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Where Silicon Valley meets Wall Street, TechCheck dives deep into stocks, trades, trends and opportunities focused on new technologies while highlighting news from mega-cap heavyweights, social media darlings, streaming giants, growth software and red-hot disruptors. Everyday TechCheck delivers investors what they need to know with compelling in-depth reporting and analysis from investors, analysts and leaders in the industry.
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: The latest bottleneck in the AI boom might not be chips anymore - it's energy. Computing for AI requires way more power than traditional data centers, and CEOs including Elon Musk, Andy Jassy and Sam Altman are all sounding the alarm. Plus, the AI race is on -- and it's now faster and more competitive than ever. Meta says its just-released latest AI model, the Llama 3, is the most powerful model that's also freely accessible. Meta is also teaming up with Google to include search results with its new AI chatbot, Meta AI, in a show of force against ChatGPT.
The practice of stack ranking might be making a comeback in Silicon Valley. Sometimes called “rank and yank,” it’s becoming increasingly popular among tech companies during what’s turning into the multiple years of efficiency, with big tech cutting costs and trimming their workforce. The type of merit-based, competitive culture has been around since the 80s, popularized by Jack Welch of GE, and is alive and well in other sectors including banking.
Microsoft is making a major investment into the Abu Dhabi-based AI firm G-42 -- $1.5 billion dollars for a minority stake and just the latest in several foreign AI and cloud investments Microsoft has made, designed to continue its head start in AI and lock up another major customer for its cloud service Azure. Plus, HSBC is making a big call on AMD today, arguing in a new note that it shouldn’t be overlooked as an AI play because of its upcoming AI accelerator chip series, and because its non-AI business segments are improving.
Apple and Tesla are the only two stocks in the Magnificent Seven that are still in the red this year, and shares of both are also sinking today on news that Tesla is laying off 10% of its workforce and Apple smartphone shipments are slumping. But it’s not just the stock declines that the two have in common. Some parallels are even more fundamental to the companies, including increased competition from China, both reportedly killing major car projects, and highly anticipated events this summer with a lot at stake.
Box is going all in on AI. The cloud management company just crossed $1 billion in annual revenue, and says there’s still a lot more opportunity ahead. We chat with CEO Aaron Levie on how regulators should tackle AI, how AI will impact jobs and hiring, Google’s AI strategy, and more. Plus, with sticky inflation increasing the chances of higher rates for longer, Silicon Valley investors are now paying close attention to what it means for their privately-held portfolios. We dig into what VCs have been saying and the divergence between AI startups and the rest of tech.
The state of Amazon speaks to the state of big tech right now: keeping up with AI competition while keeping costs in check. We break down the tightrope that CEO Andy Jassy has to walk, from investing in startups while building models, to M&A while keeping an eye on regulators.
Adam Neumann, former CEO of WeWork, sits down with CNBC’s Deidre Bosa to discuss the launch of his new Florida-based real estate startup, Flow, his bid to buy back WeWork, and more.
A new leg of the cloud wars has begun - one where access to the best AI models and tools is key. On the consumer side, Google’s strategy remains uncertain. But on the enterprise side, Google can afford to go on the offensive, and that’s happening in the cloud. CNBC's Deirdre Bosa sat down exclusively with Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian on competition, monetization, the partnership with Anthropic, and more.
There's a new fund that now allows retail investors to get in on the hottest tech startups, including Stripe, OpenAI and SpaceX. But it comes with some risk. The Destiny Tech100 fund has soared more than 500% since its launch two weeks ago but is tanking 40% today. We break down the risks and the rewards. Plus, Intel and Google both announced new and more powerful chips. Intel is introducing its Gaudi 3, which they say is better at inferencing and power efficiency than Nvidia’s H100 chip -- the main choice among companies building AI system. And Google’s Axion is the megacap’s latest expansion into custom chips, which the company says is capable of a range of tasks from powering Google’s search engine to AI-related work.
After a two-year slump, the health care funding market could finally be picking up as AI gets leveraged in the sector. We speak with Amir Dan Rubin, managing partner and CEO of the VC firm Healthier Capital and former CEO of Amazon-acquired primary care provider One Medical on the state of health care startups and funding. Plus, some of the most advanced chips in the world will now be made in America, but by a foreign firm. Taiwan Semi is the largest chip manufacturer in the world and has secured $6.6 billion in subsidies from the CHIPS Act in addition to $5 billion in low-cost government loans. But how does that impact American chipmakers like Intel?
Samsung is said to be the latest company to make a big investment in chip manufacturing in the United States. The company reportedly planning to double its total semiconductor investment in Texas to $44 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. Plus, Move over AI.. robots are emerging as the next big battleground for Big Tech. Apple – is said to be the latest mover.. joining Amazon, Tesla, Nvidia and Google
Trae Stephens is a partner at the prestigious VC firm Founders Fund, co-founder of the defense startup Anduril, and an early Palantir employee. He joins us for a rare interview on investing in defense technology, the thawing IPO market, whether an AI bubble is brewing, and more. Plus, Google’s dominance was built on free products - Gmail, Drive, Maps, Search. But now, in what would be a huge change from that model, the tech giant is reportedly considering charging for AI search features, adding them to its premium subscription services. One could argue it signals some desperation as it struggles to play catchup in the AI race, and a lack of commitment to disrupt its cash cow, Search.
Despite talks of a bubble brewing around AI, Steve Cohen, Point72 Chairman and CEO and owner of the New York Mets, thinks we have a lot more room to run. He says the markets might actually be discounting what AI’s going to be able to do for companies, and that there’s even more upside as a result of AI. We break down what that might mean for labor and productivity, and how to find the AI winners in startups.
There’s so much demand for the $53 billion CHIPS Act, the Biden administration has announced it will scrap funding originally allocated to semiconductor R&D facilities, and instead fund manufacturing hubs like Intel’s. But the funding amount is more like a drop in the bucket in Intel’s longer-term vision for its foundry business. Plus, Salesforce’s AI Chief Clara Shih joins us to talk about a new gen-AI co-pilot tool Einstein and how it’s driving productivity for customers.
Apple is coming off a tough quarter. It was one of the worst-performing megacap tech stocks this year, down nearly 12% in the last three months. The negative sentiment from Wall Street continued today, with Loop Capital cutting its 12-month price target on the stock to $170 from $185. But there could be some positive catalysts ahead, including its annual developers conference, WWDC and a new iPhone cycle in September.
Former Yahoo CEO and early Google employee Marissa Mayer thinks photo sharing is broken. Her new app Shine uses AI to fix that. We chat with her on the new venture, plus competing with tech giants and LLMs, AI startups, Google’s AI strategy and more. Plus, one Raymond James analyst thinks he’s found the next winners in AI: web tool platforms like GoDaddy and Wix. We debate whether that will still hold true as the next generation of AI apps enter the market.
A new class of meme stocks has arrived. Trump Media, or DJT, is perhaps the most divorced from fundamentals. The newly-merged SPAC closed yesterday with a nearly $8 billion market cap and is up 17% today. Newly-public Reddit has also been also volatile – up nearly 70% since its IPO but falling 11% today. It all underscores a market that is increasingly driven by momentum… and retail investors.
The saga of WeWork continues. Former CEO Adam Neumann is putting in a bid, along with half a dozen financing partners, to buy the now-bankrupt co-working company for more than $500 million, according to CNBC sources. But where is that money coming from, and who are the financing partners that would back Neumann after the high-profile WeWork implosion?
The European Union has now launched its first official investigations under its sweeping new competition law, the Digital Markets Act, targeting Apple, Google and Meta in particular. It’s a signal of European regulators going on the offense – identifying so-called gatekeepers and laying out rules to prevent future abuse of market power. But the tech giants now have battles going on multiple fronts – fighting regulators while also trying to keep up with megacap peers in the AI race.
Apple's strategy has always been to be the last and best mover. But generative AI is a different beast. Now, the tech giant looks to be scrambling. It's reportedly in talks to outsource key AI features on the next iPhone to one of its biggest rivals, Google, and has released a new Macbook Air it's selling as "the world's best consumer laptop for AI," but has the same features as past laptops. This week on TechCheck, we dig into how Apple has succumbed to the AI pressure.
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