Author: Advanced AI Bot

The AI juggernaut rolls on, at least for now. That was the clear message from Microsoft’s quarterly earnings yesterday. The company handily beat Wall Street analysts’ consensus forecasts for both revenue and profit growth, and provided more buoyant guidance for its next quarter than expected too. Microsoft shares jumped on the news, gaining as much as 9% in after-hours trading on Wednesday evening. The boost was a relief to shareholders, who have weathered a 5.5% slide in the company’s shares so far this year. The news is also likely to be a comfort to the entire AI sector—evidence that companies…

This story was originally published on Retail Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Retail Dive newsletter. Etsy is tapping AI for push notifications, emails and personalized homepages, company executives told analysts in a first-quarter earnings call Wednesday.  Engagement nearly doubled upon adding personalized homepages, CEO Josh Silverman said on the call. The company also tested using generative AI to create personalized marketing copy during the quarter. In Q1, buyer conversion rate on Etsy’s app increased year over year, Silverman said. The company saw an upward year-over-year trend in monthly active users and increases in…

Sean Gallup / Getty Images Microsoft shares rallied Thursday after the company’s quarterly results beat Wall Street’s expectations. Several analysts raised their price targets for the stock and Morgan Stanley called it one of the company’s strongest quarters in recent memory. Microsoft reiterated its plan to spend $80 billion on infrastructure in fiscal 2025. Microsoft (MSFT) shares surged Thursday after the company posted what Morgan Stanley called “one of their strongest quarters in recent memory,” on growth fueled by demand for cloud computing and AI. Microsoft shares were up nearly 9% in recent trading to about $430, pushing them into…

Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Wall Street is partying like it’s 2024. Shares of tech mega-caps soared on Thursday as strong earnings reports from Microsoft (MSFT) and Meta Platforms (META) breathed fresh life into the AI trade that’s fueled stock market gains for the past two years. Microsoft and Meta both beat expectations with their quarterly results on Wednesday. Microsoft reported a 21% increase in cloud revenue, while Meta said its AI is approaching 1 billion monthly active users. The results boosted beaten-down AI and Big Tech stocks.…

Pinterest says it’s finally going to do something about the AI slop that’s taken over its platform. After an increasing volume of complaints, the social networking and image pinboarding site announced Wednesday a plan to begin labeling AI-generated and AI-modified images. It will also introduce a new option that allows users to reduce the number of generative AI Pins they see. The new features are an indication of how serious a threat generative AI is to platforms built on top of user-generated content, crowdsourcing, and social sharing. AI technology has made it possible for bad actors to flood these platforms…

Tech giant IBM has introduced Microsoft Practice within IBM Consultingto advance digital transformation efforts for organisations. The move marks a new phase in the company’s ongoing collaboration with Microsoft and is aimed at helping organisations manage AI, cloud, and cybersecurity transformations more effectively. The newly formed practice is structured to bring together IBM’s industry-specific expertise and Microsoft’s technology portfolio. Tools such as Copilot, Azure OpenAI, Azure Cloud, Fabric, and Sentinel will be combined to assist businesses in pursuing growth, lower costs, and build “sustainable competitive advantage”. IBM Consulting senior vice president and head Mohamad Ali said: “IBM Consulting is committed…

picture alliance / Contributor / Getty Images Microsoft (MSFT) reported fiscal third-quarter revenue and profits that surpassed analysts’ expectations, sending shares higher in extended trading Wednesday. The tech titan’s revenue grew 13% year-over-year to $70.07 billion, above the analyst consensus from Visible Alpha. Net income of $25.82 billion, or $3.46 per share, rose from $21.94 billion, or $2.94 per share, a year earlier, topping Wall Street’s estimates. Microsoft shares rose over 7% in after-hours trading. The stock was down 6% for the year so far through Wednesday’s close. The gains came as revenue from Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud segment, which includes…

Chesnot / Contributor / Getty Images America’s tech giants aren’t showing signs of slowing AI spending plans despite a stretch of economic uncertainty that has meant tough times for technology shares. After Meta Platforms (META) late Wednesday reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings, touting its advertising revenue growth, the social media giant said it plans to boost its capital expenditures this year to $64 billion to $72 billion to grow its AI capacity. CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors on a conference call that he believes the opportunities for the company in AI are “staggering.” Meta is boosting its planned investments both to…

A new paper from AI lab Cohere, Stanford, MIT, and Ai2 accuses LM Arena, the organization behind the popular crowdsourced AI benchmark Chatbot Arena, of helping a select group of AI companies achieve better leaderboard scores at the expense of rivals. According to the authors, LM Arena allowed some industry-leading AI companies like Meta, OpenAI, Google, and Amazon to privately test several variants of AI models, then not publish the scores of the lowest performers. This made it easier for these companies to achieve a top spot on the platform’s leaderboard, though the opportunity was not afforded to every firm,…

(Bloomberg) — Xiaomi Corp. unveiled its own open-source AI model, joining the growing ranks of Chinese tech leaders hoping to make a splash in a burgeoning field endorsed by Beijing. Most Read from Bloomberg The smartphone and EV maker publicized the MiMo reasoning model, which like DeepSeek’s R1 mimics the way humans think through problems. Xiaomi printed stats on WeChat showing it surpassed OpenAI’s o1-mini and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s Qwen platforms in benchmark tests, which Bloomberg hasn’t independently verified. Xiaomi debuted MiMo a day after Alibaba unveiled the latest version of its own flagship model, amplifying a race between…