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Black Friday Rollin’

Americans set a new online spending record for Black Friday this year. A rush of deep discounts and the growth of flexible payment options were the drivers behind $9.8 billion in online sales in the U.S. on Black Friday — a record figure for the day.  According to Adobe Analytics, sales were up 7.5% compared to last year’s numbers.

Retailers ranging from Walmart, BJ’s Wholesale Club, and Best Buy have already shared cautious forecasts about their all-important fourth quarter. The holiday season is of to a strong start but signs ahead of the holidays, including rising consumer debt and fewer boxes moving on railroad cars, show that sales could be slower compared with recent years. Even though inflation has cooled, consumer sentiment has fallen, setting up an uncertain end of the year push for many of the country’s largest retailers.

The AI Battle and strategies…

xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial-intelligence startup, showed off its first product: a bot named Grok that rivals ChatGPT. In a series of social-media posts over the weekend, Musk said Grok will be designed for tasks including information retrieval and coding assistance, part of an effort to create AI tools “that assist humanity in its quest for understanding and knowledge.” Musk said Grok would be made available to X’s Premium+ subscribers after beta testing with a limited group of users.

“The pace of AI is faster than any technology I’ve seen in history by far,” Musk said on Thursday in a conversation with U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. “On balance I think AI will be a force for good most likely, but the probability of it going bad is not zero percent, so we just need to mitigate the downside potential.” (WSJ)

Google announced plans to invest $2 billion in the artificial intelligence company Anthropic. The deal is structured as a convertible note, a type of debt that will convert to equity at the startup’s next funding round. Prior to the financing, Google also signed a major cloud agreement with Anthropic that should provide the company ample resources to double down on computing power.

The deal follows Amazon’s $1.25 billion investment in Anthropic and surely pits the two tech giants against Microsoft and OpenAI. It’s an interesting deal for all parties: Google and Amazon score large cloud contracts while backing a challenger to take share from Microsoft. Anthropic, on the other hand, receives necessary capital to hit the gas on costly computing capabilities. The AI arms race is officially on.

Podcasting is another area of intense growth

Spotify invested over $1 billion to establish itself as the dominant player in the podcasting industry, securing deals with high-profile figures like Kim Kardashian and the Obamas. Spotify’s CEO, Daniel Ek, envisions the company as a leading audio platform, not just for music but also for audiobooks, education, sports, and news, with a revenue target of $100 billion by 2030.

However, the bet is yet to pay off. As the podcasting and audio market continues to grow, competition for first place from rivals like Amazon and Apple is only heating up. (WSJ)