In Q2, Walmart said its ad business grew 30% in the past year; eMarketer says Walmart will claim 6.8% of 2024 US retail media spending, for $3.7B in ad revenue — A high-margin and fast-growing ad business is changing the chain's relationship with brands — Walmart last week reported rising sales …
AMD agrees to buy New Jersey-based ZT Systems, founded in 1994 to design and make servers, server racks, and other infrastructure, for $4.9B, closing in H1 2025 — ZT Systems produces servers, other equipment used in data centers for artificial intelligence
How Worldcoin is building its World ID identity system, trying to assuage government and privacy activists' concerns about its iris scanning tech and data usage — More than a dozen jurisdictions have either suspended the project's operations or looked into its data processing
Arize AI: 56% of Fortune 500 companies cited AI as a “risk factor” in their recent annual reports, up from 9% in 2022; 86% of software firms cited AI as a risk — Study finds more than half of Fortune 500 groups cited new technology as a potential hazard in their latest annual reports
A look at Apple's work on its in-house modem chip, which may debut in some niche models next year, with the full rollout taking a few years to complete — Apple's move to drop Qualcomm modem chips won't have a payoff at the outset, but it could set the stage for bigger things later.
A survey of 2,012 people in Germany finds ~50% wouldn't use the digital euro over privacy fears; the European Central Bank will decide on a rollout by 2025 end — - ECB officals to decide on rollout by end of next year — Half of people in Germany can't imagine using e-euro
Runway debuts Gen-3 Alpha Turbo, a faster and cheaper model than Gen-3 Alpha, capable of generating 5- or 10-second-long video clips, available for all plans — After showing it off in preview late last month, Runway has officially released Gen-3 Alpha Turbo, the latest version …
X says it's closing its operations in Brazil, claiming a judge threatened arrest if X didn't comply with “censorship orders”; the service remains available — X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, said today that it's ending operations in Brazil …
Nancy Pelosi issues a statement in opposition to California's AI safety bill, saying it's “well-intentioned but ill-informed” and “more harmful than helpful” — San Francisco - Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi issued this statement in opposition to California Senate Bill 1047:
A profile of Anthony Tan, the solo developer of Way to the Woods, a game that received Epic Games funding and remains unreleased nine years after its conception — Anthony Tan was 16 when his idea for a video game about a deer caught the industry's eye. Nine years later, he's still working on it.
The Biden administration approves $1.6B in Chips Act grants and $3B in loans for Texas Instruments, to support its one chip factory in Utah and two in Texas — - Funding will support $18 billion in spending in Texas, Utah — Biden administration almost finished allocating chips grants
Quantum Circuits, which aims to make error correction more efficient in quantum computers to help commercialization, raised $60M from the US' In-Q-Tel and more — - Sequoia's sole quantum computing bet raised over $60 million — Policymakers fear security impact of falling behind in quantum
Unit 42: open-source projects from Google, Microsoft, AWS, and others leaked GitHub auth tokens via GitHub Actions; GitHub decided not to address the risk — Multiple high-profile open-source projects, including those from Google, Microsoft, AWS, and Red Hat, were found …
Australia's market regulator sues the country's ASX stock exchange over its botched blockchain upgrade, abandoned in November 2022 after seven years of work — Corporate watchdog said ASX made ‘misleading’ statements about its clearing and settlement system
How Tether co-founder Brock Pierce's plan to use crypto to revitalize Puerto Rico's economy became mired in legal disputes and fights with his business partners — On sun-drenched days in 2022, the cryptocurrency entrepreneur Brock Pierce liked to take his friends sailing to the island of Vieques …
Sherry Qin / Wall Street Journal : Chinese video game giant NetEase reports Q4 revenue up 3% YoY to ~$4B and net profit down 29% to ~$903...
