Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

Amazon says it could begin selling its Trainium AI chips to external customers within two years, putting the cloud giant in closer competition with Nvidia. Loading audio narration… During Wednesday’s earnings call, CEO Andy Jassy said “there’s a good chance” the company will start offering full racks of Trainium chips beyond its own cloud “over the next couple of years.” That provides a clearer timeline for earlier comments in his April shareholder letter, where he only said expansion could happen “in the future.”An Amazon spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider that this is the first time the company has provided a…

Investor interest in Anthropic has reached a feverish pitch. The maker of the Claude AI assistant has received multiple preemptive offers to raise fresh capital of around $50 billion at a valuation in the $850 billion to $900 billion range, according to half a dozen sources familiar with the matter. Bloomberg and Business Insider reported earlier this month that Anthropic received multiple preemptive bids at an $800 billion valuation, but at that time, the company had not yet committed to a fundraise. Sources say, however, that Anthropic is finding it difficult to resist the pressure to secure more funding in…

Elon Musk came to a California federal court on Wednesday to argue that Sam Altman and his co-founders “stole a charity.” He left having admitted, under oath, that Tesla is not currently pursuing artificial general intelligence (AGI)— directly contradicting a tweet he’d posted just weeks earlier. It was that kind of day for Musk. The lawsuit he filed challenging the structure of OpenAI alleges Altman and the other co-founders tricked him into backing a non-profit, then launched the frontier lab’s for-profit arm and let it come to dominate the organization.  After an occasionally testy Musk testified for hours, it appears…

When Meta released its quarterly earnings report on Wednesday evening, a colleague pointed out how Meta lost $4 billion on Reality Labs, the division responsible for its AR glasses, VR headsets, and VR software. I yawned at first. Meta losing $4 billion on Reality Labs just didn’t seem surprising. It’s a given. Reality Labs lost another $4 billion, and also, the sky is blue. Then I realized, that itself is notable — for Meta, losses on this unit are quite literally average behavior. Over its last 21 quarterly earnings reports, dating back to 2021, Meta has lost a total of…

As Meta employees brace for layoffs next month, the big question is how many humans it actually needs in the age of AI. Loading audio narration… In a telling moment during Wednesday’s first-quarter earnings call, CFO Susan Li said she “doesn’t really know” what the company’s ideal head count looks like.”I think there’s a lot of change right now, with AI capabilities advancing rapidly,” she said.That question is causing anxiety across tech, not just at Meta, which is set to cut 10% of its staff on May 20.Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg didn’t address the layoffs directly during the call, though…

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was asked point-blank by a Wall Street analyst on Wednesday how its revised OpenAI partnership would impact Microsoft’s financials. He said that the new agreement was a good deal for everyone. “We feel good about our partnership with OpenAI. I’m always very focused on any partnership and ensuring that there’s a win-win construct at all times. I mean, that’s how you can remain good partners.” He underscored that Microsoft has retained its access to OpenAI’s intellectual property — including its models and agent products — but that it no longer has to pay OpenAI for them.…

Despite the lingering perception that no one really uses Copilot, Microsoft said Wednesday that its user base and engagement are growing for the AI tool that’s baked into M365 apps like Word, Excel, and Outlook email. M365 Copilot now has 20 million paid enterprise Copilot seats, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during the company’s quarterly earnings conference call. The company has quadrupled the number of companies paying for over 50,000 seats, Nadella said, noting that Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, Mercedes, and Roche have more than 90,000 seats. He pointed to the deal announced earlier this week with Accenture for over…

Microsoft expects headcount to decrease in coming quarters, CFO Amy Hood said during an earnings conference call with analysts on Wednesday. Loading audio narration… “We continue to evolve how we operate to increase our pace and agility, and therefore we expect headcount will decrease year over year,” Hood said.She was discussing the outlook for Microsoft’s next fiscal year, which starts in July and runs through June 2027.Before the call, Hood sent out an internal memo to employees touting “increased pace” and “tighter, more accountable squads” amid recent organizational changes.Microsoft has cut thousands of jobs in recent quarters. The CFO’s comments…

Google has so far not put ads in its Gemini AI app, but it’s not ruling it out. Loading audio narration… Google is currently focusing on ads in AI Mode — its AI-powered, conversational version of Search — but this could eventually carry over to the standalone Gemini app, chief business officer Philipp Schindler said on Wednesday’s earnings call.”Our focus right now is on AI Mode, but it’s fair to say that we really believe a format that works well in AI mode would transfer successfully to Gemini app,” Schindler said.In addition to AI Mode, Google also has some ads…

Google Cloud, the business under parent company Alphabet that provides enterprise AI solutions, had a blowout first quarter, with revenues topping $20 billion for the time, a 63% increase from the same period last year. However, investors on the company’s earnings call expressed concern about the constraints surrounding the business and how Google decides to allocate cloud capacity. In the first quarter of 2026, the company said its cloud growth was driven by strong performance in the Google Cloud Platform, which grew at a higher rate than the Google Cloud division’s overall revenue growth. (The Cloud division includes a variety…