TechCheck

Former Yahoo CEO and early Google employee Marissa Mayer thinks photo sharing is broken. Her new app Shine uses AI to fix that. We chat with her on the new venture, plus competing with tech giants and LLMs, AI startups, Google’s AI strategy and more. Plus, one Raymond James analyst thinks he’s found the next winners in AI: web tool platforms like GoDaddy and Wix. We debate whether that will still hold true as the next generation of AI apps enter the market. 

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A new class of meme stocks has arrived. Trump Media, or DJT, is perhaps the most divorced from fundamentals. The newly-merged SPAC closed yesterday with a nearly $8 billion market cap and is up 17% today. Newly-public Reddit has also been also volatile – up nearly 70% since its IPO but falling 11% today. It all underscores a market that is increasingly driven by momentum… and retail investors. 

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The saga of WeWork continues. Former CEO Adam Neumann is putting in a bid, along with half a dozen financing partners, to buy the now-bankrupt co-working company for more than $500 million, according to CNBC sources. But where is that money coming from, and who are the financing partners that would back Neumann after the high-profile WeWork implosion? 

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The European Union has now launched its first official investigations under its sweeping new competition law, the Digital Markets Act, targeting Apple, Google and Meta in particular. It’s a signal of European regulators going on the offense – identifying so-called gatekeepers and laying out rules to prevent future abuse of market power. But the tech giants now have battles going on multiple fronts – fighting regulators while also trying to keep up with megacap peers in the AI race. 

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Apple's strategy has always been to be the last and best mover. But generative AI is a different beast. Now, the tech giant looks to be scrambling. It's reportedly in talks to outsource key AI features on the next iPhone to one of its biggest rivals, Google, and has released a new Macbook Air it's selling as "the world's best consumer laptop for AI," but has the same features as past laptops. This week on TechCheck, we dig into how Apple has succumbed to the AI pressure.

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The DOJ filed a historic 88-page suit against Apple, alleging that the tech giant of running an illegal monopoly. But we point out some more questionable allegations in the lawsuit, including the DOJ’s statements around CarPlay and Apple TV+. Plus, though all its megacap peers are currently facing regulatory investigations, Microsoft has somehow dodged scrutiny. We break down its regulatory playbook and secret to success. 

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Shares of Reddit are soaring after its debut on the NYSE, as investors look to parse out what the company’s AI proposition really is. Artificial intelligence was a big part of Reddit’s pitch to investors, disclosing that it’s expecting to make around $66 million, or around 7% of its revenue, from a data licensing deal with Google to train its large language model on Reddit data. We dig into just how sustainable that is, and whether Reddit can expect to increase licensing as part of its revenue stream mix in the current AI landscape.  

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TechCheck is at Nvidia’s headline developer’s conference, the GTC in San Jose, breaking down the AI ecosystem that CEO Jensen Huang has created. The chip company’s halo effect has reached the public and private markets, with Synopsis, Dell and Cadence higher on the keynote, and a who’s who of generative AI startup darlings speaking at the conference as well, including Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Mistral and Cohere. 

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Apple is now reportedly in talks with Alphabet to put Google’s Gemini AI model into iPhones. The partnership could shake up postions in the AI race, potentially acting as a strong rebuke to bears who worried that Google's Gemini large language model is falling short of competitor products. It might also cast doubt on Apple's AI strategy and whether it’s able to catch up to rivals. 

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Beijing now seems unlikely to let go of TikTok's secret sauce - it's source code - saying overnight that it would oppose a forced sale. That severely limits the options for parent company Bytedance, and poses a big challenge for any U.S. workers who might try and replicate the algorithm. 

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