Robots are no match for American football. The chorus of revolutionary promises about artificial intelligence might lead one to believe that no human activity is safe in an era of silicon smarts. But when it comes to live events – on traditional television, no less — AI can’t beat flesh-and-blood fervor. For the uninitiated, the National Football League broadcast of its championship game, dubbed the Super Bowl, is tantamount to a religious experience for many in the United States. On Sunday, millions gathered to watch the Philadelphia Eagles trounce the Kansas City Chiefs. The draw of the most-watched event

Masayoshi Son may be about to pull off his signature move – doubling down. Having already invested over $1.5 billion into OpenAI, the SoftBank boss could throw another $25 billion into the artificial intelligence company, according to a Financial Times report on Thursday. Previous double dips like WeWork and Uber have yielded distinctly mixed results, but the timing of the Japanese investor’s latest gambit deserves its own level of weird. As recently as last week, OpenAI might have seemed a sensible bet. The group run by Sam Altman, which launched ChatGPT in late 2022 and touted 100 million weekly active users within a year, was in

It’s possible OpenAI is worth $157 billion; it just requires a bit of hand waving. Technology giants, venture capital firms, and the usual suspects in the hedge fund and investment world piled into the company started by Sam Altman to give the artificial intelligence company $6.6 billion in new funding. Assuming these investors want a return commensurate with risk, say 20% annually for a decade, OpenAI’s value needs to grow to $1 trillion. That doesn’t immediately compute. OpenAI estimates revenue will triple next year to $11.6 billion, and Altman thinks revenue could reach $100 billion by 2029 according to the New York

Squeezing money-losing but fast-growing software companies for profit is an ideal private equity pitch. Problem is, banks shy from offering return-boosting debt when profit isn’t involved. As Vista Equity Partners and Blackstone close in on one of the year’s largest buyouts, they will likely tap private lenders for loans based on revenue, rather than cash flow. That’s bitten Vista before. This time, though, there are reassuring signs. Vista and Blackstone are discussing a $56-per-share offer for Smartsheet, a developer of collaboration software, Reuters reported on Monday. At nearly $8 billion in equity value, it would be the year’s largest U.S. private equity

MicroStrategy’s co-founder Michael Saylor once ran a humdrum little software firm. Then, for a moment, his company was worth many billions of dollars – or, rather, for three moments. After a dizzying rise and fall in the dot-com bubble and another after the pandemic, his company’s shares have now more than doubled this year. This latest spike is tied to a bitcoin-buying binge funded in part by bonds that can convert into stock. Unlike GameStop or other meme-crazed run-ups, though, this one is a dicey deal with Wall Street. The company began hoarding bitcoin in August 2020 and ramped up

Mobileye Global got thwacked by the same bullwhip that eventually comes around for all chipmakers. The maker of technology for autonomous-car systems warned on Thursday that its first-quarter revenue would fall to about half what it was around the same time last year because of customer stockpiling, knocking 25% off the company’s market value. Suppliers of semiconductors used in artificial intelligence are unlikely to be immune from similar gluts. Demand for products from Mobileye and its peers will keep rising. The average value of chips in each vehicle averaged $500 in 2020 and is forecast to reach $1,400 apiece in 2028, according to

For all the changes that technology has brought about, one thing will stay the same in 2024. Generation Alpha, kids born in the 2010s, are going to want to be “different” from their parents. For them, that means spending less time online. For companies counting on their data, that means life is about to get harder. Members of the youngest generation may have a role model in their slightly older peers when it comes to pushing back against an all-enveloping digital world. Globally, the amount of time people spent on social media declined year-over-year in 2023 for the first time since the

Sam Altman lost his job as OpenAI boss last month in the boardroom coup heard around the world. Four frenzied days later, with support from backer Microsoft and its Chief Executive Satya Nadella, he landed back in the top seat at the artificial intelligence startup. The incident unveiled profound tensions between OpenAI’s safety-driven, not-for-profit parent and the corporate entity it controls. Yet despite the whiplash, there’s a strong argument that the roughly $86 billion valuation OpenAI was seeking in a share sale prior to the ouster remains largely unchanged. OpenAI explicitly tasked its board with putting safety over profit. So it’s

  Sometimes a mud-covered object is a gem. Often, though, it’s just quartz. That’s the issue facing Cisco Systems after it announced on Thursday a $28 billion acquisition of big data and cybersecurity outfit Splunk. The all-cash deal banks on Cisco drumming up growth – and the $215 billion networking giant assumes the risk for executing it. The company run by Chuck Robbins is looking to diversify away from its original business: selling hardware like routers and switches that connect computers and communication networks. Splunk in theory has enough to offer. Its software helps people monitor and search large pools of data.

Salesforce has succumbed to the swarm. The software developer revealed financial progress in its quarterly results, indicated it would throttle pricey deals and installed new board members, including a representative from ValueAct Capital. Unless pushy Elliott Management presents some superstar board nominees, it would be overkill to ask for more. Co-Founder and Chief Executive Marc Benioff said on Wednesday that improving profitability is the company’s top priority. As evidence of the commitment, Salesforce said in January that it would lay off 10% of its workers. Its adjusted operating margin is already improving, up to 22.5% for the financial year finished Jan.

Does Adobe’s Photoshop work in spreadsheets? The design technology titan is acquiring startup Figma for $20 billion, using roughly half cash and half shares, in a deal that will significantly beef up its online collaboration capabilities. To justify paying 50 times annual recurring revenue, however, requires the sort of reality distortion power of the buyer’s image editing software. It’s a big transaction for Adobe boss Shantanu Narayen. The $145 billion company he leads generally targets smaller takeovers while developing new products and improving existing ones internally. Decade-old Figma, however, managed to crack the code for multiple users to watch each other design

Broadcom’s creep from semiconductors to software was already quizzical, given the scant overlap between making chips and coding bits. With the $61 billion purchase of VMware, the fog gets thicker. It doesn’t help that Hock Tan, who runs the $220 billion chipmaker, is being vague about the benefits of this giant deal on which shareholders get no real say. Acquisitive companies tend to give a clear figure on the savings a tie-up will create – as Broadcom has too in some past deals. In announcing the VMware tie-up on Tuesday, Tan said instead that software developer VMware should contribute $8.5 billion of EBITDA to