Apple rolls out a new iPad, iPad Air

Joining us are leaders of high-flying organizations including Jason Warner, cofounder and CEO of Poolside; Ilan Twig, cofounder and CTO of Navan; Seth Dobrin, CEO of Qantm AI; and Navrina Singh of Credo AI.

We’ll also hear from brilliant enterprise minds including Tye Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics; Jorn Lambert, chief product officer at Mastercard; and Katherine Stueland, CEO of GeneDx.

And don’t forget the smart money: Ben Fletcher of Accel, Tom Hulme of GV, Alex Lim of IVP, and Shalini Rao of Headline will sound off—plus Emily Prince of the London Stock Exchange Group and independent analyst Benedict Evans. 

We’re just getting started; we’ll announce many more speakers soon. Want to know what’s next for AI? Register your interest here.—Andrew Nusca

Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Data Sheet? Drop a line here.

Apple rolls out a new iPad, iPad Air

Apple’s new iPads are out: one new Air and one regular iPad.

There is very little excitement to be found in the specs—the Air’s processor is bumped up from M2 to M3; the base model iPad 11 now comes with 128 gigabytes of storage—but there is one detail that’s worth pointing out.

The new base iPad comes with the A16 chip that powered the iPhone 15, which means that, like the iPhone 15, it can’t handle Apple Intelligence. You’d need at least the A17 Bionic processor for that.

There are obviously cost savings in play here, with the iPad 11 starting at just $349, compared with the new iPad Air, which would set you back at least $599.

So that makes sense. But from a strategic perspective, what kind of message is Apple sending when it forgoes the opportunity to have its most mass-market iPad support its big Apple Intelligence push? Is it all in on AI or not?

Given the poor reviews of Apple Intelligence thus far, and with a recent Bloomberg report suggesting the fully AI-ified Siri is still at least a couple years off, you’d think Apple would be trying to signal a bit more dedication to keeping up with the market. —David Meyer

Judge denies Musk effort to halt OpenAI’s for-profit shift

A U.S. judge denied Elon Musk’s attempt to stop OpenAI from transforming itself from a nonprofit organization to a for-profit entity.

A federal judge in California said Musk and his fellow plaintiffs “failed to meet their burden of proof” and called their request “extraordinary.” The court did, however, let other elements of the lawsuit proceed. 

In a statement provided to the press, OpenAI said it welcomed the court’s decision: “Elon’s own emails show that he wanted to merge a for-profit OpenAI into Tesla. That would have been great for his personal benefit, but not for our mission or U.S. interests.”

Filed last year, the lawsuit claimed OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman—like Musk, a cofounder of the company—had breached OpenAI’s founding mission by placing commercial interests ahead of the public good. 

Musk later expanded his position, claiming that OpenAI had violated antitrust law by asking investors to agree not to invest in rival companies—among them Musk’s rival AI outfit, xAI. 

He also assembled a consortium of investors to bid on the assets of OpenAI’s nonprofit parent for $97 billion; OpenAI’s board later rejected the offer.

OpenAI aims to complete its restructuring this year. The move would allow it to function like the highly valued—to the tune of a rumored $260 billion—startup it is. —AN

U.S. CFPB drops fraud lawsuit against Zelle stakeholders

The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Tuesday dismissed its lawsuit against the operator of the Zelle payments network and the three U.S. banks responsible for most of the transactions on it.

The CFPB had sued Early Warning Services, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo in December.

The allegations: The firms failed to properly investigate fraud complaints or give victims reimbursement on the peer-to-peer payments network.

But with a new federal administration comes new priorities. Under President Trump, acting CFPB director Russell Vought has moved for the agency to drop a number of cases brought by his President Biden-appointed predecessor, Rohit Chopra. 

The CFPB estimated that customers of the three banks in question have lost more than $870 million since Zelle’s launch in 2017. Last year the service crossed $1 trillion in total volume. 

The CFPB notably dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, which means it will not bring the claims again at a later date. That means any consumer funds that were lost to fraud will remain that way. —AN

More data

—Amazon forms agentic AI group led by AWS exec Swami Sivasubramanian, who reports to AWS CEO Matt Garman.

—Google pushes back on a breakup. Company reps have appealed to U.S. Justice Department officials to ease the effort for national security reasons.

—CrowdStrike shares drop 9%. Despite Q4 revenue that beat expectations, its earnings guidance for the year—about $3.39 per share—fell well short of the $4.42 analysts expected.

—Taipei will support TSMC’s $100bn U.S. investment, but “gatekeep” to keep the good stuff in Taiwan.

—YouTube tightens restrictions on gambling content.

—Arm will provide chip designs and tech to Malaysia for $250m over the next 10 years.

—Amazon preps new AI model for June. Part of its Nova AI family, the “hybrid reasoning” model will, naturally, attempt to drive down the price of the competition.

—Google’s rumored “Pixie” AI assistant may arrive on the Pixel 10 as “Pixel Sense.”

—OpenAI unveils research consortium. Called NextGenAI, it will include Harvard, MIT, and Oxford and involve compute commitments, API access, and research grants.

—Uber, Waymo launch robotaxi service in Austin. Giddyup.

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