💰Meta’s $99B Bet
Plus: Buying Votes with Taxpayer Money?, No Phone Trend, and More
This week’s market, investing, and business insights from insiders and experts outside the mainstream media:
Shifting warfare as US enlistment drops and drones surge.
Proposed bill mandates AI developers to register data.
No phone trend with rapid rise in AI wearables.
Buying votes with taxpayer money?
Meta predicts ~$99B in expenses for 2024.
And more…Let’s get to it!
Top 5 Insights of the Week
1. 🤖 As US Enlistment Drops, Drones Go Up
As US enlistment rates drop, warfare depends more on autonomous drones.
DOD actively seeking cutting-edge warfare technology. ~$800B budget.
Under the radar companies; Bullfrog, detect and eliminate drones. Saildrone, drones for sea surveillance. Anduril, autonomous submarines.
China produces 79% of global lithium-ion batteries for drones. US only 6.2%.
2. 🧑⚖️ Regulatory Capture Coming For AI
Proposed bill mandates AI developers to register data with the government.
Bill Gurley warns, too much AI regulation could stifle innovation.
OpenAI, accused of copyright violations for training AI. Two dozen lawyers hired since March 2023.
Bria is developing a marketplace to license copyrighted content for AI training.
3. 📵 No Phone Trend
Rapid rise in AI wearables to monitor physiological signals and environmental conditions.
Humane AI Pin: A screenless smartphone with OpenAI. Limitless AI: Reads and listens to everything you do. Arc AI: Hearing aids that adjust sound 55 million times per hour. Frame: glasses able to process voice commands, visuals, and translations.
Siri likely getting a big upgrade with Apple's new LLM tech with iOS 18.
Global Wearable AI market is projected to grow from $27.61B in 2023 to $492.31B by 2034.
4. 🤔 Buying Votes with Taxpayer Money?
Fed Chair Powell admits inflation persists, no rate cuts soon. No mention of rate hikes.
Fed rate hike pre-election could hurt the economy and Biden’s re-election chances.
Critics say if Biden can’t rely on rate cuts, he could ratchet up spending by “buying votes”. E.g. recently forgiving ~$7B in student debt.
5. 💰 Meta’s $99B Bet
Meta predicts ~$99B in expenses for 2024, fueled by computing expansion.
Zuckerberg plans to buy 350,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs. Increasing computing power to about 600,000 H100 equivalents. Crucial for AI training.
Meta and Microsoft are the largest purchasers of Nvidia's H100 GPUs.
AI helped Meta beat Apple’s privacy changes. Optimizing ads without user data and cutting costs in its advertising operations.
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Top 3 Charts of the Week
1. 👑 Samsung Reclaims the Throne
Samsung shipped 60 million units in Q1 2024, surpassing Apple.
Apple sees nearly 10% YoY decline in sales due to weakening demand in China.
Chinese preferring "Made in China" products; Transsion, Xiaomi see double-digit growth.
2. 😯 States Where Taxes Are Highest
IRS reports ~100 million tax returns filed for 2023.
Lowest Tax: Alaska lowest at 4.9%, Florida 6%, Texas 7.6%. Highest: New York 12%+
Florida gained 27k high-income households. New York lost 20k from 2020-21.
3. 🌧️ Dubai Got More Than a Year's Worth of Rain
Dubai’s historic rainfall: 5.59 inches in 24 hours, 1.5x typical yearly rainfall.
Climate change amplifies rainfall: Every 1°C rise = ~7% more moisture, leading to heavier rainfalls in shorter periods.
Debate over UAE's cloud seeding amid floods. Some blame it. Some don’t.
UAE's $11M, 2010 cloud seeding program created rain in Dubai, Abu Dhabi deserts. 1,000 hours of cloud seeding have been conducted annually.
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