Microsoft recently announced a new $50 million commitment to fight climate change with the power of artificial intelligence. They'll put these funds to work in its "A.I. for Earth" program, which uses artificial intelligence technology to drive sustainability around the globe. Lucas Joppa, Chief Environmental Scientist at Microsoft, joined us from Paris, France to discuss how Microsoft will put the new funds to work.
Microsoft is using the funds to increase seed grants provided to those working on climate and environmental issues. Joppa says the grants will give these groups access to the latest cloud and A.I. technology. The focus of Microsoft's "A.I. for Earth"program is to improve efficient generation and reduce energy consumption. The availability of new tech will help to accomplish these goals.
One of the key focuses for Microsoft is the future of water. In the next 20 years, demand for fresh water is predicted to outpace supply. The company is using A.I. to clean up and make more efficient use of our oceans in order to help conserve and protect the resource.
The gaming industry has been under the spotlight so far this year following some big mergers and acquisitions. This week featured earnings of three major gaming companies, but also Meta and for the latter, things are not doing too hot. Joining Cheddar News to break it all down was Kenny Rosenblatt, President and Co-Founder of Arkadium.
While it was a volatile week in tech as Meta experienced the biggest one-day drop in the history of the U.S. stock market, industry giant Amazon reported 40 percent growth — largely on the strength of the cloud. Dan Ives, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, joined Cheddar News to break down how the e-commerce company stock managed to pop despite headwinds against its core retail business. "It's all about cloud because of sum of the parts, you could argue, amazon could be $3,500/$4,000 stock just based on cloud," he said. Ives also addressed the apparent the differing impact of Apple iOS changes on Facebook and Snapchat.
Following Ford's earnings miss, the stock price dropped despite a bullish outlook from the auto giant. Karl Brauer, an executive analyst with ISeeCars.com, joined Cheddar to break down why investors may not be sold on the carmaker because of the ongoing factor of supply constraints. "The product is not an issue. There's really good product coming from them, including the electric vehicle side, and the demand is not an issue. There's plenty of demand, but nobody really has a solid grasp on when we're going to get past the supply chain issue," said Brauer.
Image-sharing app Pinterest reported big beats on its Q4 earnings for the top and bottom lines. The social platform surprised investors after seeing a decline in users while earnings and revenue were much higher than expected.
