In today’s newsletter:

• News - 📈 Nvidia Drove 25% of S&P 500 Gains: Q3 Earnings Unpacked 💰

• Culture - 🎮 Pokémon Go Players Unknowingly Trained AI to Navigate Streets

 📈 Nvidia Drove 25% of S&P Gains: Q3 Earnings Unpacked 💰

Nvidia's unstoppable AI-fueled momentum continues, with its latest quarterly earnings nearly doubling year-on-year to $35.1 billion. While the growth pace slightly slowed compared to earlier this year, the company still exceeded analysts' expectations and projected $37.5 billion for the next quarter. Demand for its next-gen Blackwell chips is through the roof, despite early reports of overheating issues. With hyperscalers like Microsoft and Google racing to adopt these chips, Nvidia's data center revenue soared 112% to $30.8 billion, cementing its dominance in the AI infrastructure market.

At a staggering $3.6 trillion market cap, Nvidia now represents 7% of the S&P 500 index, driving nearly a quarter of its gains this year. The company’s influence is undeniable, with CEO Jensen Huang joking that "almost every company in the world seems to be involved in our supply chain." While its lofty valuation at 34x forward earnings raises some eyebrows, Nvidia’s profitability—60% of sales—leaves room for optimism. As AI adoption expands globally, from Silicon Valley to state-backed initiatives in Saudi Arabia, Nvidia’s role in shaping the future of tech appears unstoppable—for now.

🗞️ In Other News…

• A bipartisan U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission report recommends a "Manhattan Project-like" initiative to accelerate U.S. AI development and maintain technological superiority over China, citing national security and economic concerns.

• Meta has hired former Salesforce AI chief Clara Shih to lead a new Business AI group focused on creating AI tools for businesses using Meta’s platforms, aiming to enhance advertising and content creation while driving ad revenue.

• Security experts warn against uploading private medical data to generative AI chatbots like Grok, as the lack of clear privacy protections risks exposing sensitive information for AI training or misuse.

• OpenAI, in partnership with Common Sense Media, has launched a free AI training course for K-12 teachers to help them effectively and responsibly integrate AI tools like ChatGPT into education.

• U.K. antitrust regulators have decided not to investigate Google’s investment in AI startup Anthropic, concluding the partnership does not threaten competition or meet jurisdictional thresholds for merger control.

🎮 Pokémon Go Players Unknowingly Trained AI to Navigate Streets

Niantic, the creator of Pokémon Go and Ingress, is turning the geospatial data collected by its millions of players into an AI breakthrough: the Large Geospatial Model (LGM). Inspired by how Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT process text, LGMs aim to help computers understand, perceive, and navigate physical spaces. By training on millions of geolocated images captured from unique pedestrian perspectives, Niantic’s LGM can predict and interact with environments—a critical step for AR glasses, robotics, and autonomous systems. The company’s existing Lightship Visual Positioning System (VPS) powers features like Pokémon Playgrounds, which lets players place virtual Pokémon in specific locations for others to interact with, using “centimeter-level accuracy.”

With over 10 million scanned locations and a million new scans uploaded weekly, Niantic’s games have created an unmatched dataset of pedestrian-accessible spaces. While traditional datasets focus on roads, Niantic’s data provides a unique edge in powering augmented reality and even robotics, from delivery bots to autonomous security systems. However, the company hasn’t clarified limits on how this data might be used or by whom, raising ethical questions about leveraging user-generated content. As AR and AI technology converge, Niantic’s geospatial model could redefine how machines interact with the physical world, for better—or potentially for worse.

VC Fundraising Rounds

• Cyera, a leading company in data security, has secured $300 million in Series D funding, bolstering its swift expansion and solidifying its leadership in the $23.68 billion data security industry. (11/20/24)

• Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, is reportedly spearheading a $150 million funding round for Rain AI, a semiconductor startup positioning itself as a competitor to Nvidia Corporation. (11/19/24)

• Cresta, a comprehensive generative AI platform for contact centers, has announced the successful completion of its $125 million Series D funding round. (11/19/24)

• Enfabrica, an AI networking chip startup, secured $115 million in Series C funding and unveiled its new ACF SuperNIC chip, designed to optimize networking infrastructure for seamless data flow in modern AI workloads. (11/19/24)

• Blip, a conversational platform, raised $60M in a Series C round to expand its AI-driven solutions that help businesses automate and personalize real-time interactions across multiple communication channels. (11/19/24)

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