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- Will's Weekly Roundup
Will's Weekly Roundup is a weekly newsletter of curated tech, business, and startup news.
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Business
The business headlines you missed (or need to see again)...
Shutterstock - Meta sold Giphy to Shutterstock for $53 Million in a UK regulator-ordered sale after Meta had bought Giphy for a reported $400 million in 2020. LINK
Universities - The University of Idaho was given the green light to acquire the University of Phoenix for $550 million. LINK
Citigroup - Citigroup will spin off its Mexican consumer bank, Banamex, after a year-long failed attempt to sell it. LINK
Goldman - Goldman Sachs has backed Japan’s biggest taxi app with a $1 billion valuation. LINK
Tesla x Ford - The two automakers have announced a partnership that will allow Ford to use Tesla’s EV-charging network. LINK
Ghost Kitchens - Delivery-only, non-physical restaurants were supposed to represent over 20% of the restaurant industry by 2025, but it turns out they were mostly just a pandemic fad. Ghost kitchens are out, and your usual 2019 dining trends are back in. LINK
Gen Z - Among Gen Zers who invest, 55% have their primary investments allocated to cryptocurrency, with 19% exclusively holding cryptocurrency assets, while 41% have invested in individual stocks, and 35% participate in mutual funds. LINK
Top 1% Club - In the US, you’ll need $5.1M in net worth to be among the top 1%, while in the Philippines, you’ll need just $57K. LINK
Tesla - The Tesla Model Y was the world’s best-selling car in Q1 2023. LINK
ESPN - The WSJ says that ESPN is planning a stand-alone streaming service, unlocking the final part of the cable bundle. It’s difficult to know if there will be enough paying subscribers to beat the legacy bundling model. LINK
Grocery Store App Ads - Instacart earned $730m in ad revenue last year, comprising 30% of its net revenue. Other companies like Uber Eats, Walmart, and Amazon are also reporting surges in ad revenue. LINK
Tech
The tech headlines you missed (or need to see again)...
Photoshop Generative Fill - Adobe released its new AI generative fill tool for Photoshop. Explaining it wouldn’t do it justice. You need to see it to believe it. Check out this demo. LINK
Weight Loss - Pfizer’s oral weight loss drug may be as effective as Ozempic, the diabetes drug celebrities are injecting themselves with to lose weight fast. LINK
Uber Robotaxis - Uber will soon offer autonomous ride-hailing and delivery services using Waymo’s robotaxis. LINK
Amazon One - Amazon’s palm-scanning tech, Amazon One, is integrating with age-verification services so people can buy beers at places like sports games or concerts simply by hovering their hand over the scanner instead of showing ID. LINK
Space - Bezos’ Blue Origin won a $7 billion NASA contract to develop an astronaut moon lander. LINK
Musk - Elon teased his new AI project, saying that he doesn’t "want to jump the gun here on announcements, but OpenAI has a relationship with Microsoft that seems to work very well ... so it's possible that X.AI [Musk’s AI company] and Twitter and Tesla would have something similar." LINK
AI Home Runs - The companies that will kill it with AI aren't AI companies but big companies that will use AI. This will become obvious when the AI hype bubble bursts. LINK
Tech Behind Why Nvidia Stock is Soaring - Nvidia's stock surged by 24%, reaching a record high, as the chipmaker projected quarterly revenue 50% above expectations and announced plans to increase chip supply to meet the demand for its chips. Nvidia specializes in GPUs (graphics processing units) that excel in parallel processing, unlike CPUs (central processing units) that process tasks sequentially. The rising demand for AI products is driving the need for GPUs, as they offer the required computational power and parallelism to effectively train and execute complex (AI) models. Consequently, investors betting on an AI future are also betting on Nvidia which is building the hardware backbone of the technology. LINK
Data Doesn’t Exist - Data is the new oil, so we are told. It is often emphasized that every nation requires a data strategy, and individuals should have ownership over their data and receive compensation for it. But really, there is no such thing as data, it’s not yours, and it’s not worth anything. Here’s a short article on the topic. LINK
Watchlist
Startups and companies I’m keeping an eye on…
Shield AI - Shield AI is building the world’s first AI autonomous fighter jet pilot system. LINK
Bigscreen - Bigscreen is a company that’s building the world's smallest VR headset. LINK
Neighbor - Neighbor is a storage service that helps people rent out their extra space and provides inexpensive storage for those looking for places to keep items they aren't using. LINK
RaskAI - RaskAI uses AI to translate and dub videos in different languages. It's pretty impressive. DEMO, COMPANY
Skydio - Skydio builds autonomous drones that make the world more productive, creative, and safe, including a line of military surveillance drones. LINK
Checkmate - Checkmate plugs into Safari on your mobile phone to automatically provide you savings while you shop online at 40,000+ stores. It’s like the browser extension Honey designed for mobile devices. LINK
Outside Interests
Interesting internet finds…
Apple - Apple released its first-ever App Store Transparent Report (for 2022). Key takeaways: there are currently 1.8m apps available on the App Store, and on a weekly average, there are 650m visitors, downloading 750m apps, redownloading 1.5bn, and installing 41bn app updates. And, "China Mainland" is ranked number one for the country with the most apps removed from the App Store subject to government takedown demands at 1.4K app takedowns, way above any other country. LINK
Twitter Competitor - Meta is rumored to release "a text-based app" likely to compete against Twitter. LINK
TikTok Scrolling - An influencer agency is offering people $1,000 to scroll TikTok for 10 hours straight to find emerging trends. Sign me up. LINK
Ketchup - Kraft Heinz has unveiled a sauce dispensing machine that features 200 customizable sauce combinations — the perfect way to crowdsource your taste preference data. LINK
Drinking Water - Studies show you should drink 8 oz of fluid per hour for the first 10 hours of your day. LINK
Lupini beans - Lupini beans are a type of bean that has 50% more protein than chickpeas, 2x more fiber than edamame, 80% fewer calories than almonds, 60% fewer calories than pistachios, and are only 35g per serving. Are Lupini beans the next "health food" to take off? LINK
Italy - Italy’s 11,000 ft volcano Mount Etna erupted early last week halting flights into Sicily. LINK
NYC Is Sinking - New York is reportedly sinking under its 1.68 trillion pound weight. LINK
Healthcare - Americans are choosing more expensive healthcare plans than they should be buying simply because the best plans are too complicated to understand. Here’s an interesting NYT article on the subject. LINK
Productivity - Studies show that after 40 hours of work per week, productivity decreases by 50%. LINK
Seaweed Clothing - Seaweed is becoming the hot new fabric in fashion due to its sustainability and natural biodegradability. LINK
Tug of War - Tug of war used to be a famous Olympic game. Britain has won 5 gold medals. LINK
Bad UI - There's a new trend where engineers are competing to create the worst user experiences. Some of the creative ideas are worth checking out. LINK
Visuals
Three visuals worth taking a look at...
Chip manufacturing companies are currently receiving substantial investments to power all the new AI products, yet there remains untapped potential in realizing the full value of AI technology. Consider the roadmap for monetizing cycles using the mobile internet as a case study.
A simplified overview of the semiconductor chip industry.
Fast food chains with the most locations in the US.
Wisdom
Two quotes of wisdom...
"You do not write your life with words. You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do." ― Patrick Ness
"Small places make for small lives. And some people are fine with that. They like knowing where to put their feet. But if you only walk in other people’s steps, you cannot make your own way. You cannot leave a mark." ― V.E. Schwab
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