(The last one successfully did so in Hong Kong today, by the way; shares were up 11% at the time of writing.)The IPO rush is as much a sign of the improving state of the market as it is a reflection that autonomous vehicles are, somewhat surprisingly, hot again. In 2016, a whimsical Fortune magazine cover declared, “Silicon Valley Goes to Detroit;” nearly a decade later, it feels like maybe both have hopped a direct flight to Beijing. —Andrew NuscaP.S. Speaking of self-driving cars: In yesterday’s edition, the headline of the first item misstated the finances of GM’s Cruise. The company is certainly cutting expenses, but it won’t be “driving toward profit” until it restarts service and generates more revenue.Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Data Sheet? Drop a line here.Amazon’s datacenter buildout is pushing limitsTransmission lines adjacent to an Amazon Web Services data center in Hilliard, Ohio, on March 23, 2024. (Photo: Brian Kaiser/Bloomberg/Getty Images)It’s no secret in the tech community that the buildout of computing infrastructure to support artificial intelligence would be an extraordinary burden on virtually everything—from corporate coffers to the earth’s climate.An Amazon internal document newly reviewed by Business Insider reveals that the company—no stranger to scaling things—is already feeling the limits of its datacenter expansion: “Across the [Americas] region, we are experiencing headwinds in power, zoning and permitting, water, and workforce/labor that are providing challenges to our long-term capacity growth.”Of those concerns, electricity is considered to be the most pressing. Datacenter energy consumption will increase by 15% to 20% each year to comprise 16% of total U.S. power consumption by 2030, according to estimates Boston Consulting Group published in July.For Amazon, it’s a matter of business stability. According to the internal document, the company is already seeing transmission limitations in Oregon, Ohio, and Virginia—leading to idling datacenters that sometimes lack the power to be fully operational. Will tech’s giants use these hurdles as an opportunity to work with the government to improve underfunded American infrastructure? We’ll find out. —ANIBM earnings fall short of expectationsIBM said Wednesday that it had increased its third quarter revenue by 1.5% compared to the same period a year ago, but traders were displeased, sending its shares down 7% to about $216.Why punish Big Blue when software revenue ($6.52 billion) beat analysts’ consensus and Red Hat had its best quarter of customer signings since its 2019 acquisition? The performance of the rest of the business. IBM’s consulting revenue declined 0.5% to $5.15 billion as economic uncertainty weighed on the entire category. Its infrastructure revenue was down 7%, to $3.04 billion, ahead of the 2025 release of a new mainframe.CEO Arvind Krishna says IBM’s generative AI business—which cuts across its business segments but is mostly consulting revenue—now exceeds $3 billion, up more than a billion from the previous quarter. AI, you say? I knew there was a reason IBM stock was up 69% this year. —ANMeta’s oversight board has U.S. election concernsSince the advent of Facebook’s News Feed, Meta has spent much of its life fighting a battle that has consumed much of the tech industry as of late: whether media platforms are responsible for what appears on them, and how far they must go to address it.Ahead of a landmark U.S. election, the issue is back at the top of the…well, feed. Meta’s Oversight Board—established in 2018, assembled in 2020, and modeled after the federal judiciary—says it has “serious concerns” about the performance of company content moderation systems in “electoral contexts.” In short, Meta has tended to overly enforce its rules, leading to the “excessive removal of political speech.”The incident that triggered the assessment involves a satirical image of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and running mate Tim Walz that imitates a promotional photograph for the 1994 film Dumb and Dumber. First published on Facebook in August, the post was removed by Meta for “derogatory sexualized” imagery—the original photo involves nipple-pinching of the schoolyard prank variety—then restored.Are there ramifications for Meta overdoing it on political content if its censorship is equally applied across the political spectrum? Yes, according to the American Civil Liberties Union: “The biggest social media companies are central actors when it comes to our collective ability to speak—and hear the speech of others—online.” Even if that’s speech we prefer not to hear. —ANApple, Goldman Sachs to pay $89m following Apple Card investigationHas there been an Apple partnership in recent years as fraught as the one it struck with Goldman Sachs to establish the Apple Card? Unhappiness within the relationship has been widely reported; now regulators are taking their shots.The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Wednesday that the two companies fostered “customer service breakdowns and misrepresentations” that affected hundreds of thousands of Apple Card users. It found that Apple failed to send “tens of thousands” of consumer disputes to Goldman and that Goldman didn’t investigate them properly. Some consumers had incorrect negative information added to their credit reports, the agency said, and others faced long waits to get their money back.The penalties? $20 million in redress and a $45 million penalty for Goldman and a $25 million penalty for Apple…plus a ban on a new Goldman credit card “unless it can provide a credible plan that the product will actually comply with the law.” Oof.Apple is reportedly evaluating JPMorgan Chase to be the new Apple Card issuer; meanwhile Goldman Sachs has made it clear it wants out of the consumer banking business entirely. As Alfred, Lord Tennyson might have said: ‘Tis better to have banked and lost than never to have banked at all. —ANNvidia fixed AI chip flaw with TSMC’s helpWith friends like these, who needs enemies?Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Wednesday that a design flaw with its new, hotly anticipated Blackwell AI chip was fixed with the help of longtime supplier TSMC.The flaw wasn’t bad enough to lead to nonfunctional chips, thankfully—but it did weigh on Nvidia’s production capability by reducing yields. (In the 21st century, cash crops are semiconductors.) With a fix in place, Nvidia will be able to fulfill Blackwell orders sometime this quarter as promised.That’s good news for both customers and shareholders. As Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in September, Nvidia will produce 450,000 Blackwell chips in the fourth quarter, “translating into a potential revenue opportunity exceeding $10 billion for Nvidia.” So from one chipmaking giant to another: Thanks, friend. —ANMore data—Amazon debuts $350 Eero Outdoor 7. Up to 15,000 square feet of coverage.—Blue chip VC vet launch Chemistry. The new firm will back early-stage startups.—Wayve begins driver-assistance testing. The UK startup makes AI software for vehicles.—Russia, China, Iran have increased cyber influence ops ahead of the U.S. election.—A mother sues Character.ai after her late son became obsessed. He was 14.Endstop triggeredThis is the web version of Data Sheet, a daily newsletter on the business of tech. Sign up to get it delivered free to your inbox.
