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No one can rival OpenAI for internal drama. But in recent days, Meta Platforms seems to be trying its best to do so.
Earlier this week, Wired reported that Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth told staff Meta had done an “atrocious” job of launching a new AI division. That report followed another one in Wired about the internal dissatisfaction within the company’s applied AI division, citing Chief Product Officer Chris Cox acknowledging the “insanity of this company” (more on that issue). Meanwhile, Meta has very publicly reversed its policy on encouraging engineers’ AI use, we have reported, a sign that it has become more conscious of AI costs.
As all this has happened, the AI sector has been awaiting Meta’s release to developers of its latest AI model, Muse Spark, which according to The Wall Street Journal has been repeatedly delayed. Until developers get access, we won’t have a sense of whether Meta is again a contender for state-of-the-art AI models—a status it lost when its Llama 4 model release fell flat 14 months ago.
None of this can be comforting to Meta investors, who’ve had to watch as the stock has sunk 12.6% so far this year. Their anxiety is mostly related to the fact that Meta is investing a massive amount of money in AI, both for hiring star engineers and for building out data center capacity. Unlike other tech companies investing hundreds of billions in expanding AI data centers, Meta doesn’t have a cloud business that can generate revenue from cloud customers. Its AI is improving its advertising, to be sure, but that’s unlikely to be enough to justify the spending.
The worry is that Meta is fumbling its chance of ever leading in AI. What makes this particularly striking is that the company was very early to AI. When it was still known as Facebook, it went head to head with Google in the competition to buy DeepMind in 2013 and in the battle for AI talent more generally.
Meta is now in danger of following in the footsteps of Microsoft, which was very early to developing mobile software but never capitalized on that timing advantage. It released Windows Mobile, to power smartphones, in 2003, several years before the iPhone or Google’s Android came out. But Microsoft was overtaken by both companies and never regained its momentum.
Is Meta headed for the same fate?
Digital Media’s New Goliath
Is Jay Penske planning to take his publishing empire public? That seems to be on the cards, judging from the statement issued today describing Penske’s acquisition of eight Vox Media titles, including The Verge, Eater, SB Nation and Popsugar. These were the Vox titles left behind when James Murdoch bought New York magazine, Vox.com and Vox’s podcasts last month.
But Penske didn’t just buy the titles. He created a new subsidiary of Penske, PMX, which combines all of its other titles—including Billboard, Variety, Rolling Stone, WWD and Deadline—with the Vox titles. Penske gave Vox Media shareholders stock in PMX, as they’ll have a minority stake, Vox said. (Penske was already an investor in Vox Media, mind you, which likely affected the price it paid.)
There’s likely only one reason why Penske would create a new subsidiary with outside ownership—he plans to take it public. That would make sense given the number of high-profile titles. Watch this space.
Midjourney and Medicine
Some in tech still have the capacity to surprise. Take Midjourney, until now best known for its AI image-making tool (here’s a profile of the firm we published in March). Now, though, it is sure to be better known as that crazy tech firm that made a midlife pivot into medicine!
On Wednesday, Midjourney unveiled a full-body scanner for detecting diseases, and it plans to open spas across the country to make money from the scanners. That is quite the leap for an AI tool. The economics of building a medical device, and then opening spas across the country, are…quite different, to say the least. This move is almost as bizarre as footwear firm Allbirds’ pivot to renting out AI chips (hat tip to Nick Wingfield for pointing that out).
It seems corporate reinvention is alive and well in Silicon Valley.
In Other News
• Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced a bill on Thursday to establish a $7 trillion sovereign wealth fund that would provide the American public with a 50% ownership stake in the top AI companies.
Today on The Information’s TITV
Check out today’s episode of TITV in which we discuss our reporting on an OpenClaw competitor that’s gaining steam.
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