iLobby: Apple, like the rest of big tech, wants to change the rules

3/19/24 7:00PM

iLobby

‍After butting heads with the US International Trade Commission (ITC) on everything from iPhones to smart watches in recent years, Apple is increasing its lobbying efforts in Washington to get the agency’s rules rewritten, per the NYTimes.

Last year, the company was forced to remove a blood oxygen feature from its Apple Watch in the US after the ITC banned the product over patent infringements. Fines are something Apple can deal with, but the ITC’s ability to implement outright bans are more troubling for the iPhone maker, leading the company to lobby lawmakers to reshape the ITC’s focus towards what’s in the “public interest”.

‍How to spend money and influence people

‍While corporate America spending big to get the government onside might feel like a modern phenomenon, the practice actually dates back almost as far as the nation itself, with the first lobbyists reportedly hired back in 1792, when veterans from the Continental Army enlisted political influencers to lobby Congress for more compensation.

While the pharmaceutical industry has been the biggest spender on the lobbying scene for decades, Big Tech has been upping its government-bothering budget as scrutiny in the space has heightened. Last year, the 5 biggest consumer-facing tech companies parted ways with some $76m in the pursuits of their political interests per data from Open Secrets. In fact, Apple’s $9.86 million spend last year looks relatively frugal in comparison to Meta and Amazon, whose outlays both topped $19 million each.

‍

More Tech

See all Tech

Rani Molla3h

Waymo to expand robotaxi service to Detroit, Las Vegas, and San Diego

Google’s Waymo robotaxi service is expanding to three new cities — Detroit, Las Vegas, and San Diego — where it has previously tested its driverless vehicles. Waymo plans to bring its Jaguar I-Pace and Zeekr RT vehicles to those three markets this week, but they won’t be immediately available to the public.

Currently Waymo is available in five US cities: Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco.

Tesla is currently testing in Las Vegas, while Amazon’s Zoox has limited service in the city.

Waymo's robotaxi expansion accelerates with 3 new cities | TechCrunch

Currently Waymo is available in five US cities: Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco.

Tesla is currently testing in Las Vegas, while Amazon’s Zoox has limited service in the city.

Jon Keegan6h

Microsoft pledges $8 billion for data centers, cloud computing in UAE

Microsoft announced another large AI-related investment in the United Arab Emirates today, pledging $7.9 billion for data centers and cloud computing.

The deal adds to the $7.3 billion it has already poured into the Gulf state, including a $1.5 billion equity stake in G24, the country’s sovereign AI company.

Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a post on X:

“This reflects a shared vision for AI innovation, economic growth, and ensuring that the benefits of AI are diffused broadly. Microsoft is committed to the future of the UAE and the strong ties between our two nations.”

Microsoft had previously been approved by the Biden administration to send the equivalent of 21,500 of Nvidia’s less powerful A100 GPUs. The Trump administration, which has made a big push for investments in the UAE since President Trump’s visit in May, recently approved shipments of several billion dollars’ worth of Nvidia chips to the nation.

The new deal involves the equivalent of 60,400 A100 GPUs, which include some of the state-of-the-art GB300 GPUs.

Microsoft Vows to Spend $8 Billion in UAE Through 2029 on Cloud, Chips

Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a post on X:

“This reflects a shared vision for AI innovation, economic growth, and ensuring that the benefits of AI are diffused broadly. Microsoft is committed to the future of the UAE and the strong ties between our two nations.”

The new deal involves the equivalent of 60,400 A100 GPUs, which include some of the state-of-the-art GB300 GPUs.

Rani Molla8h

Prediction markets think Tesla investors will approve CEO Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay package on Thursday

Polymarket users are highly convinced that Tesla investors will approve CEO Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay package later this week, with the market-implied likelihood on the event contract at one point stretching above 97% today, though it’s since come down to around 94%.

Of course, even if investors approve his 2025 CEO Performance Award at the November 6 shareholder meeting, that doesn’t necessarily mean Musk will get the full payout. The deal is performance-based and requires Musk and Tesla to hit a number of lofty goals over the next decade, including:

Boosting the company’s market cap to $8.5 trillion from today’s $1.46 trillion.
Delivering 1 million AI robots (it has so far delivered none).
Having 1 million robotaxis in commercial operation (there are currently about 30 in Austin without a Tesla employee in the driver’s seat).

Tesla’s board and Musk have been loudly campaigning for the pay package’s approval. Board Chair Robyn Denholm wrote in an investor letter last week that it’s integral to keeping Musk. Musk himself took over the company’s earnings call last month to argue that the 29% voting control that’s part of the pay package would be integral to guiding Tesla’s development of AI robots.

“If we build this robot army, do I have at least a strong influence over that robot army?” Musk said.

Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.

Rani Molla

Phoning it In

Meta still wants to have its iPhone moment

More than a decade after Meta’s phone flop, it’s still trying to get in on hardware.

Rani Molla & Jon Keegan9h

OpenAI inks $38 billion deal with Amazon for compute

Amazon managed to pull off its monster quarter without any of those juicy OpenAI deals on its books that many of its competitors had. But now it too has one. The company’s stock, which vaulted on its earnings report last week, jumped 5% in early trading.

The ChatGPT maker has signed a $38 billion multiyear deal with Amazon Web Services to use its compute and reduce its reliance on Microsoft.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy hinted at the as yet announced deal on the company’s earnings call last week when he described the company’s massive backlog of AWS business:

“Backlog grew to $200 billion by Q3 quarter end, and doesn’t include several unannounced new deals in October, which together are more than our total deal volume for all of Q3. AWS is gaining momentum.”

The deal notes that the agreement calls for “hundreds of thousands of state-of-the-art Nvidia GPUs.” Notably, this deal does not appear to use Amazon’s Trainium chips, which it has been pushing as part of its massive Project Rainier. The initiative will run 500,000 of the custom chips.

In a press release announcing the deal, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said:

“Scaling frontier AI requires massive, reliable compute. Our partnership with AWS strengthens the broad compute ecosystem that will power this next era and bring advanced AI to everyone.”

In a post on X, Jassy said the deal takes effect right away:

“OpenAI will start using AWS’s infrastructure immediately and we expect to have all of the capacity deployed before end of next year-- with the ability to expand in 2027 and beyond.”

In the wake of this news, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives bumped up his price target on the e-commerce and cloud giant to $340 from $330, writing that this deal “is a continued move in the right direction for Amazon as they broaden AI services.”

OpenAI signs $38 billion compute deal with Amazon, partnering with cloud leader for first time