Ham @ham_financial

$ABNB launched #Icons, a new category of experiences that lets users meet celebs and stay in venues out of the movies (Skift)

The months-long standoff between $UMG #UniversalMusicGroup and #TikTok over #royalty payments and #AI policies is finally over, at least for the time being, with the announcement that the two entities have struck a deal to bring the label’s music back on the platform (Variety)

$SNAP adding new features, including editing already sent messages that are unread, a new #AI reminders feature, #emoji reactions, #Bitmoji AI fashion and more (Verge)

$TSLA has backed away from an ambitious plan for innovations in #gigacasting, its pioneering manufacturing process, in another sign that the electric-vehicle maker is retrenching amid falling sales and rising competition (Reuters)

$AMZN testing a new discovery page on #Audible to give users recommendations about what to listen to next based on their #PrimeVideo viewing behavior (TechCrunch)

$MSFT announces plans to invest $2.2B in #cloud and #AI infrastructure in #Malaysia over four years and train 200,000 people with AI skills in the country (Bloomberg)

$GOOGL closer to broader #AI rollout as they just introduced a #Chrome shortcut that lets users initiate #Gemini conversations directly from the browser's address bar by typing '@Gemini', alongside a broader Gemini roll out into apps like #Maps and #YouTube (Release)

$MSFT #OpenAI is likely to announce a new search engine soon, tentatively on May 9, 2024, at 10AM. One day before $GOOGL's #GoogleIO. The insider also revealed that OpenAI has been hiring for an events team since early January to organise in-house events (AIM)

$YELP launches new #AI assistant to help consumers easily find and connect with service professionals. #Yelp’s #SpringRelease unveils new features that leverage #LLMs and #YelpGuestManager enhancements improve operational efficiency for restaurants (Yelp)

Researchers from $GOOGL and #DeepMind have developed #MedGemini, a new family of highly capable #multimodal #AI models specialized for medicine. #Google’s new model achieved 91.1% accuracy in medical diagnostics, establishing state-of-the-art performance on 10 benchmarks (AIM)

$META #Instagram updates recommendation #algorithm to demote #aggregator accounts, hoping to promote original content and increase distribution to smaller accounts (Verge)

#TikTok's #ecommerce platform, #TikTokShop reports 500k+ sellers in the US and 15mn+ sellers worldwide in December 2023, adding 6mn+ in 2H2023 (Bloomberg)

$TSLA fires #Supercharger team raising doubts about expansion -- the nearly 500-person group is gone in addition to the 10% staff cut from mid-April. #ElonMusk says #Tesla still plans to grow the Supercharger network but at a 'slower pace for new locations' (Bloomberg)

$MSFT #OpenAI #Sora generated people with more realistic facial features than #Runway or #Pika, per tests run by executives in advertising, animation, and real estate (Financial Times)

#Anthropic CEO says it could cost $10bn to train #AI in 2 years. 'I think we're going to see models trained in the next year are going to be about $1bn… And then 2025, 2026, we're going to go to $5bn or $10bn. And I think there's a chance it may go beyond that to $100bn" (BI)

#TikTok could get banned in #EUrope too as #EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hinted during a debate for the EU's 2024 election (Politico)

The $MSFT-#BrookfieldAssetManagement “global framework agreement” is a commitment to bring 10.5 gigawatts of generating capacity online, or enough to power the equivalent of ~1.8mn homes (!) (2/2) (FT)

$MSFT has agreed to back an estimated $10bn in #renewable electricity projects to be developed by #BrookfieldAssetManagement, in a deal that underscores the race to meet #cleanenergy commitments while satisfying the voracious energy demand of #cloudcomputing and #AI (1/2) (FT)

$AMZN #Amazon also says #Fallout is its most-watched ever among adults 18-34, with 60% of the show’s audience coming from outside the #UnitedStates. In particular, the #UK, #France, and #Brazil have all proven to be hubs for the show’s popularity (2/2) (Variety)

$AMZN #Amazon said #Fallout pulled in 65mn viewers in its first 16 days of availability, making it the 2nd most-watched title ever on #PrimeVideo and the most-watched title since “#LordoftheRings: #RingsofPower” back in 2022 (1/2) (Variety)