The Italian software company, which notably acquired — and limited free access to — Evernote, has added WeTransfer to its growing portfolio. WeTransfer CEO Alexandar Vassilev says the company will “continue to serve your creative tooling needs” following the acquisition.
As David Pierce wrote about the Friend AI gadget and company CEO Avi Schiffman:
He wants Friend.com to eventually become a social network for real-life and AI friends, and he wants to build more kinds of devices and try everything.
Apparently, he’s serious. 404 Media reports he spent $1.8 million on the domain after raising about $2.5 million. Schiffman said, “People just don’t get consumer, I view this as saving money. Much less money needs to be spent on marketing, it’s a one time thing.”
The new head of Logitech discusses the company’s return to growth and plans to reduce its carbon footprint by half.
Bullying works: after TikTok users complained about Chipotle’s inconsistent portion sizes, the company announced this week it is “doubling down” on training to ensure customers get “correct and generous portions.” It will cost the company $50 million, executives told analysts.
Researcher Alex Hanna, of Distributed AI Research Institute and previously of Google, reflects on what might come next:
After the dust settles and NVIDIA has stopped churning out shovels (e.g. H100s) for the gold rush, what will be left behind? Will data centers go the way of shopping malls? Likely not—they’ll be repurposed for other massive computing projects. But what about those climate pledges?
[Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000: The Newsletter]
T-Mobile is creating a joint venture with the investment firm KKR to acquire Metronet, a service that provides fiber internet to over 2 million homes and businesses in 17 states.
As part of the deal, T-Mobile will invest $4.9 billion for a 50 percent stake in the joint venture and all of Metronet’s residential customers. In April, T-Mobile announced plans to acquire the fiber optic company Lumos as well.
[T-Mobile Newsroom]
Two of Silicon Valley’s famous venture capitalists make the case for backing Trump: that their ability to make money is the only value that matters.
Comcast’s earnings report today revealed that Peacock lost 500,000 subscribers in the months leading up to the Olympics — and Peacock’s planned price hike. Despite this, Peacock is pushing toward profitability with $1 billion in revenue and losses narrowing to $348 million.
Monthly active users increased by 14 percent year-over-year to 626 million, but 5 million short of Spotify’s expectations for the quarter. Subscribers also increased by 12 percent to 246 million, with Spotify reporting a record-high operating income of €266 million (about $288.8 million).
The growth timeline “exceeded even our own expectations,” said CEO Daniel Ek. “This all bodes very well for the future.”
