Latest news with #JakubPorzycki
Forbes
21 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
Meta To Pull All Political Ads In The EU
Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images Meta has decided to stop serving political, electoral, and social advertising on its platforms in the EU, rather than be subject to upcoming regulation. In October, the Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising regulation will come into effect, aimed at countering foreign interference in elections. It doesn't affect the content of political advertisements or, for example, the conduct of political campaigns, which fall under the jurisdiction of each individual member state. But it does cover the transparency and targeting of political advertising around elections, referendums, EU or member state legislation. Political ads must carry a transparency notice, and targeted ads will be allowed only if the individual has given specific consent. And, to prevent foreign interference, advertising services to third country sponsors will be banned completely for three months before an election or referendum. Meta claims that it already has strong measures in place - beyond what the law requires - to make sure that the political ads served on its platforms are genuine, and to share information about them transparently. And the new rules, it said, are too burdensome. "Unfortunately, the TTPA introduces significant, additional obligations to our processes and systems that create an untenable level of complexity and legal uncertainty for advertisers and platforms operating in the EU," it said in a statement. "For example, the TTPA places extensive restrictions on ad targeting and delivery which would restrict how political and social issue advertisers can reach their audiences and lead to people seeing less relevant ads on our platforms." And, as a result, when the legislation comes into force, the company plans to stop serving political, electoral and social issue ads on its platforms - which include Facebook and Instagram - in the EU altogether . "Our decision is specific to the EU. Elsewhere, we will continue to provide our industry-leading tools that ensure authentic and transparent political advertising," said the firm. "It also won't prevent people in the EU from continuing to debate politics on our services, or stop politicians, candidates and political office holders from producing and sharing political content organically. They just won't be able to amplify this through paid advertising." Late last year, Google made a similar decision, saying that the TTPA introduces significant new operational challenges and legal uncertainties for political advertisers and platforms. "For example, the TTPA defines political advertising so broadly that it could cover ads related to an extremely wide range of issues that would be difficult to reliably identify at scale," it said in a statement. "There is also a lack of reliable local election data permitting consistent and accurate identification of all ads related to any local, regional or national election across any of 27 EU Member States." It, too, plans to stop serving political advertising when the TTPA enters into force in October, while paid political promotions that qualify as political ads under the TTPA won't be permitted on YouTube in the EU.
Forbes
6 days ago
- Science
- Forbes
From the ENIAC to the Cerebras chip, looking clear-eyed at hardware innovation is frankly amazing.
Microchip and Nvidia logo displayed on a phone screen are seen in this multiple exposure ... More illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on April 10, 2023. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images) For anybody who did any kind of computing in the 1950s or 1960s, (or for that matter, in the 1970s or the 1980s), the advances that we've made in hardware are staggering. But if you do track them to Moore's law and really analyze how incremental doubling works, it all sort of makes sense. If you remember the story about the smartie (in some versions of the tale, the inventor of the game of chess) who asked a king to double a grain of rice 64 times, you get some sense of how this works – an exponential advance that starts out small and reasonable, and ends up in the realm of what people would have originally thought to be fantasy. It's all basic math, but it still seems like a magic trick – you're moving along: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 – and then you wind up with a number bigger than you can visualize! I also found this aside from Wikipedia, describing the original contriver of this trick, to be riotously funny: 'Versions (of the story) differ as to whether the inventor becomes a high-ranking advisor or is executed.' This idea, too, has been applied to our new AI gold rush - in fact, for students of artificial intelligence minutia, none other than Ray Kurzweil talks about the 'second half of the chessboard' phenomenon that goes right to the heart of what I'm trying to articulate – that the first numbers start out seeming very reasonable, until you get about halfway into the series, and then the real exponential change happens. In other words, there's a slow rise, and then a break point where that line spirals up into the stratosphere. If you double the grains of rice on a chessboard and come up with 18 quintillion, 446 quadrillion, 744 trillion and change, you get a powerful visual example of how this works. Well, not a visual example, exactly, because you can't fit all of those grains of rice into a single image, but a conceptual idea of how it works. The Frenetic Pace of Hardware Engineering I previously wrote about the Cerebras WSE chip that's about the size of a dinner plate, and has some 90,000 cores. Sources including IEEE Spectrum show that the WSE‑2 (Cerebras CS‑2) delivers approximately 7,500 trillion FP16 operations per second (7.5 petaFLOPS), while the WSE‑3 gets up to 125 petaFLOPS. This is a powerful thing to hold in your hand, and it demonstrates the power of parallel processing. It wasn't too many years ago that we were using single core chips, then dual core, then quad core. Well, you get the idea. Now we have things like the Huawei Cloudmatrix, where they keep some of these numbers under wraps, but you know intuitively that the hardware power is unreal. Hardware as a Habitat There was an interesting TED talk given by Caleb Sirak that I attended recently where the young innovator talked about hardware as a 'silicon prison.' He went over the history of hardware acceleration from early systems, measured in millions of operations per second, to then trillions, and even quadrillions. He pointed out that in some ways, this process was driven by gaming, but it quickly made its way past that single use case with Nvidia Cuda and other designs. Now, he suggested, it's time to change with the times. 'It's time to rethink the whole system,' Sirak said. Winning the Hardware Lottery One tool in pioneering new kinds of GPUs, Sirak added, is quantization. For example, a 4-bit multiplier is orders of magnitude more efficient than a 32 bit multiplier. He talked about innovations like the Cerebras chip (in this context,) and how you can reduce the trajectory of data transfers to drive efficiencies with AI. 'When each parameter is smaller, we can put more of them across the system per second, and this decreases bottlenecks across memory and network interconnects,' he said. He talked about xAI's Colossus, with what he called a 'road map' to a million GPUs. And then, back to efficiencies: 'You can take a flexible city street grid with a lot of different cars,' he explained,'or you can have an f1 track, and if you have an f1 track, that f1 card goes pretty damn fast.' He covers the work of various companies in designing smart swarms of hardware pieces, which he referred to as 'intelligent colonies.' 'The power that we're unlocking through these AI chips and these advancements has profound implications,' he added, 'and increasingly accessible and globally shared innovation is crucial. At the heart of this revolution lies a supply chain of remarkable complexity, from rare earth minerals combined on one continent, to chemicals on another, and chips on the third.' As another example of an interconnected world, he noted that a single chip can cross dozens of national boundaries before being ultimately put into production. That makes abundant sense to anyone who knows that Taiwan Semiconductor provides the lion's share of chip fabs worldwide. In any case, we really are in the hockey stick curve of a hardware acceleration for the ages. Stay tuned.
Forbes
7 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Nvidia Stock To Crash In 2025?
Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) stock has risen by 23% since early January and remains up almost 80% from lows seen in April as AI driven demand remains strong. However, there are concerns. One word. Okay, two maybe. Customer concentration. In Q1 FY'26, (ended April 2025) Nvidia disclosed that one customer accounted for 16% of revenue and another for 14%, both tied to its Compute & Networking segment. That's up from 11% and 13% sales from two direct customers in the same quarter a year ago. We're worried about that. Imagine paying close to $35 billion a year to Nvidia. How long is that going to happen? Nvidia logo displayed on a phone screen and microchip and are seen in this illustration photo taken ... More in Krakow, Poland on July 19, 2023. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images) Although Nvidia doesn't name them, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG), and Meta are widely understood to be among its largest customers. These customers are in the middle of an unprecedented AI spending spree. Amazon is expected to spend up to $105 billion on capex in 2025, while Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta are forecast to spend as much as $80 billion, $75 billion, and $72 billion respectively, much of it earmarked for AI infrastructure. A substantial portion of this will flow directly to Nvidia for GPU purchases. AI data centers also require costly land, building, electricity infrastructure, cooling, and networking systems. However, we aren't so sure these companies will keep investing the way they have on AI in the longer run. Why is that? Sketchy Returns on AI Investments The economics of the end market for AI, particularly for GPU-driven applications, remains uncertain. Most of Nvidia's customers likely aren't generating meaningful returns on their investments yet. Let's take Google, for instance. Its core search business, which generated over $170 billion in 2023 via ad sales, is being disrupted by AI-powered search tools such as Perplexity, and ChatGPT. While Google has built Gemini, a cutting edge AI search offering of its own, it does not currently offer a comparable monetization model. As shareholders eventually seek better returns on investments, we could see capital spending on GPU chips cool off, impacting the likes of Nvidia. Model Training Slowdown? Over the past two years, companies have heavily invested in AI model training, with Nvidia's GPUs emerging as the top choice on account of their performance and efficiency. AI model training is a compute-intensive process that may eventually slow. Unlike traditional cloud growth, AI model training is compute-heavy but often front-loaded making a slowdown in future GPU demand quite possible. Incremental performance gains are expected to diminish as models grow larger, and the availability of high-quality training data could become a bottleneck. As training demand declines, GPU demand could weaken. Now training these massive models is more of a one-time affair that requires considerable computing power and Nvidia has been the biggest beneficiary of this, as its GPUs are regarded as the fastest and most efficient for these tasks. Building In House AI Chips At the same time, big tech giants aren't relying solely on Nvidia - they are all actively developing their own custom AI chips. Google is building its TPU chips, while Amazon, Microsoft with Maia, and Meta too, have their own silicon developments focused on AI. While these chips have a long way to go to match Nvidia's performance in compute heavy training tasks, they could be well optimized for their respective company's AI models and code. Moreover, by building their own chips, these companies could be looking to increase bargaining power with Nvidia and create some independence from Nvidia's supply chain and pricing. Even if Nvidia maintains its technological edge, the concentration of its revenue in a handful of hyperscalers, who are both customers and emerging competitors, could be a vulnerability. Impact on Nvidia Stock NVIDIA's Revenues have surged by over 2x over the last year and are on track to grow by over 50% this year per consensus estimates. While the stock trades at above 40x estimated FY'26 earnings, this isn't too high considering the company's growth rates. That said, these projections assume hyperscaler demand continues unabated. A pullback from any major customers - whether due to internal chip development, more cautious AI returns, or overall tech spending moderation – could lead to lower pricing, lower volumes, and a sharp erosion of profitability. This is especially critical for a company like Nvidia, where such a large share of revenue is tied to a handful of customers. This could lead to a sharp contraction in valuation multiples. The risks here aren't hypothetical, either. Recent evidence from 2022 shows that NVDA stock lost over 60% of its value within just a few quarters. In fact, the stock fell by close to 35% over Q1 2025 due to concerns about tariffs. This could very well repeat itself if big customers show signs of cutting back on spending. Not too happy about the volatile nature of NVDA stock? The Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio, with a collection of 30 stocks, has a track record of comfortably outperforming the S&P 500 over the last 4-year period. Why is that? As a group, HQ Portfolio stocks provided better returns with less risk versus the benchmark index; less of a roller-coaster ride, as evident in HQ Portfolio performance metrics.
Forbes
21-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Peacock Streaming Service Increasing Subscription Prices This Week
TV remote control is seen with Peacock logo displayed on a screen in this illustration photo taken ... More in Krakow, Poland on February 6, 2022. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images) NBC Universal's Peacock streaming service is boosting the prices of its monthly and yearly streaming packages this week. Peacock launched on April 15, 2020, and primarily contains content from the NBC Universal library, which includes NBC-TV programming and Universal Pictures releases (Wicked, Nosferatu, etc.) . In addition to library content, Peacock also produces original TV programming and movies, and features sports programming including the NFL's Sunday Night Football, NBA Basketball and the Olympics. Currently, Peacock costs $7.99 per month or $79.99 per month for Peacock Premium, which includes ad-based programming or $13.99 per month or $139.99 per year for Peacock Premium Plus, which has ad-free programming. Peacock recently announced, however, that on Wednesday, July 23, the ad-based tier, which is known as Peacock Premium, will be increased to $10.99 per month to $109.99 per year, while ad-free programming on the Peacock Premium Plus tier will increase to $16.99 per month to $169.99 per year. Depending on when they are billed, some current Peacock subscribers may not see the subscription bill until as late as Aug. 22. With the price increases, Peacock's ad-based and ad-free tiers will be more expensive than its main competitors — Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max and Paramount+ — Variety reported. KANSAS CITY, MO - JANUARY 13: A view of the Peacock logo before an AFC Wild Card playoff game ... More between the Miami Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs on Jan 13, 2024 at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, MO. (Photo by Scott Winters/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) The Upcoming Peacock Price Increase Is The Third For The Streamer In 5 years When Peacock launched in 2020, the NBC Universal streaming service cost $4.99 per month for the ad-based Peacock Premium tier and $9.99 per month for Peacock Premium Plus. The streaming service maintained the pricing until July 18, 2023, when Peacock increased its monthly subscription pricing to $5.99 monthly and $59.99 yearly for Peacock Premium and $11.99 monthly and $119.99 yearly for Peacock Premium Plus. Then, in July of 2024, Peacock hiked its prices again to $7.99 per month or $79.99 per month for Peacock Premium and $13.99 per month or $139.99 for Peacock Premium Plus. With the new price increases, Peacock will also be offering a cheaper alternative with its Peacock Select tier, which will cost $7.99 per month or $79.99 per year. Per Variety, the tier includes current seasons of NBC-TV and Bravo programming, as well as some library titles. According to Variety, Peacock announced earlier in 2025 that the service has 41 million subscribers, which increased from 36 million subscribers in 2024.
Forbes
14-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
easyJet Q3 Results: What Investors Should Look Out For
easyJet plane is seen at London Gatwick Airport in Crawley, Great Britain on July 11, 2025. (Photo ... More by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images) easyJet (LON:EZJ) is set to report its Q3 figures on Thursday. With the easyJet share price down 11.6% since disclosing its interim results in May, here's what investors need to know ahead of its Q3 update for a potential rebound to occur. Turbulence Calming Down? easyJet had quite a decent H1. All its divisions realised healthy growth rates, with sales in its packaged holidays segment seeing the highest growth, at 28.6%. Nonetheless, the decline in ticket yields took some of the report's shine off, as the company invested in its new winter routes by stimulating demand through lowering prices. Consequently, passenger RASK fell 6.3% to 3.88p, with passenger revenue per seat also sliding 0.7% to £48.02. As such, investors should pay close attention to Q3's RASK. I'm estimating yields to remain flat-ish to slightly positive (4.54p vs 4.56p last year). This is due to the fact that easyJet still launched new routes in Q3, which are likely to continue weighing on RASK. Having said that, the higher demand in the summer should result in lower price stimulation, with a helpful boost from the timing of Easter in Q3 this year. As a result, this should translate to passenger revenue growth of 5.6% to of £1.69 billion. This is because while yields might be relatively flat, volumes in the form of ASK should be 6.2% higher at 37.3 million KM, according to my estimates. This comes as Europe's second-largest airline brings more aircraft on board, with a higher number of seats, and longer flights. I envision a similar neutral rate of growth for ancillary RASK (2.20p vs 2.22p), as I believe easyJet's new and longer flights won't stimulate as many ancillary opportunities, as was seen in H1. Although, there is an argument to be made that longer flights can stimulate volumes, too (eg. may result in more customers buying bigger legroom seats) – but this remains to be seen. Therefore, I have ancillary revenue growth of 4.3% to £723 million. As for the firm's most-promising business in Holidays, I'm forecasting revenue growth of 27.7% to £429 million. There remains a lot of untapped potential in easyJet Holidays, as its market share continues to grow from a low base. Paired with a growing attachment rate, the launch of new destinations and bases, while more customers take up luxury offerings, and there's a strong tailwind brewing. All in all, I project total revenue to come in at £2.84 billion. easyJet Q3 Revenue Growth by Segment (FY24-FY25) A Sticky End to Q3 Despite the spike in oil prices towards the end of Q3 from the Israel-Iran skirmish, easyJet's fuel CASK should still see a slight pullback (1.73p vs 1.78p). The price of European A1 jet fuel might have soared to the $750/MT mark, but the FTSE 250 constituent's fuel hedges should provide sufficient protection, as it had approximately 88.0% of its fuel hedged at $750/MT anyway, with prices running around the $650/MT mark earlier in the quarter. The good news, though, is that jet fuel prices have calmed back down since, albeit still not back to their pre-skirmish levels. But if oil prices don't jump sharply again in Q4, there's even scope for fuel CASK to drop a further 0.01p or more in Q4, provided jet A1 in Europe can return to $690/MT or below for a substantial period in the quarter. But even in the event of a reversal, the group remains well hedged, too, with a fuel hedge of 83.0% at $740/MT. European Average Jet A1 Fuel Price per Month (Q3'24 vs Q3'25) Moving on to non-fuel CASK, I'm projecting a slight decrease to 4.23p from 4.29p. But due to the higher volume of flights, the airline's total cost base ex. fuel will still rise to an estimated £1.73 billion. After all, longer flights combined with easyJet's shift towards more slot-constrained airports are bound to result in higher fees from airport and ground handling, crew, navigation, and maintenance. All of this should then translate to a 12.1% increment in headline EBITDA of £474 million, according to my model. Headline depreciation and amortisation is also likely to head higher to what I think will be £204 million. This will most likely be down to investments in tech and infrastructure coming into play, with higher depreciation costs coming from the higher percentage of owned aircraft in the fleet as compared to last year. Finally, assuming there are no surprises in the finance quadrant, I have projected easyJet to post a Q3 headline pre-tax profit (PBT) of £262 million – an 11.0% boost. However, this hinges on net finance costs only edging a tinge higher from an increase in leased aircraft payments, a bigger Holidays asset pool yielding higher finance income, offset slightly by lower interest rates. Potentially Cloudy Guidance The easyJet share price could very well descend on Thursday if CEO Kenton Jarvis doesn't reiterate his FY25 PBT guidance of roughly £700-710 million. In fact, consensus has pulled back slightly in recent weeks, to forecast £697 million. This is likely from fears that travel demand may be cooling after Jet2 reported last week that its customers have been booking their summer holidays later than usual, sending its stock crashing 7.0%. The impact from this sell-off also sent the easyJet share price down by 3.5%, as investors fear a contagion event. That being said, it's worth pointing out that Jet2 has had a history of reporting its customers booking late, with such trends going back to over a year ago. Plus, based on the latest Barclays consumer spending report, spend growth in airlines remains extremely strong, especially in the budget area. Outside of that, investors also ought to look out for hints on the fuel CASK guidance. It's crucial to highlight that the last time the team spoke to investors, it guided for FY25 fuel CASK to fall by about 8.0% – before the Middle Eastern skirmish. The market has since adjusted its numbers to reflect a more modest low-to-mid-single digit drop, but a reiteration of the 8.0% figure could send the stock rebounding as analysts price in higher earnings. Nevertheless, I'm still a little more confident than the market, as I'm of the belief that management will reiterate its guidance, with my model currently suggesting FY25 PBT at £704 million. This would, as a result, translate to headline earnings per share (EPS) of 69.9p, working on the assumption that the tax rate is 25.0% with share dilution at its recent historical rate. easyJet EPS Results and Consensus (FY23-FY27) In spite of that, I've since reworked my medium-term EPS numbers to reflect a more conservative outlook. This has now resulted in my model's EPS CAGR through to FY27 slowing slightly to 15.6% from a previous 16.4%. That said, with the stock's current EV/headline EBITDA still at 2.7 versus the sector's 7.7, alongside a PEG of 0.6 versus the sector's 1.5, I reiterate my price target of 780p for easyJet shares.
