Tag Archives: Finance

Meta signs a multimillion dollar AI licensing deal with News Corp

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Meta has signed an AI licensing deal with News Corp that will allow the Meta AI maker to use content from The Wall Street Journal and other brands in its chatbot responses and for training of its AI models. News Corp confirmed to Engadget that it had struck a deal with Meta, but didn't provide specifics on the terms of the arrangement. According to The Wall Street Journal, Meta will pay News Corp. "up to $50 million a year" for a three-year deal that covers content from The Journal, as well as the media giant's other brands in the US and UK. 

News Corp previously struck a five-year deal with OpenAI that was valued at around $250 million. During a recent appearance at Morgan Stanley's annual Technology, Media & Telecom (TMT) conference, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson hinted that the media company was in the "advanced stage with other negotiations."

He described the company's overall approach to such arrangements as "a woo and a sue" strategy, depending on whether companies want to pay for content or scrape it without permission. "We have what you might call a woo and a sue strategy," he said. "We'll woo you. We'd like you to be our partner. But if you're stealing our stuff, we are going to sue you. So there'll be a discount for those who hand themselves in, and there'll be a penalty for those that resist."

A spokesperson for Meta confirmed that the two companies had reached an agreement . The company, which has been reorganizing its AI teams as it looks to create its next model, has struck a number of licensing deals in recent months. It previously signed multi-year agreements with USA Today, People, CNN, Fox News and other outlets. The company said at the time that “by integrating more and different types of news sources, our aim is to improve Meta AI’s ability to deliver timely and relevant content and information with a wide variety of viewpoints and content types.”

Update, March 3, 2026, 4:18PM PT: This story was updated with additional information from a Meta spokesperson.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/meta-signs-a-multimillion-dollar-ai-licensing-deal-with-news-corp-234157902.html?src=rss

Downdetector and Speedtest have been sold for over $1 billion

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The next time you check your internet speed or whether your favorite site is down, another company may be profiting. On Tuesday, Ziff Davis announced that it sold its Connectivity division, which includes Ookla's Speedtest and Downdetector, to Accenture. The deal is worth $1.2 billion in cash.

According to Reuters, the deal will allow Ziff Davis to focus on its core brands, including IGN, Mashable and Everyday Health. Brand consolidation appears to be the name of the game, as the company recently laid off some of Eurogamer's most experienced editors and its entire video team. That followed a rotation of editorial staff among Ziff Davis's other gaming publications, which reduced VG247 to a small, two-person gaming guides site.

Ziff Davis bought Ookla for $15 million in 2014. Reuters notes that the division seized on the 5G rollout and a surge in pandemic-driven bandwidth demand to boost its impressive return on the investment. (Connectivity generated a whopping $231 million in 2025.)

Accenture is a global technology consulting company headquartered in Dublin. The company views the acquisition as a key step in building "end-to-end network intelligence services essential for AI-based transformation." (Can someone who speaks corporate translate, please?) The deal may take a few months to be finalized, and Ziff Davis will continue to operate Speedtest and Downdetector in the meantime.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/downdetector-and-speedtest-have-been-sold-for-over-1-billion-201741894.html?src=rss

OpenAI secures another $110 billion in funding from Amazon, NVIDIA and SoftBank

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OpenAI just announced a massive funding round of $110 billion, which is one of the biggest investment rounds in Silicon Valley history. The investors feature many of the usual suspects, including Amazon with $50 billion, NVIDIA with $30 billion and SoftBank with $30 billion. This investment brings OpenAI to a $730 billion valuation

"We’re super excited about this deal," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told CNBC. "AI is going to happen everywhere." That last statement seems more like a threat than a boast, but I digress.

Beyond the funding round, OpenAI has announced strategic partnerships with both NVIDIA and Amazon. This will involve Amazon Web Services (AWS) running OpenAI models for enterprise customers to "build generative AI applications and agents at production scale." It also names AWS as the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI Frontier, which is an agentic enterprise platform.

OpenAI has also committed to consuming 2 gigawatts of Amazon's Trainium capacity, which is the company's custom-designed AI training accelerator. In other words, Amazon is spending a lot of money on OpenAI and then OpenAI will turn around and spend a lot of money with Amazon. The AI funding ouroboros continues.

It's also worth noting that Amazon's investment in OpenAI will be staggered. The funding begins with $15 billion, but the remaining $35 billion will only be invested when certain conditions are met.

Oddly, it's been reported that one condition is that OpenAI achieves artificial general intelligence. AGI is when AI evolves to or beyond human-level abilities, at which point the entire world turns into rainbows and everyone gets a pony. This could happen later this year, according to those bullish on the technology, or never, according to many researchers. Sam Altman said it was coming in 2025 but has since grown weary of the term.

The new partnership with NVIDIA evolves the long-standing collaboration between the two companies. OpenAI has pledged to consume 2 gigawatts of training capacity on NVIDIA's Vera Rubin systems and an additional 3 gigawatts of computing resources, likely in the form of GPUs, to run specific AI inference tasks. In other words, NVIDIA is spending a lot of money on OpenAI and then OpenAI will turn around and spend a lot of money with NVIDIA. The ouroboros must feed.

As for revenue, OpenAI has forecast a massive loss of $14 billion in 2026. It lost around $5 billion in 2024 and reports estimate a loss of $8 billion in 2025. Despite this trajectory, the company claims it'll be raking in $100 billion in revenue by 2029.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-secures-another-110-billion-in-funding-from-amazon-nvidia-and-softbank-171006356.html?src=rss

Block, the parent of Square and Cash App, is laying off over 4,000 people

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Block is the latest business to announce layoffs, with the operator of payment platforms Square and Cash App opting to cut jobs in favor of using more AI tools. The financial tech company, helmed by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, is slashing its current staff of 10,000 to "just under 6,000." CNBC highlighted a letter Block sent to shareholders announcing the decision to nearly halve its workforce. According to the message from Dorsey: 

"The core thesis is simple. Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company. We're already seeing it internally. A significantly smaller team, using the tools we're building, can do more and do it better. And intelligence tool capabilities are compounding faster every week."

We learned last year that Block had developed an AI agent called "codename goose" for interacting with LLMs. Leadership is clearly putting high expectations on that project and any other in-house tools to fill the shoes of thousands. "intelligence will be at the core of how the entire company works. How we make decisions, how we build trust and manage risk, how we build products, and how we serve customers," the shareholder letter states.

Block also reported its latest financial results today. It finished the 2025 financial year with operating income (profit after expenses) of $1.71 billion.

This isn't the first time the fintech company has made deep cuts in its employee count. Layoffs numbering about 1,000 were rumored both in 2024 and 2025.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/block-the-parent-of-square-and-cash-app-is-laying-off-over-4000-people-223343068.html?src=rss

Gaming accessory maker and publisher Nacon files for insolvency

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French AA gaming developer and accessory manufacturer Nacon has filed for insolvency after its majority shareholder Bigben failed to make a loan repayment, the company said in a press release. "To date, the company reports available assets do not allow it to meet its liabilities," Nacon wrote. The objective with insolvency, it said, was to allow "continued operation, protect employees and maintain jobs while renegotiating with its creditors." 

Nacon is behind the games Styx: Blades of Greed and was set to publish Terminator: Survivors before that title was delayed. It published Hell is Us last year to some praise, but Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown was buggy on release and failed to find much of an audience. The company will stream its next Nacon Connect presentation on March 4, and will supposedly show off some new games and footage for previously revealed games like Endurance Motorsport Series and Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss. 

The company also makes hardware like controllers and headsets and racing sim accessories via its Revosim brand. Those products never really caught on with mainstream gamers but did have some success with the pro gaming crowd. 

With Nacon's insolvency, the future of those games and accessories is now in question. A court will decide on the company's insolvency request at a hearing in early March, but in the meantime, trading of its shares is suspended. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/gaming-accessory-maker-and-publisher-nacon-files-for-insolvency-104832702.html?src=rss

Kalshi fined a MrBeast editor for insider trading

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Kalshi, one of several online prediction markets that have exploded in popularity in the last few years, has suspended one of YouTube MrBeast's video editors for insider trading, NPR reports. Besides being suspended from the platform for two years, Kalshi says the editor will also be required to pay a financial penalty that's five times his initial trade size.

The editor, Artem Kaptur, traded in markets related to YouTube and specifically, MrBeast. Kalshi says his transactions were initially flagged because of his "near-perfect trading success on markets with low odds, which were statistically anomalous." Because trades are public on Kalshi, multiple users also flagged the trades as suspicious. Kalshi learned Kaptur was an employee of MrBeast during its investigation and determined he "likely had access to material non-public information connected to his trading." Perhaps unsurprisingly, trading with insider information violates Kalshi's rules.

Kalshi says that it reported the insider trading to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and plans to donate the over $20,000 Kaptur has been fined to "a non-profit that provides consumer education on derivatives markets." In a statement provided to NPR, Beast Industries, MrBeast's production company, said it has a zero-tolerance policy for insider trading. "We have a longstanding policy in place against employees using proprietary company information in order to safeguard the highest standards and ethics throughout our organization," Beast Industries said. 

Separately, Kalshi has also suspended and fined a politician who was running to be Governor of California. "In May, our Surveillance Department saw an online video by a candidate for Governor of California that appeared to show him trading on his own candidacy," Kalshi says. "We immediately froze his account and opened an investigation. The candidate was initially cooperative and acknowledged that this violated the exchange rules. As a candidate in a race, you can (and probably should) follow and use Kalshi’s market forecast, but you should not trade on it."

Like other prediction markets, Kalshi lets users make trades based on a variety of different subjects and events. For example, you could participate in a market focused on the results of a basketball game, or something more unusual, like who'll win the current season of Survivor. Despite resembling gambling, online predictive markets aren't currently regulated by state gambling laws, and instead classify bets as a type of futures contract, placing them under the purview of the CFTC. That hasn't stopped states from trying to regulate prediction markets anyway. For example, Nevada sued Kalshi for operating a sports gambling market without a permit earlier in February.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/kalshi-fined-a-mrbeast-editor-for-insider-trading-191027814.html?src=rss

Spotify now has more than 750 million monthly users

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Spotify announced Tuesday that it hit 751 million total monthly active users (MAUs) for quarter-four of 2025. That record-high is an 11 percent jump from the year before and a significant bump from the third quarter's 713 million MAUs. 

The quarterly earnings report also showed a 10 percent jump year-over-year in Premium subscribers, from 263 million to 290 million. Europe makes up the greatest number of the Swedish company's premium subscribers (36 percent), with North America coming second at 25 percent. 

Spotify contributes a few factors to its growth, including AI. "We consider ourselves the R&D department for the music industry. Our job is to understand new technologies quickly and capture their potential, which we’ve done time and again," Gustav Söderström, Co-CEO of Spotify, said in a statement. The entire industry stands to benefit from this [AI] paradigm shift but we believe those who embrace this change and move fast, will benefit the most.” In late 2025, Spotify announced it would get rid of some of the AI "slop" on its platform and have "artist-first AI music products" — though the specifics were very vague. 

The company also claims that December's Spotify Wrapped was bigger than ever, with over 300 million engaged users and 630 million shares across 56 languages. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/music/spotify-now-has-more-than-750-million-monthly-users-124103630.html?src=rss

OnlyFans is reportedly in talks to sell a 60 percent stake to a San Francisco investment firm

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OnlyFans is looking to cash out once again, but this time in a deal that would value it at several billion dollars less than a potential sale that previously fell through. As reported by TechCrunch, the online platform known for subscription-based pornographic content is in talks to sell a majority stake to Architect Capital, an investment firm based in San Francisco.

According to the report, the proposed deal includes $3.5 billion in equity and $2 billion in debt, which values OnlyFans at $5.5 billion. TechCrunch also reported that Architect Capital and OnlyFans are currently in exclusive talks, where the website's owner can't negotiate with other potential buyers for a certain amount of time.

With no set timeline yet for the deal, the deal is far from an official closing. Last year, OnlyFans' owner Leonid Radvinsky was also negotiating with another investment firm, Forest Road Company, to sell the platform. Although that deal never went through, the talks leading up to the sale valued OnlyFans at a much higher $8 billion. The London-based website, which still doesn't want to be known as just a porn site, is still growing and reported a nine percent increase in gross revenue for its 2024 fiscal year, earning more than $7.2 billion.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/onlyfans-is-reportedly-in-talks-to-sell-a-60-percent-stake-to-a-san-francisco-investment-firm-191842666.html?src=rss

Apple just reported its best-ever quarter for iPhone sales

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Apple shared its latest quarterly financial results today and the news is once again very, very good for the Cupertino company. The quarter ending December 27, 2025 marked "the best-ever quarter" for iPhones, which generated a record high revenue of nearly $85.27 billion for the business. Apple doesn't disclose the number of devices sold any more, but even with the prices for many of its latest generation of smartphones surpassing $1,000 a pop, that's still got to be a heck of a lot of iPhones. 

"The demand for iPhone was simply staggering," CEO Tim Cook said on the conference call to discuss the results. "This is the strongest iPhone lineup we've ever had and by far the most popular."

That wasn't the only massive number in the earnings report. Services revenue also logged its biggest quarter yet, growing 14 percent over the same period last year to reach just over $30 billion. It was also Apple's biggest quarter to date for total revenue, which was nearly $143.76 billion for the already fabulously wealthy company.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/apple-just-reported-its-best-ever-quarter-for-iphone-sales-234135513.html?src=rss

Apple acquires Q.ai for a reported $2 billion

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Apple has acquired Israel-based startup Q.ai, a move that could provide a much-needed boost to the tech giant's capabilities in artificial intelligence. Although Apple has not disclosed terms of the deal, sources told Financial Times that the arrangement is reportedly valued at nearly $2 billion. If that figure is accurate, the Q.ai acquisition marks Apple's second largest acquisition to date, followed by its purchase of Beats for $3 billion back in 2014.

Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware technologies, said in a statement that Q.ai "is a remarkable company that is pioneering new and creative ways to use imaging and machine learning." Apple hasn't shared any specifics about how it plans to leverage the startup, but its past work indicates the possibility of Apple moving deeper into AI-powered wearables. "Patents filed by Q.ai show its technology being used in headphones or glasses, using 'facial skin micro movements' to communicate without talking," the Times reported. 

The startup's founding team, including CEO Aviad Maizels, will join Apple as part of the deal. This acquisition marks Maizels' second sale to Apple; he previously founded a three-dimensional hearing business called PrimeSense that Apple bought back in 2013.

For several months, many tech insiders have speculated that an acquisition might be Apple's best path forward to catching up in the AI race. In the company's Q3 earnings call in July 2025, CEO Tim Cook acknowledged that "We’re open to M&A that accelerates our roadmap." A deal like this one could eventually lead to Apple developing its own fully in-house AI chatbot rather than relying on a competitor like Google to power artificial intelligence in its Siri assistant.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/apple-acquires-qai-for-a-reported-2-billion-190017949.html?src=rss