A little more conversation: Company executives can't stop talking about AI

8/12/23 7:00PM

A little more conversation

‍Interestingly, executives at top companies seem to be doing the exact opposite — they can’t stop talking about AI, perhaps hoping that if they position their companies as “AI forward” they may be more attractive to investors (see Nvidia becoming the latest company to join the $1 trillion club).

Data collated by Goldman Sachs reveals that artificial intelligence has been cropping up more and more in the quarterly earnings calls of Russell 3000 companies, as businesses like Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta line up to explain to investors how AI will play a pivotal role in the wider world and within their organizations… in the future at least.

‍Tried and tested

‍That’s a lot of corporate chatter, but how much are companies actually using AI? The answer depends somewhat on your perspective.

‍McKinsey’s latest report into AI, published in early August, reveals that 79% of people surveyed have had at least some exposure to the tools, although only 22% of respondents say that they personally are regularly using it in their own work. For tools that (mostly) haven’t even celebrated a first birthday yet, that feels like quite a lot.

The people using it most are your pals in marketing and sales, with 14% of respondents reporting that their organizations were regularly using generative AI in that function, more than any other.

The most common uses cited in the survey were for creating first drafts of text, personalizing marketing materials, identifying trends or communicating with customers with chatbots. AI isn't quite doing iRobot stuff yet, but taking the sting out of some of the more "boring" corporate tasks will always have its place.

‍We aren’t in Kansas anymore

‍Clearly, the answer to the question “have we had peak AI?” is a resounding, definitive “no”. The buzz around ChatGPT specifically may have slightly diminished, but that’s only because its mind boggling initial success has birthed — literally — thousands of competitors.

One website, accurately called theresanaiforthat.com, currently tracks more than 6,900 different tools. There’s AI to summarize your emails, edit your videos, build your website, design your house, write your dating profile, plan your vacation, edit your code, test new hairstyles on you, create personalized stories for children, be your personal assistant… or even just be your friend who is “always on your side”. There’s even one that creates a chatbot so you can "talk" to a PDF document(?), and there's quite a few to make charts and analyze data. Luckily for us, they aren’t very good... yet.

Rani Molla

Tunnel Vision

9/12/25

Tesla gets permit to test autonomous cars in Nevada as autonomous driving heats up there

Amazon’s self-driving Zoox launched service this week, and Google’s Waymo is testing there.

Las Vegas Exteriors And Landmarks - 2024

Jon Keegan

9/11/25

OpenAI and Microsoft reach agreement that moves OpenAI closer to for-profit status

In a joint statement, OpenAI and Microsoft announced a “non-binding memorandum of understanding” for their renegotiated $13 billion partnership, which was a source of recent tension between the two companies.

Settling the agreement is a requirement to clear the way for OpenAI to convert to a for-profit public benefit corporation, which it must do before a year-end deadline to secure a $20 billion investment from SoftBank.

OpenAI also announced that the controlling nonprofit arm would hold an equity stake in the PBC valued at $100 billion, which would make it “one of the most well-resourced philanthropic organizations in the world.”

The statement read:

“This recapitalization would also enable us to raise the capital required to accomplish our mission — and ensure that as OpenAI’s PBC grows, so will the nonprofit’s resources, allowing us to bring it to historic levels of community impact.”

A joint statement from OpenAI and Microsoft

The statement read:

“This recapitalization would also enable us to raise the capital required to accomplish our mission — and ensure that as OpenAI’s PBC grows, so will the nonprofit’s resources, allowing us to bring it to historic levels of community impact.”

Rani Molla

9/11/25

BofA doesn’t expect Tesla’s ride-share service to have an impact on Uber or Lyft this year

Analysts at Bank of America Global Research compared Tesla’s new Bay Area ride-sharing service with its rivals and found that, for now, it’s not much competition for Uber and Lyft. “Tesla scale in SF is still small, and we don’t expect impact on Uber/Lyft financial performance in ’25,” they wrote.

Tesla is operating an unknown number of cars with drivers using supervised full self-driving in the Bay Area, and roughly 30 autonomous robotaxis in Austin. The company has allowed the public to download its Robotaxi app and join a waitlist, but it hasn’t said how many people have been let in off that waitlist.

While the analysts found that Tesla ride-shares are cheaper than traditional ride-share services like Uber and Lyft, the wait times are a lot longer (nine-minute wait times on average, when cars were available at all) and the process has more friction. They also said the “nature of [a] Tesla FSD ‘driver’ is slightly more aggressive than a Waymo,” the Google-owned company that’s currently operating 800 vehicles in the Bay Area.

Apple AI was MIA at iPhone event

A year and a half into a bungled rollout of AI into Apple’s products, Apple Intelligence was barely mentioned at the “Awe Dropping” event.

Jon Keegan9/10/25

Jon Keegan

9/10/25

Oracle’s massive sales backlog is thanks to a $300 billion deal with OpenAI, WSJ reports

OpenAI has signed a massive deal to purchase $300 billion worth of cloud computing capacity from Oracle, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

The report notes that the five-year deal would be one of the largest cloud computing contracts ever signed, requiring 4.5 gigawatts of capacity.

The news is prompting shares to pare some of their massive gains, presumably because of concerns about counterparty and concentration risk.

Yesterday, Oracle shares skyrocketed as much as 30% in after-hours trading after the company forecast that it expects its cloud infrastructure business to see revenues climb to $144 billion by 2030.

Oracle shares were up as much as 43% on Wednesday.

It’s the second example in under a week of how much OpenAI’s cash burn and fundraising efforts are playing a starring role in the AI boom: the Financial Times reported that OpenAI is also the major new Broadcom customer that has placed $10 billion in orders.

Exclusive | Oracle, OpenAI Sign Massive $300 Billion Cloud Computing Deal