Verizon has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire competing fiber Internet service provider Frontier Communications in a transaction valued at $20 billion, including $9.6 billion in cash. The deal is expected to close in about 18 months, pending Frontier shareholder and regulatory approval. Verizon says the deal will increase its fiber subscribers by 2.2 million customers and extend its network reach to 25 million households across 31 states and Washington, D.C. It is also expected to expand Verizon’s intelligent edge network for digital innovations like artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things. Continue reading Verizon Plans Frontier Acquisition in Deal Valued at $20 Billion

Nvidia has had another impressive quarter. Record revenue of $30 billion in Q2 was up 122 percent from a year ago, while data center revenue of $26.3 billion marked a 154 percent increase from the same period in 2023. The performance was seen by many as an assurance of AI’s staying power, although others raised concern that if the AI companies buying chips do not start generating profits soon, the sugar high of the two-year AI boom could precede a crash. Nvidia took the occasion to tout its next-generation Blackwell chips, reassuring investors that a mid-production “tweak” would not delay release. Continue reading AI Boom Continues to Drive Strong Nvidia Revenue and Profit

Alphabet announced that its revenue was up 14 percent to $84.7 billion in Q2, slightly outperforming expectations. Profits rose 29 percent to $23.6 billion, beating analyst targets by $900 million. Search continued to be a top performer, generating $48.5 billion in the three-month period ending June 30, while Google advertising was up 10.5 percent to $64.6 billion. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company’s cloud and generative AI solutions “are being used by more than 2 million developers.” The Google Cloud services unit surpassed the $10 billion quarterly revenue mark for the first time. “We are innovating at every layer of the AI stack,” Pichai added. Continue reading Alphabet Reports Q2 Profits Jump 29 Percent to $23.6 Billion

New documents submitted to state regulators for license applications are shedding light on how Elon Musk plans to make his X app into a payment platform that competes with services like Venmo and PayPal. Plans include letting users store money within their X accounts that can then be applied to purchases — including in physical stores — or issuing payment to other individuals or businesses. The filings come as X seeks to expand its revenue pool beyond advertising, which had in its Twitter days accounted for as much as 90 percent of sales. Ad income is said to have fallen below that threshold since Musk purchased the company in October 2022. Continue reading Musk Takes Next Step Toward Making X an ‘Everything App’

Nvidia just wrapped a record quarter, with no sign of interest cooling for the GPUs that have become essential to powering the AI boom. Revenue for the company’s most recent quarter was a record $26 billion, up 262 percent year-over-year. Profit also hit a new high, up nearly sevenfold to $14.88 billion compared to the same period a year earlier. The performance drove the already buoyant stock price above $1,000 a share. Company founder and CEO Jensen Huang proclaimed, “the next industrial revolution has begun,” with Nvidia playing a pivotal role in transforming data centers into “AI factories.” Continue reading Nvidia Reports Record Revenue, Profits as AI Demand Surges

Netflix has added 9.33 million paid subscribers in Q1, a 16 percent year-over-year increase to 269.6 million worldwide. The growth, attributed largely to a password-sharing crackdown, has delivered the company’s strongest first-quarter customer expansion since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The dominant global streamer boosted Q1 revenue by nearly 15 percent year-over-year, to $9.37 billion, and drove profits to more than $2.3 billion for the quarter, a 78.7 percent gain over the same period last year (and a 148 percent leap from Q4’s $938 million). A surprise to many, Netflix announced it will cease reporting quarterly subscriber gains in Q1 2025. Continue reading Netflix Adds 9.3 Million Subscribers, $2.3 Billion in Profit in Q1

Ethereum, the second most popular cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, has completed a software upgrade that aims to make its network cheaper. Called Dencun, the update lowers the cost of so-called layer-2 networks — which include chains like Base, Polygon and Arbitrum — to about a cent for transactions that previously cost $1, while exchanges that used to cost a few cents are reduced to fractions of a cent. Accomplished through a new system of storing data, the upgrade is being welcomed as a harbinger of a development renaissance brimming with new applications and free services. Continue reading Ethereum Software Upgrade Could Reduce Transaction Fees

After a tumultuous two-year slump, Bitcoin rebounded this week when it briefly reached a new all-time high exceeding $69,000, marking a more than 300 percent rise since November 2022 when the price was below $20,000. The prior record of just below $68,790 dates back to November 2021. The 2024 rally comes on the heels of regulatory action approving rules that make it simpler for individuals to invest in Bitcoin by allowing some large investment firms including BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale and Valkyrie to add it to their funds, making it easier for the average investor to choose it as a portfolio option. Continue reading Bitcoin Hits Record $69,000 High Following SEC Rule Change

CTA Vice President of International Trade Ed Brzytwa discussed the sensitive topic of foreign investment transactions with U.S. Department of the Treasury Assistant Secretary for Investment Security Paul Rosen, who runs the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS). Rosen stated that CFIUS was established almost 50 years ago and has been reauthorized by Congress many times. “The mission is to review foreign investments that come into U.S. businesses for national security risks,” he said. “We’re looking to assess who’s getting access to sensitive U.S. assets or getting control of a U.S. company.” Continue reading CES: A Look at the U.S. Security Risks of Foreign Investment

CTA Senior Manager of Government Affairs John Mitchell led a discussion at CES on the use of blockchain as the basis of a new economic ecosystem. Coinbase Head of U.S. Policy Kara Calvert, FinClusive CEO Amit Sharma, and Paradigm Policy Director Justin Slaughter expressed enthusiasm about the potential for financial inclusion and digital identity as well as frustration over U.S. legislators’ approach to regulation. “Here, blockchain is positioned as a problem to address, not an opportunity to be seized,” suggested Slaughter. Meanwhile, they note, Switzerland, China and other countries are taking the lead. Continue reading CES: Leaders Urge Regulation to Unleash Blockchain’s Power

Enterprise software firm SAP is launching its own AI assistant named “Joule,” which will be embedded throughout the company’s cloud portfolio, offering users contextualized insights across SAP apps and third-party sources on both desktop and mobile platforms. The German business solutions giant has an estimated 300 million global enterprise users using its software for applications related to managing human resources, finance, supply chain, procurement and customer experience, as well as the underlying SAP Business Technology Platform. Continue reading SAP Plans to Launch Its New AI Assistant ‘Joule’ in November

Financial software giant Intuit is adding a customer-facing AI assistant to work with individuals and small businesses. Intuit Assist is being integrated across Intuit products starting with TurboTax and expanding to QuickBooks, Credit Karma and Mailchimp. Assist will be embedded across Intuit’s products via a common user interface, allowing customers to get personalized recommendations via contextual datasets. The generative AI assistant was built using Intuit’s Generative AI Operating System, a proprietary corporate model dubbed GenOS, launched in June. Intuit is working with OpenAI to accelerate GenAI app development on GenOS. Continue reading Intuit’s GenOS Spawns Its First Customer AI Product: ‘Assist’

A federal court has approved an agreement between Binance co-founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao and the Securities and Exchange Commission that will allow the embattled cryptocurrency firm to continue operating while fighting an SEC civil fraud lawsuit, the outcome of which may determine the future of the crypto business in the United States. Filed June 5, the Binance charge rocked an industry already reeling from market turmoil and SEC complaints against Coinbase and the founder of FTX. The SEC initially moved to freeze Binance’s U.S. assets, but the company said that would put it out of business here. Continue reading SEC Provides Binance a Lifeline as It Pursues Fraud Charges

Google DeepMind has discovered a way to create AI algorithms that run faster than those coded by humans, which could lead to more cost-effective software development and computing that is more efficient and sustainable, according to the Alphabet company. The breakthrough, detailed in the journal Nature, is called AlphaDev. It uses a form of machine learning called reinforcement that allows computers to build on their successes, honing strategies independent of human programmers. In this case, faster algorithms were developed for computer-science functions like sorting and hashing. Continue reading Google DeepMind’s AlphaDev Can Create Faster Algorithms

After three straight quarters of declining revenue, Meta Platforms posted a 3 percent year-over-year gain in Q1, for a total of $28.6 billion. Earnings fell by 24 percent, to $5.7 billion, due in part to restructuring charges. But the bad news was offset by strong user growth, including 37 million daily active users for Facebook, up 4 percent from Q1 2022. The results beat Wall Street expectations and exceeded Meta’s own guidance. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called it “a good quarter,” adding that “our AI work is driving good results across our apps and business.” Continue reading Meta Back on Growth Curve Following Three Tough Quarters