(GLOBE NEWSWIRE, May 17, TMT2024) -- Today's highlights: U.S. real estate tycoon forms a consortium to bid for TikTok; Sony Music issued more than 700 warning letters worldwide; JD.com's NASDAQ revenue increased by 16 times in 10 years of listing; Lenovo releases its first AI phone; The Xiaomi SU7 Pro will make its public debut; Toshiba plans to lay off up to 4,000 employees in Japan.
U.S. real estate tycoons form a consortium to bid for TikTok
American billionaire Frank McCourt announced that his organization, Project Liberty, is working to form a consortium with investment bank Guggenheim Partners to buy TikTok's U.S. operations. McCourt said that if the deal goes through, it plans to restructure TikTok "so that individual users have more control over their digital identities and data." He said that he does not use TikTok, but his own business and Internet-focused business will use it. McCourt is an American real estate tycoon who was the owner of Major League Baseball's Los Angeles Dodgers.
Sony Music has issued more than 700 warning letters worldwide
Sony Music Group, one of the world's largest record labels, is taking action to ensure that its music rights are not ruthlessly abused by tech companies in the AI deluge. Sony Music has sent letters to more than 700 AI companies and streaming platforms around the world, warning them not to use Sony Music's intellectual property to train AI models without explicit authorization, and demanding that they immediately stop infringing on them. Sony Music reserves the right to retroactively pursue past infringements. OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and a number of other companies that develop AI systems have received letters from Sony.
Sony plans to invest 1.8 trillion yen in growth over three years
Against the backdrop of the current slowdown in the growth of the game business, the Sony Group has announced a growth investment plan of 1.8 trillion yen through mergers and acquisitions (M&A) over the next three years. It will acquire intellectual property (IP) in the content field through the film and music business, and explore the growth model of continuous monetization of its own content. In April this year, Sony partnered with Apollo Global Management, a U.S. investment fund, to propose a plan to acquire U.S. media giant Paramount Global.
JD.com's NASDAQ revenue has increased 16 times in the 10 years since it was listed
JD.com released its first quarter report for 2024. Quarterly net revenue was 260 billion yuan (about 360 US dollars), a year-on-year increase of 7.0%. Net profit attributable to ordinary shareholders was $7.1 billion, compared to $6.3 billion for the same period in 2023. Non-GAAP net income attributable to common shareholders was $8.9 billion, compared to $7.6 billion for the same period in 2023. JD's retail revenue was 226.835 billion yuan, JD's logistics revenue was 42.137 billion yuan, and its new business revenue was 4.870 billion yuan. By May 22, 2024, JD.com will celebrate its 10th anniversary on the Nasdaq. Over the past decade, JD.com has expanded its business scale, with total revenue growing 16 times from 69.3 billion yuan before listing to 1.1 trillion yuan in 2023.
11% of Baidu's search results come from generative AI
Baidu released its financial results for the first quarter of 2024. Total revenue for the quarter was 31.5 billion yuan (about 4.37 billion US dollars), an increase of 1% year-on-year. Net profit attributable to Baidu was 5.4 billion yuan. Non-GAAP net profit attributable to Baidu was 7 billion yuan, up 22% year-on-year. Revenue from "Baidu Core" reached 23.8 billion yuan (about 3.30 billion US dollars), a year-on-year increase of 4%. "Baidu Core" had a net profit of 5.2 billion yuan in the first quarter. Non-GAAP, "Baidu Core" had a net profit of 6.6 billion yuan in the first quarter. Robin Li said that the revenue of the AI cloud business increased by 12% in the first quarter, and 11% of the search results on Baidu search are now generated by AI. In this quarter, mobile phone manufacturers such as Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo all connected to the Wenxin large model API.
iQIYI no longer announces the number of members every quarter
iQIYI released its financial report for the first quarter of 2024. Total revenue for the quarter was 7.9 billion yuan (about $1.1 billion), down 5% year-on-year. The net profit attributable to iQIYI was 655.3 million yuan, compared with a net profit of 618.1 million yuan in the same period in 2023. Non-GAAP net profit attributable to iQIYI was 844.3 million yuan, compared with 939.5 million yuan in the same period in 2023. Among them, the revenue of membership services was 4.8 billion yuan, the revenue of online advertising services was 1.5 billion yuan, the revenue of content distribution was 928.0 million yuan, and the other revenue was 718.4 million yuan. iQIYI no longer announces the number of members every quarter. Gong Yu, CEO of iQIYI, said that the number of members can only partially show the quality of members' business development, and overemphasizing this number will interfere with daily work.
魅族21 Note携Flyme AIOS正式发布
Meizu has officially launched the new Flyme AIOS system and Meizu 21 Note mobile phone, as well as Meizu LIVE AI true wireless Hi-Fi noise cancelling earphones, MYVU and PANDAER trend products. Among them, the Meizu 21 Note is equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 mobile platform, providing up to 16GB of running memory, equipped with a 6.78-inch OLED screen, and a built-in 5500mAh capacity battery, priced from 2599 yuan. Meizu's new version of Flyme AIOS supports a series of new features such as microphone conversations, AI web page summarization, AI document interpretation, drag and drop gestures, and AI search.
Lenovo releases its first AI phone
Lenovo released its first AI mobile phone, moto X50 Ultra, which is equipped with Lenovo Xiaotian personal agent (AI Agent), 100x zoom periscope light chasing AI imaging system, and the processor uses Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen3 flagship platform. On the premise of learning and growing according to the user's individual habits, Lenovo Xiaotian personal agent can carry out natural language dialogue, document translation, document summary and other capabilities. In addition, the moto X50 Ultra's AI treasure chest also integrates functions such as travel assistants, smart eye recognition screens, and smart scenes.
Tencent Cloud launched the Generative AI Ecosystem Program
Tencent Cloud has launched a large-scale model native toolchain, including a knowledge engine, an image engine, and a video creation engine. In addition, Tencent Cloud will launch a generative AI ecosystem plan to work with industry application vendors, service providers, and agents. Tencent will also release the large-scale model app "Yuanbao" on May 30. "Yuanbao" is based on Tencent's self-developed hybrid model. Currently, the Pro, Standard, and Lite versions of Tencent's hybrid model will be fully open to enterprise and individual developers through Tencent Cloud. Tencent plans to open source the hybrid Wenshengwen model in the third quarter.
MiLM large language model has passed the filing
Xiaomi officially announced that MiLM, a large language model of Xiaomi, has officially passed the large model filing. Through the combination of device and cloud, it will not only bring the intelligent improvement of a single device, but also realize the collaboration of multiple devices in and between scenes, empowering the whole ecological strategy of people, cars and homes.
The Xiaomi SU7 Pro will make its public debut
Xiaomi SU7 Pro will make its public debut at 08:30 a.m. on May 18, and Lei Jun will drive live while driving. Lei Jun will mainly introduce the Xiaomi SU7 Pro, a high-end intelligent driving version with ultra-long battery life priced at 245,900 yuan. The car accelerates from zero to 100 in 5.7 seconds, and the power performance is slightly improved compared to the standard version. The Xiaomi SU7 Pro is also equipped with the Mi Pilot MAX high-end intelligent driving function and is equipped with LiDAR, which is one of the most powerful intelligent driving versions of Xiaomi cars.
Toshiba plans to lay off up to 4,000 employees in Japan
Toshiba Corporation (Toshiba) announced on the 16th that it will lay off up to 4,000 employees across the entire group in Japan. At our four subsidiaries and headquarters, which are divided into our main businesses such as power and infrastructure, we will reduce labor costs in overlapping indirect divisions. In the future, the company plans to integrate its subsidiaries into Toshiba's main body. The 4,000 employees is equivalent to about 6% of Toshiba's total number of employees in Japan (approximately 67,000 at the end of December 2023). This will be Toshiba's first thorough restructuring since its delisting in December last year. Layoffs are open to people over the age of 50, and voluntary resignations are recruited.
Apple terminates the iOS Developer University program
Apple has terminated its iOS Developer University program for students on May 15. The program allows university professors and other qualified instructors to create development teams of up to 200 students who can create and test apps without having to pay the Apple Developer Program membership fee, which is typically $99/year. Apple didn't say why, but said accredited educational institutions can still join the Apple Developer Program for free by submitting a fee waiver request.
The European Union has launched a formal investigation into Meta
The European Union has launched a formal investigation under the Digital Services Act into Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram. The EU will conduct an in-depth investigation into the potential addiction and "rabbit hole" effect of platforms; the effectiveness of age verification tools; The degree of privacy and security provided to minors during the operation of the recommender system. The European Commission is concerned that Facebook's and Instagram's systems, including their algorithms, could stimulate children's online addiction. Under the Digital Services Act, non-compliant companies are subject to fines of up to 6% of their annual global turnover.
OpenAI has partnered with Reddit
OpenAI has announced a partnership with Reddit to bring each other's content to ChatGPT. The agreement will enable OpenAI's AI tools to better understand and present Reddit's content, allowing OpenAI to display Reddit's content and train AI systems on its partners' data. Reddit will also provide its users with a new artificial intelligence tool based on models created by OpenAI, which will run ads on its partners' websites.
Hugging Face提供1000万美元免费共享GPU
Hugging Face, the world's largest open-source AI community, announced that it will provide $10 million in free shared GPUs to help developers create new AI technologies. The aim is to help small developers, researchers, and startups compete with large AI companies and avoid "centralization" of AI progress. The company's goal is to level the playing field by donating these shared GPUs to the community through a new initiative called "ZeroGPU". Some time ago, Hugging Face also raised $235 million in funding, and the company was valued at $4.5 billion.
The commercial promotion of 5G cross-network roaming was launched
At the 2024 World Telecommunication and Information Society Day Conference, China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Radio and Television jointly announced the launch of 5G cross-network roaming commercial promotion, so that remote areas can enjoy 5G "without being left behind". In the case of not changing the card or number, when the operator does not have 5G network coverage, the mobile phone can be automatically switched to use the 5G network of other operators. 5G cross-network roaming is of great significance to accelerate 5G network coverage, especially to improve the network coverage level in remote areas and rural areas.