- FAANGBytes
- Posts
- OpenAI poaching from Google, Meta VR headset deal in China, and Google's investment in CharacterAI
OpenAI poaching from Google, Meta VR headset deal in China, and Google's investment in CharacterAI
The most important tech news on 11/13/2023
👋 Welcome to FAANGBytes, a byte-sized newsletter containing the most important FAANG-related news you need to know. We publish every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday! If you aren’t already, subscribe here.
🔥 Can’t Miss Hits
OpenAI is trying to lure Google AI employees by giving them incredibly high upside comp packages of up to $10M/yr while retaining a base salary of $245k to $425k. This of course assumes the $29 billion valuation OpenAI is holding as well as their unique PPU plan.
Other incentives include access to the best computing resources to advance AI.
Meta will sell a new, lower-priced VR headset in China through its partnership with video game maker Tencent in late 2024. This puts Meta’s headset directly up against China’s current VR market leader ByteDance, the owner of TikTok.
It’s the first time Meta will have exposure in China since 2009 since What’sApp, Facebook, and Instagram were banned.
Just a few weeks after their $2B commitment to Anthropic, Google is investing hundreds of millions into AI chatbot CharacterAI.
Founded by former L7/L8 Google engineers responsible for leading LaMDA, CharacterAI allows you to chat with multiple bots at a time (celebrities, teachers, public figures, etc). The company claimed to have had over 100M users since launch and recently led a $1B valuation from Andreessen Horowitz back in March.
🔑 Today’s Highlights
Over 180 roles were eliminated from Amazon Gaming as they focused on “delivering great games” to users. The two divisions cut were Crown Channel and Game Growth, which were respectively tasked with delivering weekly content and helping publishers reach new audiences.
For now, Amazon is focusing on future projects such as Tomb Raider and Lord of The Rings games.
Google has been paying Apple for quite some time to be the leading search engine in Safari. But both companies have tried to keep the exact figure hidden until a witness leaked the figure in the recent Google antitrust trial.
Google witness Professor Ken Murphy accidentally revealed that “a 36% cut of all Search Ads revenue on Safari” is given to Apple. According to Bloomberg, Google lawyer John Schmidtlein visibly cringed when Murphy said the number.
You can now shop Amazon’s FB and Instagram ads without leaving the social media app through a new Amazon and Meta partnership.
While Amazon has historically been search, or intent-based, this new partnership with Meta allows business owners to reach customers they usually wouldn’t through Meta’s discovery-based model.
Important to note that Pinterest’s deal with Amazon a few quarters ago also led to a boost in sales.
🤖 Developments in AI
Amazon is training a 2 trillion parameter model to compete with top rival models from OpenAI and Google.
Codenamed Olympus, the project is reported to be run by Head Scientist of Artificial General Intelligence at Amazon, Rohit Prasad.
Apple has internally referred to IOS 18 as “ambitious and compelling” with the goal to ship major new features and designs and catch up to Google and OpenAI in the GenAI war.
Some reports speculate this could involve revamped interactions between Siri and Messages, allowing users to ask complex questions and autocomplete more effectively, as well as GenAI-powered productivity apps.
The new Pixel 8 comes with some pretty powerful Generative AI, and Google is making sure it isn’t being misused.
To avoid deceptive or fraudulent activities, Google’s Magic Editor will ensure that faces, receipts, IDs, etc will not be edited by AI.
đź”— Quick Reads
🙋‍♂️Imran Chaudhri Interview Profile
Interview with ex-Apple and Humane Cofounder Imran Chaudri after the debut of the AI Pin.
Netflix plans to expand beyond mobile gaming into cloud gaming and even platform-based (such as only for your TV).
Creators can turn this feature on or off for shorts or long-form as this intends to roll out on 11/20.
Prime members save on a One Medical membership.
Any accounts not touched for two years can be deleted.
The EU’s Digital Markets Act requires Apple to enable sideloading, which will allow EU users to install apps without the App Store.
What did you think of this issue? |