Elon Musk speaks via video during the opening ceremony of 2023 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, China, on July 6, 2023.
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Elon Musk believes China is in a strong position when it comes to the development of artificial intelligence and that the country will be “great at anything it puts its mind to.”
In remarks delivered by video on Thursday to the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, which is being held in Shanghai, the Tesla CEO did not hold back when it came to praising certain aspects of the world’s second-largest economy.
“I think there’s a tremendous number of very smart, very talented people in China,” he said. “I’ve always been a tremendous admirer of the sheer amount of talent and drive that exists in China.”
“So I think, really, China’s going to be great at anything it puts its mind to,” Musk added.
“So that includes, you know, many different sectors, sectors of the economy but also artificial intelligence. So, I think China will have very strong AI capability — [that] is my prediction.”
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Musk has significant business interests in China. Tesla sells its electric cars there and runs a major factory in Shanghai. In May, he met with China’s Foreign Minister, Qin Gang.
Musk’s most recent comments come against a backdrop of tensions between the U.S. and China over technology.
In 2022, Washington enacted sweeping export restrictions on key chips and semiconductor equipment to China. The move could hobble’s Beijing’s attempts to boost its domestic industry in a critical technology. But industry analysts believe that Chinese chip makers will still develop their own advanced semiconductors despite Washington’s attempts to cut the country off.
Interest in AI and its potentially transformative effects on society has heightened in recent times. The past year has seen chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT garner huge amounts of publicity, while discussions about whether AI poses a wider threat to humanity have also taken place.
Content aggregator Digg is making a comeback with the help of an unlikely partner: Reddit co-founder and rival Alexis Ohanian.
Ohanian and Digg founder Kevin Rose acquired the platform for an undisclosed sum. The deal is backed by venture capital firms True Ventures, where Rose is a partner, and Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six. The partnership was announced Wednesday in a video post to the company’s X account in which Rose called the partnership a “team-up he would have never imagined 20 years ago.”
Digg was founded in 2004 and rose to prominence as a major outlet for trending news because it allowed users to rate stories. Rose made what became an infamously goofy appearance on the cover of Businessweek in 2006 as the kid who “made $60 million in 18 months.”
The company said in a release that it aims to differentiate itself in the social media market by “focusing on AI innovations designed to enhance the user experience and build a human-centered alternative.” Digg said it will also create a platform that “prioritizes transparency, rewards human effort, and fosters enriching discussions.”
Ohanian also teased the collaboration, telling X followers on Wednesday that he was “working on something new… but also old… but also very new” and is “excited” to be partnering with Rose.
At its peak in 2008, Digg was reportedly valued at about $160 million. But the rise of Facebook and other social sites caused traffic to Digg to plummet. Meanwhile, Reddit, which was founded a year after Digg by Ohanian and current CEO Steve Huffman, emerged as a direct rival to Digg by forming communities around types of content and letting users similarly rate news stories.
In 2012, Digg’s brand and website were acquired by tech incubator Betaworks for about $500,000.
Reddit has continued its ascent, reporting nearly 102 million daily active users at the end of the fourth quarter. The site gained widespread attention when it became the center of the 2020 meme stock craze as retail traders inflicted huge pain on hedge funds shorting stocks using a subreddit known as Wallstreetbets.
Reddit went public on the New York Stock Exchange last March at $34 a share and has seen its stock nearly quintuple. Shares are up about 1% year to date and added 4% during Wednesday’s session.
Ohanian has moved on to other projects since he stepped down from Reddit’s board in 2020. He’s currently partnering with billionaire Frank McCourt in a bid for TikTok after President Donald Trump extended the initial deadline for the company’s Chinese-parent ByteDance to sell the social media platform or face a ban.
Rose said in a post on X that he and Ohanian “dreamed up features that weren’t even possible with yesterday’s tech.”
“The new @digg brings some great nostalgia, but we’re not here to just rebuild the past or clone a competitor,” he wrote.
The cybersecurity software provider said it expects fiscal first-quarter earnings to range between 64 cents and 66 cents per share, versus the average Factset estimate of 95 cents. CrowdStrike is projecting earnings for the year to range between $3.33 and $3.45 per share, excluding items. That fell short $4.42 expected by analysts polled by LSEG.
For the fiscal fourth quarter, CrowdStrike posted a net loss of $92.3 billion, or 37 cents per share, versus net income of $53.7 million, or 22 cents per share, in the year-ago period. The company also reported $21 million in costs from incident-related expenses and $49.9 million of tax expenses connected to acquisitions.
The company also said it anticipates another $73 million in expenses for the first quarter resulting from its July update that spurred a global information technology outage, grounded flights and disrupted businesses. CrowdStrike projects an additional $43 million in costs due to some deal packages offered in its wake.
The outage has also weighed on free cash flow margins, which CrowdStrike said on a conference call with analysts Tuesday it expects to return to 30% or more in fiscal 2027.
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Many on Wall Street expect headwinds from the July issue to start abating in the new fiscal year, with Bernstein’s Peter Weed expecting a pick up in CrowdStrike net retention rate in the new fiscal year.
“Although FY26 guidance marked a conservative start to the year, in our view, we expect management is setting the stage for a return to a beat-and-raise cadence we saw before the outage,” wrote JPMorgan’s Brian Essex.
CrowdStrike’s disappointing guidance offset better-than-expected fiscal fourth-quarter results. The company posted adjusted earnings of $1.03 per share on $1.06 billion in revenue and said that revenue grew 25% from a year ago.
Founder and CEO George Kurtz called the company a “comeback story” on the conference call.
“I’m extremely proud of the engagement we’ve had with customers, partners, prospects in the market navigating a year that tested CrowdStrike,” he said. “Q4 showcases the fruits of our labors, giving me strong conviction in our AI-native, single platform, excellent execution, and accelerating market opportunity.”
A sign is posted in front of a One Medical office on July 21, 2022 in San Rafael, California.
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One Medical CEO Trent Green will step down from the Amazon-owned primary care provider after less than two years in the role.
Green is leaving One Medical to become CEO of National Research Corp., or NRC Health, a provider of health-care analytics and other services, the company said in a release Tuesday. He’ll start there on June 1.
Under Green, One Medical expanded into new geographic markets and opened more offices. It also integrated further into Amazon, with the company adding medical services to its Prime membership program.
Amazon confirmed Green’s departure in a statement.
“After nearly three years with Amazon One Medical, CEO Trent Green has decided to leave the company,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement. “We are grateful to Trent for his many contributions and wish him well on his next endeavor.”
Neil Lindsay, who leads Amazon Health Services, said in a memo to employees on Tuesday that Green is moving back to his home state of Nebraska for the new role. Green’s last day at Amazon will be April 4.
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“Trent has helped One Medical solidify its position as an incredible place for providers to deliver — and patients to turn to (and return for) — high-quality, human-centered care,” Lindsay wrote in the memo, which was obtained by CNBC.
The deal for One Medical is the third-largest acquisition in Amazon’s history, behind its 2017 purchase of Whole Foods for $13.7 billion and its $8.45 billion deal for MGM Studios in 2021.
Amazon acquired One Medical as part of a deepening push into the health-care market. The company scooped up online pharmacy PillPack in 2018 for about $750 million, before launching its own offering.