Vision Pro, which it describes as “a revolutionary spatial computer that seamlessly blends digital content with the physical world.” Based on early estimates, sales of the $3,500 device are likely to be too small to significantly impact the next quarter. Read more

The Walt Disney Company announced revenue of $23.5 billion for the quarter ending December 31, essentially consistent year-over-year, while net income was up 49 percent to $1.91 billion year-over-year. CEO Bob Iger amplified plans to bring the company “to a period of sustained growth.” Following news that ESPN plans to partner on a new sports streaming platform, Iger disclosed a $1.5 billion investment in “Fortnite” creator Epic Games that will see the companies “collaborate on an all-new games and entertainment universe.” He also revealed Disney+ will exclusively stream Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” concert film. Read more

Apple has released MGIE, an open-source AI model that edits images using natural language instructions. MGIE, short for MLLM-Guided Image Editing, can also modify and optimize images. Developed in conjunction with University of California Santa Barbara, MGIE is Apple’s first AI model. The multimodal MGIE, which understands text and image input, also crops, resizes, flips, and adds filters based on text instructions using what Apple says is an easier instruction set than other AI editing programs, and is simpler and faster than learning a traditional program, like Apple’s own Final Cut Pro. Read more

Amazon’s net sales for Q4 were $170 billion, a 14 percent increase year-over-year. For the full year 2023, net sales were up by 12 percent to $574.8 billion. “This Q4 was a record-breaking holiday shopping season and closed out a robust 2023 for Amazon,” CEO Andy Jassy said in the recent earnings release. The results included October Prime Day and holiday season shopping. Outstanding Q4 performers included ad sales, up 27 percent to $14 billion, and Amazon Web Services, which brought in $24.2 billion, growing 13 percent.”What we’re most pleased with is the continued invention and customer experience improvements across our businesses,” Jassy added. Read more