Humans retake the game of Go. While everyone is getting excited about how generative AI is going to make humans obsolete, real humans are proving just how flawed these systems are and have retaken their rightful place at the top of the game of Go. It was back in 2016 when it was widely declared that the game of Go...
The Fed claims its first victim. A combination of aggressive Federal Reserve policy and poor management has led to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank causing all sorts of problems for start-up companies and putting much of the start-up and early-stage ecosystem in great peril. Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) has been taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation as...
The Dutch are unlikely to go nearly as far. The Netherlands has said that it is going to place more restrictions on exports to China but I suspect that these will be slow in coming and be far less wide-reaching than the US would like. The Netherlands’ trade minister has written to the Dutch parliament outlining the new restrictions but...
Google needs to calm down and do what it is best at. Microsoft has finally managed to get under Google’s skin and the level of panic that has ensued could see Google rush a product to market that damages the quality and performance of its core services. Google appears to be in full panic mode with Sundar Pichai calling in...
Geopolitics and subsidies in the driving seat. Intel is asking Germany to increase the level of subsidy that it is providing to incentivize leading-edge manufacturing in Germany which indicates both how the current subsidies are not enough and also what dire straits Intel currently is in. Intel is looking for a further €4bn-€5bn in subsidies from the German government in...
Zuckerberg giveth and he taketh away. Meta Platforms is giving to its investors with further job cuts likely but at the same time taking it away by cutting the price of its VR units ensuring that more units ship and higher losses are incurred. It looks very likely that another round of job cuts is coming at Meta Platforms and...
Generative AI has bubble written all over it. The signs are everywhere from ridiculous valuations to outlandish use cases and every man and his dog now wanting to build one, but the technology has no chance of living up to the hype meaning that sooner or later the house of cards will fall. That does not mean that there is...
Subsidising failure is a bad idea. The most recent debate doing the rounds at MWC is the idea that Big Tech should pay some of the cost of rolling out 5G as it stands to disproportionately benefit from it. I find this argument to be absurd because I have long argued that the main reason why Big Tech is so...
Floor report – No smiles here. The buzz on the floor is back but the halls of power seem to be filled with doom and gloom as one presentation after another is bemoaning the difficult situation in which the industry finds itself. The Orange CEO gave a dour presentation about the state of operators in Europe while the DT CEO...
Richard is founder, owner of research company, Radio Free Mobile. He has 16 years of experience working in sell side equity research. During his 11 year tenure at Nomura Securities, he focused on the equity coverage of the Global Technology sector.
Meta Platforms – Give and take pt. II
About half of the savings will materialise. Meta Platforms has announced further job cuts which will help reduce expenses but the renewed subsidisation of the Metaverse may well eat up some of these savings leading to less change on the bottom line than expected. A further 10,000 positions are to be eliminated (around 13% of the already reduced workforce) as...