Will's Weekly Roundup

May 1st - May 7th

Will Sullivan
May 08, 2023

Will's Weekly Roundup is a weekly newsletter of curated tech, business, and startup news.

Spread the word about Will's Weekly Roundup. Get 3 of your friends, family members, or colleagues to subscribe. Send them this link:

https://willsullivan.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Business

The business headlines you missed (or need to see again)...

Uber - Uber is crushing it. Their revenue grew 29% year-over-year to $8.6 billion, and the company completed 2.1 Billion rides in Q1 alone (23 million trips per day). However, Uber’s freight and logistics business dropped 23% YoY. LINK

IBM - IBM expects to pause hiring for roles as roughly 7,800 jobs could be replaced by AI in the coming years. LINK

Cohere - The Toronto-based ChatGPT competitor Cohere, founded by ex-Google researchers, is valued at about $2 Billion in its most recent funding round. LINK

OpenAI - OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, closed a $300M share sale at $27B-29B valuation. LINK

Green Copper - Goldman Sachs estimates “green” copper will account for 47% of total demand growth between 2023 and 2040. LINK

Morgan Stanley - Morgan Stanley plans to cut 3,000 more jobs as a result of a slowdown in dealmaking activity. LINK

Chegg - Education company Chegg’s stock has been cut in half as students turn away from their services to ChatGPT. LINK

PwC - PwC announced a 3+ year-long $1B dollar partnership with Microsoft to sell Chat-GPT-based products (on Azure) to its IT consulting clients. LINK

Airbnb - Airbnb is going back to its roots, rolling out “Airbnb Rooms,” a filter that allows you to locate properties where you can rent a singular room and the host also lives on-site, in an attempt to lower costs for its customers. LINK

Saudi - Saudi Aramco is in separate talks with Sinopec and TotalEnergies to raise about $10 billion for midstream/downstream projects. Investment bank Evercore is advising Aramco on the plans. LINK

Tesla - Tesla has slightly raised the prices of its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles in the US and China. LINK

S&P 500 - 80% of S&P 500 firms have beaten Q1 earning estimates with over half reporting. LINK

Vice - Vice is reportedly preparing to file for bankruptcy, its value dropping from $5.7 billion in 2017 to a fraction of that. LINK

Banking Crisis - Here’s a timeline of how the banking crisis unfolded. LINK

Tech

The tech headlines you missed (or need to see again)...

War AI - Palantir showed off their new AI product that aims to serve as an 'ethical' and 'legal' veneer for future military automation efforts. Here’s a cool demonstration. LINK

ChatGPT & Education - ChatGPT can do so many things but there have yet to be good examples of how it can teach individuals how to think. Until ChatGPT-like technologies can teach critical thinking, epistemology (the theory of knowledge), philosophy, and media literacy, traditional education isn’t going anywhere. LINK

FinChat - FinChat is a ChatGPT designed specifically for finance that can do things like accurately summarize earnings reports and organize key information into tables. It’s incredible. LINK

Tech CEOs - This table shows how long it took famous CEOs of tech companies to “make it.” LINK

Khan Academy - Khan Academy is launching an AI super tutor that will forever change education. Here’s a short TED demonstration. LINK

SpaceX - SpaceX will spend about $2 billion on Starship this year in an effort to get the biggest and largest rocket ever created to orbit. LINK

Passwordless - Passwords will soon become a technology of the past. Google now offers passwordless accounts, allowing users to switch to passkey-only authentication. LINK

Samsung Data Leak - Samsung banned their staff from using generative AI tools after employees accidentally leaked sensitive data via ChatGPT. LINK

Italy & AI - ChatGPT has been unbanned in Italy after OpenAI addressed data privacy and underage content concerns. LINK

Godfather of AI Speaks Up - Geoffrey Hinton, the "Godfather of AI,” leaves Google and warns about the potential dangers of the technology he has nurtured for 50 years. LINK

Google AI - Google’s ChatGPT competitor, Bard, is better at generating code from text prompts than ChatGPT. LINK

Watchlist

Startups and companies I’m keeping an eye on…

Gigs - Gigs is a job platform that makes it easy to find hourly jobs in your neighborhood. LINK

Woodoo - Woodoo is building environmentally-friendly materials from wood to replace glass and leather. The company recently raised $31 Million. LINK

Elmo - Elmo has developed road-legal tele-driving technology that allows for remote operation of cars (like a video game). This technology is transforming the car rental and sharing industry by enabling cars to be driven between customers without the need for human drivers. LINK

Whisper Aero - Whipser Aero is a startup that aims to enable the next generation of ultra-quiet electric drones. The company just raised $32 Million in Series A funding. LINK

Hero Bread - Hero Bread is a Tom Brady-backed company making low-carb bread, tortillas, and buns. The company recently raised $15 Million in Series B. LINK

Outside Interests

Interesting internet finds…

The 4 Types of People Who Vote Republican - David Pakman, a left-wing progressive political commentator, describes the 4 categories of people who vote Republican: (1) the pro-business, low-tax Republicans like Mitt Romney, (2) the libertarian-type that focus on freedom and liberty, (3) the religious conservatives like Ted Cruz, and (4) the category that Trump introduced - people who didn’t pay attention to politics but either followed celebrities or had grievances that they did not yet have a scapegoat for. LINK

Code Bounties - Replit, the collaborative browser-based software development platform, has a new feature called “Bounties,” which allows creators to post projects or features they want to be built and lets vetted programmers select and complete the projects. LINK

BirdieBall Golf - These oddly shaped golf balls are designed when hit to feel like an actual golf ball but won’t travel as far. They’re perfect for practice. LINK

Quiet Punch - This company has created a proprietary new punching bag that is designed to be mounted in a doorway, just like semi-permanent pull-up bars. LINK

Apple Commercials - The production quality of Apple commercials amazes me every time. Here’s a recent one for Apple Arcade, their video game subscription service. LINK

Plane Routes - US and China are in a dispute over airline routes between the two countries. LINK

Kanye - Investors are suing Adidas for ignoring extremely problematic behavior from Kanye West. LINK

Manchester United - A pair of billionaires have each submitted final bids of around $6.3 billion for Manchester United. LINK

FakeSpot - This Chrome extension detects fake reviews and scams on Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Bestbuy, and other sites. LINK

Box Office - The Super Mario Bros. Movie surpassed $1B at the box office. LINK

Gmail Blue Checkmarks - Gmail is adding blue checkmarks to better verify senders similar to Instagram and Twitter. LINK

NYC Airports - Airports in New York City hit record passenger traffic in Q1. LINK

Free ChatGPT-4 - Currently, to use ChatGPT-4 (and not GPT-3) you must pay for Open AI’s monthly subscription. This website gives you access to GPT-4 for free. LINK

Beer - Mexico is the world’s largest beer exporter, but that’s not why everyone in the US drinks Modelo. The real story involves Brazil, the biggest brewer in the world, and an antitrust lawsuit that forced the sale of Modelo’s US business to a US company. LINK

AudioPen - This website lets you record your messy thoughts and then converts them automatically into short, clear text. LINK

Visuals

Three visuals worth taking a look at...

Alphabet’s Q1 fiscal year 2023 income statement.

LVMH, Hermès, Dior, EssilorLuxottica, and Kering, all French, have a combined market cap of over $1 trillion, accounting for approximately 80% of the top 20 largest public luxury companies' total value.