Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 06/13 – The Excel World Championships

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

Apple isn’t paying OpenAI anything for their partnership. Guess they’ll make it up on volume. More details on how much money OpenAI IS making. The surprise Galaxy Watch FE. And do you think you’d have the skills to compete in the Excel World Championships? Links: Apple to ‘Pay’ OpenAI for ChatGPT Through Distribution, Not Cash (Bloomberg) OpenAI’s Annualized Revenue Doubles to $3.4 Billion Since Late 2023 (The Information) Perplexity was planning revenue-sharing deals with publishers when it came under media fire (Semafor) You’ll soon be able to join Discord calls directly from your PS5 (The Verge) Nintendo Switch Update 18.1.0 Pulls X/Twitter Support, Bringing It In-Line With PlayStation and Xbox (IGN) Samsung’s Galaxy Watch FE is its new entry-level smartwatch (The Verge) Spreadsheet Superstars (The Verge) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech meme right home for Thursday, June 13th, 2024. I'm Brian McCullough today. Apple isn't paying OpenAI anything for their partnership. I guess they'll make it up on volume. More details on how much money OpenAI is making, the Surprise Galaxy Watch F.E. And do you think you'd have the skills to compete in the Excel World Championships? Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. This is sort of shocking to me. sources are saying Apple isn't paying Open AI at all as part of their partnership. and aims instead to eventually make money from AI by striking revenue-sharing deals with chatbot owners. According Mark German and Bloomberg.

Apple believes pushing OpenAI's brand and technology to hundreds of millions of its devices is of equal or greater value than monetary payments, these people said. But even if money wasn't a major factor in the Apple OpenAI deal, remuneration could come into play later. Under the current structure, the partnership could become costly for OpenAI, which needs to pay Microsoft to host, ChatGPT on that company's Azure cloud computing systems. The more people use ChatGPT, the more OpenAI's expenses rise.

And the integration into Apple's devices, while optional for users and limited to the company's recent products, threatens to add significantly to the computing budget. ChatGPT will be offered for free on Apple's products, but OpenAI and Apple could still make money by converting free users to paid accounts. OpenAI's subscription plans start at $20 a month, a fee that covers extra features like the ability to analyze data and generate more types. of images. Today, if a user subscribes to OpenAI on an Apple device via the chat GPT app, the process uses Apple's payment platform, which traditionally gives the iPhone maker a cut.

Apple's deal with OpenAI isn't exclusive, and the iPhone maker is already discussing offering Google's Gemini chatbot as an additional option. That agreement should be in place later this year. Apple has also held talks with Anthropic as a potential chatbot partner, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg earlier this year. The idea is to ultimately offer a range of AI services to users similar to the way Apple has different searches. engine options in its Safari browser. Eventually, Apple aims to make money from AI by striking revenue-sharing agreements, whereby it gets a cut from AI partners that monetized results in chatbots on Apple platforms,

according to the people. The company believes that AI could chip away at the billions of dollars it gets from its Google search deal because users will favor chatbots and other tools over search engines. Apple will need to craft new arrangements that make up for the shortfall. Apple's own AI services won't be as costly to deliver because most of them are handled on the devices themselves rather than through cloud computing. Still, the company is ramping up its data center operations to support new online AI services that handle more advanced tasks, end quote. But maybe for Sam Altman, it's no worry, no cry, because sources say Open AI's

annualized revenue has hit $3.4 billion up from the $1 billion in the summer of 2023 that was estimated and $1.6 billion in late 2023, with $3.2 billion coming from subscriptions to its chatbots and API feeds, quoting the information. OpenAI was last valued at about $86 billion in a recent sale of employee shares. The latest revenue figure suggests OpenAI is being valued at about 25 times forward revenue on the lower end of recent fundraisings for private AI startups. It's also just a little above where AI chipmaker Nvidia's stock is valued on the public market according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Most of OpenAI's revenue, about $3.2 billion on an annualized basis, comes from subscriptions to its chatbots as well as fees from letting software developers access its models through an application programming interface. Microsoft has typically taken a cut from some of OpenAI's sales of AI models because those models run on Microsoft's cloud. OpenAI also receives a cut from Microsoft's sales of OpenAI models to Microsoft's own Azure cloud customers. OpenAI's cut now amounts to about $200 million on an annualized basis of roughly 20% of the revenue Microsoft is generating from that business, Altman told staff. Apple's news this week that it will integrate ChatGPT into its products could

give OpenAI a further boost, though the terms of that deal, including whether Apple is paying Open AI at all are unclear, although we just got that from German. At the same time, OpenAI has plans to roll out an array of new products, including a search engine, a video generating model, and AI-powered software that can take actions on users' computers, which could further boost revenue. That revenue rate puts the chat GPT maker far ahead of its rivals. Last fall, for instance, rival Anthropic told investors it was generating revenue at a $100 million annualized rate, with plans to reach more than $850 million in annualized revenue by the end of 2024. Cohere, a Canadian Open AI rival was generating just $22 million in annualized revenue in April, end quote.

Meanwhile, AI search engine perplexity says it is working on revenue sharing deals with publishers, even as Forbes has been vocally critical of the company alleging it misused content from Forbes and others. Quoting semaphore, Forbes last week accused perplexity of plagiarizing one of its articles, an investigation into former Google CEO Eric Schmidt's drone company. It also mentioned the reporting in one of its five-minute AI-generated podcast episodes. Employees and executives at Forbes took to X to criticize Perplexity's co-founder and CEO Aravind Serenovas. Among the criticisms was that Perplexity's citations of the original Forbes article were not sufficiently prominent, which may have led some readers to infer that Perplexity authored the article. Perplexity said it was already working on

revenue-sharing deals with high-quality publishers even before this criticism. Perplexity has not announced the details of those partnerships, but the company aims to unveil its plan soon, the company's chief business officer Dmitri Chivalenko said. The deals would be a first-of-its-kind revenue stream for media companies, providing a framework to earn recurring income. In contrast, OpenAI is paying media companies up front to use their archives for training new AI models. It's debatable how long OpenAI and other foundation model companies will need that data,

meaning the deals could be one-offs. Perplexity was originally available via the Discord chat app and later the web. Rather than answer questions based on training data, perplexity goes out and searches the internet for results, citing the original sources within the answer. Last month, it launched a new pages feature. Users can take a search result and turn it into a page, similar to a Wikipedia entry.

Then, at some point, a perplexity user created a page from a search about an article by Forbes about Schmit's secretive new drone business, John Pachowski, a Forbes executive editor and veteran tech journalist, was livid. Our reporting on Eric Schmidt's stealth drone project was posted this AM by At Perplexity AI, he posted on X. It rips off most of our reporting. It cites us, and a few that reblogged us, as sources in the most easily ignored way possible. Perplexity's knockoff of our reporting feels like a crystallization of the can journalism survive AI conversation. The company took our paywalled work without our permission and competitively. broadcast it across the web, video, mobile, as though it were itself, a media outlet, he wrote in

another ex post, end quote. Sony has rolled out an update to Discord on PS5 to integrate that app into the console's dashboard and let users join calls directly, starting in Japan and Asia, quoting the Verge. To start, select the Discord tab in GameBase within the PS5 Control Center and choose the Discord server or DM group you'd like to join, explains Sabrina Medits, senior director of product management for the PlayStation Platform experience. Then select your preferred voice channel. This will reveal more details such as who is already in the channel chatting. You'll also receive a PS5 console notification when another Discord user calls you, allowing you to join

right away. This latest PS5 update puts the Discord experience nearly on par with what Microsoft offers on the Xbox. Microsoft first offered Discord support on Xbox in July 2022 for testers before then rolling out an improved experience without the need for a phone in November of that same year. Discord on Xbox was also updated to let you stream your gameplay to friends last year. Sony is also rolling out the ability to share your PlayStation network profile on any messaging or social app with a new share profile option in the PlayStation mobile app next week. The feature generates a shareable link or QR code so people can easily add you as a friend, end quote. But don't expect to tweet from your Nintendo Switch anymore. That's because

Nintendo has removed X support from the switch via a new firmware update. following in the footsteps of Sony and Microsoft, which removed X support from their consoles in 2003 after X introduced new fees for API usage, quoting IGN. The decision to remove support came after Elon Musk's social media platform began charging more for business use of its API, the interface used by third-party developers to access Twitter data. Nintendo didn't give an explicit reason for the removal of support, but big companies like it, Sony and Microsoft could be charged around $42,000 a month to up a month to up

hold integration, according to Wired. It notably continued to support Facebook, however, which does not charge for using its API. At the time, Nintendo announced its plan to pull the integration from Switch X slash Twitter itself responded, insisting it was dedicated to enhancing the gaming community's experience on the social media platform and that it still has a strong relationship with Nintendo. The gaming community is one of the largest and most vibrant communities on our platform, and we are dedicated to enhancing and supporting gaming-related features, X-slash Twitter said in its own now-deleted post. Our partnership with Nintendo remains strong,

and we are working together to ensure a smooth transition for all users. We will continue collaborating with partners to bring new and exciting experiences to our global gaming community, end quote. Surprise! Samsung has unveiled the $199 Galaxy Watch F.E. In a single 40-millimeter size with a 1.2-inch OLED display, Exinos W-920 chip NFC, GPS, and 16 gigabytes of storage on sale from June 24th. So there are now three Galaxy Watch models with this on the low end, but those are pretty decent

specs for that price, I think. Quoting The Verge. It makes sense that Samsung's doing this now. The Galaxy Watch series used to be relatively affordable compared to the competition, but in the past two years, Samsung's raised the starting price of its watches by $50 to keep up with inflation. The FE will retail at $199 for the Bluetooth-only version and at $249 for the LTE version, which is more in line with what its watches used to cost. This also makes Samsung's smartwatch lineup look a bit more like apples with a budget model, flagship model, and a more

premium option. Like other entry-level models, the FE foregoes some bells and whistles to get that more palatable price. For example, the FE only comes in a single 40-millimeter size with a slightly smaller 1.2-inch OLED display. The FE also has the last-gen-exenose W-920 chip instead of the W-930, with 1.5 gigabytes of RAM and 16 gigabytes of storage. Most of the sensors remain the same, but you do give up the temperature sensor that was introduced last year. The battery is also smaller at 247-m-amp hours. The Verge asked if the FE will support fast-charging, but did not get a response. That said, you're not giving up that much. Despite being the budget model, the F.E has the same Sapphire crystal lens, IP68 rating, and 5 ATM of water resistance. It's also got

the same one-click-click strap mechanism, NFC payments, and built-in GPS. Connectivity-wise, you get LTE, Bluetooth 5.0, and Wi-Fi. Also, like the flagship watches, the F.E has one UI, watch five, and wear OS4, abnormal, high, low heart rate notifications, EKG's body composition analysis, and personalized heart rate zones. announcing the FE. is a bit of a surprise. Samsung typically unveils its wearables at its summer unpacked event, which is expected to take place next month in Paris. That said, this year's event could be a truly stacked one for Samsung's wearable lineup. On top of a new Galaxy Watch 7, we're expecting to see a new Galaxy Watch Ultra and the Galaxy Ring. All things considered, the relatively simple FE

would have easily gotten lost in the shuffle. The Bluetooth version of the Galaxy Watch F.E. goes on sale in the U.S. starting June 24th, the LTE version arrives later this year, end quote. Finally today, did we know this was a thing? And by this, I'm referring to the Microsoft Excel World Championship, an annual tournament hosted by the Financial Modeling World Cup, where competitors solve Excel puzzles for prizes. Coding the verge. It's happy hour in Las Vegas, and the MGM Grand Casino is crawling with people. The national finals rodeo is in town. The NBA's inaugural in-season tournament is underway. The Raiders play on Sunday, and the U-2 residency is going strong at the Giant Sphere, so it seems everyone in every bar and at every slot machine

is looking forward to something, and wearing a cowboy hat. Even for a town built on nonstop buzz, this qualifies as a uniquely eventful weekend. But I'd wager that if you wanted to see the most exciting drama happening at the MGM on this Friday night, you'd have to walk through the casino and look for the small sign advertising something called the Active Cell. This is the site of the play-in round for the Excel World Championship, and it starts in five minutes. There are 27 people here to take part in this event, 28 registered, but one evidently chickened out before we started, which will send its top eight finishers to tomorrow night's finals. There, one person will be crowned the Excel World Champion, which comes with a trophy and a

championship belt and the ability to spend the next 12 months bragging about. being officially the world's best spreadsheeter. Eight people have already qualified for the finals. Some of today's 27 contestants lost in those qualifying rounds. Others just showed up last minute in hopes of a comeback. At 6 p.m. on the dot, Andrew Glynovich, the founder and CEO of the Financial Modeling World Cup, the organization hosting these championships, takes the modular stage in the ballroom. He loads an unlisted YouTube link, which begins explaining today's challenge known as a case. It's a puzzle called Potions Master, and it goes roughly like this. You are training to be a potions master in Excelberg, but you're terrible at it.

You have a number of ingredients, each of which has a certain number of associated points. Your goal is to get the most points in each potion before it explodes, which it does based on how much of a white ingredient you've added. The potions master case, like so many of the puzzles conquered by these competitive accelerers, is not particularly complicated. This is a flashier, faster, deliberately more arcadey version of spreadsheeting, more like trying to win 10 simultaneous games of chess on easy mode rather than painstakingly taking on a Grandmaster. If you like, you can solve the whole thing manually, figure out when the white number gets too high, count the total points until that spot, then double check it because there's a lot of numbers and eventually

answer the first question. Competitive Excel has been around for years, but only in a hobbyist way. Most of the people in this room full of actuaries, analysts, accountants, and investors play Excel the way I play, Scrabble, or Do the Crossword, exercising your brain using tools you understand. But last year's competition became a viral hit on ESPN and YouTube, and this year the organizers are trying to capitalize. After all, someone points out to me, poker is basically just math and it's all over TV. Why not spreadsheets? Excel is a tool, it's a game, and now it hopes to become a sport, end quote. Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.