Good morning. Are you a tech pro trying to wrangle your organization’s data in the great push to deploy AI?
If so, I’ve got just the thing for you.
I’m hosting a virtual session on Nov. 18 with corporate leaders from health, retail, and finance to share what they’re doing (and, ahem, not doing) to make sense of the chaos.
It’s free to join and we’ll kick things off at 1 p.m. Eastern. Register here, then read today’s tech news below. —Andrew Nusca
P.S. Yesterday’s edition cited a report that Amazon would lay off 30,000 people. The company confirmed the layoffs Tuesday morning—but the magic number is 14,000, to set the record straight.
P.P.S. Our annual Fortune 500 Europe list is out today. Can you guess which company tops the list? Here’s a hint: skrrt skrrt.
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OpenAI completes restructuring, renegotiates Microsoft stake
It’s finally done.
OpenAI and Microsoft jointly announced on Tuesday that they reached a deal to complete OpenAI’s restructuring into a more traditional for-profit corporation.
Microsoft, an early investor, will receive a 27% stake in OpenAI, worth around $135 billion.
The tech giant will also retain access to OpenAI’s technology through 2032, including any models that reach the milestone of artificial general intelligence (AGI)—something that will now be verified by an independent expert panel.
Microsoft will also have rights to OpenAI’s research IP, defined as “confidential methods used in the development of models and systems,” until either AGI is verified or 2030, whichever comes first.
However, Microsoft’s rights no longer include OpenAI’s consumer hardware. The company also relinquished its cloud exclusivity with OpenAI.
OpenAI says the restructuring plan has taken nearly a year to negotiate. The new agreement lifts a key restriction on the startup’s ability to raise capital, a limitation dating back to its 2019 partnership with Microsoft.
“The more OpenAI succeeds as a company,” board chairman Bret Taylor wrote, “the more the nonprofit’s equity stake will be worth, which the nonprofit will use to fund its philanthropic work.” —Beatrice Nolan
Nvidia will invest $1 billion in Nokia
Tech’s hottest target in 2025 is…Nokia?
The pioneering Finnish mobile company—whose candybar handsets will be forever seared in the minds of millennials of a certain vintage—announced on Tuesday that it would give Nvidia a $1 billion stake in exchange for supplying the telecom company with AI computers to support its 5G and 6G wireless networks.
“We need a different kind of network in the future,” Nokia president and CEO Justin Hotard told Bloomberg, citing all of the ways AI is working itself into the economy. “And that’s what we realized.”
Shares of Nokia jumped 21%, their greatest leap in more than a decade.
Though Nokia became a household name for those feature phones (until Microsoft bought and sold that bit, anyway), the company has, as of late, been all about mobile networks.
With the AI boom well underway, Nokia is moving deeper into the data center. Earlier this year, it picked up optical networking firm Infinera for $2.3 billion.
A billion-dollar deal with Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, represents an even more aggressive push—and a timely one amid global trade tensions as Nokia evolves into a Western foil to China’s Huawei. —AN
Uber plans a robotaxi fleet of 100,000
Another bit of Nvidia-linked news, given the chipmaker’s GTC event in Washington this week.
Uber says it plans to deploy 100,000—that’s no typo—autonomous vehicles around the world beginning in 2027 as the global robotaxi race accelerates.
The vehicles will naturally be supported by “a joint AI data factory” built on technology from Nvidia, which first partnered with Uber earlier this year.
Starting in 2028, Stellantis—parent to Jeep, Fiat, Ram, and others—will work with iPhone maker Foxconn to build some 5,000 robotaxis for use by Uber and featuring (naturally!) Nvidia sensors, hardware, and software. It will surely not be the only automaker helping Uber reach its target.
Uber’s goal is staggering, even if it doesn’t have an end date.
To put it in perspective, Alphabet-owned Waymo—the category leader and an Uber frenemy—has, at last count, more than 2,000 vehicles on the road in the U.S.
Rivals Tesla and Amazon-owned Zoox remain in pilot programs.
Meanwhile, Baidu’s Apollo Go, WeRide, and Pony AI are moving quickly beyond China’s borders but have yet to individually surpass Waymo’s total vehicles on the road.
Where will the robotaxi race go from here? It’s too early to tell. What seems certain is that ride prices will drop as Nvidia shares rise. —AN
More tech
—PayPal partners with OpenAI. Buyers and sellers will be able to complete transactions through ChatGPT starting in 2026.
—Apple is now worth $4 trillion. It’s the third company to reach the milestone, behind Nvidia (natch) and Microsoft.
—Skyworks, Qorvo to merge in almost $10 billion deal, pending regulatory approval. The rival radio-frequency chipmakers supply Apple and other smartphone makers.
—OLED displays are reportedly coming to Apple’s MacBook Air, iPad mini, and iPad Air.
—Western Union will launch a dollar-backed stablecoin. USDPT will be built on the Solana blockchain and issued by Anchorage Digital Bank.
—Myanmar gov’t raids cyberscam center next to its border with Thailand.
—Adobe adds AI assistants to its software: “Conversational, agentic experiences that let anyone create using their own words.”