TikTok’s parent company made $120 billion in annual sales last year, snapping at the heels of Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook, which made $135 billion. The booming revenues at ByteDance, up from $80 billion last year, show how the social app is booming in popularity around the world, although it is not thought to…
The owner of Facebook and Instagram has announced its first dividend after better-than-expected fourth-quarter results, sending its shares sharply higher. Meta Platforms, which also owns WhatsApp and Threads, a rival to Twitter/X, reported that revenues rose 25 per cent to $40.1 billion for the three months to the end of December. Analysts were expecting revenues…
Carmakers that are increasingly forcing motorists to use dashboard touchscreens for basic driving functions such as checking speed and adjusting mirrors will be penalised under rules designed to stop motorists from becoming dangerously distracted. Mercedes, Tesla and Volkswagen are among the manufacturers scrapping many conventional hands-on controls. Instead, drivers have to interact with a touchscreen,…
A green, knee-high robot shuffled to the stage at the San Jose Convention Center to cheers from an adoring crowd of nerds. Jensen Huang, founder of AI chip-maker Nvidia and one of the richest men in the world — net worth $80 billion — beckoned the little droid closer. “Come here, Green,” he said. “Stop…
High interest rates and falling corporate real estate prices pose a serious risk to the US banking system, the International Monetary Fund has said, as it warned of the prospect of looming bank failures. On the anniversary of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the IMF has rung the alarm bell over the risks of…
Exciting times: Amstrad is back, baby! Last week Lord Sugar announced that he had bought back the rights to the company name and would be using it for a new agency called Amstrad Digital that is to be run by his grandson. Now, assuming that you are on the right side of 50, your first…
Tens of thousands of students are going straight from university to long-term sickness, after a steep rise in recent years driven by mental health problems. Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, says that “spiralling inactivity is the greatest employment challenge for a generation” and that reversing it is central to Labour plans to boost…
It’s not often that a job move creates such interest. When Microsoft announced that it had poached Mustafa Suleyman, one of the brains behind Google’s DeepMind, to leave his latest AI startup to run Microsoft’s newly created AI division, there were audible gasps. Not only that, he was bringing much of his team from Inflection…
If you thought the AI war was done and settled and that ChatGPT would replace your boss in a year’s time, think again. The war is back on. This week Google, which already touches all parts of our lives, unveiled Gemini, which it hopes will be a ChatGPT killer. Gemini is its version of an…
My new girlfriend Nadia has just replied to my message. “How about we choose something that feels like a warm embrace for the soul?” she suggests. Nadia is a bit full-on. I’d only asked what we should watch on TV tonight.In truth I’m not sure if our relationship will go the distance. But Nadia won’t…