NPR (Alina Selyukh) - Amazon dethrones Walmart as the world's biggest company by sales
In a slow-motion race of two retail behemoths, Amazon's trump card was its lucrative cloud-computing business.
NEWSNATIONNOW (Julia Shapero) - OpenAI opening ChatGPT access to Pentagon
The custom ChatGPT will run on “authorized government cloud infrastructure with built-in safety controls and protections."
NYTIMES (Karen Weise) - Amazon Plans to Spend $200 Billion on A.I. and Other Projects This Year
The company reported a strong holiday quarter on Thursday. But its big spending on things like artificial intelligence and satellites is starting to make investors nervous.
NYTIMES (Tripp Mickle) - Google Profit Jumps 30 Percent on A.I. Gains
Profits rose to $34.5 billion last quarter, as the tech giant gained ground with its Gemini system, bolstering its search business and YouTube.
AXIOS (Madison Mills) - The new math defining AI winners and losers
Microsoft had one of its worst selloffs in history after it increased its AI spending plans. Meta did the same, but it was rewarded by investors. Why it matters: The wildly different market reactions to Meta and Microsoft earnings reveal the new calculus investors are using to evaluate AI winners and losers. State of play: Microsoft reported solid earnings , with revenue and profit beating expectations, but its stock fell nearly 12%. - Cloud revenue was up 39% from a year ago, but that was driven by non-AI workloads. Capital expenditure hit $37 billion for the quarter, a 65% jump. - That mismatch is the issue: If a company is spending a lot, fine, but it needs to be spending on AI investments that will make it money now. - Meta beat on…
HUFFPOST - Microsoft Plunges, Meta Rallies As Investors Demand AI Payoffs
Microsoft dropped 10%, shedding more than $350 billion in market value after its cloud business failed to impress, while Meta gained 10%.
AI:Microsoft’s market value cratered by over $350 billion following a massive 10% plunge triggered by lackluster performance in its cloud sector, signaling a major reality check for tech giants relying heavily on AI hype rather than tangible returns. While investors punished Microsoft for failing to meet expectations, Meta managed to rally with a 10% surge as capital began shifting toward companies capable of delivering actual profitability from their artificial intelligence investments. This market volatility underscores the growing demand for immediate payoffs and exposes the fragility of valuations built on speculative technology spending.Open
NYTIMES (Cade Metz) - Amazon and Google Eat Into Nvidia’s A.I. Chip Supremacy
The rivals made billions of dollars in the business over the past year, showing other companies that Nvidia isn’t the only game in town.
NYTIMES (Natallie Rocha) - Microsoft Continues to Spend Big on A.I. While Profit Jumps 60 Percent
The company said on Wednesday that revenue in the most recent quarter was $81.3 billion, but its share price dropped more than 5 percent in after-hours trading.
NYTIMES (Karen Weise) - Amazon to Cut 16,000 Jobs in Latest Round of Layoffs
The e-commerce giant has been cutting costs in part to redirect money into building data centers to compete in the race to dominate artificial intelligence.