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SoftBank Founder Shares Vision for Artificial Superintelligence | | | | | | |
| What's up: Longtime Musk fixer leaves Tesla; Grilling steaks to explain AI's energy suck; more tech talent moves. | |
| |  | | "I am betting all in on the world of ASI," SoftBank Group Chief Executive Masayoshi Son said. Photo: Kazuhiro Nogi/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images | | | | |
| Good morning. SoftBank Group Chief Executive Masayoshi Son is all in on artificial superintelligence. "I am betting all in on the world of ASI," he said at an annual shareholder meeting held in Tokyo on Friday. Not to be confused with artificial general intelligence—read the definition here—ASI is a hypothetical form of AI that is smarter than humans. Hitting the milestone first is partly behind Meta's intense recruiting drive. The company recently invested $14 billion in AI startup ScaleAI and hired its CEO to lead a new superintelligence team. Son said that in the next decade, just a handful of companies will reap the benefits from the around 600 trillion yen, equivalent to $4.2 trillion, of anticipated profit from ASI. A key part of Son's strategy is strengthening the Japanese technology investment company's relationship with OpenAI, WSJ's Megumi Fujikawa reports. Earlier this year, SoftBank and OpenAI announced Stargate, a joint project to build infrastructure for the ChatGPT maker. Oracle and MGX, an investor backed by the United Arab Emirates, are also equity partners in the venture. The companies have pledged to invest up to $500 billion in Stargate over the next four years. Read the story. | |
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| Meta's quest for AI talent continues. Bloomberg reports that the company is in talks to acquire PlayAI, a startup that uses AI to generate human voices. | |
| Vasi Philomin, who helped lead Amazon Web Service's generative AI effort and oversaw Bedrock, AWS's AI platform, left the company earlier this month, Reuters reports. | |
| Omead Afshar, longtime Tesla fixer and most recently the EV maker's chief of sales and manufacturing operations in North America and Europe, is leaving, WSJ reports. His departure comes amid Tesla's deepest sales slump in years. New data this week showed May sales in the European Union were down 40%. | |
| Kobi Bar-Nathan, formerly CFO at Oracle, has joined Google Cloud as its finance chief, Bloomberg reports. | |
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| |  | | What really happens after you hit "enter" on that AI prompt? WSJ's Joanna Stern heads inside a data center to trace the journey and then grills up some steaks to show just how much energy it all takes. Photo Illustration: David Hall, Paige Money for WSJ | | | | |
| Raise your hand if you ever felt guilty for the energy consumed prompting ChatGPT on the cultural impact of "Rock Me Amadeus." Anyone? WSJ Tech Columnist Joanna Stern went to a data center to find out how much power AI tasks actually use. | |
| | | I wanted to better understand the stakes—literally. So I grabbed an electric grill from Home Depot, a power meter and my video producer, David Hall. About 10 minutes and 220 watt-hours later, we had a thin, medium-well steak. Translation: The energy it took to cook a decent dinner was about the same as generating two AI videos, at the high end.  | Analysis by the WSJ's Joanna Stern | | | | | |
| Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff tells Bloomberg that AI is now responsible for 30% to 50% of the work at the company. | |
| AI cloud provider CoreWeave is in talks to acquire bitcoin miner Core Scientific, WSJ reports. The exact terms being discussed couldn't be learned. | |
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| |  | Photo: Tingshu Wang/Reuters | | | | | Analysts say Xiaomi's new SUV unveiled Thursday could be a "Tesla killer." Preorders for the Chinese consumer electronics giant's YU7 hit 200,000 units in the first three minutes of sales, and 289,000 in the first hour, the company said. | | |
| Hawaiian Airlines said it is grappling with a cybersecurity issue that has affected some of its information technology systems, WSJ reports. The carrier said flights are operating safely and as scheduled on Thursday. | |
| Uber is talking with co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick to help fund its acquisition of the U.S. subsidiary of China's Pony.ai, the New York Times reports. Pony.ai has permits to operate self-driving cars and trucks in the U.S. and China. Kalanick stepped down from Uber in 2017 amid an investor revolt. | |
| Microsoft's fabled "blue screen of death" only has weeks to live, CNBC reports. The error message, which has been gracing crashing Windows machines for the last several decades, this summer will be replaced by a black restart screen. | |
| | Everything Else You Need to Know | | |
| The U.S. attack on Iran vaulted Gen. Dan Caine, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, into President Trump's top tier of advisers. (WSJ) Harvard University and other top research schools are seeking corporate funders to support their science labs following sweeping cuts to government grants. (WSJ) Zohran Mamdani has struck fear across New York City's business community after his Tuesday night surprise victory against former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who conceded in the city's Democratic primary for mayor. (WSJ) Anna Wintour is stepping down as editor in chief of the American edition of Vogue after more than three decades atop the fashion magazine, setting the stage for a younger editor to help shape the iconic publication. (WSJ) | |
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