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Brian McCullough
Welcome to the Tech Me Bright home for Tuesday, February 11, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough. Today Elon makes an unsolicited bid to buy OpenAI, or at least the nonprofit that controls it. And maybe he doesn't really want to own it. It's complicated. I'll explain. YouTube continues to be the biggest thing in media. Forget smart watches, get ready for smart earbuds and the crazy cheap Chinese EVs can now do crazy cheap self driving too. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Yeah, so I definitely jinxed things yesterday when I read that Times article about Sam outfoxing Elon. Because late yesterday investors led by Elon Musk made an unsolicited $97.4 billion bid to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, complicating Sam Altman's plans to convert to a for profit entity. Quoting the Journal, Musk's lawyer Mark Toboroff said he submitted a bid for all the nonprofit's assets to OpenAI's board of director Monday. It's time for OpenAI to return to the open source safety focused force for good it once was, musk said in a statement provided by Toboroff. We will make sure that happens. End quote Altman quickly rejected the offer. On X, he wrote no thank you, but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want. Using the previous name for the Musk owned social media platform and moving the decimal point in the billionaires bid for OpenAI1 space to the left. In a slack message to employees, Altman wrot our structure ensures that no individual can take control of OpenAI. These are tactics to try and weaken us because we are making great progress. The bid is being backed by Musk's artificial intelligence company Xai, which could merge with OpenAI following a deal. He also has several investors backing him, including Valor Equity Partners, Barron Capital, Atreides Management, Vi Capital and 8 VC, a venture firm led by Palantir co founder Joe Lonsdale. Ari Emanuel, CEO of Hollywood company Endeavor, is also backing the offer through his investment fund. End quote now, to underline the animosity underlying all of this, in response to Altman's tweet on X saying that they would buy Twitter, Musk replied, quote Swindler and Axios got a quick interview with Altman at the AI Action Summit in Paris. Quote there's been like versions of Elon trying to, you know, somehow take control of OpenAI for a long time. So it's like, okay, here's this week's episode, Altman told Axios, OpenAI is not for sale. OpenAI's mission is not for sale, to say nothing of the fact that like, a competitor who is not able to beat us in the market and you know, instead is just trying to say like I'm going to buy this with total disregard for the mission is a likely path there. End quote. Okay, but why is Elon trying to buy OpenAI now? And note, he's not trying to buy OpenAI, but the nonprofit that in theory owns part of OpenAI. Sure, maybe Elon thinks he can get OpenAI now before it gets much bigger, but there's something more strategically subtle possibly at play here. Remember, Sam Altman and OpenAI are trying to transform OpenAI into a for profit company, and that's not as simple as just checking a box on a form. You have to make sure the nonprofit is made whole for the transaction, which means you need to value things properly. And that involves courts and even the state of California getting involved. So what if just by doing this it complicates that whole process? Throws a spanner in the works, if you will. So Elon could win even if he doesn't take over the company just by making things more difficult for Sam, someone no less than President Trump has intimated Elon hates. Quoting the Wall street journal, Musk's $97.4 billion offer, with the backing of a consortium of investors, could force OpenAI's board of directors to reassess how it is valuing the nonprofit, which the board has said will be fairly compensated in the transaction and own a stake in the for the higher the valuation of the nonprofit, the bigger its stake would likely be in the for profit OpenAI following a conversion. At the same time, OpenAI is negotiating how much equity Microsoft, its biggest investor, should get in the for profit company, along with other backers and employees. It is also seeking to raise up to $40 billion of new capital. Investors in that round will likely expect equity when OpenAI becomes a for profit as well. Satisfying all those parties was already complicated. If Musk's gambit increases the equity awarded to the nonprofit, it will be even more difficult. End quote. Then there's the fact that for any profit transformation to take place, the attorneys general from California, where OpenAI is located, and Delaware, where it is incorporated, have to sign off because they oversee the process that makes sure charities and nonprofits don't get ripped off. I think he is probably just trying to slow us down. He obviously is a competitor, altman told Bloomberg I wish he would just compete by building a better product. But I think there's been a lot of tactics, many, many lawsuits, sorts of other crazy stuff. Now this end quote. But remember, the board of directors of the nonprofit is still in theory, independent. With a valuation high enough they might have the fiduciary duty to at least consider it. Quoting from the Journal Again, if Elon's is a fair price and the OpenAI nonprofit is empowered to make the decision, it could sell, said Harvey Dale, a professor of nonprofit law at New York University, the board could reject Musk's bid for reasons beyond money, though as a charity, OpenAI's obligation is to fulfill its legal purpose safely advancing artificial intelligence to benefit humanity. The question of the appropriate price is secondary to the question of whether the board should sell the charitable assets at all, said Jill Horwitz, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. So again, Elon might be unable to take over OpenAI in the end, but maybe that's actually a secondary goal to simply tweaking Sam Altman As Dan Premack tweeted, quote my understanding is that Lonmusk is not trying to buy the OpenAI nonprofit per se, but rather the underlying for profit assets that Amma must buy in order to reorg the company. It's partially a troll and partially setting a price that may cause Sam to pay more than he might want to, end quote. Like if Sam wanted to say to the various parties, hey, look, we value the nonprofit stake in OpenAI at say, $40 billion, but if you turn down a bid valued at $97 billion, that suggests you think that is lowball, that the nonprofit stake is worth much more than that. So then Sam would have to pay out more to shake off the nonprofit status, which would mean he would raise more money than he wanted from the YouTube is bigger than most people realize. File in his annual letter to the community, YouTube CEO Neil Moen says TV has overtaken mobile as the primary device for YouTube viewing in the US indicating, in his words, YouTube is the new TV. Quoting the Hollywood Reporter according to Neil Moen, YouTube CEO, TV screens have officially overtaken mobile as the primary device for YouTube viewing in the U.S. in other words, more people are watching YouTube on TV sets than any other device. At least here in the US it is, as Moen writes in his annual letter from the CEO, an indication that YouTube is the new television. But the new television doesn't look like the old television, mohan writes. It's interactive and includes things like shorts. Yes, people watch them on TVs podcasts and live streams, right alongside the sports sitcoms and talk shows people already love. YouTube has consistently dominated Nielsen's monthly gauge report, handily topping Netflix as the most watched streaming video platform. And TV has long been a priority for YouTube. In last year's letter, Moen noted that the YouTube TV VMVPD passed 8 million subscribers and that the company was investing in the platform. The company unveiled sweeping changes to its TV app experience last year. Moen also underscored three other big bets for 2025 in his letter. In a section titled YouTube will remain the epicenter of culture, he noted that 45 million Americans watched election related content on Election Day last year. And he noted the success of videos like Joe Rogan's interview with President Trump and the SNL sketch with Kamala Harris on the platform. From elections to the Olympics to Coachella to the super bowl and the Cricket World cup, the world's biggest moments play out on YouTube, Moen writes, adding that the company also plans to roll out more tools to support podcasters, improve monetization for creators, and make it even easier to discover podcasts this year. But YouTube is also working to bring more AI tools to creators, and despite early hype around AI, image and video generation products, YouTube is developing them too. Moen suggests that YouTube creators are finding simpler, practical tools to be more helpful. As impressive as the generative models are, creators tell us that they're most excited about the ways AI can help with their bread and butter production. That's why we're investing in tools to help them in the everyday work of creation, like coming up with a new video idea, title or thumbnail, mohan writes. We're also using AI to help creators find new audiences for videos with dubbed audio. More than 40% of the total watch time comes from viewers choosing to listen in a dubbed language. Last year we launched auto dubbing, which helps creators translate their videos into multiple languages with a touch of a button. Later this month, we'll make audio dubbing available for all creators in the YouTube Partner Program. We'll continue to make improvements here and expand to more languages throughout the year. End quote. If you're a security or IT professional, you've got a mountain of assets to protect. You've got devices, applications, employee identities plus the scary stuff outside your security stack like unmanaged devices, shadow IT apps and non employee identities. It's a lot. Fortunately you can conquer those risks with 1Password extended access management. You know I use 1Password personally, but get how you can deploy this it folks. 1Password's device trust solution blocks unsecured and unknown devices before they access your company's apps. And don't worry, 1Password still protects against the biggest attack source Compromised Credentials Its industry leading password manager helps employees create strong, unique logins for every app. Secure devices check Secure credentials check. What About Employee Productivity? 1Password Extended Access Management empowers hybrid employees to join the security team with end user remediation that teaches them how and why to fix security issues without needing help from it. Go to 1Password.com Ride to secure every app, device and identity, even the unmanaged ones. Right now my listeners get a free two week trial at 1Password.com ride. That's 1Password.com ride even if you think it's a bit overhyped. AI is suddenly everywhere from self driving cars to molecular medicine to business efficiency. If it's not in your industry yet, it's coming fast. But AI needs a lot of speed and computing power, so how do you compete without costs spiraling out of control? Time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI OCI is a blazing, fast and secure platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, plus all your AI and machine learning workloads. OCI costs 50% less for compute and 80% less for networking, so you're saving a pile of money. Thousands of businesses have already upgraded to oci, including Vodafone, Thomson Reuters and Suno AI. Right now, Oracle is offering to cut your current cloud bill in half if you move to OCI for new US customers with minimum financial commitment. Offer ends March 31st. See if your company qualifies for this Special offer@oracle.com Techmeme that's oracle.com Techmeme Google Maps now shows Gulf of America instead of Gulf of Mexico for users in the US Users in Mexico see Gulf of Mexico and everyone else sees both names, so it's basically a geofence sort of thing. This is obviously in response to the new administration seeking to rename the Body of Water for official US purposes, but this was not done at the direction of the administration. Google has also removed Pride Month, Black History Month, Indigenous People Month, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Hispanic Heritage, and More events in mid-2024 from Google Calendar for not being, quote, scalable or sustainable, they say, quoting the Verge, Google confirmed it's made changes to the default calendar events, but with a different explanation about when and why. Here's Google's explanation on what's going on, provided by spokesperson Madison Cushman Veld for over a decade we've worked with timeanddate.com to show public holidays and national observances in Google Calendar. Some years ago, the Calendar team started manually adding a broader set of cultural moments in a wide number of countries around the world. We got feedback that some other events and countries were missing, and maintaining hundreds of moments manually and consistently globally wasn't scalable or sustainable. So in mid 2024, we returned to showing only public holidays and national observances from timeanddate.com globally while allowing users to manually add other important moments. End quote. Powerbeats Pro 2 earbuds have debuted for $250 with an H2 chip, active noise cancellation, better water resistance, and a 20% lighter design than the previous generation. Which you might say, Brian, who cares about earbuds? But they've also got heart rate monitoring, and that's why I'm mentioning it. Expect this to be a trend going forward. Your lowly earbuds are going to get way smarter with everybody adding sensors and even cameras, as we've heard rumors about from Apple, right? So get ready for your earbuds to become as smart as your smartwatch. Quoting MacRumors a key new feature for active users is heart rate monitoring, a feature MacRumors discovered some time ago based on code in Apple software updates. When both earbuds are in the ear and heart rate monitoring is active, LED optical sensors Pulse at over 100 times per second to measure heart rate via blood flow, integrating with popular fitness apps to collect data during workouts and sync it to the Apple Health app. Supported apps at launch include Open Meditation, Peloton, various fitness Workouts, Runner Slopes, Skiing, Ladder Strength Training, and Nike Run Club for running and Yao Yao for jump roping for iOS users. Heart rate monitoring automatically begins when a workout is started in a compatible app, and it automatically ends when the workout is stopped. Android users will need to manually turn on heart rate monitoring via the earbuds themselves or in the Beats app, but monitoring will automatically end when the workout is completed. Apple says that when a user is wearing both an Apple Watch and Powerbeats Pro 2 apps, and Apple Health will default to using data from the Apple Watch, a choice Apple made to not disrupt the existing base of Apple Watch users who have already been tracking heart rate data. Apple notes, however, that both methods have been thoroughly validated and and should Yield similar results. Powerbeats Pro 2 are available to order@apple.com starting today in four Electric Orange, Hyper Purple, Jet Black and Quicksand. They're available at the same $249.99 price point as the previous generation and they will be on store shelves starting this Thursday, February 13th. Finally today, remember how Chinese automakers are making insanely cheap electric cars for broad consumption, at least outside of the U.S. well, get this, they can do self driving cheaper too, apparently. Chinese EV maker BYD has unveiled a God's Eye self driving system and aims to install it on its entire LineUp, including its $9,600 Seagull hatchback. Oh, and there's a deep seek angle quoting the Financial Times. Dubbed God's Eye, the driving system was developed in house by BYD and will equip the carmakers mass market models with features commonly only found on upscale EVs, such as remote parking via smartphones and autonomous overtaking on roads. We are starting an era where autonomous driving is for everyone, said founder Wang Chunfu at a live stream event in BYD's Shenzhen headquarters on Monday. Advanced driver assistance systems were no longer an unattainable luxury, but an essential tool like safety belts and airbags, said Wang. BYD has become the biggest EV producer in China, the world's largest car market, by providing a wide range of affordable EVs built using its highly vertically integrated supply chain. However, the company's slow progress in developing self driving capabilities has long been regarded as one of its biggest shortcomings. Investor anticipation of BYD's update of its self driving technology plans set the company's Hong Kong listed shares surging 21% over five sessions last week. No matter whether on hardware specifications or smart driving functions, BYD's cars are taking the lead over all the competitors in the segment, LU added. BYD is a company that specializes in optimizing the cost structure, so it's no surprise that it started investing in in house self driving R and D last year. Light vehicles with so called level 2 partial automation features accounted for only about 8.5% of the Chinese market, according to S and P Global Mobility data. Consumers in China are more willing to pay extra for sophisticated in car technology than in most parts of the world, according to EY survey of consumers. Last year, only 39% of surveyed Chinese EV owners rated expensive services, primarily consisting in car connectivity as a challenge, while 45% of European and 47% of US respondents highlighted it as a primary concern. Elon Musk's Tesla is attempting to win Beijing regulators approval for its self driving software. BYD on Monday also joined a cohort of local peers including Geely Greatwall Motor and Stellantis partner Leap Motor that are seeking to integrate Chinese startup sensation Deepseek's artific intelligence into their vehicle systems. Analysts said they expected Deepseek, which last month overturned assumptions about US Supremacy in AI, would allow Chinese carmakers to offer more powerful features, such as the use of more sophisticated in car voice commands. After the deep seat surprise during the Chinese New Year, intelligence initiatives could remain a key theme among auto stocks, said Paul Gong, an auto analyst at ubs. Longer term, we see Chinese carmakers taking the lead on intelligence innovations and democratizing these technologies in mass market cars, he said. End quote. It Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.