In Brief The Competition and Markets Authority, the U.K.’s antitrust watchdog, has opened an investigation into whether IBM’s planned acquisition of cloud software vendor HashiCorp would affect competition.The CMA said Monday it was inviting comment on the merger from interested parties by January 16. The regulator set a provisional February 25 deadline to decide whether to clear the deal or refer it for further review. As The Wall Street Journal reports, IBM announced it agreed to buy HashiCorp in April f ...

U.S. telecom giant Verizon says it has secured its network after being targeted by the China-linked Salt Typhoon cyberespionage group.In a statement given to TechCrunch on Sunday, Verizon spokesperson Richard Young said the company has “contained the cyber incident brought on by this nation-state threat actor,” and that it has not detected any threat actor activity on its network “for some time.”  Verizon’s containment of the incident has been confirmed by a “highly respected cybersecurity firm,” the compa ...

Core Insights - CEO Sundar Pichai emphasized that 2025 will be a "critical" year for the company, highlighting the urgency for faster movement and the high stakes involved [1][2] - The primary focus for the company in the upcoming year will be scaling the Gemini AI application on the consumer side [2] - The company is currently making significant investments in AI, acknowledging the need to catch up in this area and aiming to establish a leadership position by 2025 [4] Summary by Sections - **Company Strategy** - Pichai indicated the necessity for the company to internalize the urgency of the current moment and to accelerate its pace of operations [2] - The company plans to prioritize the scaling of the Gemini app, which is based on its AI model, as a major focus for the next year [2] - **Industry Context** - The tech industry, including the company, is heavily investing in AI, although results have been mixed [4] - Pichai acknowledged that the company has work to do in 2025 to close the gap in AI capabilities and to secure a leadership position in the market [4]

Group 1 - Microsoft and OpenAI have a specific internal definition of artificial general intelligence (AGI) based on profits, indicating that OpenAI is years away from achieving AGI [1] - OpenAI has reportedly agreed that it will only achieve AGI when it generates at least $100 billion in profits, which is significantly different from the broader technical and philosophical definitions of AGI [2] - OpenAI is expected to incur billions in losses this year and has informed investors that it will not turn a profit until 2029 [2] Group 2 - Microsoft loses access to OpenAI's technology once AGI is reached, which could mean Microsoft retains access to OpenAI's models for a decade or more due to the profit-centric definition of AGI [3] - There is speculation that OpenAI might declare AGI sooner to limit Microsoft's access, but the existing agreement suggests otherwise [3] - The recent debate over OpenAI's o3 model raises questions about its significance toward AGI, as it incurs high compute costs, which could negatively impact OpenAI and Microsoft's profit-focused definition of AGI [4]

Google has offered up its own proposal in a recent antitrust case that saw the US Department of Justice argue that Google must sell its Chrome browser.US District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled in August that Google had acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in online search, with the DOJ then proposing a number of remedies, including the sale of Chrome, the spinoff of its Android operating system, and a prohibition on entering into exclusionary search agreements with browser and phone companies. Google file ...

In Brief Chip company Nvidia gets the green light from the European Union to complete its acquisition of Run:ai.The EU came to a unanimous decision today that Nvidia could go ahead with its acquisition of Israeli GPU orchestration platform Run:ai, according to reporting from Bloomberg. The European Commission determined that if the merger went through other hardware options compatible with Nvidia would still be available on the market and thus this company combination would not create a monopoly. Despite t ...

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. This will be the last newsletter of 2024! But don’t worry, we’ll be back in 2025 — sign up here to get it in your inbox every week. Thank you for reading and your emails. I love to get them. Happy holidays and have a Happy New Year.I didn’t meet Jean Jennings until long after she had cemented her status as an automotive journalism icon. By then, Jennings (formerly Lindamood) had been editor of Car a ...

In Brief Tesla is evaluating multiple Texas cities where it wants to test a long-promised robotaxi service, including Austin, according to emails obtained by Bloomberg News. An employee has apparently been in touch with Austin officials since May, and recently held an event in December to “train first responders on how to best work with Tesla’s autonomous vehicle technology,” which is still in development. The employee told the city that “Austin is obviously on our roadmap, but has not yet been decided wh ...

In Brief Apple and Meta are warring in Europe over the balance between interoperability and privacy, Reuters reports.The fight focuses on the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), a competition regulation that requires designated gatekeepers (including Apple and Meta) not to restrict rivals’ access to so-called core platform services. In Apple’s case, this means: iOS, iPadOS, App Store, and Safari. But its concern here seems mainly focused on iOS. The iPhone maker has made no bones about its distaste ...

Group 1 - Microsoft purchased 485,000 Nvidia Hopper chips in 2024, more than double the amount bought by its closest competitor, Meta, which acquired 224,000 chips [1] - The number of Nvidia chips purchased by Microsoft in 2024 more than tripled compared to its purchases in 2023 [1] Group 2 - Microsoft is developing its own custom AI chips named Maia, announced at the Ignite conference in late 2023 [2] - The company has strengthened its partnership with OpenAI, participating in a significant $6.6 billion funding round in October [2] - Microsoft signed a deal to reopen the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in September, securing a 20-year agreement to purchase all generated power for its data centers [2]