Shares for Facebook parent Meta jumped more than 17% in after-hours trading Wednesday, after the tech giant beat Wall Street expectations on revenue and user growth.
Of note: Meta also provided positive first quarter guidance and said it expects expenses for the full year to be lower than originally forecasted.
David Cahn has agreed to join Sequoia Capital as a partner on its growth team, Axios has learned. He previously was a general partner and COO of venture capital with Coatue Management.
Why it matters: This reflects how top VC firms are seeking to bolster their AI and data expertise, which Cahn focused on at Coatue.
Meta has a green light to buy virtual reality fitness startup Within, beating a Federal Trade Commission bid to block the acquisition.
Driving the news: Per Bloomberg, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila made the ruling in sealed court documents filed in California district court Wednesday.
School districts in Tucson, Arizona, and Nantucket, Massachusetts, are responding to ransomware attacks on their networks this week — with at least one district canceling classes as it mitigates the impact.
Driving the news: Schools in Nantucket are closed Wednesday as the district works to understand the scope of a ransomware attack that hit their computers.
OpenAI announced Wednesday it's starting to sell $20 a month subscriptions to ChatGPT, its trendy AI-driven chatbot that answers questions, write poems and has taken the tech world by storm.
Why it matters: ChatGPT seized a powerful spotlight. Now, the monetization begins.
Samsung officially unveiled its Galaxy S23 family of smartphones Wednesday, boasting faster processors and an array of camera improvements. The company also introduced a range of new Galaxy Book laptops, including its first high-end Ultra model.
The big picture: Samsung, like other tech companies, faces a challenging market as it tries to launch new devices into a tough economy.
The rise of generative AI tools is creating parallel demand for a new class of systems that can help distinguish AI-generated text and images from those created by humans.
Why it matters: Educators, in particular, are concerned about students turning in work created by an AI system. But experts are also worried about how generative AI can create a flood of misinformation and impersonation. Detection tools, if they can be made sufficiently accurate, could help.
A new Biden administration report describes Apple and Google as "gatekeepers" of mobile app stores and suggests legislation is needed to spur competition and give app makers and consumers more choices.
Driving the news: The White House is pushing for tech antitrust action in the new Congress, with a new Department of Commerce report laying out what it sees as a harmful app store environment for both consumers and app makers.
Shares in Snap Inc. fell more than 13% in after-hours trading Tuesday, after the company said it missed Wall Street expectations for revenue growth in the fourth quarter and offered a somewhat bleak outlook for the current quarter.
Why it matters: Snap typically serves as a bellwether for other ad-supported internet stocks, like Meta and Pinterest, which are scheduled to report earnings in the next week.
PayPal CEO Dan Schulman announced on Tuesday that the company will lay off around 2,000 employees, the latest tech giant to slash jobs this year.
The big picture: This would come on top of the 68,000 tech workers who already have lost their jobs so far in 2023, according to tracking site Layoffs.fyi.
The Federal Reserve Board's unanimous rejection of a digital-assets-focused bank's 27-month effort to gain entry to the club came with an exclamation point.
Why it matters: If Custodia Bank was meant to serve as an example, crypto firms in the throes of playing "Mother, May I" with [name your banking regulator] are likely to be disappointed, regardless of standing.
Developers are the most in-demand roles on the dark web, according to recent research from Russian cyber firm Kaspersky.
Driving the news: Kaspersky's analysis of job advertisements posted on dark web forums between January 2020 and June 2022 found that some cybercrime and state-sponsored hacking groups were offering developers upward of $20,000 a month to join their ranks.
Suspected Russian hackers deployed a new malware wiper against a Ukrainian energy sector company right as Russian armed forces started launching missiles against Ukraine's broader energy infrastructure late last year.
Driving the news: Researchers at Slovakian cyber company ESET found in a report released today that Russian state-sponsored hacking group Sandworm targeted the unnamed company in October with a data-wiping malware.
The Justice Department's recent, historic operation that thwarted a notorious ransomware gang came with a barely coded messaged: More ransomware victims should call the FBI.
Why it matters: Targets of ransomware and other malicious cyber incidents often fear that if they call the FBI, they'll have to give agents overly broad network access, they'll be named in future litigation, or the attackers will leak sensitive information.
ChatGPT creator OpenAI today released a free web-based tool designed to help educators and others figure out if a particular chunk of text was written by a human or a machine.
Yes, but: OpenAI cautions the tool is imperfect and performance varies based on how similar the text being analyzed is to the types of writing OpenAI’s tool was trained on.
The Threshold Network has announced plans for a new decentralized bitcoin bridge to Ethereum, allowing the original cryptocurrency to be used on the largest programmable blockchain.
Why it matters: As holders of the oldest and most valuable cryptocurrency, many bitcoin investors want to use it to earn yield in decentralized finance (DeFi), something they can't do on the Bitcoin blockchain. But they also want to avoid the counterparty risk of trusting a single company to provide a bitcoin derivative that works on Ethereum.
Lotus Technology, a luxury electric vehicle maker majority owned by China's Geely, agreed to go public at an implied $5.4 billion enterprise value via a blank check company sponsored by private equity firm L Catterton.
Why it matters: This suggests that Geely hasn't soured on EV SPACs, despite the poor stock market performance of its Polestar unit.
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek will pivot his focus towards increasing the company's margins this year, but he doesn't plan to hold back on new investments in growth areas like audiobooks, he told Axios in an interview.
Why it matters: Heavy investments in technology, marketing and content helped fuel Spotify's top-line revenue and user growth in 2022, but weighed on the company's profits, frustrating investors.
Miami's Chef Pii is now selling her TikTok-famous Pink Sauce at Walmart stores.
What's happening: Chef Pii recently partnered with Dave's Gourmet, a specialty foods wholesaler that helped her develop a shelf-stable version of her popular, Pepto Bismol-colored product. You can now find it in 4,300 Walmarts across the country.
As the tech world embraces ChatGPT and other generative AI programs, the industry's longstanding pledges to deploy AI responsibly could quickly be swamped by beat-the-competition pressures.
Why it matters: Once again, tech's leaders are playing a game of "build fast and ask questions later" with a new technology that's likely to spark profound changes in society.
