The Tech Company News Brief: AMD is Going to be A-OK!

Looks like AMD has finally done it.

After months of wrangling and being relegated to second fiddle against Nvidia's might in the AI hardware space, the company has finally offered more clarity about its future in the industry.

Last week, the company reported its third-quarter earnings, and by all means, everything seemed to be doing A-OK. But what caught everyone's attention were comments surrounding the company's MI300 chips, the supposedly cheaper alternative to Nvidia's advanced H100 hardware, that currently serve as the backbone of servers training AI models.

Specifically, AMD for the first time told markets that it expected to sell a whopping $2 billion of its AI chips in 2024. According to Reuters, this is significant for a number of reasons: for one, the market at large had no idea up until the release of the company's earnings as to how much the company expected to sell these chips, so a sales forecast is a win for the company, indicating that there is demand for its product (and why wouldn't there be? Considering that Nvidia's hardware costs an arm and a leg!).

Second, with such a large sales figure, Reuters was again quick to point out that the MI300 chips may very well represent the fastest product to ramp to $1 billion in sales in AMD's history. This means the company is going to get very, very valuable in the future if it's able to pull the wool over Nvidia's eyes.

Now, while AMD experienced a market rally, competitor Nvidia experienced the exact opposite, all thanks to Joe Biden.

Ah, good ol' Joe. All it takes is one signature and somebody's day is ruined.

Well, in this case, it was Nvidia's day that got ruined after it found out that it could not ship $5 billion worth of chips to Chinese companies under an export restriction placed by the Biden administration. Ouch!

Nvidia ranked #31 on HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings.

Apple Brings Out the New Macs💻

Big week for Apple last week, though not without the company's share of troubles.

The world's most valuable company released its earnings this past week, and things might have looked OK, except that the company's stock took a bit of a hit after it warned that it might not sell as many devices during the holiday season, particularly iPads and wearables like the Apple Watch.

The company is also facing stiff competition in places like China where competitor Huawei and other local smartphone sellers are creeping up on the iPhone manufacturer to win over consumers.

Meanwhile, the company announced a new line of Mac PCs that will be powered by its redesigned and supposedly powerful M3 line of chips. The new PCs are focused on professionals, like those developing softwares, and are expected to perform better than previous-gen hardware that came with Intel chips.

Apple ranked #3 on HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings.

In Other News.. 📰

• Sam Bankman-Fried might not be the last crypto criminal — via The Verge.
• Musk to integrate xAI with social media platform X — via Reuters.
• Lidl owner and Bosch Ventures co-lead $500M Series B into German AI start-up Aleph Alpha — via TechCrunch.
• Facebook and Instagram users in Europe can now opt out of ads — for a price — via CNN.
• Gaming has hits, but few know how big they are — via Axios.
• Google faces off with Epic Games as it enters its second antitrust trial in two months — via CNBC.

And that's a wrap! Don't forget to share this newsletter with your family and friends! See y'all next week. PEACE! ☮️

— Sheharyar Khan, Editor, Business Tech @ HackerNoon

*All rankings are current as of Monday. To see how the rankings have changed, please visit HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings page.