← Tech Brew Ride Home
Tech Brew Ride Home
Is Oracle The New Nvidia?
00:19:53
Larry Ellison becomes the richest person in all the land! Is Oracle the new Nvidia? Spotify finally delivers on lossless audio. Robinhood is going to roll out true social trading. Quantum computing continues to be hot. And the startup that’s taking my AI podcast experiment to the next, logical level.
Loading summary
Transcript15 lines
- [00:04]
Brian McCullough
Welcome to the Tech Brew ride home for September 10th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Larry Ellison becomes the richest person in all the land is Oracle, the new Nvidia Spotify finally delivers on lossless audio, Robinhood is going to roll out true social trading, Quantum computing continues to be hot, and the startup that's taking my AI podcast experiment to the next logical level. Here's what you missed today. In the world of tech, Larry Ellison has, at least briefly this morning become the world's richest person for the first time ever, with a personal wealth staked at around $393 billion, thereby overtaking Elon Musk's $385 billion. Why has this happened? Well, Ellison's Oracle had an earnings report that caused the stock to rocket more than 45% this morning in Interestingly, Oracle sort of missed across the board in terms of meeting estimates for this quarter, but they promised potentially half a trillion dollars in projected data center backlog that will come through in the coming years. Quoting cnbc, Oracle said Tuesday that its remaining performance obligations, a measure of contracted revenue that has not yet been recognized, soared to $455 billion, up 359% from a year earlier. During the quarter, OpenAI said it signed an agreement with Oracle to develop 4.5 gigawatts of U.S. data center capacity, end quote. So to reiterate this, Oracle missed earnings, but promised a tidal wave of AI earnings coming soon, and they thereby added $280 billion in market cap in a single day. That's the entire market cap of Coke, Coca Cola, the 33rd largest company in the world in a single day. I'll repeat, quoting the Journal. Oracle now expects its cloud infrastructure revenue to hit $114 billion in the 2029 fiscal year, compared with just over $10 billion in the fiscal year that ended in May. The projection strongly suggests the 48 year old company that is already one of the world's largest software providers could more than double its total revenue over the next three years. That has shades of AI chip titan Nvidia, which quickly transformed from a niche supplier of video game chips into the world's only company worth more than $4 trillion. Oracle stock, up 45% already this year, surged another 40% Wednesday morning, putting the company's market cap around $950 billion. The stock hasn't seen such a big single day gain since the 1990s, according to FactSet data. Turning remaining performance obligations into revenue will depend on the company's ability to build out its network to service those contracts that will require power permits and equipment like Nvidia's GPU chips that are in hot demand and consistently short supply. Still, Oracle's revenue is arguably more certain. Its growth is largely linked to inferencing, or the process of querying and getting answers from AI models. That activity is likely to pick up as the focus in AI turns from training better models to rolling them out to many millions of new users. Oracle has plenty of competition, and companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft are vastly outspending Even the record $35 billion in capital expenditures Oracle expects to spend this fiscal year. But analysts say Oracle also has some strong advantages of its own. In a report Wednesday, Patrick Colville of Scotiabank noted Oracle's creme de la creme technical expertise, access to capital, deep support from Nvidia, and independence such that it is well placed to capitalize on the supernova of demand for AI training and inference End Quote or as the Journal titled this story this morning, Oracle is the new Nvidia. For better or worse. After years of rumors and vague promises, Spotify has finally announced plans to roll out lossless audio to premium users over the next two months in around 50 markets. And you won't need to pay more to get it. Quoting the Verge it's been a long time coming, but Spotify is finally getting lossless audio. Rumors have been circulating about a high fidelity offering since as early as 2017, and in 2021 Spotify claimed it was coming later this year, and By May of 2024 it was so. When rumors started picking up again in June of this year, they were met with skepticism, especially amid announcements over the launch of features nobody was asking for, like direct messaging. Well, it's here for real, and there's some good news. Lossless won't be confined to a new, higher priced tier. There's no new Spotify hi Fi membership or Music Pro subscription. Instead, Lossless audio will be rolling out to all Premium subscribers in 50 markets, starting with Australia, Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, the US and the UK over the next two months. Spotify confirmed that it will not be changing its prices as part of the feature rollout. There shouldn't be any guessing either. Spotify says subscribers should receive a notification in the app as lossless becomes available to them. You'll then be able to head into your settings and enable Lossless from the Media Quality menu. And if you're actively listening to lossless audio, there will be an indicator in the now playing bar and via the connect picker for compatible hardware to start that will include devices from Sony, Bose, Samsung and Sennheiser, with Sonos and Amazon support expected to be added next month. There is a catch, however. Spotify's lossless option tops out at 24 bit 44.1kh flac. Apple, Music, Tidal and Quobuz all offer high res flac support at up to 24bit 192khz. Granted, once you start entering 24bit FLAC territory, it can get pretty hard to tell the difference, unless you're a particularly demanding audiophile with a sound system priced in the same range as a used sedan. But it does leave room for Spotify to add on one of those rumored deluxe tiers to squeeze a bit more money out of. This leaves YouTube as the only major streaming music service, and I'm using the term major loosely here, that doesn't support lossless streaming. And there's been no indication from Google that it's going to change its tune anytime soon, end quote. The day or so after an Apple event, we often get interesting additional news. Well, here you go, quoting the Verge. It's less noticeable than a thinner profile or a trick camera lens, but Apple is pointing out another Upgrade in the iPhone 17 family of phones that it says is part of the most significant upgrade to memory safety in the history of consumer operating systems, explicitly targeting the spyware industry that produces exploits for tools like Pegasus to hack on targeted devices. A A series of changes in Apple's chips, OS and development tools are part of what it calls Memory integrity enforcement, or MIE. The approach is similar to what we've seen from Microsoft's introduction of memory integrity security features for Windows 11, as well as a series of changes that have arrived to prevent speculative execution vulnerabilities like Spectre. Apple's blog post also mentions efforts by ARM with the memory tagging extension, or mte, to fight memory bugs, which is supported on Google's Pixel phones, starting with the Pixel 8 series and enabled for supported apps. If you turn on advanced protection, Apple says its implementation goes a step further with the ability to protect all users by default and by designing its A19 and A19 Pro chips for enhanced security while still adding memory safety changes for older hardware that doesn't support the new memory tagging features. The company also says its new mitigation for Spectre v1 leaks works with virtually zero CPU cost, as performance hits have been an issue for memory integrity and other security features, with all of the changes making mercenary Spyware even more expensive to develop. End quote.
- [08:22]
LinkedIn Ads Narrator
Race the rudders. Raise the sails. Raise the sails.
- [08:25]
Brian McCullough
Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching. Over.
- [08:27]
LinkedIn Ads Narrator
Roger, wait. Is that an enterprise sales solution? Reach sales professionals, not professional sailors. With LinkedIn ads, you can target the right people by industry, job title and more. Start converting your B2B audience today. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Get started today@LinkedIn.com campaign terms and conditions apply.
- [08:52]
Brian McCullough
Heard of Klarna? You probably have. They burst onto the ecommerce scene back in 2005 to challenge traditional credit during a time when consumer trust was at an all time low. Since then, Klarna has won the trust of 111 million customers by providing a more flexible, transparent way to shop and pay online. And now they're also listed on the New York Stock Exchange, underscoring their scale and credibility. In case you didn't know, Klarna helps consumers split the costs into four interest free payments with no hidden fees, no confusing terms and no revolving debt. Klarna has helped save consumers billions in interest. Millennials and Gen Z are also using this AI powered payment tool to help budget smarter and avoid interest fees. Learn how you can pay smarter with klarna@l.klarna.com 2Techbrew and look out for the pink Klarna logo at checkout next time you shop online. That's l.klarna.com 22xc Klarnatechbrew.
- [09:52]
UnitedHealthcare Nurse Practitioner
Heather is a nurse practitioner from UnitedHealthcare.
- [09:55]
UnitedHealthcare Narrator
We meet patients wherever they live.
- [09:57]
UnitedHealthcare Nurse Practitioner
During a house call, she found Jack had an issue.
- [10:00]
UnitedHealthcare Narrator
Jack's blood pressure was dangerously high.
- [10:03]
Brian McCullough
It was 217 over 110.
- [10:06]
UnitedHealthcare Nurse Practitioner
So they got Jack to the hospital and got him the help he needed.
- [10:09]
UnitedHealthcare Narrator
He had had a stent placed in his heart, preventing a massive heart attack.
- [10:13]
Brian McCullough
If it wasn't for my guardian angel, I wouldn't be here.
- [10:16]
UnitedHealthcare Nurse Practitioner
Hear more stories like Jack's at unitedhealthcare.com benefits, features and or devices vary by plan, area limitation and exclusions apply.
- [10:23]
Brian McCullough
Robinhood has announced an in app feed where users can follow and copy verified trades from other investors and public figures rolling out in beta in Q1 of 20, quoting the journal Robinhood, Social features a feed of short posts similar to platforms like X or Reddit. Posted trades will be verified and investors can see when a post's author entered and exited a position. That solves one key challenge that investors can encounter on other social networks, Robinhood said, where it can be difficult to determine whether either the person or the trade behind a particular post is real. Users can also check the performance of a post's authority, viewing their profit rate and other trading stats. In addition to posting about trades on stocks, options, crypto and prediction markets, users will also be able to click on the symbol in a post to initiate a trade, the company said. Robinhood will roll out a beta version of the platform to roughly 10,000 users in the first quarter of next year, with a wider launch date to be determined. A community of individual investors now rely on social media to navigate the markets and occasionally band together to bet on a particular stock, as they did with GameStop shares in 2021. Robinhood is hoping to fold that key part of the retail investing experience into their business. The company is flying high this year, in part because a raging bull market has boosted profits across the brokerage business. In July, Robinhood announced a significant push into crypto, with plans to develop its own blockchain and offer tokenized U.S. stocks to overseas customers. The brokerage is expanding into more traditional businesses, with moves into managed investing, accounts and banking. Robinhood is also one of the newest members of the S&P 500 index. Its stock has more than tripled this year. End quote More heat in the quantum computing Space Quantum startup PSI Quantum has raised $1 billion, the largest funding round ever for a quantum computing startup led by BlackRock, Temasek and Ballygiffert, at a $7 billion valuation, up from $3.2 billion back in 2021. Quoting the FT, the deal caps a burst of investment and soaring valuations for quantum companies this year, despite warnings from some experts that a truly useful quantum machine could still be decades away. The US Company said the cash would help it build a quantum computer by 2028 with 1 million quantum bits, the basic units that encode information far more than the hundreds of qubits in today's most advanced machines. The ambitious timeframe could put it ahead of Google and IBM, which are in a race to build a full scale quantum system by the end of this decade. A computer that big would be able to solve commercially valuable problems that nobody else on the planet will ever solve without a quantum machine, said Peter Schadbolt, Psiquantum's chief scientific officer. The latest funding highlights the broadening interest among investors as the promise of workable quantum machines comes closer to reality. Quantum machines are expected to perform specialized calculations alongside supercomputers, running Nvidia's GPUs and leading the AI chips group to work closely with a number of quantum companies, including Psiquantum. The investment comes after rival Quantinuum this month announced a $600 million fundraising at a $10 billion valuation, while Finnish company IQM raised $300 million. The investments mirror a burst of enthusiasm in the stock market that began late last year and accelerated with a series of recent technical breakthroughs in the field. Three publicly traded companies in the US that are trying to build quantum systems, Ionic Rigetti and D Wave, have seen their combined stock market value jump to $22 billion from less than $5 billion in November. However, the field as a whole still faces steep technical challenges. Google is the only company to have shown it can control the noise that builds up inside a quantum system and drowns out calculations as more qubits are added, a critical hurdle known as error correction. Shadbolt pointed to Google's achievement as the most important in a number of breakthroughs that had ignited interest in the industry and raised hopes for practical quantum machines. There were people who said ph will conspire against you to stop this from happening, he said. The whole field of quantum computing has been emboldened by some of these recent results. Finally today I'm still working on that other AI podcast, YouTube video AI experiment, but in the meantime, well, you can see other people are noodling in this area too, Quoting the Hollywood Reporter why pay a celebrity podcast host millions when you can create your own using AI? Inception Point AI is attempting to do just that as the company builds a stable of AI talent to host podcasts and eventually become broader influencers across social media literature and more. Amid the high cost for producing narrative podcasts and pricey short term contracts for popular hosts, the idea here is being able to own, scale and control the talent, unlike those off the cuff humans, and produce shows at a minimal cost. We believe that in the near future half the people on the planet will be AI and we are the company that's bringing those people to life, said CEO Jeanne Wright, who was previously chief operating officer of podcasting company Wondery, which has recently had to reorganize. Under the changing podcast landscape, the company is able to produce each episode for a dollar or less depending on length and complexity, and attach programmatic advertising to it. This generally means that if about 20 people listen to that episode, company made a profit on that episode without factoring in overhead. Inception Point AI already has more than 5,000 shows across its Quiet Please Podcast network and produces more than 3,000 episodes a week. Collectively, the network has seen 10 million downloads since September 2023. It takes about an hour to grade an episode from coming up with the idea to getting it out in the world. The company produces different levels of podcasts. The lowest level involves weather reports for various geographic areas or simple biographies, and higher levels involving subject area podcasts hosted by one of about 50 AI personalities they've created, including food expert Claire Delish, gardener and nature expert Nigel Thistledown, and Ollie Bennett, who covers offbeat sports. As for how it stacks up against human podcasts, I think that people who are still referring to all AI generated content as AI slop are probably lazy Luddites because there's a lot of really good stuff out there, wright said. The company has been recently experimenting with short form videos and creating social media profiles for the AI personalities in the hopes of eventually turning some into influencers. Wright hopes to create thousands more personalities in the near future to see what personalities stick. The team is in the midst of navigating the ethics around creating these AI personalities as the technology advances. Each host now identifies themselves as being AI at the top of the episode, and they've stayed away from having the hosts invent their own backstories for now. But that could come Wright says she could eventually imagine having hosts chat with listeners or sing Happy Birthday to them, but there's wariness about diving in too deep. The company now consists of a team of eight, with four working with content. Podcast topics are selected with the help of AI based on Google and social media trends, and then the team may launch five different versions of the show with different titles to see what performs best. The podcasts are often titled after simple SEO search terms such as whales so that they're discoverable. The shows that do stick can then be replicated and scaled. We might make a pollen podcast that maybe only 50 people listen to, but I'm already at unit profitability on that, so then maybe I can make 500 Pollan Report podcast, Wright said. The content team, led by Katie Brown, a former lifestyle television host and home goods expert, gives each podcast a title, creates an outline of the podcast with the content filled out by AI and assigns it one of the personalities as a host. Other team members do a final check and add in music and sound. The shows are then spot checked periodically. End quote. You know who periodically spot checks this podcast? You do. Dear Listener, I told you AI can definitively do my job at this point. Talk to you tomorrow.