 Nvidia is preparing to withdraw its plans to acquire U.K. chip designer Arm, Bloomberg reports. The chipmaker has faced hurdles trying to gain regulatory approval for the $40B deal, one of the biggest deals ever for the semiconductor industry. More: - Japanese tech giant SoftBank agreed to sell Arm to Nvidia in September 2020.
- The deal has faced scrutiny from regulators who argued that it would harm competition and give Nvidia an unfair advantage over rivals.
- Last year, the U.K.'s competition regulator launched an in-depth investigation to explore antitrust and national security concerns. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission also filed its own lawsuit challenging the transaction.
- Nvidia has since told partners it doesn't expect the deal to be finalized.
- Softbank is now preparing to take Arm public as an alternative, though it remains "hopeful that the transaction will be approved."
- Arm's architecture for mobile processors is used in more than 95% of Apple, Android, and other smartphones.
BLOOMBERG 
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Google unveiled Topics, a new system for tracking Chrome browser users without the need for privacy-invasive tracking cookies. The latest ad-targeting solution replaces Google's previous plans for FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts), which sparked privacy concerns. Google hopes to launch the first trial of Topics by the end of Q1 2022. More: - Google plans to block tracking cookies on Chrome in 2023, which will prevent advertisers from logging websites to determine a users' browsing interests.
- The company initially proposed FLoC as a replacement for third-party cookies but faced criticism that it could still be used to track users and actually make it easier for advertisers to gather information.
- As a result, Google proposed the Topics AP, which uses software built into Chrome to monitor browsing behavior and create a list of five subjects that users showed interest in every week.
- It will determine the topics by comparing visited sites against a list of 350 selected topics.
- Advertisers can then use the Topics API to place relevant ads based on that data.
TECHCRUNCH
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 A message from LOHIKA Web3: Why It Matters and How to Think About It in 2022. Lohika is hosting an online event with Capgemini AIE “Web3: Why It Matters and How to Think About It in 2022.” and we’re thrilled to announce that Patrick White, CEO at Bitwave has joined the panel. Patrick and the Bitwave team are doing interesting things in crypto accounting. Is web3 the future of the Internet or is it hype? Is an NFT the key to great wealth or is it fool’s gold? What will happen between central banks asserting their control of fiat currencies and decentralized currencies erasing boundaries and national sovereignty? That’s what an expert panel will explore at our upcoming event. Our panel: Join us on February 10, 2022 at 10am PT / 1pm ET. Register Now
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 Artist's illustration of the James Webb Space Telescope, The James Webb Space Telescope has successfully reached its final destination about 930,000 miles from Earth. The deep-space observatory is now in orbit around the Earth-sun Lagrange Point 2, a gravitationally stable point where it can begin to collect data and study distant light from the early days of the universe. More: - The Webb team now expects to spend the next three months aligning the hexagonal segments of the telescope's primary mirror and preparing its instruments.
- The first cosmic images are expected back in about five months.
- Described as the “largest and most technically complex space science telescope NASA has ever built," the $10B space telescope was launched on Dec. 25 and unfolded its final mirror wing earlier this month.
- Webb, a successor to Hubble, is named after the late NASA administrator who oversaw the beginnings of the Apollo program.
- Webb is the result of a collaboration between NASA and the European and Canadian space agencies.
NPR
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 Boeing announced a $450M investment in Wisk Aero, a developer of pilotless flying taxis. The electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) company is a joint venture between Boeing and Kitty Hawk, the air taxi firm funded by Google co-founder Larry Page. More: - Wisk is developing pilotless aircraft technology to transport passengers on short trips across cities. The startup is specifically focused on autonomous flights.
- Wisk noted that the $450M investment makes it one of the world's most well-funded companies working on advanced air mobility.
- Boeing owns an undisclosed majority stake in Wisk. The companies will reportedly seek certification for the first passenger vehicle sometime around 2028.
- Within five years of certification, the plan is to eventually conduct an estimated 14 million eVTOL flights annually in ~20 major markets worldwide.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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 A message from CHILI PIPER How does 2x your inbound pipeline sound? With 60-70% of their inbound demo requests never making it to a booked meeting, Bryan Schuler, ABM and Marketing Operations Manager at SaaSOptics, knew something needed to change. Their inbound scheduling process required SDRs to go back and forth with prospects to qualify and schedule a meeting before speaking with an account executive. Bryan implemented Chili Piper’s Form Concierge, which allowed inbound prospects to book a meeting time in the correct AE’s calendar immediately after filling out their demo request form. Behind the scenes, Chili Piper instantly qualified the lead, routed it to the correct AE, and booked the meeting in their calendar. Since implementing Chili Piper, the SaaSOptics team has seen their booked rate on inbound demo requests increase from 40% to 90%, resulting in 4x more sales meetings and double the amount of inbound pipeline per month. Watch the video
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YouTube is exploring NFT features for video creators, though it hasn't specified what those might be. In her latest letter to the YouTube community, CEO Susan Wojcicki said the company views Web3 "as a source of inspiration." More: - NFTs fall under the umbrella of Web3, a hypothetical decentralized version of the internet based on the blockchain.
- Wojcicki said YouTube is always focused on expanding its ecosystem to "help creators capitalize on emerging technologies, including things like NFTs." She didn't elaborate further.
- Wojcicki's letter also outlined the company's priorities for 2022, which include gaming, shopping, music, and video shorts known as YouTube Shorts.
- The TikTok-like feature has amassed 5 trillion video views since its rollout in late 2020, she said.
Zoom-out: - Last week, a Financial Times report said Meta is exploring ways to allow users to create and sell NFTs on Instagram and Facebook.
- Meta is also holding internal talks to possibly launch a marketplace for people to buy and sell NFTs.
- In addition, Twitter recently started allowing users of its Blue subscription service to use NFTs as their profile pictures.
THE VERGE
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 Meta announced an AI supercomputer that will help it train models, boost research, and develop augmented reality and metaverse tools. The company's AI Research SuperCluster is expected to be the world's fastest supercomputer for AI tasks once it's fully built out by this summer. More: - Meta is already using the supercomputer to train models in natural-language processing and computer vision, the branches of AI that train machines to understand words and "see" the world, respectively.
- According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the machine will support AI models that can understand hundreds of languages and learn from trillions of examples.
- It will help fuel experiences for the company's metaverse plans, which require compute power in the quintillions of operations per second, he said.
- The supercomputer took two years of work and was built with partners Nvidia, Penguin Computing, and Pure Storage.
- It is currently made up of 760 Nvidia A100 modules with 6,080 graphics processing units. Meta plans to expand that to 16,000 GPUs later this year.
UNITE.AI
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- GM said it will invest $7B, its single largest investment ever, to expand its EV manufacturing in Michigan.
- The White House could release an executive order next month that would task some federal agencies with reviewing the benefits and risks of cryptocurrencies.
- Panasonic plans to start producing its new 4680 lithium battery cells, developed on Tesla's request, as early as 2023.
- Twitter is refining its "Flock" feature that will let users share tweets with a limited number of people, up to 150 friends at a time.
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 |  | Beth is an Inside Analyst and a former public policy/investigative reporter. She has covered AI, VR, technology, and e-commerce for Inside. When she's not busy writing, she's hiking in Arizona's desert, playing pickleball, or trying out new Mexican food recipes. |   | | Editor | Eduardo Garcia is a writer and editor based in New York. He is writing an illustrated book about climate change that will be published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Bylines in The New York Times, The Guardian, Slate, Scientific American, and others. In one of his previous lives, Eduardo worked as a Reuters correspondent in Latin America for nearly a decade. | |
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