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- [00:05]
Brian McCullough
Welcome to the Techmeme ride home for Wednesday, March 19, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough. Today the EU Commission has brought the hammer down on Apple and Google at the same time. All the big news from Nvidia's big event yesterday. More details on that Google Wiz deal, two new pebble smartwatches and Google's new entry level Pixel that you can't pre order yet. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Well, one advantage of me being late on the show today is we get to talk about this. I would have missed it if we were still on the normal timeline the EU Commission has ordered Apple to open iOS to third party connected devices and in preliminary findings charged Google with breaking the DMA in search and apps. Quoting TechCrunch, the European Union has sent Apple preliminary instructions on how it expects the iPhone maker to comply with interoperability provisions in the Block's Digital Markets act, its flagship market contestability reform. According to the Commission, device manufacturers and app developers should be able to access nine iOS connectivity features that were restricted to Apple's exclusive use before, such as peer to peer WI fi connectivity, NFC features and device pairing. As a result, Bluetooth headphones, smartwatches, connected TVs or other non Apple devices should work better with an iPhone. Google could use this opportunity to make Airdrop work with Android devices. Headphone manufacturers could support SharePlay, a feature that now only works with AirPods. This follows the opening of two specification proceedings on Apple back in September, one of which focused on ensuring the DMA's interoperability requirements are effectively met when it comes to Apple allowing connected devices to tap into iOS connectivity features, including notifications and device pairing. The second concerns request for interoperability made by third party app developers with features of Apple's iOS and iPadOS platforms. In that case, the Commission recommends improved access to technical documentation as well as better communication with third party companies using those features. The EU is asking for timely communication and updates and a more predictable timeline for the review of interoperability requests. End quote and then quoting the Verge on Google Google is breaking European antitrust laws by favoring its own shopping, hotels and flights search services over rival comparison providers, according to the European Commission. The EU announced in its preliminary ruling today that Google's parent company Alphabet had also violated anti steering rules under the Digital Markets act by preventing app developers on its Play Store from steering customers to other distribution channels. Google can challenge the preliminary charges or make additional compliance changes ahead of the EU's final ruling. The EU can fine companies up to 10% of their global annual revenue for DMA violations, which would be a maximum of $35 billion based on the 350 billion Alphabet earned in 2024. When it comes to Google's mobile app store, the EU believes that Alphabet does not effectively allow Android phone users to be told about or directed to cheaper offers from app developers outside the Google Play store. End qu at their big GTC conference yesterday, Nvidia and Jensen Huang announced all the things for example, Nvidia unveiled Blackwell Ultra, a family of AI chips shipping in 2025, and Vera Rubin, its next gen chip featuring Nvidia's first custom CPU, slated for the second half of 2026. But wait, there's more. Quoting CNBC Nvidia announced new laptops and desktops using its chips, including two AI focused PCs called DGX Spark and DGX Station that will be able to run large AI models such as Llama or Deepseek. The company also announced updates to its networking parts for tying hundreds or thousands of GPUs together so they work as one, as well as a software package called Dynamo that helps users get the most out of their chips. End quote. Now this Dynamo they're calling an operating system for the AI factory. They say it can boost token output by 30x per GPU when running DeepSeek R1 on a large cluster. Okay, so are your ears already glazing over? I get it. Let me take a step way back and tell you what all this means. New chips to run AI on your laptop. A full redesign of data centers to be what they're calling AI factories and robots, basically. You know, all the fears of AI getting cheaper and deep seek and all that. Maybe people won't need to use as many Nvidia chips. Well, no. Jensen is basically going all Jeevan's Paradox here. Let me explain by leaning heavily on silicon angle. At the heart of the keynote was the Blackwell system, the latest in Nvidia's graphics processing unit evolution. This isn't just another generational upgrade. It represents the most extreme scale up of AI computing ever attempted. With the Grace Blackwell NVLink 72 rack, Nvidia has built an architecture that brings inference at scale to new heights. The numbers alone are staggering. One exaflop computing in a single rack 600,000 components per data center rack 120 kilowatt fully liquid infrastructure. The shift from air cooled to liquid cooled computing is a necessary adaptation to manage power and efficiency demands. This is not incremental innovation, it's a wholesale reinvention of AI computing infrastructure. Huang emphasized that AI inference at scale is extreme computing with an unprecedented demand for flops, memory and processing power. Nvidia introduced Dynamo, an AI optimized operating system that enables Blackwell NVL Systems to achieve 40 times better performance. Dynamo represents a breakthrough in delivering an operating system software to run on the AI factory engineered hardware system. This should unleash the agentic wave of applications and new levels of intelligence. Huang predicted that AI will reshape the entire computing stack from processors to applications. AI agents will become integral to every business process and Nvidia is building the infrastructure to support them. They say 10 billion digital AI agent workers are coming. They say 100% of Nvidia's operations will be AI assisted by the year end. And they say that AI powered coding will replace traditional programming, full stop. This isn't just about replacing humans. It's about enabling enterprises to scale intelligence like never before. Nvidia's ultimate vision is to move from traditional data centers to AI factories. Self contained ultra high performance computing environments designed to generate AI intelligence at scale. This transformation redefines cloud infrastructure and makes AI an industrial scale production process. Huang's new punchline, the more you buy, the more revenue you get was a comedic yet poignant reminder that AI's value is directly tied to scale. Nvidia is positioning itself as the architect of this new era where investing in AI computing power isn't an option, it's an economic necessity. Finally, Nvidia is applying its AI leadership to robots. Huang outlined a future where general purpose robots will be trained in virtual environments using synthetic data, reinforcement learning and digital twins before being deployed in the real world. This marks the beginning of AI driven automation at industrial scale. Huang's GTC keynote wasn't just about the next wave of GPUs. It was about redefining the entire computing industry. The shift from data centers to AI factories, from programming to AI agents, and from traditional networking to AI optimized interconnects positions Nvidia at the forefront of the AI industrial revolution. The Nvidia CEO has set the tone for the next decade. AI isn't just an application, it's the future of computing itself. AI infrastructure has to deliver the speeds and feeds and scale to open the floodgates for innovation in the agentic and new AI applications that sit on top, end quote. So let me come back to that line. Investing in AI computing power isn't an option, it's an economic necessity. That's the vision Nvidia was selling yesterday. Full Jevons Paradox. Yes, prices for intelligence will be coming down on all sides of the equation. Compute, training, inference storage, everything. Jensen literally said the more you save, the more you buy. The use of AI is still in the earliest innings based on this vision, and Nvidia wants to transform the whole global compute infrastructure to take advantage of this. Data centers are out. AI factories are in. Again, this was all almost too complicated for me to really summarize. If you want to go deep in the weeds on this, tap through on the first three links in today's show Notes, especially the deep, deep, deep technical analysis by semianalysis I like having a secret weapon when I go into some sort of a business negotiation situation. An ace in the hole if you will. An advantage in my back pocket. And that's how Mack Weldon thinks about clothing as a secret weapon. Timeless, classic style that's infused with performance fabrics and hidden details to give you secret confidence in how you look. Mack Weldon has become my go to business attire. Some guys just want to look good without calling attention to themselves. 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View important disclosures@acorns.com Ride more about that Google acquisition of Wiz announced yesterday Reuters says It's exactly what we were speculating it was quote Less than a year after Google's plans to acquire Israeli cybersecurity firm Wiz fell apart, executives were able to ink a deal in a flurry of negotiations after US President Donald Trump was sworn into office just eight weeks ago. Google SU sweetened its original offer for $23 billion in July to $32 billion, making it one of the largest tech deals ever, and dramatically upped the breakup fee to more than $3.2 billion, people familiar with the agreement said. But the real closer for Wiz and Google executives was the change at the White House that brought with it the prospect of a friendlier antitrust review under Trump, these people said. Google made another pass last fall while Wiz considered a potential ipo, these people said. While negotiations continued sporadically over several months, executives started meeting regularly to hammer out details of after Trump's January 20th inauguration and appointment of key antitrust officials in his administration, these people said. Wiz executives found it hard to turn down Google's revised offer, which valued the cybersecurity startup 39% higher than the earlier bid and also included a higher reverse breakup fee of more than $3.2 billion, or over 10% of the deal value payable to Wiz if the deal falls through, the sources said. Google sees the premium as justified given Wiz's 70% annual revenue growth and over $700 million in annualized revenue, according to a source familiar with the first Termination fees, more commonly referred to as breakup fees, are paid by buyers to compensate target companies when deals fall apart due to regulatory reasons. Such a high breakup fee is not common in corporate dealmaking in the United States, even though such fees have been on the rise in recent years as regulatory threats to large deals have increased globally, according to a study by law firm Fenwick and West, which reviewed deals worth at least $1 billion that were signed in 2023. Breakup fees on an average ranged between 4 and 7% of the overall transaction value. It' clear if Wiz and Google approached US Antitrust authorities prior to signing of the deal. End quote. BT dubs Google also says that Wiz will be joining Google Cloud and that Wiz's products will continue to work across all major clouds, including aws, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud. Eric Migovsky, the original founder of the smartwatch brand pebble, has unveiled two new pebble smartwatches running its open source OS. The $149 Core 2 Duo will ship in July and the $225 Core Time 2 will ship in December. Quoting the Verge, Migosky's new company is called Core Devices, and these will be the first Core smartwatches to hit the market. But they are pebbles in every important way. They'll run the newly open source pebble operating system, they'll have all the features of the old pebble devices, and one of them will actually be built using leftover Pebble Watch parts. They're not called pebbles, but they are pebbles and they're coming soon. The first watch that Michikovsky and Core plan to ship is called the Core2 Duo, not to be confused with the old intel processor, which Mijicovsky says will cost $149 and will ship in July. The name explains the whole idea, he says. It's like a Pebble 2, but it's made by Core Devices and then Duo is for do over. It has the exact same black and white E paper display as the old Pebble 2, technically a transflective LCD, if you're curious, and it even comes in the exact same frame. We were able to find a SUPP supplier that still had the frames for Pebble Time 2 and Pebble 2, he says. They were never used, so we've been able to just draft that. The Core 2 duo does get a couple of upgrades, mostly by virtue of overall technological progress. Mijicovsky says the new watch will last more than 30 days instead of the Pebble 2's seven, largely because Bluetooth chips have become so much more efficient. There's also a speaker in the device now, which Mijikovsky uses for chatting with AI assistants. Overall, though, this is an eight year old device simply made new again. This is part of the idea behind the pebble remote. Mijikovsky is convinced that pebble mostly had it right a decade ago and simply wants to get back to that. He estimates there will be around 10,000 Core2 duos available and figures a lot of developers and hardcore fans will be happy to have a new watch to play with as soon as possible. Coming a little later this year is the Core Time 2, an update to the old Pebble Time 2 design. This watch is shipping in December and will cost $225. The big change with the time two is the addition of a touchscreen. Mitzikovsky says he really likes the tappable complications you get on a watch with bits of information that open up to full apps, and he wanted to bring the same feature to the pebble world. It'd be cool to just tap on your watch rather than having to dig through a layer of menus with buttons, he says he doesn't intend the touch screen to enable complicated new apps or become a whole multi touch surface though. He just wants to be able to tap on the screen. For the most part though, the Core Time 2 is a return to old school pebble form. It has buttons on the sides, long battery life, lots of customization and plenty of hacker friendly features. And again, it benefits from Battery Life, increases 30 days on a charge and has a speaker plus some new chips and upgrades for step and sleep tracking. This is all happening faster than Migoski says he expected, particularly for the Core two duo. Getting that up and running with the new software and new parts has been pretty smooth, but there are still hurdles. Connecting a Pebble OS watch to an iPhone continues to get more complex and less functional. I want to be able to reply to notifications and I can't, mijikovsky says. Luckily, Android is easier to both connect to and get information from. There's still work to do on manufacturing and software integrations, so Micosky is careful to note that things might get delayed. He's also worried about tariffs and says his only plan is to pass along extra costs to customers. We're going to charge more if it costs more, he says. We just can't bear the cost. But through it all, Migoski seems thrilled to be making smartwatches again. I'm not building a company to sell millions of these, he says. The goal is to make something I really want, end quote. And finally today, something else I would have missed. Google has unveiled the $499 plus Pixel 9a with no camera bump, a 48 megapixel rear camera, a 6.3 inch display, a tensor G4 chip and IP68 water resistance shipping in April. Quoting the Verge, the camera bump is gone. It has a bigger screen, a Tensor G4 processor and better water resistance, and it still starts at $499. It's all looking like a pretty good deal, especially considering what Apple is chargin its new entry level phone. The comparisons to the iPhone 16e are all too easy to make, especially since Apple's budget iPhone just launched a couple weeks ago. The two phones share plenty of specs, including IP68 water resistance, but the $599 16e lacks an ultra wide camera and its screen only offers a 60Hz refresh rate for $100 less. The 9A comes with a second rear camera and a faster display. The screen is bigger 6.3 inches now compared to 6.1 inches, but despite the increase, the phone is less than 2 millimeters taller than the 8A, actually a tiny bit lighter. The screen isn't just bigger either, it's brighter this time, with a peak brightness of up to 2,700 nits compared to 2,000 nits. It's still a 1080p 120Hz panel, which is all well and good for a $500 phone. The 9A ops for a 48 megapixel rear camera with a half inch type sensor that's slightly smaller than the Pixel 8A's. Bigger is generally better when it comes to image sensors, so I'll be interested to see if that impacts image quality. The 9A gains a macro mode though, which somewhat unusually uses the main camera sensor. The 13 megapixel ultra wide is back again too. End quote. But note what I said about that shipping in April thing. Google says it is checking on component quality issues for the Pixel 9a, thereby delaying its release from this month March to sometime in April. They didn't specify. That is why pre orders are not yet open so I don't need surgery on my knee. Yay. Talk to you tomorrow.
- [19:26]
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