Good morning. Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of Steve Jobs’ speech to Stanford University graduates.
You know the one: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward.” “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” And, of course: “Stay hungry, stay foolish.”
Like any great commencement address, it provides an opportunity to reconsider the big picture. Give it another go, then have a great weekend. —Andrew Nusca
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Meta invests $14.3 billion in Scale AI, hires CEO Alexandr Wang
Call it the world’s most expensive acqui-hire.
Scale AI on Thursday formally announced a $14.3 billion investment by Meta that includes the hire of the San Francisco startup’s cofounder and CEO, Alexandr Wang, “to work on Meta’s AI efforts” as part of the larger company’s so-called superintelligence team. (He’ll remain on the board of Scale.)
The deal values the nine-year-old startup at more than $29 billion and reportedly gives Meta a 49% stake via nonvoting shares.
Jason Droege, the startup’s chief strategy officer, will become interim CEO.
As with many well-funded AI companies, a who’s who of investors backed Scale, including firms Accel, Coatue, DFJ, Index, Thrive, Spark, Tiger Global, Greenoaks, and Wellington; companies Amazon, AMD, Cisco, Meta, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and ServiceNow; and individuals Elad Gil and Nat Friedman.
“Meta’s investment recognizes Scale’s accomplishments to date and reaffirms that our path forward—like that of AI—is limitless,” Wang said in a statement.
Scale doesn’t make AI models; the company works with corporations to prepare their data for AI systems and build them custom applications for the purpose.
With the deal, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is demonstrating a change in strategy as he moves to keep up with rivals.
The parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp has never been shy about an acquisition but has largely shunned major investments in startups—unlike Amazon, Google, and Microsoft—preferring instead to build within. —AN
Chime shares pop 37% in Nasdaq debut
Shares of the San Francisco payments company Chime jumped 37% in their Nasdaq debut on Thursday.
The company’s long-awaited IPO valued the company at $11.6 billion. Chime had raised about $700 million in its offering.
Chime shares, trading under CHYM, closed the day at $37.11—well above its $27 IPO price and valuing the company at $13.5 billion.
For all the day-one trading spectacle, Chime’s value is actually quite a bit less than it used to be.
During its last major fundraising round in 2021—an eon ago in tech, but—investors valued the company at $25 billion.
Still, Chime’s success in seeing its offering through is another win for the fintech category, which has for years waited on the IPO sidelines for market conditions to change.
Trading firm eToro and stablecoin company Circle also went public in recent months; Bullish, Gemini, Klarna, Monzo, and Revolut wait in the wings.
Chime offers fee-free mobile banking services, principally to U.S. customers who earn less than $100,000 per year. The company reported $519 million in revenue and $13 million in profit in its most recent quarter. —AN
Google outage hits Cloudflare, Spotify, Snapchat
Google said Thursday that it had resolved a brief but global service disruption to its Google Cloud products that knocked out service to a number of major services.
Among them: Music streamer Spotify, communications platform Discord, and AI services including Character.AI and Replit.
The outage lasted about five hours and began in the middle of the U.S. workday.
"The issue with Google Chat, Google Meet, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Cloud Search, Google Tasks, Google Voice has been resolved for all affected users," the Alphabet-owned company said.
Google hasn’t yet pointed to a reason for the outage. It promised that it would share more information once it completed its internal investigation.
For what it’s worth: Neither Amazon Web Services nor Microsoft Azure reported outages. —AN
More tech
—Amazon RTO complaints. Disabled employees say the company’s policy violates their rights.
—Apple’s revamped Siri is reportedly coming in spring 2026.
—AMD says new chips best Nvidia’s. AMD hopes its latest MI350 chips help it catch up to Nvidia’s market share.
—Boeing stock sinks 5% after an Air India crash kills more than 200 people aboard a Dreamliner 787-8.
—Fidelity, TPG, Sequoia, others buy xAI shares. About $250 million worth of shares value the Elon Musk company at $113 billion.
—Tesla sues former Optimus engineer. Alleged theft of robotic trade secrets for his startup Proception.
—SAG-AFTRA suspends video game strike. Nearly a year’s protest against AI use and more.
—Mattel taps OpenAI to help it design—what else?—toys.
—U.S. FTC mulls Omnicom-Interpublic restrictions that would prevent the combined company from refusing to place ads on platforms for political reasons.
—Adobe earnings beat estimates. $5.87 billion in Q2 revenue and a sunny Q3 forecast.
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