Kick-Off
Apple M&A • Podcast About AGI • Meta's Llama Salvage • NVIDIA's Q2 • NVIDIA's 2 Big Customers • Apple's Radio Play • Meta's Big Men on AI Campus • 'TechWoven' Cases
While it officially kicked off in Ireland last weekend with the famous international matchup of, um, Kansas State vs. Iowa State, college football is really back in business this weekend. And that means Labor Day is upon us. Though not for me since I no longer live in the US, so I'll be back here writing on Monday. To many of you though, have a good, long weekend. #GoBlue 〽️
• Enjoying a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale 🍻
• Listening to Deftones - "Infinite Source" 🎶
• Written on an M4 MacBook Air 💻
• Sent from London, England 🏴 I Wrote…
🗳️ Apple Weighs the Voting Machine
Will they do a big AI deal? Should they?
🍌 AGI is Bananas
A conversation about Google, Apple, AI, AGI, and everything in between...
I Think…
🦙 Meta's Race to Salvage Llama
While it sure seems like the 'Behemoth' model (the largest, flagship variant of Llama 4) was scrapped amidst the whole AI reset (which happened right after it was reported to be delayed), the company has maintained there were other Llama models in the works for this year (always as a counter to the notion that they could scrap the "open source" element of the project). The new 'TBD' team (one of the four teams now under the 'Superintelligence Labs') is working like a new doctor brought in to save the ailing patient, it seems. 'Llama 4.x' could be 'Llama 4.5', so it's possible we get a 'Llama 4.1' even if they can't hit the end of year timeframe for the bigger project. The main question remains: will the work under MSL be "open source" out of the gate, or will they hold that back until later, as is the common practice amongst their peers now? Seemingly that happens at some point... [BI 🔒]
📈 NVIDIA's Q2 2025
Another booming quarter – but with some 'buts'... Yes, the basically beat on their numbers across the board, so the AI revolution (read: market exuberance) can continue for at least another quarter. But the stock did slide initially on concerns about weakness in data center revenue (the second quarter in a row that has happened). The company mainly chalked that up to China, noting that they saw no sales of the H20 chip yet despite the approval to sell in the country (with a cut going to the US government, of course). So they can sell, but the problem is that China isn't buying – thanks Lutnick! – which Jensen is working like hell to try to remedy. And if he does, you can expect a big boost in sales next quarter. If he doesn't – thanks Alibaba! – things continue to slow a bit, mainly for law of large numbers reasons. [WSJ 🔒]
💰 NVIDIA's 'Big Two' Customers
Well this is fun. Alongside the earnings above, the company disclosed that just two customers made up 39% of the total revenue for the quarter. That's obviously a massive amount and as such, a massive concentration risk – something you'd perhaps expect from CoreWeave, but not from NVIDIA itself. The only hint the company will give is that they're "direct customers" – meaning they buy chips directly to build their own systems which they then sell to "indirect" customers of NVIDIA. CNBC takes this to mean that cloud service providers – i.e. Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc – are likely bucketed as 'indirect'. But I'm not so sure, there's seemingly quite a bit of wiggle room in the definitions. FWIW, OpenAI's best guesses for the two are: Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta, Oracle, or yes, OpenAI. Dell, SoftBank, xAI, and CoreWeave itself could be in there too, I suppose, though given the size of the revenue – 'Customer A' was 23% of NVIDIA's $46.74B in revenue, so $10.75B spent in one quarter – it's probably Big Tech. [CNBC]
📻 Apple's Radio Ambitions
The partnership to put some of their Beats Radio stations on TuneIn is clearly an attempt to combat Spotify, which keeps eating up streaming market share. But obviously Apple Music needs a free, ad-supported offering to truly compete. I appreciate them avoiding this, but it's not like they're not ramping up ads in other areas – including, you know, on your phone. They probably just need more infrastructure to handle it, alongside inevitably doing it with Apple TV+ too. One more idea: taking podcasting more seriously. You know, the format they helped bring into this world. Howard Stern could help... [WSJ 🔒]
I Quote…
"There’s a lot of big men on campus."
– An unnamed investor talking about Meta's newly built AI team and why many seem to have trouble adjusting.
This FT report also backs up the notion that Shengjia Zhao was given the 'Chief Scientist' title after he was about to quit to return to OpenAI. Meta's non-denial of this now twice-reported story seems awfully weasel-wordy, as do all of their continued gaslight-y statements on the whole situation...
I Note…
Um, did Dell just officially become an AI company, with revenue from AI servers and related business now bigger than that of PC sales? [CNBC]
Ryen Russillo leaving The Ringer to start his own company is something I'm sure Bill Simmons can appreciate. Doing so with the backing of Dave Portnoy and Barstool... probably not so much! [FOS]
Oh good, Microsoft's Miss Minutes-like Copilot AI talking blob thing – the new Clippy! – is coming to Samsung TVs. Remember when TVs were just simple, beautiful screens. Now they're jam-packed with junk and bloatware. [Verge]
Speaking of Microsoft, they also unveiled some new AI models built in-house (read: not from OpenAI). They keep downplaying the tension there, but everyone knows the score. And if they're really training the next models on some massive GB200 clusters like you-know-who... [Semafor]
Anthropic is starting to train using user chats (including, notably, from Claude Code), just like everyone else already does. It's being framed as helping to "improve Claude", which sure – at least the change is opt-in... [Anthropic]
Threads is testing a really nice-looking text payload for longer messages – something Twitter should have done about 15 years ago. [TechCrunch]
RIP Typepad, one of the OG blogging services will officially shut down right around its 22nd birthday. But it really died long ago... [Typepad]
Ridley Scott apparently already has another Gladiator in process right now – and would be open to another Alien prequel "if I get an idea". A reversal on his previous stance. Maybe he's been inspired by Alien Earth? [Guardian]
He also turned down $20M to direct Terminator 3 way back when. That would have been fun simply because James Cameron, of course, took over the Alien franchise from him 17 years earlier...
Star Wars: Starfighter – aka the Ryan Gosling Star Wars – has entered production and it sounds... a lot like every other Star Wars outside of Andor, which is mildly concerning. No Skywalkers – or at least they're not the focus – but it's an older, wiser fighter protecting a child from evil... [THR]
I Spy...
Majin Bu has seemingly been all over the accessory leaks for the forthcoming iPhones 17 lineup. The big one here would seem to be the end of 'FineWoven' – Apple's attempt to replace their leather cases with their own "premium" material. Those cases were so bad that I returned mine – something I never do with Apple products. And after a year of silence, it seems 'TechWoven' (a clunky name, but certainly better positioned than 'Fine' for a decidedly not fine product) will be the new option alongside the tried and true silicone. They look... fine?
One more thing: a new "crossbody" magnetic strap to go with the new cases? Will this help with, say, phone thefts?
