Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company was well placed to navigate a shift in the artificial intelligence industry, in which businesses are moving from training AI models to getting detailed answers from them.
Huang, speaking at the company's annual software developer conference in San Jose, California, defended the company's lead in selling costly AI chips to customers, which has recently been questioned by investors after China's DeepSeek made a competitive chatbot with allegedly fewer AI chips. "The amount of computation we need as a result of agentic AI, as a result of reasoning, is easily 100 times more than we thought we needed this time last year," he said, referring to autonomous AI agents that require little human intervention for routine tasks. Huang announced new chips, including its next GPU chip Blackwell Ultra, which will be available in the second half of this year. Separately, General Motors will use artificial intelligence chips and software from Nvidia to develop autonomous vehicle technology for its vehicles and improve workflow at its factories, the companies said.
Alphabet will buy fast-growing startup Wiz for about $32 billion in its biggest deal ever, the Google parent said, as it doubles down on cybersecurity to sharpen its edge in the cloud- computing race against Amazon.com and Microsoft. The blockbuster deal will make Wiz part of Google's cloud unit and strengthen the company's efforts in cybersecurity solutions that companies use to remove critical risks. Its high price and unusually big breakup fee suggest Alphabet is comfortable that the buy will pass muster with the White House, even as the Trump administration has inserted itself into major deals and promised heavy scrutiny of Big Tech. To nail down the acquisition, Alphabet had to agree to a heavier price than last year's $23 billion bid for Wiz, which the Israeli startup had rejected. It was valued at $12 billion in a private funding round last May, with more than $500 million in annual recurring revenue as of mid- 2024.
Nasdaq said it would open a regional headquarters in Texas, deepening its presence in a state that is fast emerging as a major financial hub rivaling New York. Elon Musk-led Tesla and SpaceX, as well as tech giants Oracle and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, have all moved to the Lone Star State in recent years, attracted by a favorable tax climate, lower costs of living and reduced energy costs. For Nasdaq, the move could also help it better compete with the New York Stock Exchange — which last month committed to launching an exchange in the state — and the Texas Stock Exchange, a venture backed by BlackRock and Citadel Securities, which is gearing up for a launch early next year. Nasdaq did not specify its hiring plans for the new headquarters in Dallas. However, it pledged additional investments to support its "broad range of clients in the region."
Apple lost its challenge at Germany's top civil court against its classification as a significant market power, a label which gives antitrust regulators more scope and flexibility to scrutinise its business practices. Judges at the Federal Court of Justice backed the German cartel office's 2023 designation of Apple as a "company of paramount cross-market significance for competition". With that, Apple joins Google parent Alphabet and Facebook owner Meta on Germany's growing list of tech giants subject to possible measures curbing their dominance. Apple said it faced tough competition in Germany and that it disagreed with the court's decision. "It neglects the value of a business model that places the privacy and security of users at its centre," a spokesperson for the company said in an emailed statement to Reuters.
