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| Here's a look at today's tech briefing: - Private U.S. spacecraft successfully lands on the moon.
- Reddit files for U.S. IPO.
- Nvidia market cap tops $2 trillion.
- Florida lawmakers pass bill to ban social media for under-16s.
Beth
p/beth-duckett | |
| 1 | | Intuitive Machines' Odysseus spacecraft successfully landed on the moon Thursday, marking the first lunar landing by a private company and the first U.S. landing since the last Apollo mission in 1972. Technical issues with the flight delayed the landing by several hours. According to Intuitive Machines, the IM-1 lander is now operational and sending back data, despite initially experiencing weak signals. More: - NASA confirmed that the lander, launched on Feb. 15 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, landed on the moon at 6:23 PM ET on Thursday near a crater on the moon's south pole.
- The mission is part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services, which involves private contracts with U.S. companies for moon material delivery.
- Odysseus carries a dozen government and commercial payloads, including NASA instruments to "perform science test technologies and demonstrate capabilities" that could help with the agency's future manned moon missions.
- Specifically, NASA's instruments will study space weather, lunar surface interactions, and radio astronomy.
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| 2 | | Reddit filed for an IPO on Thursday, setting the stage for this year's first major tech debut. The company's U.S. listing, expected in March, will also mark the first social media IPO since Pinterest in 2019. More: - Reddit filed its IPO prospectus with the SEC on Thursday, over two years after it first filed confidentially.
- The San Francisco company will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "RDDT."
- According to its S-1 document, Reddit earned $804M in revenue, mostly from advertising, last year, up 21% from the year earlier.
- It still reported a $90.8M net loss, down from a $158M loss the year before,
- The company reported 73 million daily users, over 100,000 active communities, and 1 billion total posts.
Zoom out: - Reddit will reveal its IPO terms and valuation in a future filing.
- The New York Times reports that Reddit's IPO bankers are aiming for a $5B valuation at minimum, about half of its $10B valuation from a 2021 private financing round.
- The IPO is eagerly awaited following a downturn, with only 108 U.S. companies going public last year, a quarter of 2021's total.
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| 3 | | Nvidia reached a $2 trillion market value on Friday, becoming the third U.S. company to pass the milestone after Apple ($2.83 trillion) and Microsoft ($3.06 trillion). The chipmaker's rapid growth from the AI boom boosted its market value from $1 trillion to $2 trillion in just nine months, outpacing even Apple and Microsoft. 
What the numbers show: Nvidia's stock surged 16% on Thursday, adding a record $277B to its stock market value in a single day, the largest valuation increase in Wall Street history. By Friday, Nvidia's market value had topped $2 trillion, two days after its record earnings revealed a 580% increase in full-year profits for 2023. Demand for Nvidia's chips has surged during the AI boom, leading the company to project a 233% increase in revenue for the current quarter. The bigger picture: Initially focused on PC gaming graphics chips, Nvidia became one of the first chipmakers to embrace AI as companies began buying up GPUs to power their AI projects. Nvidia is now the largest semiconductor manufacturer worldwide and the fourth largest company overall, behind only Microsoft, Apple, and Saudi Aramco. Its record surge has boosted the chip sector and driven global stock indices to record highs. | | | |
| 4 | | A bill that would ban most social media for children under 16 has cleared Florida's legislature and awaits the signature of Gov. Ron DeSantis. The bill, "Online Protections for Minors," is set to become one of the toughest U.S. laws designed to keep kids safe online. More: - Florida's House approved the bill in a 108-7 vote on Thursday, shortly after the Senate passed it 23-14.
- It would force social media companies to ban children under 16 from opening new accounts, and to close accounts of users suspected to be under 16. The platforms would also have to verify users' ages.
- The bill targets a broad range of social media platforms, including those where users can post content and have over 10% of daily users under 16 spending an average of two hours a day.
Zoom out: - DeSantis hasn't said if he would sign the bill. On Thursday, he said that while social media can be harmful and addictive for 14- and 15-year-olds, he believes parents should play a role in managing its use.
- "As much as I think it's harmful to have people on these social media platforms for five or six hours a day, a parent can supervise a kid to use it more sparingly," DeSantis said.
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| 5 | | Google will discontinue its standalone Google Pay app in the U.S. on June 4 to simplify its payment services. Google Pay is largely being replaced by Google Wallet, which claims five times as many users worldwide. More: - Until June 4, U.S. Google Pay users can still manage balances and bank transfers, but after that, they will be unable to send, receive, or request money.
- Users can still use Google Wallet for mobile payments and other features like in-store payments, boarding plans, transit rides, and storing loyalty cards.
- The standalone Pay app will remain available only in Singapore and India due to the "unique needs in those countries," according to Google.
Zoom out: -
Google first launched the Google Pay app in 2018, replacing Android Pay, and later split it into Google Pay for rewards and transactions and Google Wallet for storing cards and passes. | | | |
| 6 | | A global survey of tech leaders revealed that 65% rated AI, including machine learning and natural language processing, as the most important tech area of 2024. Survey respondents favored AI over extended reality, cloud computing, 5G networks, and electric vehicles, which rounded out the top five. More: - The IEEE survey, "The Impact of Technology in 2024 and Beyond," polled 350 technology leaders from the U.S., China, the U.K., India, and Brazil on growth-driving technologies for the next year.
- In addition to picking AI as the top, 54% of those surveyed ranked real-time cybersecurity and attack prevention as a leading AI use, followed by improving supply chain and warehouse automation and speeding up software development.
- The report highlighted AI's growing role in telecom, manufacturing, and finance, as well as tasks like data optimization, task automation, and decision-making.
- According to the IEEE, key AI uses include cybersecurity, supply chain automation, software development, recruitment efficiency, and faster drug discovery.
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| 7 | | QUICK HITS - AT&T said a failed update linked to its network expansion caused yesterday's service outage affecting thousands of its mobile customers in the U.S. The FBI, FCC, and Department of Homeland Security are now investigating the outage, which has been resolved.
- A U.S. judge cleared bankrupt FTX's proposal to sell its 7.84% stake in AI startup Anthropic as part of the crypto firm's liquidation efforts to repay customers.
- GM's self-driving car unit, Cruise, plans to resume testing its robotaxis on public roads, possibly in Houston and Dallas, after suspending operations in October following a pedestrian accident in San Francisco.
- Google is rolling out an AI writing assistant in Chrome. Called "Help Me Write," the experimental tool understands the context of web pages to suggest text for completing messages, forms, surveys, and more.
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 | AI and technology writer | | Beth is a contributing editor and writer of Inside's AI and Tech newsletters. She has written for publications including USA Today, the Arizona Business Gazette, and The Arizona Republic, where she received recognition with a Pulitzer Prize nomination and a First Amendment Award for collaborative reporting on state pension cost increases. You can reach her at Beth.Duckett@yahoo.com. | | This newsletter was edited by Eduardo Garcia | |
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