Welcome back to your daily memorandum talking tech, business, AI, markets, and more. 🗞️

In today’s edition, we are tackling the following:

🏨 Uber moves toward an ‘everything app’ with Expedia-powered hotel bookings.
📱 Qualcomm rises on smartphone rebound hopes & data center chip push.
📈 Alphabet's first-quarter profit surges as Google’s AI bets lift stock.
☁️ Amazon's cloud & AI boom drives double-digit growth across the board.
🛢️ UAE oil break exposes deepening Saudi rift as Gulf power shifts.

TECHNOLOGY

• Uber moves toward an ‘everything app’ with Expedia-powered hotel bookings (AP)
  ^{_{More: ABC, MSN}}

  • Uber has partnered with Expedia to let users book hotels directly within its app.

  • Over 1M Vrbo vacation rentals will also be added to the app later this year.

  • Uber's chief product officer says the move is part of a broader 'everything app' strategy.

• Qualcomm rises on smartphone rebound hopes & data-center chip push (Reuters)
  ^{_{More: Bloomberg, Economic Times, Investing.com}}

  • Qualcomm's CEO says the smartphone market will begin recovering after the third quarter.

  • Qualcomm shares jumped 15% after hours following the CEO's upbeat remarks on growth.

  • The chipmaker is currently developing three chip types targeting the data center market.

• Meta's Reality Labs has now burned a total of $83.5B since 2021 (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: Yahoo!, MEXC}}

  • Reality Labs lost $4B in Q1, matching its average loss across 21 consecutive quarters.

  • Total Reality Labs’ losses have reached $83.5B since 2021, even as metaverse ambitions wind down.

  • Despite the drain, Meta posted $26.8B in net income and $56.3B in revenue this quarter.

BUSINESS

• Alphabet's first-quarter profit surges as Google’s AI bets lift stock (Washington Post)
  ^{_{More: AP, MSN}}

  • Alphabet reported $62.6B in profit for Q1, an 81% increase from a year ago.

  • Revenue rose 22% year-on-year to $109.9B, surpassing analyst expectations by a wide margin.

  • Alphabet's market value has more than doubled in a year, now standing at $4.2T.

• Amazon's cloud & AI boom drives double-digit growth across the board (WSJ)
  ^{_{More: Reuters, TechCrunch, CNBC}}

  • AWS revenue surged 28%, beating estimates on the back of strong enterprise AI spending.

  • Amazon confirmed a $200B AI investment target for the year, reassuring cautious investors.

  • Ad sales climbed 24% to $17.2B, sending shares up nearly 4% after hours.

• Supreme Court's conservative majority hands Republicans a major redistricting win (AP)
  ^{_{More: Washington Times, FOX}}

  • The 6-3 ruling effectively guts the Voting Rights Act's protections for minority districts.

  • Republicans can now redraw maps in their favor, targeting Democratic-leaning seats across the South.

  • States like Louisiana and Tennessee are already reviewing congressional maps in light of the ruling.

MARKETS

WORLD

• UAE oil break exposes deepening Saudi rift as Gulf power shifts (Reuters)
  ^{_{More: Japan Times, MSN, Source}}

  • The UAE's OPEC exit brings years of tensions with Saudi Arabia into the open.

  • The split caps a long history of disputes over Yemen, Sudan, and output quotas.

  • Analysts say the break marks a structural shift in Gulf power away from Saudi leadership.

• European markets set for lower open as oil surges & central banks decide (CNBC)
  ^{_{More: Reuters, Investing.com}}

  • European stocks are set to open lower as investors track the Iran war and earnings.

  • Brent crude hit a wartime high above $126 a barrel, stoking fears of renewed conflict.

  • The U.S. military is preparing to brief Trump on potential military action against Iran.

• Amazon & Meta push back against Google Pay & PhonePe dominance in India (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: Tech Buzz, Yahoo!}}

  • Amazon Pay, WhatsApp, and CRED are among the platforms set to lobby India's payments body.

  • The meeting follows India's decision to defer a 30% UPI market share cap until December 31, 2026.

  • PhonePe and Google Pay together accounted for around 80% of the 22.6B UPI transactions in March.

FUTURISM

• AI-powered surveillance systems are rapidly spreading across the U.S.(Futurism)
  ^{_{More: Yahoo!}}

  • Expanding AI tools, such as cameras, drones, and databases, increasingly monitor people across the U.S.

  • Weak regulations allow authorities to access surveillance data without warrants, raising serious privacy concerns.

  • Activists and communities are organizing efforts to resist surveillance expansion and protect civil liberties.

• Australian banks warned frontier AI could create larger, faster cyber attacks (Reuters)
  ^{_{More: Firstpost, Economic Times}}

  • Australia's financial regulator, APRA, warned that most banks are not keeping pace with AI developments.

  • Frontier AI systems, including Anthropic's Mythos, could enable larger and faster cyber attacks, regulators cautioned.

  • S&P Global also flagged that AI developments may affect Asia-Pacific banks' overall creditworthiness.

• NASA chief urges Pluto to be reinstated as a planet (Futurism)
  ^{_{More: The Independent, Yahoo!}}

  • NASA administrator Jared Isaacman revives a decades-old debate over Pluto’s planetary status during a Senate hearing.

  • He openly supports making Pluto a planet again, signaling that NASA may push new research papers.

  • The agency plans to engage the scientific community to reconsider the definition of a planet and honor the discoverer Clyde Tombaugh.

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CONTENT

• Demis Hassabis on agents, AGI & the next big scientific breakthrough (Y Combinator)

  • Demis Hassabis, a Nobel laureate and the CEO of Google DeepMind, discussed what still needs to happen before AGI arrives.

  • Hassabis spoke about AI memory, reasoning gaps, and why smaller models are becoming increasingly powerful tools.

  • He also shared advice for founders on staying ahead and predicting the next major scientific breakthroughs.

• Jigar Shah & Jon Parrella on whether the AI data-center buildout can scale (Prof G Markets)

  • Experts debated whether the AI data center buildout can realistically meet Big Tech and investor expectations.

  • Power is emerging as the biggest bottleneck to scaling AI infrastructure across the U.S.

  • Jigar Shah and Jon Parrella proposed solutions to help America build and manage the power infrastructure it needs.

• Reiner Pope on how GPT-5, Claude & Gemini are trained & served (Dwarkesh Patel)

  • Reiner Pope delivered a blackboard lecture on how frontier LLMs are trained and served at scale.

  • He deduced what AI labs are doing using just equations, public API prices, and some chalk.

  • Pope is CEO of chip startup MatX and formerly worked on TPU architecture and compilers at Google.

EXTRAS

• Families of Canadian school shooting victims sue OpenAI over ChatGPT's role (AP)
  ^{_{More: CBS, The Guardian}}

  • Families of victims from a British Columbia school shooting are suing OpenAI in a U.S. federal court.

  • The lawsuit alleges OpenAI failed to alert police to the shooter's alarming ChatGPT interactions beforehand.

  • Sam Altman formally apologized for not notifying law enforcement about the shooter's concerning online behavior.

• Anthropic eyes a $50B raise at a valuation near $900B (TechCrunch)
  ^{_{More: Yahoo!, MSN}}

  • Anthropic has received multiple preemptive offers to raise around $50B at a valuation of up to $ 900B.

  • The company may finalize the round at a May board meeting, ahead of a potential IPO.

  • Investor demand is intense, with one backer offering $5B yet to secure a meeting.

• ChatGPT uninstalls are spiking at a critical time for OpenAI (Futurism)
  ^{_{More: Yahoo!}}

  • OpenAI missed internal targets for one billion weekly active users and fell short of revenue goals.

  • The company's CFO warned it may struggle to fund future computing contracts without significant revenue growth.

  • ChatGPT app uninstalls rose 132% year over year in April, threatening its key revenue stream.

AND MORE

• Elon Musk's biggest enemy in his own legal battles is himself.

• Apple fails to pause App Store fee changes as case heads to Supreme Court.

• Roko’s Basilisk skips the buzz words and cuts straight to what moves markets, products, and careers.*

• Google defends allowing the U.S. military to use AI for classified operations.

• Earth AI is vertically integrating the search for critical minerals.

• Patreon's Quips, a tweet-like feature, is now available to all users.

• Google Photos is using AI to recreate the iconic closet from 'Clueless.'

• Grindr unexpectedly dominated the White House Correspondents' Dinner party circuit.