Dispatch 037: CaptAIn AmerIca...
We're seemingly back in that part of the cycle where it's all NVIDIA, all the time (see: below). But first, some thoughts on yesterday's late-breaking news that Disney was merging Hulu + Live TV with Fubo, in what is clearly both an effort to end the lawsuit over Venu and put their vMVPD in better position to compete with YouTube TV (while perhaps also getting such an increasingly expensive service off their own balance sheet as cable continues to collapse). But my god Disney has a mess on their hands when it comes to streaming options. Clearly – clearly – they don't care, and view more choices as better. But there's both a real brand perception and customer confusion risk here.
Certainly, they need to buy Vudu next.
M.G. Siegler
I Think...
🤖 Nvidia's 'Cosmos' AI Helps Humanoid Robots Navigate the World – So far, just based on headlines and buzz, it's pretty clear that NVIDIA is "winning" CES. But cool AI wafer shields aside, it isn't all their AI chips generating the heat – literally and figuratively – this time, but actually their own AI models to help usher the industry beyond LLMs and into the real, physical world via robots. That's the area Jensen Huang is clearly and forcefully laying out as the company's next big bet. But in some ways, it's also their former bet. Before generative AI took off, people forget that NVIDIA was gaining steam in AI usage for self-driving technology. They were perhaps a bit early and the pandemic veered everything off course, but now we're back on track and Huang clearly thinks these cars will be the first hit in a "multi-trillion dollar robotics industry". But cars aren't the only bet, warehouse robots, humanoid robots, etc. They're partnering with a lot of players here – including, notably, Tesla – but if these markets are truly this big, obviously everyone will be rushing to compete as well. NVIDIA, so far, is doing well to stay one step ahead – and right now, it's enough to push them back to the most valuable company in the world. Will they beat Apple to $4T? [Wired 🔒]
⚱️ Nvidia Announces $3,000 Personal AI Supercomputer Called 'Digits' – But if physical AI and robots are the future, generative AI and LLMs remain the present, and NVIDIA isn't about to give up that market, obviously. In fact, they're pushing further into the home – or, at least, the office, with their Mac mini-like (though gold!) 'Project DIGITS' (all caps) machine. While Apple is finally starting to make 8GB of RAM the new standard to handle the the AI age, these machines will come with 128GB of RAM standard (the maximum amount of memory you can get in a Mac mini is 64GB – and that will cost you... around $3,000). It runs on a new 'GB10' (or the 'Grace Blackwell Superchip' which is fun branding), which they say can deliver up to "1 petaflop of AI performance". Interestingly, they made the chip in collaboration with MediaTek, which specializes in ARM-based design. It will run NVIDIA's DGX OS (Linux-based). Jensen did not pull this one out of an oven, sadly. [Verge]
🤼 Meta’s Zuckerberg Adds UFC’s Dana White, Two Others to Board – I like this framing in the title as it certainly feels like Zuckerberg really wanted to add White, who is both his friend and runs the sport of which he's a fanboy, but knew the reaction would be bad without some cover in the form of two more additions. But this now brings Meta's board up to 13 members, which is massive – certainly for a tech board – even a Big Tech™ one! Tesla and Apple have 8 directors. Amazon and Alphabet have 11. Microsoft, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in a few months, has 12. (To be fair, current darling NVIDIA also has 13 board members – and a very complicated history, of course.) Look, White has built a massive company and gives Meta more of the right-leaning bonafides that Zuckerberg is clearly looking for. And Meta's board overall seems solid (not something every tech company can say). But come on, we all know what this is. Maybe White will finally get his Zuck/Elon cage match. [Bloomberg 🔒]
✔️ Meta Reveals Plan to Alter Fact-Checking Program – Totally, completely, truly unrelated to the above, Meta seems to be pulling out all stops, and fact-checkers, to please the new administration. Going so far here as to pre-brief that team on this change (for what purpose other than to curry favor?), a source told Theodore Schleifer and Mike Isaac. And it didn't take long for new policy head, Joel Kaplan, to get to work. In fact, it took just a few days. First order of business: an exclusive interview with Fox News to break word of this change to the world. Look, I'm not even sure that overall this isn't the right move. Xitter's Community Notes feature remains one of the great things the network has going for it, and we all know Meta loves to copy great features. But my god this sucking up to the new administration is already at parody levels. Has Meta no shame? We're not even six months removed from the statement of political neutrality by Mark Zuckerberg. It was always a farce, of course, but come on! Has work begun on the shrine yet? [NYT]
💻 Dell Kills the XPS Brand – Look, I appreciate the move towards simplicity. And yes, Dell's various brands were beyond long in the tooth – I mean, I had a Latitude laptop 20 years ago, when I was still a PC user! 'XPS' was over 30 years old! But there's also taking spartan branding a bit too far... 'Dell', 'Dell Pro', and 'Dell Pro Max' are fairly straightforward "good, better, best" options with obviously a bit of an Apple twist there, but when we get to 'Dell Plus' vs. 'Dell Pro Plus' vs. 'Dell Pro Max Plus' which are all slightly below 'Dell ___ Premium' but above 'Dell ___ Base', things get ridiculous, fast. It's more like: "good - good, good - better, good - best, better - good, better - better, better- best, best - good, best - better, best - best". "Dude, you're getting a Dell Pro Max Premium!" (Sidenote: are they reading my tweets?) [Verge]
I Note...
- Kevin O'Leary – "Mr. Wonderful" – joining the Frank McCourt bid for TikTok makes sense in that it's a ridiculous deal you could see Trump endorsing. Certainly if it was on TV. Not sure the 90% discount is going to fly though... [Information 🔒]
- RIP Quest Pro, the ill-fated attempt at higher-end VR lived barely two years, a smart course correct for Meta. [RoadtoVR]
- Following Microsoft's Copilot being built into some TVs from Samsung and LG, Google is working on getting Gemini integrated into TCL and Hisense TVs. Will anybody want AI on their TV? We'll see. [Bloomberg 🔒]
- Microsoft making Bing look like Google to try to trick their users searching for the rival is something else – the auto-scrolling the page down to mask the Bing logo is just the cherry on top. [9to5Google]
- Grok 3, the next flagship model by xAI, missed the 2024 launch window, continuing a trend across all of AI (and Musk companies)... [TechCrunch]
- That said, the new deep Grok integration on Xitter actually seems good and useful – even if the design is rough... [@MihirPanchaal]
- Bluesky is still growing, but that growth has slowed – which was always inevitable, but the slow down is pretty substantial... [TechCrunch]
- Also growing: Truth Social – but Bluesky seems like it could already be larger. [TheRighting]
- With Fubo and Hulu + Live TV merging, Martin Peers has an interesting idea: Google should buy the new entity to push YouTube TV past Comcast and Charter as the largest "cable" player. Would Google be allowed to do that? Unclear, but it certainly feels inevitable that those two legacy cable players will eventually merge as cable continues its slow death, just like the satellite players before them (which will still eventually happen). [Information 🔒]
- Also, are we certain that Venu's legal/antitrust issues are over? NYT DealBook isn't as the Justice Department (and others) still may have something to say about the competitive nature of Venu. [NYT]
- Can TiVo OS really compete with Roku, Google, Amazon, etc? I don't know. But if they can focus on recapturing the magic of the early TiVo experience with those cute little bleeps and boops, maybe? Someone just needs to fully unify the content from all the various streamers. And that means getting Netflix to play nice. Good luck. [Verge]
- Despite his weirdly cryptic IG post implying something Matrix-related was in the works (after turning down the chance to star in the original over 25 years ago, to instead do Wild Wild West – ouch), Will Smith will not be starring in the next Matrix movie, it seems... [THR]
- Prime Video making a Melania Trump-produced documentary about Melania Trump directed by Brett Ratner is... something. What is going on here? At the very least, it's another optically strange, if politically prudent move by Amazon. [Variety]
- Apple will tweak (at least visually) the way they showcase their AI notification summaries after many jokes and backlash. [BBC]
- They probably want to get that squared away before they go deeper into news with Apple News around the world... [FT 🔒]
- One method NVIDIA is using to get users to help train their "physical AI" models? Apple's Vision Pro. Yet another enterprising use case. [TechCrunch]
I Quote...
"I think this year is an inflection point where we’re going to see this acceleration of physical AI and robotics."
-- Jensen Huang, during his keynote at CES, talking up what NVIDIA is betting on as the next phase of AI.
I Spy...
CaptAIn AmerIca...
