Tag: Inc. (AMZN)

Will Twilio (NYSE: TWLO) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) Redefine AI Potential with Their Unstoppable Alliance?

Posted on by The INO.com Team

Last week, at the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Summit in New York, San Francisco-based cloud communication and customer engagement platform Twilio Inc. (TWLO) announced its strategic partnership with technology giant Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN). Right on cue, the market welcomed the announcement with more than a 5% intraday gain in the former’s share price while surging by as much as 11.7% during the trading session.

The Partner

As a dominant player in the CPaaS (Communications-Platform-as-a-Service) market, TWLO provides businesses with the tools to integrate voice calls, text messages, and security verification tools into their software and apps to drive customer engagement by facilitating seamless and personalized interactions on demand. This empowers businesses to expand their customer base and communicate with clients across the globe.

While potential growth avenues for TWLO include expanding its CPaaS offerings and forging partnerships with other major tech companies, competition from established tech giants could impact the company’s operations and revenue generation. However, that concern seems to have been mitigated by TWLO’s artificial intelligence (AI)-fueled strategic partnership with AMZN.

The Partnership

The renewal of vows and strengthening of ties, which seeks to enhance the company’s predictive AI proficiency, has closely followed a vote of confidence from the tech giant in which AMZN announced that it has acquired 1% stake in TWLO earlier in the week with its ownership of 1.77 million shares worth more than $108 million.

The association between the two businesses started back in 2016 when TWLO began serving as a Marketplace partner for AWS, which had become the world's largest cloud infrastructure platform. It signed two deals with AMZN to directly integrate its communication tools into AWS, which enabled developers to easily add TWLO's voice calls, text messages, audio clips, and other features to their mobile apps.

Fast forward to June 2022, and TWLO revealed its CustomerAI, which adds a technology layer that integrates generative AI and predictive AI tools into the company's customer engagement platform.

According to Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson, who was employed with AMZN between 2004 and 2005, “With generative and predictive intelligence, Twilio’s high-quality interaction data, and Segment profiles working together, every experience can be highly personalized and tuned with a level of sophistication that was previously only attainable by the tech giants. With Twilio CustomerAI, brands can transform their customer relationships and unlock their full potential.”

The Heavyweight

Coincidentally, also in June 2023, AWS, in response to the recent noise around AI being made by frontrunner Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) and challenger Alphabet Inc. - Class A (GOOGL), announced an allocation of $100 million for a center to help companies use generative AI. This technology has captivated the public imagination and shaped the business narrative since OpenAI unleashed ChatGPT.

While $100 million might be an apparent drop in the bucket for a company with $64 billion in cash and half a trillion dollars a year in operating expenses, the investment acknowledges the significance of generative AI and the importance of being a part of the conversation.
AWS CEO Adam Selipsky insists that the AI trend is real. For AMZN, that momentum applies to its Bedrock generative AI service and its Titan models, as well as the new innovation center.

While it might seem that the company, which got a head start of no less than seven years over MSFT and GOOGL in the business of renting out servers and data storage to companies and other organizations, might be late to the generative AI game, Selipsky, echoing Amazon founder and longtime CEO Jeff Bezos, said the company has succeeded by listening to customers.

In fact, AMZN’s leadership in the cloud infrastructure market could give the company heft and mileage in the generative AI race. “AI is going to be this next wave of innovation in the cloud,” Selipsky said. “It’s going to be the next big thing that pushes even more customers to want to be in the cloud. Really, you need the cloud for generative AI.”

Moreover, according to Selipsky, AWS provides a measure of credibility in offering generative AI that eludes others in the space. He emphasized, “I can’t tell you how many Fortune 500 companies I’ve talked to who banned ChatGPT in the enterprise. Because at least the initial versions of it just didn’t have that concept of enterprise security.”

Bottom line

TWLO Senior Director of Product Alex Millet expressed his optimism around the company’s partnership with AMZN, “With AWS’ predictive AI technologies, we are rapidly developing AI-native features and APIs.” He further added, “We believe our tools will change the way marketers, contact centers, developers, and data teams deliver these world-class customer experiences.”

Hence, while the OpenAI-MSFT alliance is garnering attention and reaping the first-mover advantage with GOOGL scrambling to play catchup, the coalition of AMZN and TWLO has the potential to emerge as the dark horse in what AWS CEO has termed as a “10K race.”

Shopify (SHOP) Unveils HOT AI Chatbot: Is it a 'Must' Buy?

Posted on by The INO.com Team

On July 12, Canada-based e-commerce company Shopify Inc. (SHOP) unveiled its artificial intelligence (AI) assistant designed to help merchants with questions, thereby becoming the latest in the string of companies to implement such a feature.

The assistant, Sidekick, would be embedded as a button on the platform that can complete tasks for merchants and answer specific questions about their business, including queries on sales and order trends within a store. Illustrating the features through a video on Twitter, SHOP CEO said that the AI feature is “coming soon.”

Since the announcement, SHOP’s stock has gained about 6.9%, compared to a 2.9% rise during the month prior, at par with the S&P 500. However, is the feature worth the hype? Let’s find out.

AI is an umbrella term that is used to denote a series of programs and algorithms designed to mimic human intelligence and perform cognitive tasks efficiently with little to no human intervention.
However, unlike other next-big things, AI has been around for quite some time, influencing how we shop, drive, date, entertain ourselves, manage our finances, take care of our health, and much more.

However, the technology came into the limelight late last year with the release of ChatGPT, which in its own description, is “an AI-powered chatbot developed by OpenAI, based on the GPT (Generative Pretrained Transformer) language model. It uses deep learning techniques to generate human-like responses to text inputs in a conversational manner.”

The easily accessible chatbot that took the world by storm is one of the several use cases of generative AI, the subset of algorithms that creates and returns content, such as human-like text, images, and videos, based on the user's written instructions (prompts).

Including this subset, AI in its various forms and applications can analyze large volumes of data generated during the entire course of our increasingly digital existence and identify trends and exceptions to help us develop better insights and make more effective decisions.

Given its massive importance, it’s hardly surprising that Zion Market Research forecasts the global AI industry to grow to $422.37 billion by 2028. Hence, this field has understandably garnered massive attention from investors who are reluctant to miss the bus on such a watershed development in the history of humankind.

The Catch

Notwithstanding all the transformative qualities of AI, investors in SHOP would be wise to be aware of the caveats before FOMO drives them to buy like there’s no tomorrow and inflate a "baby bubble" growing in plain sight.

Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) has bet big on the technology by announcing a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment deal with Open AI. MSFT’s rival, Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL), is in hot pursuit. With ubiquitous AI-enabled technology across its platforms, the company has unveiled its response to ChatGPT, called BardAI.

Chinese tech giant Baidu, Inc. (BIDU) has also followed suit with Ernie Bot. Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) and Meta Platforms, Inc. (META) are also among the notable players in this dynamic domain. Alibaba Group Holding Limited (BABA), Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (ZM), and Databricks have all crowded this space with their own offerings.

Hence, while the technology is powerful (and useful, unlike most cryptocurrencies), the adoption is fast becoming so widespread that it remains unclear how it could help a specific business differentiate itself by developing enduring competitive advantages (read moats) and generating consistent profitability.

While AI is really good (and continually getting better) at predicting based on available data, it lacks contextual understanding. Since, in the words of Morgan Housel, 'things that have never happened before happen all the time,' it could be challenging for any AI tool to deal with tails, exceptions, and outliers in the shifting sands of business, economy, and society.

Even AAPL co-founder Steve Wozniak, who knows more than a thing or two about technology, agrees with the ‘A’ and not the ‘I’ of Artificial Intelligence.

Stick to Basics

Just as we have learned during the dot-com, cryptocurrency, real estate, and numerous other bubbles through the ages, markets can stay irrational longer than investors can stay solvent.

Therefore, even if the next big thing comes along and changes the world (and electricity, automobiles, personal computers, and the Internet really did), it is fundamentals that determine whether a business can survive to capitalize on those windfalls.

With inflation and rising interest rates expected to keep weighing on consumer spending, SHOP’s core activities in a softening market have been facing unrelenting pressure from competition on both livestream shopping and logistics fronts.

However, in a strategic U-turn, SHOP sold its logistics unit, which it had spent years building out, including last-mile delivery startup Deliverr, its largest acquisition ever, to supply chain technology company Flexport. Moreover, on May 4, SHOP announced that it would be laying off 20% of its workforce in addition to the 10% it let go last July.

Bottomline

Rather than getting too carried away and stretching an improvisation that keeps the business at par with the competition to frothy excesses with unrealistic expectations, it would be wise for investors to evaluate SHOP based on its fundamentals and prospects.

Is AI Fueling the Next Tech Bubble? 5 Stocks to Watch

Posted on by The INO.com Team

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an umbrella term that denotes a series of programs and algorithms designed to mimic human intelligence and perform cognitive tasks efficiently with little to no human intervention. Reinforcement through Machine Learning (ML) changes the game by enabling the models and algorithms to keep evolving based on outcomes.

Unlike other next-big things, such as nuclear fusion, quantum computing, and flying cars, which are practically (and literally) pies in the sky, AI has been around for quite some time, influencing how we shop, drive, date, entertain ourselves, manage our finances, take care of our health, and much more.
However, the technology came into the limelight late last year with the release of ChatGPT, which in its own description, is “an AI-powered chatbot developed by OpenAI, based on the GPT (Generative Pretrained Transformer) language model. It uses deep learning techniques to generate human-like responses to text inputs in a conversational manner.”

The Euphoria

The easily accessible chatbot, believed to be capable of eventually disrupting how humans interact with computers and changing how information is retrieved, took the world by storm by signing up 1 million users in five days and amassing 100 million monthly active users only two months into its launch. To put this in context, TikTok, the erstwhile fastest-growing app, took nine months to reach 100 million users.

ChatGPT is one of the several use cases of generative AI, the subset of algorithms that creates and returns content, such as human-like text, images, and videos, on the basis of written instructions (prompts) provided by the user.

Including this subset, AI in its various forms and applications is capable of analyzing large volumes of data generated during the entire course of our increasingly digital existence and identifying trends and exceptions to help us develop better insights and make more effective decisions.
Given its massive importance, it’s hardly surprising that Zion Market Research forecasts the global AI industry to grow to $422.37 billion by 2028. Hence, this field has understandably garnered massive attention from investors who are reluctant to miss the bus on such a watershed development in the history of humankind.

Although OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, is not a publicly listed company, Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) has bet big on the company with a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment deal. CEO Satya Nadella discussed, at the World Economic Forum held in Davos this year, how the underlying technology would eventually be ubiquitous across MSFT’s products. The process has already begun with updates to its Bing search engine.

MSFT’s rival, Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL), is in hot pursuit. With AI-enabled technology ubiquitous across its platforms, the company has unveiled its response to ChatGPT, called BardAI, with which the company is eager to reclaim its reputation as an early bird in the domain of conversational AI.

Chinese tech giant Baidu, Inc. (BIDU) has also followed suit with Ernie Bot. Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) and Meta Platforms, Inc. (META) are also among the notable players in this dynamic domain.

However, more recently, the company which made headlines when its stock got its moonshot due to the widespread public interest in AI is NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA). Post its earnings release on May 24, the Santa Clara-based graphics chip maker has stolen the thunder by becoming the first semiconductor company to hit, albeit briefly, a valuation of $1 trillion.

NVDA’s A100 chips, which are powering LLMs like ChatGPT, have become indispensable for Silicon Valley tech giants. To put things into context, the supercomputer behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT needed 10,000 of Nvidia’s famous chips. With each chip costing $10,000, a single algorithm that’s fast becoming ubiquitous is powered by semiconductors worth $100 million.

The Catch

Notwithstanding all the transformative qualities of AI, investors, who poured a record $8.5 billion of cash into tech funds last week, would be wise to be aware of the limitations and loopholes of investing in technology before FOMO drives them to inflate a "baby bubble" growing in plain sight.

While the technology is powerful (and useful, unlike most cryptocurrencies), the adoption is fast becoming so widespread that it remains unclear how it could help a specific business differentiate itself by developing enduring competitive advantages (read moats) and generating consistent profitability.
Moreover, LLM-based generative AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and BardAI are simply auto-complete on steroids that have been trained on a vast amount of data. While they are really good (and continually getting better) at predicting what the next word is going to be and extrapolating it to generate extensive literature, it lacks contextual understanding.

Consequently, the algorithms struggle with nuances such as sarcasm, irony, satire, analogies, etc. This also leads to the propensity to “hallucinate” and generate responses even if those are factually and logically incorrect.

Additionally, with the widespread adoption of LLMs and other forms of generative AI, a massive amount of content will be ingested and regurgitated as canned responses echoed in infinite permutations and combinations. This oversupply could dilute the value and increase demand for qualitatively superior insight and discernment, which (still) requires human intervention.

(Relatively) Safe Havens

Just as we have learned during the dot-com, cryptocurrency, real estate, and numerous other bubbles through the ages, markets can stay irrational longer than investors can stay solvent.

Therefore, even if the next big thing comes along and changes the world (and electricity, automobiles, personal computers, and the Internet really did), it’s the fundamentals that determine whether a business can survive to capitalize on those windfalls.

Hence, it could be wise and safe for investors to stick to big tech mega caps (mentioned earlier in the article), which are involved in providing the infrastructure and computing horsepower required to make the data and power-hungry AI algorithms work.

Moreover, since AI is well-embedded into their business operations and market offerings and AI as a service is (still) a small portion of their revenue, concentration risks can be more easily managed.

Bottom Line

Rather than getting too carried away and stretching a worthwhile and useful innovation to frothy excesses with unrealistic expectations, it could be useful to remember that legendary investor and polymath Charlie Munger doesn’t think that AI is the silver bullet that can solve mankind’s pressing problems all by itself.

Even AAPL co-founder Steve Wozniak, who knows more than a thing or two about technology, agrees with the ‘A’ and not the ‘I’ of Artificial Intelligence.
We hope this discourse will help investors cultivate discernment, discretion, and, if necessary, dissent while investing in this revolutionary technology since those are the ultimate indicators of intelligence.

Subpoenas to Biden Agencies Over Social Media 'Censorship': Impact on Big Tech and Stock Market

Posted on by The INO.com Team

Holocaust survivor Susan Sontag, when asked, summed up her lesson from her struggle with a simple yet profound observation that 10% of any population is cruel, no matter what, and that 10% is merciful, no matter what, and that the remaining 80% could be moved in either direction.

The above observation has not just stood the test of time; it holds true for political ideologies and economic doctrines as well, as revolutionaries and public enemies over the ages have found out to their respective triumphs and desolations.

However, in the age of information and the Internet, social media has become the new battleground for conflicting subcultures to shape narratives and influence the 80% to write a preferred version of history.

This ongoing and intensifying conflict reached another flashpoint when House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Republican Jim Jordan, subpoenaed three government agencies on Friday, April 28, as part of investigations into alleged censorship.

This has followed subpoenas sent in February to chief executives of Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL), Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN),Apple Inc. (AAPL), Meta Platforms, Inc. (META), and Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) demanding information on how they moderate content on their online platforms.

In this article, we will get into the details of the subpoena, followed by an exploration of what regional and temporal differences in the definition of appropriateness and appropriateness in the limits of free speech mean for the business prospects of big tech companies. Continue reading "Subpoenas to Biden Agencies Over Social Media 'Censorship': Impact on Big Tech and Stock Market" →