Mark Zuckerberg names ex-OpenAI employee chief scientist of new Meta AI lab
Zuckerberg has been on a multibillion-dollar artificial intelligence hiring blitz in recent weeks, highlighted by a $14 billion investment in Scale AI. In June, Zuckerberg announced a new organization called Meta Superintelligence Labs that's made up of top AI researchers and engineers.
Zhao's name was listed among other new hires in the June memo, but Zuckerberg said Friday that Zhao co-founded the lab and "has been our lead scientist from day one." Zhao will work directly with Zuckerberg and Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI who is acting as Meta's chief AI officer.
"Shengjia has already pioneered several breakthroughs including a new scaling paradigm and distinguished himself as a leader in the field," Zuckerberg wrote in a social media post. "I'm looking forward to working closely with him to advance his scientific vision."
In addition to co-creating ChatGPT, Zhao helped build OpenAI's GPT-4, mini models, 4.1 and o3, and he previously led synthetic data at OpenAI, according to Zuckerberg's June memo.
Meta Superintelligence Labs will be where employees work on foundation models such as the open-source Llama family of AI models, products and Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research projects.
The social media company will invest "hundreds of billions of dollars" into AI compute infrastructure, Zuckerberg said earlier this month.
"The next few years are going to be very exciting!" Zuckerberg wrote Friday.
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Yahoo
31 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Stocks to watch this week: Microsoft, Apple, Shell, AstraZeneca and HSBC
Four more of the "Magnificent 7" are to due to report in the coming week, along with a raft of major companies across a range of sectors. Following on from Tesla (TSLA) and Alphabet (GOOGL, GOOG) earnings this week, Microsoft (MSFT), Meta (META), Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) are next up from the Mag 7 to report. On the London market, Shell (SHEL.L) is due to report, having already flagged weaker trading and production for its integrated gas division in the second quarter. Another FTSE 100-listed (^FTSE) giant reporting in the week ahead is pharmaceuticals company AstraZeneca (AZN.L), which has just pledged $50bn of investment in its US operations. Meanwhile, HSBC (HSBA.L) will be the latest UK-listed bank to report, following on from Lloyds (LLOY.L) and NatWest (NWG.L) this week. Here's more on what to look out for: Microsoft (MSFT) – Releases fourth quarter earnings on Wednesday 30 July Tech companies are continuing to cut jobs to reduce costs and streamline operations. This includes Microsoft (MSFT), which recently revealed that it was cutting another 9,000 jobs globally, not long after it axed around 6,000 roles in May. And in a memo to staff on Thursday, CEO Satya Nadella admitted that the recent layoffs had been "weighing heavily" on him. "These decisions are among the most difficult we have to make," he said. "They affect people we've worked alongside, learned from, and shared countless moments with — our colleagues, teammates, and friends." He acknowledged that by "every objective measure, Microsoft is thriving — our market performance, strategic positioning, and growth all point up and to the right." However, Nadella added: "This is the enigma of success in an industry that has no franchise value. Progress isn't linear. It's dynamic, sometimes dissonant, and always demanding." Despite the recent layoff announcements, Microsoft (MSFT) shares have climbed since the company released third quarter results at the end of April and are currently up 21% year-to-date. The company beat expectations in the third quarter, reporting revenue of $70bn (£52.1bn) compared to forecasts of $68.4bn, according to Bloomberg consensus estimates. Earnings per share of $3.46 also beat estimates of $3.21. Read more: Tesla disappoints while Alphabet tops expectations to kick off Mag 7 earnings Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: "Microsoft is the king of quietly going about its business and nailing execution along the way." He said cloud performance through Microsoft Azure was stronger than expected last quarter "and there could be some upside to guidance of 34-35% growth in next week's fourth-quarter results if it's been able to bring more supply online." "Margins will be in focus as eye-watering AI investment continues, but as supply/demand dynamics become more favourable there should be a natural tailwind," he said. Britzman added that there would also be "keen interest in how efforts to boost efficiency are progressing". "Recent reports suggest Microsoft has already saved over $500m in annual costs by integrating AI into its customer service functions," he said. "Some analysts think there's much more to come and will be keeping an eye out for any further commentary on AI driven cost savings." Apple (AAPL) – Releases third quarter results on Thursday 31 July Shares in Apple (AAPL) are down nearly 15% year-to-date, as tariff headwinds have weighed on the iPhone-maker. Apple CEO Tim Cook warned in a second-quarter earnings call at the beginning of May that tariffs were expected to add $900m to costs in the third quarter. Hargreaves Lansdown's Britzman said that this "sounds big, but is relatively small in the grand scheme of things". Apple's second-quarter results topped estimates, with revenue of $95.4bn compared with forecasts of $94.5bn, and EPS of $1.65 compared to expectations of $1.62. Read more: Stocks that are trending today Britzman said that investors will "hoping for more meat on the AI bone" in this latest set of results. "Apple's relatively disappointing developer conference had a distinct lack of news on the AI strategy and investors are rightly looking for some updates," he said. "Apple's approach to AI has fallen well short of what investors and consumers have come to expect from one of the world's leading brands," he added. "Apple Intelligence has so far failed to deliver the game changing experience that was promised, so investors should watch out any updates on new AI features and where Apple stands with Siri, another product with huge potential but poor execution." Shell (SHEL.L) – Releases second quarter results on Thursday 31 July Shares in oil major Shell (SHEL.L) fell in early July on the back of a trading update, in which the company warned that it expected to report lower trading and production results for its gas division in the second quarter. Shell lowered the top end of its production guidance for the integrated natural gas division to 900,000 to 940,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d) for the quarter, compared with a range of 890,000 to 950,000 previously given. The upper end of its outlook for its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production was also lowered, to 6.4 to 6.8 million metric tons compared with a previous range of 6.3 to 6.9 million tons. Shell raised the lower end of its output guidance for its oil-focused upstream division, to a range of 1.66 million to 1.76 million boe/d, up from a previous projection of 1.56 million to 1.76 million boe/d. Stocks: Create your watchlist and portfolio AJ Bell's investment experts Russ Mould and Dan Coatsworth said: "Shell's shares are down by around 6% in the past year and oil & gas producers is the seventh worst performer within the 39 sectors that make up the FTSE All-Share (^FTAS) thanks, in the main, to soggy oil prices. "At the same time, the share price seems to be doing its best to ignore a steady recovery in natural gas, although is still not actually that far below May 2024's all-time high." In the full second quarter results next week, they said that analysts are looking for pre-tax profit of $5.5bn, down from $9bn in the first three months of the year and $7.4bn a year ago. As for Shell's preferred metric of adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA), the benchmark is the $16.8bn figure the company reported in the second quarter of last year. "In terms of cash returns, Shell kept its quarterly dividend unchanged at 35.8 US cents in the first quarter (equivalent to a cash payout of $2.2bn)," said Mould and Coatsworth. "The oil major also ran a $3.5bn buyback in Q2 after a $3.3bn scheme in Q1 and analysts and shareholders will look to see what chief executive Wael Sawan offers for the third quarter." AstraZeneca (AZN.L) – Releases first half results on Tuesday 29 July Earlier this week, AstraZeneca (AZN.L) announced plans to invest $50bn in the US by 2030, as the threat of Trump's tariffs loom over the sector. AstraZeneca said in a statement on Monday that the cornerstone of this investment will be a new multi-billion dollar manufacturing facility in Virginia. In addition, the company said that the investment would go towards other facilities in the US, including a research and development centre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as manufacturing facilities for cell therapy in Maryland and California. Read more: NatWest beats on profits and announces £750m share buyback AstraZeneca said that these investments would collectively help the company deliver its goal of reaching $80bn in total revenue by 2030, of which 50% is expected to be generated in the US. The announcement comes as the Trump administration carries out a Section 232 probe to determine which drug manufacturers are operating in countries that pose a national security threat to the US. Trump teased earlier this month that an announcement around pharmaceuticals tariffs would be coming soon, saying in a cabinet meeting that the rate could be as high as 200%. In terms of performance, AstraZeneca (AZN.L) posted a 10% increase in revenue in the first quarter to $13.6bn, which it said was driven by double-digit growth in oncology and biopharmaceuticals. Reported earnings per share of $1.88 were up 34% on the same quarter last year. At the time, AstraZeneca reiterated its guidance for the year, expecting total revenue to increase by a high single-digit percentage and core EPS to grow by a low double-digit percentage. HSBC (HSBA.L) – Releases first half results on Wednesday 30 July In the first quarter, HSBC (HSBA.L) posted a $3.2bn drop in pre-tax profits to $9.5bn compared with the same period last year, though this was well ahead of expectations of $7.8bn, according to Reuters. HSBC said the drop was primarily because of the net impact in the first quarter of last year of business disposals in Canada and Argentina. The bank said that contributors to profits in the latest quarter included strong performance in its wealth business, as well as in foreign exchange (forex), debt and equity markets. Net interest income (NII) – the gap between what it pays out to savers and receives from borrowers in interest – fell by $0.4bn to $8.3bn. Revenue fell by $3.1bn, or 15%, year-on-year to $17.6bn. Read more: IMF wants Bank of England to ease interest rates 'gradually' HSBC said its board had approved a first interim dividend of $0.10 per share and planned to launch a share buyback of up to $3bn, which it expected to begin shortly after its annual general meeting on 2 May and complete before its interim results announcement. Richard Hunter, head of markets at Interactive Investor, said: "The overhang from China and the tariff trade wars may not be central to its numbers next week from an investment viewpoint. Whereas HSBC had been moving towards becoming a business with a slavish reliance on interest rate movements and levels, the revised and increasing focus on the growth in affluent wealth, especially in Asia, is key to the new offering. "The group has been investing heavily in this move, giving HSBC higher, but more diversified income streams," he added. " "Apart from the longer-term potential for the key Chinese market, the group previously identified areas such as India and Vietnam as being some of the fastest growing economies at present, while the building economic connections between Asia and the Middle East, notwithstanding any geopolitical conflicts, are also emerging opportunities for HSBC with its sprawling footprint." Other companies reporting this week include: Monday 28 July Primary Health Properties (PHP.L) Science Group (SAG.L) Cranswick (CWK.L) Essilor Luxottica ( Heineken ( Porsche ( Tuesday 29 July Games Workshop (GAW.L) Croda (CRDA.L) ConvaTec (CTEC.L) Shaftesbury Capital (SHC.L) Morgan Sindall (MGNS.L) Greggs (GRG.L) Inchcape (INCH.L) Staffline (STAF.L) SThree (STEM.L) Forterra (FORT.L) Restore (RST.L) AG Barr (BAG.L) Tristel (TSTL.L) Advantest (6857.T) NEC (6701.T) L'Oréal ( Christian Dior ( Air Liquide ( Orange ( Ferrovial ( Philips ( Endesa ( Kering ( Logitech ( Brembo ( TF1 ( Visa (V) Procter & Gamble (PG) Merck (MRK) United Health (UEEC) Boeing (BA) Spotify (SPOT) Starbuck's (SBUX) Royal Caribbean Cruises (RCL) Mondelez (MDLZ) UPS (UPS) Norfolk Southern (NSC) Electronic Arts (EA) Sofi Technologies (SOFI) Teradyne (TER) Qorvo (QRVO) Caesar's Entertainment (CZR) Wednesday 30 July Hargreaves Services (HSP.L) Rio Tinto (RIO.L) GSK (GSK.L) Bodycote (BOY.L) Hostelworld (HSW.L) Franchise Brands (FRAN.L) Fujitsu (6702.T) Kyocera (6971.T) Japan Airlines (9201.T) Alibaba (BABA, Prada ( Hermès ( Airbus ( UBS ( Banco Santander (BNC.L) Intesa SanPaolo ( Siemens Healthineers ( Danone ( Mercedes Benz ( Caixa Bank ( Adidas ( BASF ( Wolters Kluwer ( CapGemini ( Telefonica ( Leonardo ( Carrefour ( Krones ( Meta Platforms (META) Qualcomm (QCOM) ARM (ARM) LAM Research (LRCX) Altria (MO) Hess (HES) Carvana (CVNA) Ford (F) American Eagle (AEO) Hershey (HSY) GE Healthcare (GEHC) Kraft Heinz (KHC) eBay (EBAY) Smurfit Westrock (SW) Skyworks (SWKS) F5 (FFIV) Alamos Gold (AGI) MGM Resorts (MGM) Harley Davidson (HOG) Thursday 31 July British American Tobacco (BATS.L) Unilever (ULVR.L) London Stock Exchange (LSEG.L) Rolls-Royce (RR.L) SEGRO (SGRO.L) Standard Chartered (STAN.L) Haleon (HLN.L) Mondi (MNDI.L) Weir (WEIR.L) Endeavour Mining (EDV.L) Schroders (SDR.L) Drax (DRX.L) Elementis (ELM.L) Hammerson (HMSO.L) Spire Healthcare (SPI.L) Helios Towers (HTWS.L) Indivior (INDV.L) Sabre (SBRE.L) Coats (COA.L) Robert Walters (RWA.L) Nichols (NICL.L) Toyota Motor (7203.T) Hitachi (6501.T) Tokyo Electron (8035.T) Japan Tobacco (2914.T) Samsung Electronics ( Budweiser APAC ( Schneider Electric ( Sanofi ( ABInBev ( Ferrari (RACE) ENEL ( BBVA (BVA.L) Universal Music ( BMW ( St Gobain (COD.L) Subsea 7 ( Pirelli ( Clariant ( UCB ( Legrand ( Amadeus IT ( Société Générale ( ArcelorMittal ( Mediobanca ( Lufthansa ( AirFrance-KLM ( Amazon (AMZN) Mastercard (MA) AbbVie (ABBV) Stryker (SYK) Comcast (CMCSA) KLA-Tencor (KLAC) KKR (KKR) Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) Coinbase (COIN) CVS (CVS) Cigna (CI) Roblox (RBLX) Ingersoll-Rand (IR) Clorox (CLX) Baxter (BAX) Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCLH) Shake Shack (SHAK) Verona Pharma (VRNA) Azenta (AZTA) Friday 1 August International Consolidated Airlines (IAG.L) Intertek (ITRK.L) Melrose Industries (MRO.L) Pearson (PSON.L) IMI (IMI.L) KDDI (9433.T) TDK (6762.T) Suzuki Motor (7269.T) Nippon Steel (5401.T) Yamaha (YAMCF) Daimler Truck (DTG) AIB (AIBGY) Jeronimo Martins (JRONF) ConocoPhillips (COP) Kimberly-Clark (KMB) AngloGold Ashanti (AU) DraftKings (DKNG) Moderna (MRNA) Icahn Enterprises (IEP) Goodyear Tire (GT) You can read Yahoo Finance's full calendar here. Read more: UK set to lose 16,500 millionaires this year as non-dom status ends UK's rising debt cost puts Reeves and tax rises in spotlight London IPO fundraising slumps in blow to UKSign in to access your portfolio
Business Insider
2 hours ago
- Business Insider
China's Newest AI Model Is Cheaper than DeepSeek
Chinese tech startups are following in DeepSeek's footsteps by releasing new artificial intelligence models that are smarter and cheaper, according to CNBC. One of the most notable is formerly known as Zhipu, which on Monday revealed its GLM-4.5 model. The company says that this model costs less to use than DeepSeek's and works with agentic AI, which is a system that breaks large tasks into smaller steps for more accurate results. Z. ai is also making the model open-source so developers can freely download and use it. Elevate Your Investing Strategy: Take advantage of TipRanks Premium at 50% off! Unlock powerful investing tools, advanced data, and expert analyst insights to help you invest with confidence. What's interesting is that GLM-4.5 is roughly half the size of DeepSeek's competing model and requires only eight Nvidia (NVDA) H20 chips to run. For context, these are the specialized chips made for China to comply with U.S. export controls. CEO Zhang Peng told CNBC that the company already has enough computing power and does not need to buy more chips, although he declined to disclose the model's training costs. Nevertheless, stated that it will charge $0.11 per million input tokens and $0.28 per million output tokens, which is significantly cheaper than DeepSeek's rates of $0.14 and $2.19, respectively. It is worth noting that release adds to a wave of new open-source AI models from China. Indeed, earlier this month, Alibaba-backed Moonshot (BABA) introduced its Kimi K2 model that it claimed was better at coding than OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude. Tencent (TCEHY) also released its HunyuanWorld-1.0 model for 3D game development, and Alibaba announced Qwen3-Coder for programming tasks. In addition, has raised more than $1.5 billion from investors, which has led U.S. regulators to add the startup to their Entity List that limits American companies from working with it. Which Tech Stock Is the Better Buy? Turning to Wall Street, out of the three stocks mentioned above, analysts think that BABA stock has the most room to run. In fact, BABA's average price target of $151.08 per share implies more than 23% upside potential. On the other hand, analysts expect the least from of $184.91 equates to a gain of 5.6%.
2 hours ago
Cheyenne to host massive AI data center using more electricity than all Wyoming homes combined
CHEYENNE, Wyo. -- An artificial intelligence data center that would use more electricity than every home in Wyoming combined before expanding to as much as five times that size will be built soon near Cheyenne, according to the city's mayor. 'It's a game changer. It's huge,' Mayor Patrick Collins said Monday. With cool weather — good for keeping computer temperatures down — and an abundance of inexpensive electricity from a top energy-producing state, Wyoming's capital has become a hub of computing power. The city has been home to Microsoft data centers since 2012. An $800 million data center announced last year by Facebook parent company Meta Platforms is nearing completion, Collins said. The latest data center, a joint effort between regional energy infrastructure company Tallgrass and AI data center developer Crusoe, would begin at 1.8 gigawatts of electricity and be scalable to 10 gigawatts, according to a joint company statement. A gigawatt can power as many as 1 million homes. But that's more homes than Wyoming has people. The least populated state, Wyoming, has about 590,000 people. And it's a major exporter of energy. A top producer of coal, oil and gas, Wyoming ranks behind only Texas, New Mexico and Pennsylvania as a top net energy-producing state, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Accounting for fossil fuels, Wyoming produces about 12 times more energy than it consumes. The state exports almost three-fifths of the electricity it produces, according to the EIA. But this proposed data center is so big, it would have its own dedicated energy from gas generation and renewable sources, according to Collins and company officials. Gov. Mark Gordon praised the project's value to the state's gas industry. 'This is exciting news for Wyoming and for Wyoming natural gas producers," Gordon said in the statement. While data centers are energy-hungry, experts say companies can help reduce their effect on the climate by powering them with renewable energy rather than fossil fuels. Even so, electricity customers might see their bills increase as utilities plan for massive data projects on the grid. The data center would be built several miles (kilometers) south of Cheyenne off U.S. 85 near the Colorado state line. State and local regulators would need to sign off on the project, but Collins was optimistic construction could begin soon. "I believe their plans are to go sooner rather than later,' Collins said. OpenAI, the developer of Chat GPT, has been scouring the U.S. for sites for a massive AI data center effort called Stargate, but a Crusoe spokesperson declined to say if the Cheyenne project was one. 'We are not at a stage that we are ready to announce our tenant there,' said the spokesperson, Andrew Schmitt. 'I can't confirm or deny that is going to be one of the stargate." Recently, OpenAI announced it had switched on the first phase of a Crusoe-built data center complex in Abilene, Texas, in a partnership with software giant Oracle. 'To the best of our knowledge, it is the largest data center — we think of it as a campus — in the world,' OpenAI's chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane told The Associated Press last week. 'It generates, roughly and depending how you count, about a gigawatt of energy.' OpenAI has also been looking elsewhere in the U.S. to expand its data centers. It said last week that it has entered into an agreement with Oracle to develop another 4.5 gigawatts of data center capacity. 'We're now in a position where we have, in a really concrete way, identified over five gigawatts of energy that we're going to be able to build around,' Lehane said. OpenAI hasn't named any locations, besides its flagship site in Texas, where it plans to build data centers. As of earlier this year, Wyoming was not one of the 16 states where OpenAI said it was looking for locations to build new data centers.
