YouTube supported 490,000 full-time jobs in the US last year

490,000

That’s how many full-time jobs YouTube said its ecosystem supported in the US last year, per research from Oxford Economics cited in a report by the platform yesterday. If accurate, that would make YouTube a bigger employer than Home Depot, which reported 470,100 employees at the end of last year.

The “creative ecosystem,” as researchers have laid out previously, is pretty broad, encompassing creators who earn money on and away from YouTube, their employees, and any companies or freelance workers who make a substantial amount of their money from propping up creators’ supply chains.

Still, the vast network reportedly contributed a mind-boggling $55 billion to national GDP in 2024 — up $20 billion from the same report just two years before. Clearly, as the platform that Alphabet bought almost 20 years ago keeps growing, the amount of cash that creators and associates get for posting content there does too.

More Tech

See all Tech

Republican Presidential Nominee Former President Trump Holds Rally In Butler, Pennsylvania

Tesla investors don’t want Elon Musk involved in politics

The Tesla CEO is spending big on the GOP in midterm elections.

Rani Molla10h

Jon Keegan11h

Report: China’s “Manhattan Project” built an advanced EUV chip fab prototype

The most advanced chipmaking process in the world is currently owned by one company: Dutch chipmaker ASML.

The process, known as extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV), allows for the smallest, most complex semiconductors to be etched onto silicon chips.

These advanced chips are used in a huge number of crucial industries such as AI, mobile phones, and weapons manufacturing.

A new report from Reuters says that China has completed a factory-sized prototype of an EUV chip fab, a first that could have huge ramifications for the balance of power in the global technology race.

The prototype was built in a high-security facility in Shenzhen by former ASML employees and made use of secondary markets to acquire older, used ASML parts, according to the report. Despite a goal of delivering working chips by 2028, sources say China is likely a couple years behind that schedule.

ASML’s $250 million EUV machines are used to manufacture advanced chips for Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, and for chips made by TSMC.

ASML shares were down about 4.8% as of 12 p.m. ET.

Exclusive: How China built its ‘Manhattan Project’ to rival the West in AI chips

These advanced chips are used in a huge number of crucial industries such as AI, mobile phones, and weapons manufacturing.

ASML’s $250 million EUV machines are used to manufacture advanced chips for Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, and for chips made by TSMC.

ASML shares were down about 4.8% as of 12 p.m. ET.

Alexander C. Kaufman

Powerhouse

11h

Inside Oklo’s audacious plan to turn leftover weapons-grade plutonium into a nuclear bridge fuel

“There’s enough energy in nuclear waste to power the country for 150 years, and every year we produce enough for another four years,” the CEO of Oklo told Sherwood News.

Blastoff of Missile from Underground Bunker

Jon Keegan12h

Google is reportedly working with Meta to expand software support for its AI chips

Nvidia dominates the market for AI chips. But its advantage is not limited to hardware.

The company has a growing suite of software tools that are usually paired with its chips, optimized to get the most out of the GPUs crunching the data.

Any challengers to Nvidia’s dominance will need to make it easy for developers to walk away from the Nvidia software-hardware lock-in. That’s what Google and Meta are teaming up to do.

A new report from Reuters says Google is working on an initiative code-named “TorchTPU,” which aims to make it easier for AI developers who use the ubiquitous, open-source PyTorch software framework to switch the hardware layer to Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs).

Meta is a huge backer of the PyTorch project, so the company is teaming up with Google to help develop its TorchTPU software, per the report.

Last month, it was reported that Google is planning on selling TPUs worth “billions of dollars” to Meta, which follows other Big Tech players who are hedging their bets against Nvidia’s dominance.

Exclusive: Google works to erode Nvidia's software advantage with Meta's help

Any challengers to Nvidia’s dominance will need to make it easy for developers to walk away from the Nvidia software-hardware lock-in. That’s what Google and Meta are teaming up to do.

Meta is a huge backer of the PyTorch project, so the company is teaming up with Google to help develop its TorchTPU software, per the report.

$100B

Rani Molla14h

Waymo, Alphabet’s autonomous driving subsidiary, is in talks to raise more than $15 billion in a funding round that would value the company near $100 billion, Bloomberg reports. That’s more than double the valuation from its last round in October 2024, reflecting its lead in driverless ride-hailing.

Latest Stories

Sherwood Media, LLC produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and is a fully owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate, including Robinhood Markets, Inc., Robinhood Financial LLC, Robinhood Securities, LLC, Robinhood Crypto, LLC, or Robinhood Money, LLC.