Good morning. Which way is X heading?
Some media executives told the Financial Times that brands plan a return to Elon Musk’s platform, in the hope of pleasing the tech mogul as he takes an influential role in the Trump administration.
But the FT’s data crunchers also report that X deactivations have soared after the election, with traffic to rival platform Bluesky rising accordingly. The U.K.’s left-wing Guardian also just became the first major newspaper to stop posting on X.
Given that liberal X-odus, those brands might find themselves advertising to a narrowing set of users. —David Meyer
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AMD cuts jobs to focus more on AI
AMD plans to cut 4% of its workers in an effort to focus on higher growth areas like chips for artificial intelligence.
The layoffs translate to 1,000 jobs out of 26,000 as of the end of last year.
AMD is already a major manufacturer of GPUs, or graphics processing units, the backbone of the AI boom. The company is second in market share for GPUs, but is well behind industry leader Nvidia.
Lisa Su, AMD's CEO, is hoping to close the gap in a category that it expected to explode in size in the coming years. Investors are anxious, with AMD's stock down nearly 5% this year compared to a nearly 200% gain for Nvidia, cementing its place as one of the world's most valuable publicly traded companies. —Verne Kopytoff
Polymarket's CEO is in the FBI's crosshairs
During the recent presidential campaign, betting site Polymarket got a lot of attention for its users predicting—accurately, it turned out—that Donald Trump would win the election.
On Wednesday, however, the site was in an entirely different kind of spotlight after the FBI executed a search warrant at the home of the service's founder and CEO, Shayne Coplan. The agency is looking into whether the company let U.S.-based users place bets.
During the raid, FBI agents seized Coplan’s phone but did not arrest him.
In a statement, Polymarket told news outlets, “This is obvious political retribution by the outgoing administration against Polymarket for providing a market that correctly called the 2024 presidential election.”
Just a week ago, Polymarket said it would restart operations in the U.S. after paying a $1.4 million fine to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2022 for operating without registering. At the time, it paused trading.
Apple wall display is coming
Apple will announce a wall-mounted display for controlling smart homes, and also for chatting to Siri and making FaceTime calls, as early as March, Bloomberg reports.
It seems the device will look a bit like an iPad and will have a touch interface similar to that of the Apple Watch, although users are primarily supposed to talk to it.
Basically, it’s a competitor to Amazon’s Echo smart displays and Google’s Nest Hub. But Bloomberg also reports that Apple also intends to release a version with a “robotic limb that can move the screen around,” which sounds somewhat more innovative if difficult to envisage.
Interestingly, at the outset, there won’t be an app store for the device. —David Meyer
VW holds Rivian closer
Volkswagen, which said in June that it would invest $5 billion in Silicon Valley electric vehicle maker, is making it $5.8 billion instead.
As the Wall Street Journal explains, the final terms of the partnership reflect how much Rivian needs the cash, and how much VW needs Rivian’s digital-first car designs to build a better position in the EV race.
That’s a big concession for the traditionally self-reliant VW, but strong competition from Tesla and China’s BYD have put the company in a sticky position. VW reportedly plans to close some of its German plants and cut pay in others, to reduce operational losses.
Rivian has so far spent over $19 billion since going public in 2021, and isn’t profitable. It reportedly hopes to collaborate with other automakers too, so VW would not necessarily be an exclusive partner. —DM
China’s CATL plans major expansion
CATL, the Chinese company that makes more than a third of the world’s EV batteries, plans to get into electric grid energy storage.
That’s likely a boom market because such storage will be crucial when connecting renewable-energy projects to grids. It helps to mitigate the fact that solar and wind don’t produce constant power.
CATL founder Robin Zeng told Reuters that the company even intends to get into power generation, building grids that can support cities and futuristic data centers. He said this business could be “ten times” larger than the firm’s EV battery business.
But CATL also plans to get further into EVs by offering its own off-the-shelf platform for carmakers to adapt and sell. —DM
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