Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

Nvidia beat Wall Street’s sales expectations in its quarterly earnings report on Wednesday despite significant headwinds in China as the chip giant navigates trade restrictions.The company reported revenue of $44.06 billion, compared to estimates of $43.32 billion. In its key data center segment, Nvidia saw revenue of $39.1 billion during the quarter, lower than analysts’ expectations for $39.36 billion but up 73% year-over-year.Trading was volatile immediately after the results, with the stock up 3% in after-hours trading to about $138.41. Shares were up 0.4% year-to-date through Wednesday’s close, closing at $134.68.Nvidia didn’t waste any time mentioning what was dragging down…

DeepSeek has gone viral. Chinese AI lab DeepSeek broke into the mainstream consciousness this week after its chatbot app rose to the top of the Apple App Store charts (and Google Play, as well). DeepSeek’s AI models, which were trained using compute-efficient techniques, have led Wall Street analysts — and technologists — to question whether the U.S. can maintain its lead in the AI race and whether the demand for AI chips will sustain. But where did DeepSeek come from, and how did it rise to international fame so quickly? DeepSeek’s trader origins DeepSeek is backed by High-Flyer Capital Management, a Chinese quantitative hedge fund…

Chinese startup DeepSeek has released an updated version of its R1 reasoning AI model on the developer platform Hugging Face after announcing it in a WeChat message Wednesday morning. The updated R1, which is under a permissive MIT license, meaning it can be used commercially, is a “minor” upgrade, according to DeepSeek’s WeChat announcement. The Hugging Face repository doesn’t contain a description of the model — only configuration files and weights, the internal components of a model that guide its behavior. Weighing in at 685 billion parameters in size, the updated R1 is quite hefty. (“Parameters” is synonymous with “weights.”) Without modification,…

After spending the day promoting his company’s AI technology at a developer conference, Anthropic’s CEO issued a warning: AI may eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within the next five years.”We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming,” Dario Amodei told Axios in an interview published Wednesday. “I don’t think this is on people’s radar.”The 42-year-old CEO added that unemployment could spike between 10% and 20% in the next five years. He told Axios he wanted to share his concerns to get the government and other AI companies to prepare…

Odyssey, a startup founded by self-driving pioneers Oliver Cameron and Jeff Hawke, has developed an AI model that lets users “interact” with streaming video. Available on the web in an “early demo,” the model generates and streams video frames every 40 milliseconds. Via basic controls, viewers can explore areas within a video, similar to a 3D-rendered video game. “Given the current state of the world, an incoming action, and a history of states and actions, the model attempts to predict the next state of the world,” explains Odyssey in a blog post. “Powering this is a new world model, demonstrating…

Google is celebrating 10 years of Google Photos with the launch of a redesigned editor. The redesign adds new AI features — Reimagine and Auto Frame — which were previously only available on Pixel devices, bringing the tools into the hands of more users. The Reimagine feature uses generative AI to transform objects and backgrounds in photos with text prompts. For example, you could ask to replace a gloomy sky in one of your photos with “clear blue skies.” The Auto Frame feature suggests different ways to frame a photo, whether it’s by cropping, widening, or using generative AI to…

Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings is joining Anthropic’s board of directors, the company announced on Wednesday. Hastings’ appointment adds a veteran Big Tech executive to one of OpenAI’s largest — and youngest — competitors in the AI race. The Netflix co-founder seems likely to help Anthropic grow from a startup into a major company, pulling from his experience sitting on the boards of Netflix, Microsoft, Bloomberg, and Meta. However, Anthropic notes that Hastings was appointed by its Long-Term Benefit Trust, an independent body at the top of the startup’s corporate governance structure that’s designed to be “financially disinterested.” The Long-Term Benefit…

AMD has acquired Enosemi, a startup designing custom materials to support silicon photonics product development. The terms of the deal, announced Wednesday, weren’t disclosed. Silicon photonics uses light — photons — to transmit data, offering a faster and more efficient alternative to traditional electrical communication. AMD and other chipmakers have shown an increasing interest in the tech. Late last year, AMD reportedly teamed up with several Taiwan startups for a silicon photonics R&D collaboration. AMD says that its acquisition of Enosemi will “accelerate [its] co-packaged optics innovation for AI systems.” “As AI models grow larger and more complex, the need for…

Microsoft announced on Wednesday that it has started rolling out the beta version of its Copilot for Gaming experience. Beta testers can access the experience in the Xbox app on iOS and Android. The early version of the experience allows the assistant to answer questions about the games you’re interested in, give you links to more information, and answer questions based on your account, play history, achievements, and more. For example, you could ask something like: “What’s my gamer score and can you give me some tips to raise it?” or “I love horror movies. Any suggestions for what game…

Context, a startup building an AI-powered office suite, on Wednesday announced that it raised $11 million in a seed round led by Lux Capital with participation from Qualcomm Ventures and General Catalyst. The round, which brings the company’s total raised to around $15.75 million, values Context at $70 million. Founder Joseph Semrai, a Thiel Fellow, started working on Context in 2024 after he realized that current digital office suites are not well-suited to take advantage of AI models. “[W]e have a bunch of disparate applications that aren’t necessarily built keeping the power of [AI models] in mind,” Semrai told TechCrunch…