Technology

  Bloomberg Instagram is rolling out a new feature called broadcast channels that lets users send text or photo updates directly to followers, the latest attempt by the Meta Platforms Inc. division to fine-tune the service. Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg announced the news on his Instagram account by creating a channel of his own. The idea is to ...

  Bloomberg The US Supreme Court is poised to hear a case that could spell danger for the internet’s most lucrative business: online advertising. The case, Gonzalez v. Google, will be argued on Tuesday and centers on whether internet companies are liable for the content their algorithms recommend to users. The tech industry says it’s protected by a legal shield ...

Bloomberg SoftBank Group Corp. offered to buy all shares in robot maker Berkshire Grey Inc. it doesn’t already own in a $218 million deal, in a foray into logistics automation after halting almost all investment activity for months. The global tech investor has sent a non-binding letter of interest, offering to buy Berkshire shares for $1.30 a piece, according to ...

  Bloomberg Ford Motor Co. and Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. plan to build a battery plant in Michigan, capping a monthslong search that became mired in geopolitical tensions between the US and China. The multibillion-dollar facility, to be located about 100 miles west of Detroit, is expected to create about 2,500 jobs. The agreement could be announced as soon ...

  Bloomberg Coupang Inc, the South Korean e-commerce pioneer that has lost billions of dollars since its founding, is rolling out an army of robots at fulfillment centers in a bid to reach profitability. Korea’s answer to Amazon.com Inc., Coupang burned cash by building distribution centers around the country that could help it push the boundaries of speedy delivery with ...

  Bloomberg Samsung Electronics Co is counting on demand for premium devices to drive double-digit growth in sales of marquee Galaxy phones in 2023, despite signs the global market may contract a second straight year. The world’s largest smartphone maker, which warned this week that a record smartphone slump may persist well into 2023, expects to outpace the industry by ...

  Bloomberg Alphabet Inc.’s Google has invested almost $400 million in artificial intelligence (AI) startup Anthropic, which is testing a rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Google and Anthropic declined to comment on the investment, but separately announced a partnership in which Anthropic will use Google’s cloud computing services. The deal marks the latest alliance between a tech giant and an AI startup ...

  Bloomberg Global smartphone shipments suffered their worst quarterly drop on record in a clear sign of cooling consumer demand that signals more pain for manufacturing hubs like South Korea and Vietnam. Shipments declined 18.3% in the December 2022 quarter compared to a year earlier, to a little over 300 million units, Needham, Massachusetts-based IDC said. For the year, shipments ...

  Bloomberg Microsoft Corp is investing heavily in artificial intelligence (AI), but don’t expect the magic of OpenAI’s ChatGPT to show up in its signature Word program quite yet. The software giant announced a $10 billion investment in OpenAI, whose AI tool ChatGPT is trained on troves of data to generate human-like responses to prompts in seconds. Microsoft plans to ...

  Bloomberg Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud unit will spend $35 billion on new data centers in Virginia by 2040, underscoring its determination to stay ahead of rivals Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc. The investments at multiple locations will create an estimated 1,000 jobs in Virginia, the state said in a news release. Virginia is Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) most important hub, ...