Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 4

Apple has informed 9to5Mac that it will soon be stopping sales of its flagship Apple Watch models following a recent ruling by the International Trade Commission (ITC).

The ruling by the ITC involves an extensive patent dispute between Apple and medical technology company Masimo, which is debating over the ownership of the Apple Watch's blood oxygen sensor technology. Notably, the ITC announced its ruling back in October, which upheld a judge's decision from January. The case was then sent to the Biden administration, where it will undergo a 60-day Presidential Review Period, and throughout this period, President Biden can veto the ruling. The Presidential Review Period is scheduled to end on December 24, 2023.

As for the Apple Watch's in question, Apple has told the publication that it will no longer be able to sell its Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 in the United States after 3 pm ET on Thursday, December 21. Additionally, in-store inventory won't be available from Apple stores after December 24. The two affected watches are Apple's only devices using the blood oxygen monitoring technology, hence their imminent removal.

It appears that Elon Musk's rocket company, SpaceX, is worth more than Disney or Comcast, according to recent reports from Bloomberg.

The new report from the publication indicates that SpaceX is considering selling shares at a valuation of $175 billion, which would make Musk's company worth more than Disney or Comcast. Notably, SpaceX officially denied reports that insinuated the company was having an internal consideration about an IPO for its Starlink division next year while also upping its valuation by $25 billion more than it was last summer.

According to unnamed sources in the report, SpaceX is considering a share price of $95, which would generate $500 to $750 million if initiated. For reference, Comcast and Disney are worth about $167 billion, and Musk's rocket company hasn't even released put into place its best product - Starship. The company's newest generation rocket that's designed to land on the moon and Mars.

Following the severing of many notable brands as advertisers on X, the social media platform formerly called Twitter, Elon Musk has continued his tirade of comments aimed directly at Disney CEO Bob Iger.

The latest comments from Musk emerged on his personal X account, where he wrote, "Bob, Iger thinks it's cool to advertise next to child exploitation material. Real stand-up guy." The comment was in reference to a lawsuit filed by Attorney General Raúl Torrez of New Mexico against Meta, which alleges the Mark Zuckerberg-run company isn't doing enough to protect kids on both Instagram and Facebook.

How does this connect to Iger? Musk has pointed out that Disney is still continuing to advertise on Meta despite the allegations against the company. The X owner called for Iger's immediate resignation, writing he should be "fired immediately", and that Walt Disney himself was "turning in his grave over what Bob has done to his company."

In what seemed like a bizarre turn of events in the technology news cycle, with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman being ousted from his position and then rehired, we are starting to learn a little bit more about why Altman was initially let go from his position.

A new report from WIRED has revealed that Altman's personal life played a role in why the board decided to let him go, as the publication reports that Altman was spread too thin among his many entrepreneurial pursuits, and as OpenAI's board wrote in its blog post about Altman's departure, "he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities."

So, what could this mean? Altman wasn't just responsible for his duties at OpenAI; he was also rapidly investing in many startups that he saw potential in. For example, in 2019, OpenAI signed a nonbinding agreement to spend $51 million on AI chips developed by Rain AI, a company that Altman had personally invested $1 million into. "Over four years ago, we signed a nonbinding Letter of Intent with Rain to engage in discussions regarding a written agreement; we have not proceeded with next steps," said OpenAI spokesperson Kayla Wood

In what marks the third time this year, Spotify has announced it will be laying off 1,500 employees that have already been notified of their departure.

The news of the layoffs comes from company CEO Daniel Ek, who explained in a newsroom post that the cuts of 17% of the company's workforce was decidedly made to be immediate instead of incrementally over time. This decision was made by Ek, who wrote that he considered Spotify's financial goal state and its current operational costs, and elected to "right-size our costs" to "accomplish our objective".

Additionally, Ek explained that the workforce reduction of this caliber might come as a surprise to many employees considering the "recent positive earnings report and our performance". However, Spotify's CEO writes that this decision was made to close the gap "between our financial goal state and our current operational costs."

AMD has just announced that it has opened its largest global R&D center in Bengaluru, India, where the company will boost research, development, and engineering operations in India.

The new state-of-the-art facility will host around 3000 AMD engineers over the coming years, where they will be designing and developing semiconductor technology that will include 3D stacking, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and, I'm sure so, so much more.

Recently, the new R&D campus was inaugurated by Ashwini Vaishnaw, Union Cabinet Minister for Railways, Telecommunications, Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India. AMD executive leaders, including Mark Papermaster, executive vice president and chief technology officer; David Wang, senior vice president of GPU technologies and engineering; Brian Amick, senior vice president of central engineering; and Andrej Zdravkovic, chief software officer and senior vice president of GPU technologies along with the AMD India leadership team were present.

Elon Musk took to the stage at the 2023 DealBrook Summit in New York on Wednesday and was pressed about the relationship between his "antisemitic" tweets that led to big advertisers such as Apple and Disney to suspend advertising expenditure on the social media platform.

Musk responded to the question by saying he hoped that advertisers who paused expenditure with X over his tweets wouldn't return to the platform. The company CEO added that anyone who attempts to "blackmail" him with money should "go f*** yourself". Known companies that have paused ad spending on X are as follows: Disney, Apple, IBM, Comcast, Warner Bros Discovery, Paramount Global, and Lions Gate Entertainment.

Now, industry analysts are assessing whether or not advertisers will be returning to the platform following Musk's apology for the post and his harsh words to companies that tried to "blackmail" him. The New York Times and Reuters have reported that advertisers won't be returning to the social media platform, and Reuters mentions one executive at a major global ad-buying firm, who declined to be named, said only one major client was continuing to advertise on X.

It was only a few days ago that X owner Elon Musk told the social media platform's advertisers that attempted to "blackmail" him with money to "go f***" themselves.

The certainly interesting comments by Musk took place at the 2023 DealBook Summit in New York on Wednesday and came off the back of Andrew Ross Sorkin asking Musk about the reaction from big advertisers pausing ad expenditure on X following Musk's "antisemitic" tweets. Sorkin's question referred to advertisers such as Disney and Apple pausing or pulling ad spending on X, to which Musk replied, "I hope they stop. Don't advertise".

Now, company CEO Linda Yaccarino has addressed Musk's harsh comments in a series of X posts, writing that Musk's comments on the current advertising situation are an "explicit point of view about our position." Yaccarino added that X stands at a "unique and amazing intersection of Free Speech and Main Street", and "To our partners who believe in our meaningful work -- Thank You."

The United States is currently in a race with only a few competing nations in achieving global semiconductor dominance, and the CEO of NVIDIA said it will be quite some time before it will reach its goal.

Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA, sat down for an interview at the Dealbook Summit, where he explained that while the US is making moves to put itself in the race for semiconductor dominance, it will be at least a decade or two before manufacturing reaches the point where the US can sustainably disconnect itself from the global chip supply. Regardless of how high the mountain is and how long it takes to climb, Jensen says that the US should still embark on the journey.

"We are somewhere between a decade or two decades away from supply chain independence; as I mentioned earlier, our systems come from 35,000 parts, and eight of them come from TSMC. Supply chain independence is going to be challenging, but we are going to try it, and we should endevaour it, but total independence of supply chain isn't practical for a decade or two," said Jensen Huang

Elon Musk sat down at the 2023 DealBook Summit in New York on Wednesday, where he answered some questions regarding advertising on the social media platform formerly called Twitter and now called X.

Elon Musk, the owner of X, and the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at the company, spoke to Andrew Ross Sorkin about the recent tweets from Musk that have been described by the White House as "antisemitic and racist hate". Musk was asked his thoughts on big advertisers such as Disney and Apple pausing ad expenditure with X over his recent controversial tweets. Musk replied by saying, "I hope they stop. Don't advertise."

Sorkin followed up by asking Musk, "You don't want them to advertise?" Musk replied with, "No." Musk was asked to explain his reasoning behind his statement, to which the X owner said, "If somebody's gonna try to blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go f---yourself. Go. F---. Yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is." Musk then doubled down by saying, "Hi Bob! If you are in the audience. That's how I feel," which a reference to Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney.