CryptoCurrency
Google’s new antitrust defense is AI
For more than a year, company executives threw around the words artificial intelligence to signal that they too were on the cutting edge. Feeding the investor frenzy for lower costs, boosted productivity, and smarter products, “AI” became an earnings call mantra. On Wednesday, Google (GOOG, GOOGL) showed another way companies can wield AI and the excitement around it: as an antitrust defense.
In a blog post responding to the Justice Department’s proposal to potentially break up Google, the company pointed to the blossoming market for AI and the evolution of search as reasons why the government’s case is so misguided.
The Justice Department in a court filing earlier this week outlined potential remedies to reinvigorate competition in the search engine market. Google will have a chance to formally respond, but in the blog post, the company said the government seems to be pursuing a sweeping agenda that threatens to harm consumers and American competitiveness.
“The DOJ’s outline also comes at a time when competition in how people find information is blooming, with all sorts of new entrants emerging and new technologies like AI transforming the industry,” wrote Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs.
In Google’s view, the government’s heavy-handed approach to transforming the search market ignores the nascent developments in AI, the fresh competition in the space, and new modes of seeking information online, like AI-powered answer engines.
The energy around AI and the potential disruption of how users interact with search is, competitively speaking, a negative for Google, said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives. But in another way, as a defense against antitrust charges, it’s a positive.
“That’s an argument against monopoly that bodes well for Google,” he said.
Others are more skeptical of the AI defense.
“The DOJ has specifically noted that this evolution in technology is precisely why they are intervening at this point in time,” said Gil Luria, an analyst at DA Davidson. “They want to make sure that Google is not able to convert the monopoly it currently has in Search into a monopoly in AI Enhanced Search.”
Google’s enormous investment in AI-powered search tools also carries risks for the company. At a fundamental level, the AI transition marks an overhaul of Google’s core search product. And since many people experience the internet through Google, powered by its advertising empire — analysts have questioned whether Google might be endangering its search business to prop up a new, untested AI-driven regime.
“The shift to AI Enhanced Search is a tricky one for Google to begin with because it changes the monetization model Google has successfully refined over the last 20 years,” said Luria.
Instead of displaying ads and sponsored links with every search, Google will have to experiment with different types of advertising when it offers generative AI answers to their queries, he said. “While it is in a position to monetize those ads as well, it may take it years to achieve the same level of monetization [it] enjoys in traditional Search.”
The company likely anticipates these risks, and some contend that a new paradigm could complement or even supplant the old search-based ad model.
“I’m not of the belief that the dollars within search are going to disappear,” said Charlie Miner, an analyst at Third Bridge. “We don’t fully know how they are going to approach the monetization of search.” Advertisers, for instance, might pay a higher premium to place their products inside of AI queries.
Of course, pointing to the advancements of AI and the potential for new markets isn’t a proven defense against accusations of abusing market power. In fact, Google and the other major cloud providers, who are also among the top players in the AI market, have already attracted regulatory scrutiny concerning their AI deals and partnerships.
Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation targeting Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN), and Google’s investments in AI startups. The inquiry focuses on three multibillion dollar deals: Microsoft’s partnership with the maker of ChatGPT, OpenAI, as well as Amazon and Google’s relationships with the AI startup Anthropic.
The FTC said it is seeking information related to competition for AI inputs and resources and the strategic rationale for the deals.
Hamza Shaban is a reporter for Yahoo Finance covering markets and the economy. Follow Hamza on X @hshaban.
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CryptoCurrency
Time to Hit Buy on These 2 Software Stocks, Says Daniel Ives
It’s no secret that tech stocks have been powering the market gains over the past few years, and software stocks were among the biggest drivers of this growth.
Multiple factors are propelling the software industry forward, such as the rapid advancement of AI technology, high demand for IT solutions, and the ongoing expansion of the global digital economy.
Wedbush tech expert Daniel Ives has been watching the tech industry, and his take on it points to continued strength supported by AI and cloud expansion.
“Solid enterprise spending, digital advertising rebound, and the AI Revolution will drive tech stocks higher into year-end in our view,” Ives opined. “We believe 70% of global workloads will be on the cloud by the end of 2025, up from less than 50% today.”
Keeping that in mind, Ives goes on to add that the time has come to hit buy on two software stocks. They may not be household names, but according to the TipRanks data, both stocks are Buy-rated – and Ives sees significantly more upside to each than the consensus on the Street. Let’s take a closer look.
Couchbase (BASE)
We’ll start with Couchbase, a modern database platform provider that offers users and developers everything they need to support a wide range of applications – from cloud, to edge, to AI. Couchbase bills itself as a one-stop-shop for data developers and architects, making its services available through its powerful database-as-a-service platform, Capella. Organizations using the service can quickly create applications and services that deliver premium customer experiences, giving top-end performance at affordable prices.
The Capella platform brings the popular as-a-service subscription model to the database industry. The company can support database services for a wide range of AI applications, including the latest gen-AI tech, as well as database search, mobile access, and analytic functions. Customers can also choose self-managed services through Couchbase’s servers, with on-premises management for both multicloud and community apps.
Couchbase’s database service has found success in a wide range of fields, including the gaming, healthcare, entertainment, retail, travel, and utility sectors. The company’s customer base includes such major names as Verizon, UPS, Walmart, Cisco, Comcast, GE, and PayPal.
Turning to the financial results, we see that Couchbase reported its fiscal 2Q25 figures at the start of last month. The top line of $51.6 million was up almost 20% year-over-year and came in just over the forecast, beating expectations by nearly a half-million dollars. At the bottom line, the company ran a net loss of 6 cents per share in non-GAAP measures, but that was 3 cents per share better than had been anticipated.
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1 Top Stock to Buy Hand Over Fist Before That Happens
2024 is turning out to be a solid year for the global semiconductor industry, driven by multiple catalysts. These include the booming demand for chips that can manage artificial intelligence (AI) workloads, a turnaround in the smartphone market’s fortunes, and a recovery in the personal computer (PC) market.
These factors explain why the global semiconductor industry’s revenue is expected to jump 16% in 2024 to $611.2 billion, according to World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS). That points toward a nice turnaround from last year, when the semiconductor industry’s revenue fell 8%. Even better, the semiconductor space is expected to keep growing in 2025 as well, with WSTS projecting a 12.5% increase in the industry’s earnings to $687.4 billion next year.
More specifically, WSTS predicts a whopping 25% increase in the memory market’s revenue in 2025 to $204.3 billion. As it turns out, memory is expected to be the fastest-growing semiconductor segment next year as well, following an estimated jump of almost 77% in this segment’s revenue in 2024.
There’s one company that could help investors tap this fast-growing niche of the semiconductor market next year: Micron Technology (NASDAQ: MU). Let’s look at the reasons why buying this semiconductor stock could turn out to be a smart move right now.
WSTS isn’t the only forecaster expecting the memory market to surge higher next year. Market research firm TrendForce estimates that the sales of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) could jump 51% in 2025, while the NAND flash storage market could clock 29% growth. Both these markets are expected to reach record highs next year.
The growth in these memory markets will be driven by a combination of strong demand and improved pricing. TrendForce is forecasting a 35% year-over-year increase in DRAM prices next year, driven by the increasing demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) that’s used in AI processors, as well as the growth in DRAM deployed in servers. Meanwhile, the growing demand for enterprise-class solid-state drives (SSDs) and the growth in smartphone storage will be tailwinds for the NAND flash market.
These positive trends explain why Micron is set to begin its new fiscal year on a bright note. The company’s revenue in fiscal 2024 (which ended on Aug. 29) increased 61% year over year to $25.1 billion. The company posted a non-GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) profit of $1.30 per share, compared to a loss of $4.45 per share in fiscal 2023, driven by a big jump in its operating margin on account of recovering memory prices.
CryptoCurrency
A truly decentralized system would decentralize authority — Cardano exec
Cardano Foundation chief technology officer Giorgio Zinetti told Cointelegraph that centralized authority is good for speed, but decentralized governance would give long-term sustainability.
CryptoCurrency
Intel’s former CEO tried to buy Nvidia almost 2 decades ago
Tech pioneer Intel (INTC) has seemingly missed out on the artificial intelligence boom — and part of it can reportedly be traced back to a decision not to buy the chipmaker at the center of it all almost two decades ago.
Intel’s former chief executive Paul Otellini wanted to buy Nvidia in 2005 when the chipmaker was mostly known for making computer graphics chips, which some executives thought had potential for data centers, The New York Times (NYT) reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter. However, Intel’s board did not approve of the $20 billion acquisition — which would’ve been the company’s most expensive yet — and Otellini dropped the effort, according to The New York Times.
Instead, the board was reportedly more interested in an in-house graphics project called Larrabee, which was led by now-chief executive Pat Gelsinger.
Almost two decades later, Nvidia (NVDA) has become the second-most valuable public company in the world and continuously exceeds Wall Street’s high expectations. Intel, on the other hand, has seen its shares fall around 53% so far this year and is now worth less than $100 billion — around 30 times less than Nvidia’s $3.4 trillion market cap.
In August, Intel shares fell 27% after it missed revenue expectations with its second-quarter earnings and announced layoffs. The company missed profit expectations partly due to its decision to “more quickly ramp” its Core Ultra artificial intelligence CPUs, or core processing units, that can handle AI applications, Gelsinger said on the company’s earnings call.
And Nvidia wasn’t the only AI darling Intel missed out on.
Over a decade after passing on Nvidia, Intel made another strategic miss by reportedly deciding not to buy a stake in OpenAI, which had not yet kicked off the current AI hype with the release of ChatGPT in November 2022.
Former Intel chief executive Bob Swan didn’t think OpenAI’s generative AI models would come to market soon enough for the investment to be worth it, Reuters reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter. The AI startup had been interested in Intel, sources told Reuters (TRI), so it could depend less on Nvidia and build its own infrastructure.
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