These two products dominate every non-technical industry. I think MSFT makes mediocre software. But as long as those two gravy trains exist, they'll never lose.
All Intel did was just report a new operating structure and re-allocate revenue and costs to that segment. So essentially expenses that went into manufacturing before are now just thrown under IFS. It's just a bunch of financial engineering.
it's all internal revenue. IFS is charging Intel Products for making chips. 2023 was a down year bc of weaker cloud & IT demand. Outside of NVDA, semiconductor companies had a poor 2023.
"Revenue was $18.9 billion down $8.6 billion from 2022. Internal revenue was $18.0 billion, down $9.1 billion driven by lower intersegment volume. External revenue was $953 million, up $479 million from 2022, driven by higher packaging revenue"
I doubt it will backfire on them at all. No one cares about who is spending money on Twitter. Moreover, Twitter is an irrelevant advertising platform and also an atrocious one as well (still lacks DR). Twitter's influence is exaggerated by media dependence and loquacious users.
Twitter has 360m MAUs, 225m DAUs globally. That's less than what Facebook does in Europe.
"By the numbers: Engagement metrics are down across the board.
App downloads fell roughly 38% globally between October 2022 and September 2023, according to Sensor Tower estimates. In the U.S., mobile app downloads fell 57% in the same time period. Data from Data.AI, another app tracking firm, shows similar trends.
Usage has also decreased, with monthly active Android users falling 14.8% globally and 17.8% with mobile users in the U.S. year-over-year for the month of September, per SimilarWeb.
Average time spent, daily per user, fell 2% year-over-year globally in the third quarter of 2023. Sessions dipped 4% in that same time period, per Sensor Tower.
User churn, or users who stop using the app, increased more than 30% year-over-year as of September 2023, per Sensor Tower.
Web traffic was down 7% globally and 11.6% in the U.S. for the first nine months of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022, per SimilarWeb."
Twitter has always been a power-user platform, but lacks mass appeal.
MAUs are down 15-20% YoY, gross churn is up 30%, but time spent is only down 2%.
Each time the Chinese market rallies, it's another opportunity to sell.
Investing in China was already a thorny issue, you cannot trust the government at all as a foreign investor and there's 0 transparency. Now, there's 0 growth as well.
The last part is the most important as it will cap any thought of entering China again. If the government stimulates the economy massively, investors will return for a short period.
Iirc, the NP structure was implemented to attract top AI talent from FAANG. Then they needed investors to fund the infrastructure and hence gave the employees shares or profit units (whatever the hell that is). The NP now shields MSFT from regulatory issues.
I do wonder how many of those employees would actually go to MSFT. It feels more like a gambit to get Altman back in since they were about to cash out with the tender offer.
Looking back, Altman's ace in hand was the tender offer from Thrive. Idk anyone at OpenAI, but all the early senior personnel backed him with vehemence. If the leaders hand't championed him strongly, I doubt you get 90% of the company to commit to leaving.
I'm sure some of those employees were easily going to make $10m+ in the sale. That's a pretty great motivation tool.
Overall, I do agree with you. The board could not justify their capricious decision making and refused to elaborate. They should've brought him back on Sunday instead of mucking around. OpenAI existing is a good thing.
Every GW of Blackwell generates more revenue than the entire gaming business does in 1 year.