📜 Monopoly choke points

🧵 In today's edition:

• 📜 Monopoly choke points

• 🌒 Nvidia is over the moon

• 🍎 Is Apple playing catch-up?

• 🛠️ AI Tools to Check Out

• 🤑 AI Fundraising News

• 🐦 Tweet Post of the Day

📜 Monopoly choke points

Jonathan Kanter, the top US antitrust enforcer, is sounding the alarm over the concentration of power in the AI sector among a few deep-pocketed tech giants. 

Here’s the TL;DR: 

• In an interview with the Financial Times, Kanter expressed urgency in examining "monopoly choke points and the competitive landscape" surrounding AI, spanning computing power, data for training large language models, cloud services, engineering talent, and essential hardware like GPUs.

• Regulators fear the AI sector has already reached "the high-water mark of competition," and Kanter stressed the need for "meaningful intervention" to prevent dominant tech players from controlling the market. He warned that the most effective intervention might be "in real time" to be "less invasive."

• Kanter's concerns extend to the microchip industry, where Nvidia's dominance in advanced GPUs, crucial for training AI models, has become a "scarce resource."

• He also questioned whether chipmakers are allocating their best products fairly or favoring certain customers to undermine competitors.

Overall: The Antitrust Chief also signaled scrutiny of major AI tech deals, including Microsoft's $13B investment in OpenAI and its "acqui-hire" of AI start-up Inflection. 

While Microsoft argues its partnerships foster competition, Kanter vowed to examine the substance of such deals, regardless of their form.

Read more: Financial Times

🌒 Nvidia is over the moon

In an incredible run of events, Nvidia's market value soared beyond an astonishing $3T, catapulting the chip behemoth ahead of Apple to become the world's second most valuable publicly listed company.

Here’s what happened: 

• Nvidia's share price escalated over 5% on Wednesday, reaching a staggering $1,224 per share. 

• This rise was fueled by investors' conviction that the US firm is poised to be a major beneficiary of the impending tidal wave of investment in AI. 

• Nvidia now trails only Microsoft in market capitalization, another key player in the AI arena, thanks to its strategic investments in OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT. 

• Nvidia's valuation hovered around $2 trillion as recently as February, but the company ignited a fresh surge of share purchases last month with the announcement of a forthcoming stock split.

Overall: Jensen Huang, Nvidia's CEO, has heralded the advent of AI as "the next industrial revolution." 

And that isn’t just hyperbole - the company's explosive growth was exemplified by its staggering $26B in sales during the three months ending April 28th, a threefold increase compared to the same period in 2023…👀

Now, that’s exponential growth if I’ve ever seen one.

Read more: BBC

🍎 Is Apple playing catch-up?

After years of cautious approaches to general AI, Apple now finds itself in an unfamiliar position—playing catch-up in a technological race that could define the future. 

However, good news could be on the horizon as the company prepares to integrate GenAI into its core products at next week's Worldwide Developers Conference.

Here’s the thing—Apple's trademark secrecy, perfectionism, and meticulous hardware-software integration have always been its strengths.

But this time, this mentality hindered their early AI efforts because launching a flawless AI product is next to impossible, with emerging AI prone to occasional errors or "hallucinations." 

However, the game-changing launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 sparked a sense of urgency within Apple: 

• Craig Federighi, the Software Chief, went all in on AI after experimenting with GitHub's AI coding tool, Copilot. Across his organization, employees were tasked with incorporating GenAI into products. 

• Apple has also increased its efforts to build its own GenAI models and is exploring potential partnerships with major AI developers like OpenAI. 

Overall: The upcoming WWDC is expected to unveil an array of AI upgrades to software products like Siri, focusing on message writing, photo editing, and text summarization while maximizing user privacy.

While not expected to catch up with AI leaders immediately, Apple is determined to bring its trademark polish to generative AI and unleash its potential for the masses.

As one former Siri engineer noted, "Apple can do pretty much anything they set their minds to."

Read more: WSJ

🛠️ AI Tools to Check Out

• Logome: Advanced AI logo maker that simplifies the process of designing a professional and unique logo that perfectly reflects your brand's identity. Check it out!

• Squire.ai: A context-aware agent who works with you to write pull request descriptions, review PRs, and learn how you like your code reviewed. Check it out!

• Narafy: An AI-powered personal notes app that helps you find what you need. Check it out!

🤑 AI Fundraising News

• Vurvey raises $2M in funding to develop an AI platform that provides on-demand insights for innovation in various consumer product industries, including CPG, beauty, luxury hotels, and fashion.

• Human Native AI raises $3.6M/£2.8M in Seed funding to provide AI developers access to fully licensed data.

🐦 Tweet Post of the Day

The first video in this thread is insane 🤯