Good morning. For all of Elon Musk’s ventures—the cars, the rockets, the tunnels, the brain-machine interfaces, the satellite Internet services, the federal government departments with funny names—a private preschool might be the most curious.
Called “Ad Astra” and located in Texas, the Montessori school will emphasize “exploration” (on brand for Musk) and being a “respectful” member of the community (not so much), among other things, according to a new report by Fortune colleague Jessica Mathews.
As the father of a preschooler who once profiled the man for a venerable magazine, I was quite curious to see if Musk would have a fresh take on the concept. But so far, it feels rather familiar—first principles thinking be damned. —Andrew Nusca
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Nvidia absolutely crushes its Q3 earnings |
 Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, September 13, 2023. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images)
Nvidia’s third quarter results came in better than expected as the AI chipmaker and stock market darling beat the soaring expectations placed at its feet.
Revenues for the quarter were $35.1 billion, up 94% from a year ago. Profits were $19.3 billion, an increase of 109% from the same time last year. At $0.78, earnings per share (GAAP) were up 111% compared to last year. The company beat analyst expectations on all fronts.
The prime concern for Nvidia, whose shares have been on a meteoric 200% rise since the start of the year, remains whether it can continue to grow at this pace. (Nvidia shares were down 2.5%, to $142, in after-hours trading.)
On a conference call, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company was delivering more Blackwell chips—its flagship AI product, announced in March—this quarter than expected. Analysts had been concerned about production delays. “Blackwell production is in full steam,” Huang said. —Paolo Confino
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Meta debuts new Messenger features |
Meta’s entrenched Messenger service got a glow up yesterday with an array of new features.
The update adds audio and video voicemail (à la Apple's FaceTime), AI backgrounds for video calls, HD video calls, background noise suppression, and hands-free calling and messaging via Apple’s Siri voice assistant.
(Example: “Hey Siri, send a message to Boz on Messenger.”)
The new features keep the communication service competitive with competing alternatives—critical since it’s a promising source of “non-advertising” revenue at the company.
Thanks to its integration with Facebook and Instagram, Messenger is considered the third most popular communication service around the globe, behind Meta-owned WhatsApp and Tencent’s WeChat.
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U.K. legislators want Elon Musk to testify about X |
Elon Musk’s X played a significant role in the spread of inflammatory statements during racist riots in the U.K. earlier this year, and now British lawmakers reportedly want Musk to come and testify at a social media inquiry.
A user called Lucy Connolly has already been jailed for inciting racial hatred with a tweet during the riots—X apparently didn’t think her post calling for people to set fire to refugee hostels broke its rules against violent threats—and even Musk himself stoked the situation by tweeting that “civil war is inevitable” and spreading disinformation.
The hearings will take place in the new year, when the tycoon will be busy co-running his new Department of Government Efficiency under the second Trump administration, so it’s not clear if he would turn up.
But with the U.K. continuously tightening the screws on harmful online content, snubbing the inquiry could backfire on X. —David Meyer
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xAI now valued at $50 billion |
One month ago, this very newsletter told you that Elon Musk’s OpenAI rival, xAI, was fundraising at a $40 billion valuation.
That figure has now jumped to $50 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. That means the artificial intelligence startup has more than doubled its worth since—checks watch—a few months ago.
xAI raised $5 billion this round (versus $6 billion last time), according to the report, from investors that reportedly include Qatar’s sovereign-wealth fund, Valor Equity Partners, Sequoia Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz.
In truth, investor interest in all of Elon Musk’s businesses has increased in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidential win, given that Musk stumped for the candidate in the lead up to Election Day. But it’s a show of confidence for a company that reportedly earns $100 million in revenue on an annualized basis.
On what will xAI spend the cash, you ask? Same thing as a month ago: About 100,000 Nvidia AI chips for training its models. Full steam ahead.
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A search rival presses for fresh Google investigations |
The search engine DuckDuckGo is taking the fight to Google in a new way.
On Wednesday, the venerable upstart (DuckDuckGo has been pitching itself as a privacy-first Google rival for 14 years now) called on the European Commission to launch three new investigations against Google for allegedly violating the new Digital Markets Act, a tough Big Tech antitrust law.
Google is already facing DMA probes over its Google Play developer rules and the way it treats third-party services in its search results.
If the Commission follows DuckDuckGo’s advice, it would also investigate Google over its failure to: give rivals access to key search data; give Android users an explicit choice about the search engine they want to use; and make it easy for Android users to switch their default search engine.
As the DMA’s fines run as high as 10% of global annual revenue, Google potentially has a big problem here. —DM
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Andrew Nusca, Editorial Director, Los Angeles Alexei Oreskovic, Tech Editor, San Francisco Verne Kopytoff, Senior Editor, San Francisco Jeremy Kahn, AI Editor, London Jason Del Rey, Correspondent, New York Kali Hays, Correspondent, San Francisco Allie Garfinkle, Senior Writer, Los Angeles |
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