Microsoft is betting artificial intelligence is the next big thing and it would like everyone to get on board. The latest target: India, where the company is promising to train two million people in AI by 2025.
Microsoft
CEO
Satya Nadella
made the announcement on a visit to Mumbai where he highlighted a number of Indian major companies already using the company’s Copilot AI software that it is hoping will become a major money spinner.
Nadella doesn’t exactly face a tough audience in his country of birth, but he has plenty to celebrate after recently passing his tenth anniversary at the helm of Microsoft. His gamble on AI—including the $13 billion investment in ChatGPT-developer OpenAI—has helped Microsoft take the title of world’s most valuable company from
Apple,
even though its recent earnings were largely met by a shrug from the stock market.
India is a battleground well worth fighting for in the AI competition, with a large potential workforce, a booming economy, and fewer political complications than doing business in China. If Microsoft is to make its own AI platforms the de facto standard in the industry, it will need to win the fight there against rivals such as Google-parent
Alphabet.
Microsoft shares were up 0.7% in early trading Wednesday, while Alphabet stock was broadly flat.
Still, AI isn’t paying off for everyone.
Snap
looks to be missing out on the AI-advertising boom that helped Facebook-owner
Meta Platforms,
and the Snapchat owner’s stock was down 31% in early trading after its earnings guidance disappointed the market.
“While Snap may have been spending in the right places, the returns on those investments have been slower to materialize than some would like, and 2023 may be remembered as a lost year for the company, where user growth decelerated and revenue were flat,” wrote Scott Kessler, an analyst at Third Bridge, in a research note.
Elsewhere, Elon Musk’s X social-media platform is assisting with a lawsuit being brought against
Walt Disney
by actress Gina Carano, who alleges that her social-media posts led to a wrongful termination by Disney and Lucasfilm from The Mandalorian series.
Musk has previously said X would fund lawsuits of people who claim they were unfairly fired for posts on the social-media platform. Disney didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment early on Wednesday.
Disney shares were down 1.9% in early trading Wednesday, ahead of its earnings report after the close.
Farther afield, TikTok owner ByteDance said Wednesday that Zhang Nan, the chief executive of its Chinese video app Douyin has stepped down. Zhang will stay with the company and take on other responsibilities, the company said.
If the fight over TikTok and its role in the U.S. tends to dominate the mind when it comes to ByteDance, it’s worth remembering it’s only a part of the company, which is one of the world’s largest potential candidates for an initial public offering. Bloomberg reported that ByteDance’s revenue in 2023 rose by around 30% to more than $110 billion, citing people familiar with the matter.
Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@barrons.com
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