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Hard Numbers: NVIDIA rising, the magician’s assistant, indefensible budget lags, Make PDFs sexy again
CFOTO/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
February 27, 2024
3: NVIDIA is now the third-most valuable company in the U.S. after reporting rosy financial returns. The AI-focused chipmaker’s market capitalization is now $1.812 trillion, surpassing Google parent company Alphabet, and trailing only Microsoft and Apple. How things change: just one year ago, NVIDIA’s market cap was a paltry $580 billion.
1: A New Orleans magician says he was paid $150 by a Democratic operative supporting presidential longshot Dean Philipps to create the fake Joe Biden robocall sent to New Hampshire voters in January. Creating the fake audio took him 20 minutes and cost $1, the magician said. The incident sparked national outrage, including an investigation by the New Hampshire attorney general and the Federal Communications Commission banning unsolicited AI-generated robocalls.
1.8 billion: The U.S. Department of Defense is seeking $1.8 billion in the federal budget solely for AI. But with congressional budget talks still ongoing, Craig Martell, the Pentagon’s chief digital and AI officer, said his office needs to make tough decisions about what projects to prioritize. AI-related defense projects range from the simple—such as making administrative tasks more efficient—to the complex, like building new advanced weapons systems.
400 billion: Adobe has lots of cutting-edge products: Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects; but there’s nothing sexy about PDFs. On paid versions of Acrobat and Reader, which people use to view 400 billion PDFs each year, an AI chatbot will soon summarize and search your document. Adobe wants users to have a “conversation” with their PDFs—summaries sound nice, but does anyone want a full dialogue?More For You
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Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney attended a meeting of the European Political Community in Armenia this weekend, a first by the leader of a non-European country. He was invited to discuss common interests in trade, energy, and security. In a speech that echoed his address to the World Economic Forum in Davos two months earlier, Carney called on middle powers, including Canada and European nations, to work together in the wake of disruption of the established world order — implicitly pointing to the United States. “It’s my strong personal view that the international order will be rebuilt,” he told the crowd in Yerevan, “but it will be rebuilt out of Europe.”
Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan’s government fell after losing a no-confidence vote, putting Romania’s access to EU recovery funds – worth approximately $13 billion – at risk.
Natalie Johnson
Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan’s government fell after losing a no-confidence vote, putting Romania’s access to EU recovery funds – worth approximately $13 billion – at risk. The country, which has the largest budget deficit in the EU, has to complete the bloc’s mandated economic reforms by August to unlock the funds. But with its country’s pro-EU government pushed out, those reforms are uncertain.
One year after announcing its European digital commitments, Microsoft shared an update on progress across the region, highlighting new investments and expanded infrastructure to support AI adoption, strengthen resilience, and protect data. As demand for AI grows, organizations across Europe are increasingly focused on digital sovereignty, seeking greater control over data, stronger security, and assurance that critical systems remain available amid geopolitical uncertainty. Microsoft’s latest update outlines progress across key areas, including cloud expansion, cybersecurity, and privacy protections, helping enable AI and cloud adoption at scale while aligning with European regulations and priorities. Read the full update here.
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