Latest news with #Iranian-American
Time Magazine
20-05-2025
- Business
- Time Magazine
Pam Omidyar and Pierre Omidyar
Iranian-American entrepreneur Pierre Omidyar founded eBay in 1995, and within a few years, he and his wife Pam were billionaires. Since then, they have committed to using the majority of their wealth to improve the lives of others, giving over $4 billion to causes from humanitarian aid to global democracy, and creating a network of new institutions in the process. In 2004, they founded the Omidyar Network, which to date has invested almost $2 billion in both nonprofit and for-profit organizations focused on innovative technology, civic engagement, and media initiatives that serve the public interest. Among them: the Democracy Fund, which does grantmaking and civic advocacy in the U.S., and Luminate, which funds work to improve information ecosystems and civic participation with a focus on Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The couple have also founded institutions individually: First Look Media, for example, was launched by Pierre to support independent journalism, while Hopelab, founded by Pam, seeks to use technology to improve youth mental latest initiative: at the 2025 AI Action Summit in Paris, their organization for AI in the public interest, AI Collaborative, helped establish a $400 million public-private partnership bringing together governments, tech companies, and philanthropic organizations to ensure the technology serves democratic interests.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Pam Omidyar and Pierre Omidyar
Credit - Courtesy Michele Clement Iranian-American entrepreneur Pierre Omidyar founded eBay in 1995, and within a few years, he and his wife Pam were billionaires. Since then, they have committed to using the majority of their wealth to improve the lives of others, giving over $4 billion to causes from humanitarian aid to global democracy, and creating a network of new institutions in the process. In 2004, they founded the Omidyar Network, which to date has invested almost $2 billion in both nonprofit and for-profit organizations focused on innovative technology, civic engagement, and media initiatives that serve the public interest. Among them: the Democracy Fund, which does grantmaking and civic advocacy in the U.S., and Luminate, which funds work to improve information ecosystems and civic participation with a focus on Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The couple have also founded institutions individually: First Look Media, for example, was launched by Pierre to support independent journalism, while Hopelab, founded by Pam, seeks to use technology to improve youth mental latest initiative: at the 2025 AI Action Summit in Paris, their organization for AI in the public interest, AI Collaborative, helped establish a $400 million public-private partnership bringing together governments, tech companies, and philanthropic organizations to ensure the technology serves democratic interests. Contact us at letters@ Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
Asia Times
19-05-2025
- Business
- Asia Times
American AI chipmakers' eyes are on Saudi Arabia now, not China
Artificial intelligence (AI) chip makers in the United States have complained in recent years about Washington's chip export ban against China, but they are less grumbly now as they see rising opportunities in the Middle East. On a trip to the Middle East on May 13, US President Donald Trump was welcomed by Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman. Both sides agreed to boost their cooperation in AI development. Trump said Saudi Arabia's DataVolt plans to invest $20 billion in AI data centers and energy infrastructure in the US. At the same time, Google, DataVolt, Oracle, Salesforce, AMD and Uber are committing to invest $80 billion in cutting-edge transformative technologies in both countries. The same day, the US Commerce Department said its Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) will not enforce the AI diffusion rule. That rule dates from January, when the Biden administration announced US companies, such as Nvidia and AMD, were required to apply for export licenses if they ship high-end AI chips to foreign countries other than 18 US allies. 'The good news about the US is that the administration has changed,' Mohsen Moazami, President of Groq International and an Iranian-American entrepreneur, who joined Trump's recent tour to Saudi Arabia, told Asia Times in an interview on the sidelines of a London event called AI Rush on May 16. 'The administration has changed, and therefore the mind has changed.' Mohsen Moazami, President of Groq International and an Iranian-American entrepreneur Photo: Asia Times / Jeff Pao 'What the former administration thought,' he said, 'could be different from what the current administration thinks. Right now, the current administration is very keen on making American technology available to all the legitimate players on the planet to ensure that they benefit from the usage, and that America benefits from them using American technology,' Moazami said. Commenting on the ongoing US-China chip war, he said the market would decide who would win. He noted that Jensen Huang, Nvidia's chief executive, 'was on record 10 days ago saying 50% of the world's AI researchers are Chinese. A country with that much wealth and human resources should be respected, as long as everybody abides by the set of rules in a fair competition.' Moazami added: 'We don't steal from you, and you don't steal from us. Then we can compete and let the market decide who is the winner.' Nvidia and Groq are both headquartered in California. Nvidia makes graphic processing units (GPUs) for AI model training, while Groq makes language processing units (LPUs) for AI inference, which uses trained AI models to reason and make predictions for machine learning. Groq is unrelated to technology guru Elon Musk's AI model Grok. In October 2022, the Biden administration unveiled a package of export controls, forbidding Nvidia from shipping A100 and H100 AI chips to China. A year later, it also banned the exports of A800 and H800 chips to China. Nvidia then tailor-made H20 chips for the Chinese markets, but it still faced shrinking revenue and margins in China and rising challenges from Huawei Technologies' Ascend AI chips. In his final week at the White House in January, US President Joe Biden announced the AI diffusion rule, which would create heavy compliance costs for American AI chipmakers. However, on May 13, the BIS rescinded the AI diffusion rule and replaced it with three guidelines to forbid companies from using Ascend chips, deploying US chips to help Chinese firms train their AI models or re-exporting US high-end chips to China. The new rules shifted compliance burdens from chipmakers to the end users. The Trump administration also helped American AI firms open new markets in the Middle East. Also on May 13, Humain, an AI development unit of Saudi Arabia's state-owned Public Investment Fund (PIF), announced a strategic partnership with Nvidia to build AI data centers in the kingdom with a projected capacity of up to 500 megawatts powered by several hundred thousand of Nvidia's most advanced GPUs over the next five years. In the first phase, Nvidia will deploy an 18,000-unit Nvidia GB300 Grace Blackwell AI supercomputer with NVIDIA InfiniBand networking to Saudi Arabia. On May 15, Humain named Groq as its official inference chip provider. In February, Groq opened a data center in Dammam, Saudi Arabia. 'Groq is fortunate to be chosen to power the largest cluster of AI inference in the Middle East,' Moazami said. 'We have an extension of GroqCloud coming out of Dammam. Saudi Arabia is now serving tokens [providing AI and machine-learning services] not only domestically but also internationally.' 'Low energy cost is the most critical factor,' he said. 'At the end of the day, things not only have to be fast – they have to be cheap,' he said, adding that the power cost is only three US cents per kilowatt hour in Saudi Arabia, compared with more than 30 cents per kWh in the United Kingdom. Chinese media said Huawei's Ascend chips currently have a 30% market share in Saudi Arabia, mainly due to an AI project in the Neom planned city. On April 9, the US government informed Nvidia that it would need to obtain licenses to export H20 chips to China. Huang told Reuters on May 17 that his company is evaluating how to address the Chinese market but will not downgrade the H20 further as 'it's not possible to modify Hopper anymore.' According to a Financial Times report, Nvidia will open a research and development center in Shanghai to support Chinese clients while complying with US export rules amid growing AI chip trade. Lin Jian, a spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said on May 16 that the US overstretches the concept of national security, abuses export controls and long-arm jurisdiction, and groundlessly and maliciously blocks and suppresses China's chips and AI industry. 'China firmly opposes this and absolutely does not accept it. China urges the US to drop its protectionist acts and unilateral bullying, and stop its egregious suppression of China's technology businesses and AI industry,' Lin said. 'China will take firm measures to defend its right to development and Chinese businesses' legitimate rights and interests.' On Monday, Huawei published a technical paper, saying that its Ascend AI server using the DeepSeek AI model can deploy inferences faster than Nvidia's Hopper. Jin Lei, a columnist at said Huawei successfully used advantages in mathematical theories and algorithms to offset the physical limitations of its hardware, maximizing its servers' performance. At the AI Rush event, some cloud experts said combining different chips and models is the upcoming trend in the AI sector. Christian Reilly, Cloudflare's Field Chief Technology Officer for EMEA Photo: Asia Times / Jeff Pao Christian Reilly, Cloudflare's Field Chief Technology Officer for EMEA, said DeepSeek's success showed the importance of using the right technology at the right time. 'As technologists and engineers, we always build for scale and peak. That is a great idea, until you can't do it,' Reilly said. 'DeepSeek engineers were constrained by their limited capacity. So they engineered this differently.' 'Originally, there was a defined way that we kept scaling out the number of parameters … but if you look at DeepSeek, it was genius.' In late January, Wall Street investors were shocked by DeepSeek's rise. The company used the distillation method and 2,000 H800 chips to train its AI models. Alexandre Pereira, co-founder and chief executive of said the AI sector has made enough GPUs to sustain itself for several years, and it's time for AI companies to consider what types of GPUs and language models they need instead of choosing the most powerful ones. Read: US uses 'poison pills' to isolate China from supply chains
Time of India
17-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Moody's downgrade US credit rating: What led to Moody's downgrading the U.S. credit rating to Aa1, first time in over a century? Here are the reasons the agency cited and why Americans should be worri
Reason For Moody's Downgrading the US Credit Rating What Does This Mean for the US Economy? How Does This Compare to Previous Downgrades? ADVERTISEMENT FAQs ADVERTISEMENT For the first time in over a century, the US does not hold a top-tier rating from any major credit agency, as even Moody's Ratings downgraded the US government's credit rating from Aaa to Aa1 on Friday, as per explained that it reduced the ratings due to repeated failures by successive administrations to control the country's growing debt, as per Newsweek. However, the ratings agency also mentioned that the United States 'retains exceptional credit strengths such as the size, resilience and dynamism of its economy and the role of the U.S. dollar as global reserve currency," quoted READ: Moody's downgrades U.S. rating from AAA to Aa1; what are the consequences of this move, and will the economy be affected? Here are all the details The rating agency also pointed out that, 'We expect federal deficits to widen, reaching nearly 9% of (the U.S. economy) by 2035, up from 6.4% in 2024, driven mainly by increased interest payments on debt, rising entitlement spending, and relatively low revenue generation," quoted Moody's also cautioned that extending US president Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts, which is now a key priority for the Republican-led Congress, would add $4 trillion to the federal primary deficit over the next 10 years, as per is the latest downgrade of the three major rating agencies to lower the federal government's credit, Standard & Poor's downgraded federal debt in 2011 and Fitch Ratings followed in 2023, reported READ: Who is Mark Zandi, the Iranian-American Moody's chief economist whom Donald Trump accuses of downgrading the U.S. credit rating to Aa1? Democratic strategist Chris Jackson posted on social media platform X, saying, "BREAKING: In a stunning move, Moody's has downgraded the U.S. credit rating from Aaa to Aa1—for the first time in history. That's right: the only major credit agency that hadn't downgraded us under Trump just did. Who else enjoying all this 'economic winning' under Trump?" as quoted by means the US no longer holds the highest credit downgraded the US due to the rising national debt and a lack of government action to address it.
Time of India
17-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
What led to Moody's downgrading the U.S. credit rating to Aa1, first time in over a century? Here are the reasons the agency cited and why Americans should be worried
For the first time in over a century, the US does not hold a top-tier rating from any major credit agency, as even Moody's Ratings downgraded the US government's credit rating from Aaa to Aa1 on Friday, as per reports. Reason For Moody's Downgrading the US Credit Rating Moody's explained that it reduced the ratings due to repeated failures by successive administrations to control the country's growing debt, as per Newsweek. However, the ratings agency also mentioned that the United States 'retains exceptional credit strengths such as the size, resilience and dynamism of its economy and the role of the U.S. dollar as global reserve currency," quoted AP. ALSO READ: Moody's downgrades U.S. rating from AAA to Aa1; what are the consequences of this move, and will the economy be affected? Here are all the details What Does This Mean for the US Economy? The rating agency also pointed out that, 'We expect federal deficits to widen, reaching nearly 9% of (the U.S. economy) by 2035, up from 6.4% in 2024, driven mainly by increased interest payments on debt, rising entitlement spending, and relatively low revenue generation," quoted AP. While, Moody's also cautioned that extending US president Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts, which is now a key priority for the Republican-led Congress, would add $4 trillion to the federal primary deficit over the next 10 years, as per Newsweek. Live Events How Does This Compare to Previous Downgrades? It is the latest downgrade of the three major rating agencies to lower the federal government's credit, Standard & Poor's downgraded federal debt in 2011 and Fitch Ratings followed in 2023, reported AP. ALSO READ: Who is Mark Zandi, the Iranian-American Moody's chief economist whom Donald Trump accuses of downgrading the U.S. credit rating to Aa1? Democratic strategist Chris Jackson posted on social media platform X, saying, "BREAKING: In a stunning move, Moody's has downgraded the U.S. credit rating from Aaa to Aa1—for the first time in history. That's right: the only major credit agency that hadn't downgraded us under Trump just did. Who else enjoying all this 'economic winning' under Trump?" as quoted by Newsweek. FAQs What does the downgrade mean for the US? It means the US no longer holds the highest credit rating. Why did Moody's downgrade the US? Moody's downgraded the US due to the rising national debt and a lack of government action to address it.
