HARDWARE

Hello and Goodbye from California

This isn’t what The Beatles meant when they wrote “Hello, Goodbye,” but we’ll make it work: As one California chipmaker waves hello (to a new market), another says goodbye (to a big business unit). 

Starting in San Diego 

Yesterday, Qualcomm revealed a set of chips and software designed for 5G infrastructure. The virtualized, interoperable networking technology lets carriers pick and choose parts for base stations, rather than sourcing something soup-to-nuts.

• Qualcomm’s technology is compatible with an architecture backed by Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. 
• Execs from Jio and SoftBank spoke approvingly of the technology. 

Qualcomm already makes chipsets for 5G devices. Why not take a stab at infrastructure, which could be an $8.1 billion market this year?

What? Geopolitics, even here? Yes. U.S. industry ceded the cellular infrastructure game to overseas players more than a decade ago. But then Washington saw a national security issue on the eve of 5G, shutting out Huawei and putting out bat-signals for domestic solutions. 

• Qualcomm is answering that call and setting itself up to capture value from both ends of 5G. 

Shuttling over to Santa Clara...

...where Intel confirmed it will sell its flash memory division to South Korea’s SK Hynix for $9 billion. Intel will offload most of its memory business, including a fab in Dalian, China, and retain operations of Optane, a line of products commonly used in data centers.

New beginnings: It’s a bittersweet moment for Intel, which started its memory manufacturing in the '60s. Under CEO Bob Swan, the company has shed non-core businesses. It pawned off its struggling modem chip unit to Apple for ~$1 billion last year. 

Apples to apples

Intel is 55% larger than Qualcomm by market cap. Both companies (along with top U.S. chipmaker Nvidia) are building for the age of two-character buzzwords. Qualcomm is holding a “5G Summit” as we speak. Intel says it will funnel money from the sale into AI, 5G, and edge computing efforts. 

+ Pulse check: Even with the 5G iPhone imminent, next-gen networks are far from fully built out.

AI

Provenance or It Didn’t Happen

Haters will say it’s photoshopped. And, thanks to new AI editing tools debuted at this year’s Adobe Max Event, it probably is. 

The new features Adobe released yesterday aren't revolutionary from a technical standpoint, but they’re a game changer for AI consumerization. They include sky replacement, better edge selection, and “neural filters.” More on that last one:

• It's an advanced editing suite with portrait-specific tools like aging, reverse aging, and adjusting facial expressions. 
• One niche filter even lets you transfer makeup from one person to another, The Verge reports. 

But...these types of tools are like candy to deepfake creators. So Adobe’s hedging its bets by launching something else, too: an image attribution tool to help fight fraudulent imagery. 

• Since detecting deepfakes by appearance alone gets harder every day, the tool instead encourages creators to prove an image’s authenticity via creator name and image edit history. 
• It’s slated for 2021 release on both Photoshop and Behance, as part of Adobe’s Content Authenticity Initiative. 

Zoom out: Dana Rao, Adobe’s EVP, told Bloomberg he wishes he could go back in time and release the tool five years ago, but he hopes the tech helps in future elections. 

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Your Next Fave Podcast

You’re telling us that we can listen to stories about remarkable teams rescuing kids from underwater caves? And revolutionizing industries by turning their own factories into competing innovators? And it will count as professional development?

Yeah, we’re in.

The second season of Teamistry just hit the airwaves, the original podcast from Atlassian that combines captivating storytelling with practical business lessons you can apply to your team.

Hosted by award-winning documentarian Gabriel Cowperwaite (Blackfish), Teamistry tells the stories of teams who work together in new, unexpected ways, and then it gives you the tools to teach your teams how to grow, too.

Teamistry is entertaining; Teamistry is informative; Teamistry is your next fave podcast.

Listen to Season 2 here.

EVS

Rollin' With My EVs

In Monday’s newsletter, we made a joke about convincing a Hummer owner to switch to a hybrid. Turns out that may not be too difficult: Last night, GM unveiled its new Hummer EV, billed as the first all-electric supertruck. 

It’s all part of GM’s big-picture plan—the company has been aggressively steering towards an “all-electric future” for years, with CEO Mary Barra in the driver’s seat. 

Spending dashboard 

GM announced a $2.2 billion investment yesterday, the lion’s share of which will go to its Spring Hill, Tenn., assembly plant. After a full makeover, it’ll become the company’s third dedicated EV production facility. 

• The new Cadillac Lyriq and Hummer EV are part of GM’s commitment to 20 EV models by 2023. 

Big picture: File GM’s latest bet under “reasons why that one friend keeps telling you to invest in EV companies.” Morgan Stanley predicts that by 2030, battery electric vehicles will make up 31% of all global vehicle sales. 

• If not for factors like competing technologies and government legislation, their forecast would be as high as 50%.

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BITS & BYTES

Statistique: Facebook’s new multilingual AI model directly translates between 100 languages without relying on English data. Translation models typically route through English as a middle point because of the language’s abundant digital footprint. 

Quote: “We do think it’s more important to get it right than to be the first.”—Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Monday, he indicated the central bank isn’t rushing to release a digital currency. 

Read: An exposé from The Verge looks at what happened after Foxconn promised to build a massive tech manufacturing plant in Wisconsin. Spoiler: It never did. 

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• The Department of Justice and 11 state attorneys general filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google. 
• To the moon: A NASA-contracted Nokia 4G network. This is a truly devastating PR blow for 5G, but the lunar network will eventually be upgraded. 
• Tech and telco companies will license Associated Press election results for voice, video, and search services, Axios reports. 
• Sweden banned Huawei and ZTE from its 5G networks. 
• Pakistan reversed its TikTok ban, after the app agreed to new moderation practices. 
• Kik and the SEC have proposed a $5 million settlement over the former’s $100 million initial coin offering in 2017.
• CES 2021 will run on Microsoft’s cloud. 

TRIVIA

Snap had a mammoth Q2. Yesterday, Snapchat’s parent company reported $679 million in quarterly revenue, a 52% annual leap. We won’t quiz you on any financial intricacies, but we do want to test your knowledge of all things Snapchat. 

Take today’s trivia here.

TECH THINGAMABOBS

For eyes on the road: Ford and Argo revealed their fourth-gen self-driving test vehicles. If you’re in Austin, Detroit, Miami, Palo Alto, Pittsburgh, or D.C., keep an eye out for these vehicles. Send Ryan a pic if you see one, and we’ll give you Morning Brew joggers.  

For an antitrust refresher: Google isn’t the only one in the hot seat. Brew writers assembled a guide to the probes facing each member of Big Tech (excluding Microsoft, which has been there, done that).  

ICYMI

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions: 

• State of AI 2020 
• Emerging tech policy roadmap
• China’s digital Yuan giveaway