Meta starts paying its AI team like star athletes. Ruoming Pang accepted a pay package of more than US$200 million to join Meta’s “superintelligence” team. That nine-figure deal was in line with other major hires at Meta, including former GitHub chief Nat Friedman and AI startup founder Daniel Gross. Meta’s superintelligence team now has some of the highest compensation of any corporate jobs in the world, including CEO roles at major banks. (July 11 Edition)
Canadian colleges go broke. After international student visas were rolled back by the feds, universities and colleges were forced to make major cuts to their programs and staff. In Ontario alone, over 10,000 faculty and staff members at colleges were let go in the past year, one of the largest mass layoffs the post-secondary sector has ever seen. One report forecast that the top 20 universities in Ontario could lose $600 million in the upcoming school year. (July 10 Edition)
AI chatbots get into the shopping game. Shopify partnered with OpenAI to launch a shopping checkout system within ChatGPT that will let users search for, browse, and buy products without leaving the app. The idea is to turn ChatGPT into a one-stop virtual shopping assistant that can recommend products based on your taste and budget. Meanwhile, Meta announced that it will now use the data collected from its AI services to target ads to us on Instagram and Facebook. (July 17 Edition)
Couche Tard strikes out on 7-Eleven bid. After nearly a year of pursuing a takeover of 7-Eleven, Quebec-based Alimentation Couche-Tard has abandoned its US$46 billion bid to acquire its Tokyo-based owner, Seven & i. A buyout of 7-Eleven would have immediately made the Canadian company the largest convenience store chain in the world. Couche-Tard execs wrote that Seven & i’s leadership “engaged in a calculated campaign of obfuscation and delay.” (July 18 Edition)
Meme stock mania makes a comeback. Krispy Kreme and GoPro headlined a resurgent meme stock rally, climbing ~31% and ~53% over two days of trading, respectively, despite no change in their underlying businesses. Other seemingly random companies, including Kohl’s, saw similarly absurd spikes in trading. The original meme stock craze saw GameStop surge over 2,700% in three weeks, before a selloff erased US$167 billion in a matter of days. (July 24 Edition)