Catch up on the top artificial intelligence news and commentary by Wall Street analysts on publicly traded companies in the space with this daily recap compiled by The Fly:
WHATSAPP: Meta’s (META) WhatsApp introduced Message Summaries, a new option that uses Meta AI to privately and quickly summarize unread messages in a chat, so users can get an idea of what is happening, before reading the details in their unread messages. “Message Summaries uses Private Processing technology, which allows Meta AI to generate a response without Meta or WhatsApp ever seeing your messages or the private summaries,” the company said in a blog post. “No one else in the chat can see that you summarized unread messages either. This means your privacy is protected at all times. For those interested in learning more about the technical details behind Private Processing, we invite you to read our engineering blog and technical whitepaper.” Message Summaries is rolling out in the English language to people in the United States, and Meta said it hopes to bring it to other languages and countries later this year.
META POACHES OPENAI RESEARCHERS: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has hired three AI researchers from Microsoft-backed (MSFT) OpenAI to help with his superintelligence efforts, the Wall Street Journal’s Meghan Bobrowsky reported. The social media giant poached Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov and Xiaohua Zhai from OpenAI’s Zurich office, the author says, citing people familiar with the matter. The three staff established the Zurich office late last year, the author noted.
UBS RAISES META TARGET: UBS raised the firm’s price target on Meta Platforms to $812 from $683 and keeps a Buy rating on the shares. Meta is benefiting from consumer and advertiser demand for AI, and there is a longer term opportunity for the company to extract incremental revenue from various AI products, the analyst tells investors in a research note. Meta is also not necessarily exposed to the danger of what may be slower-than-anticipated enterprise AI spend, as it is the primary user of its own technology, UBS says.
OPENAI CONTRACT TALKS: OpenAI and Microsoft are in contract negotiations that hinge on when OpenAI’s systems will reach artificial general intelligence, The Wall Street Journal’s Berber Jin reported. The contract stipulates that OpenAI can limit Microsoft’s access to its tech when its systems reach AGI, which Microsoft is fighting. Microsoft hopes to remove the AGI clause or secure exclusive access to OpenAI’s IP even after AGI is declared, according to the report. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had a “super nice” call with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Monday and discussed their future working partnership, Altman said this week in a New York Times podcast. “Obviously in any deep partnership, there are points of tension and we certainly have those,” Altman said. “But on the whole, it’s been like really wonderfully good for both companies.”
AI CO-INNOVATION LAB: Microsoft, in collaboration with the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and TitletownTech announced on Wednesday the opening of an AI co-innovation lab on the UWM campus. This marks Microsoft’s first AI co-innovation lab with a dedicated focus on manufacturing innovation. The lab’s launch comes one year after Microsoft’s landmark investment to build AI infrastructure in Wisconsin. Operating out of a temporary home on the UWM campus over the past year, the lab worked with a handful of companies from across Wisconsin to build AI solutions. “A year ago, alongside our $3.3 billion infrastructure investment, we committed to using the power of AI to help advance the next generation of manufacturing companies, skills and jobs in Wisconsin and across the country,” said Rima Alaily, corporate vice president and general counsel, infrastructure legal affairs at Microsoft. “Thanks to our partnership with WEDC, TitletownTech and UWM, we’re delivering on this commitment. With access to cutting-edge AI technology and technical guidance to bring their ideas to life, we can’t wait to see what Wisconsin companies will build.”
MORGAN STANLEY RAISES MICROSOFT TARGET: Morgan Stanley raised the firm’s price target on Microsoft to $530 from $482 and keeps an Overweight rating on the shares after the firm updated its capex-implied AI revenue analysis and its OpenAI model detailing the contribution to Azure. While investors continue to debate the “Return on Investment” of rising capital expenditures, the firm sees the yields on Microsoft’s investments in Generative AI “becoming increasingly apparent,” says the analyst, who expresses increased confidence in upside to Azure forecasts. Microsoft’s “prime position for the upcoming GenAI innovation cycle matched with solid execution is driving an acceleration in the Azure business,” the analyst argues.
GEMINI CLI: Alphabet’s (GOOG) Google announced introduced Gemini CLI, or command line interface, an open-source AI agent that brings the power of Gemini directly into a user’s terminal. “It provides lightweight access to Gemini, giving you the most direct path from your prompt to our model,” the company said. “While it excels at coding, we built Gemini CLI to do so much more. It’s a versatile, local utility you can use for a wide range of tasks, from content generation and problem solving to deep research and task management. We’ve also integrated Gemini CLI with Google’s AI coding assistant, Gemini Code Assist, so that all developers – on free, Standard, and Enterprise Code Assist plans – get prompt-driven, AI-first coding in both VS Code and Gemini CLI.”
GOOGLE CLOUD/PEARSON: Google Cloud and Pearson (PSO) announced a multi-year strategic collaboration to accelerate new AI-powered products and services that personalize learning for students, empower educators with insights, and help improve educational outcomes. The partnership will deliver richer content and more engaging learning experiences for students using Pearson AI products and services, especially in the K-12 space. In addition, Google for Education and Pearson will collaborate on go-to-market activities and explore opportunities for integration across their product suites.
UBS SEES ‘RISK’ WITH POSSIBLE APPLE-PERPLEXITY DEAL: UBS reiterated a Neutral rating and $210 price target on Apple (AAPL) after media reported that the company is weighing either acquiring Perplexity AI or partnering with the company and adding it as a search engine option within Safari as well as integrating functionality into Siri. While a partnership or integration of Perplexity with Apple’s platform has been discussed for a year, an acquisition would be the largest transaction in Apple’s history and comes with some risk, the analyst tells investors in a research note. While paying at least $14B is a “manageable risk,” Apple’s track record in integrating larger acquisitions has been mixed, the analyst says, adding that Perplexity has faced allegations of unauthorized content use and plagiarism. The firm added that, given Apple’s AI efforts have been a bit underwhelming, it believes a deal would likely be construed as defensive in nature, not a positive catalyst.
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