Nvidia to Join Dow Jones Industrial Average, Replacing Rival Chipmaker Intel

With the addition of Nvidia, four of the six trillion-dollar tech companies are now in the index.

Nov 02, 2024

Nvidia is replacing rival chipmaker Intel in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a shakeup to the blue-chip index that reflects the boom in artificial intelligence and a major shift in the semiconductor industry.

The switch will take place on Nov. 8. Also, Sherwin Williams will replace Dow Inc. in the index, S&P Dow Jones said in a statement.

Nvidia shares have climbed over 170% so far in 2024 after jumping roughly 240% last year, as investors have rushed to get a piece of the AI chipmaker. Nvidia’s market cap has swelled to $3.3 trillion, second only to Apple among publicly traded companies.

On Friday, Nvidia shares rose 1%. Intel shares were down 1% in extended trading.

Now Is the Time to Go "All-In" On AI

Artificial intelligence is a “new digital species,” says Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft AI’s CEO. For this episode, Mustafa joined Reid Hoffman on stage at the October 2024 Masters of Scale Summit. They discuss the risks and rewards of AI, and Mustafa explains why AI will change our experience of memory. Plus, why he thinks now is a great time to found and scale companies.

Anthropic Warns of AI Catastrophe if Governments Don't Regulate it Soon

'The window for proactive risk prevention is closing fast,' the company says.

Only days away from the US presidential election, AI company Anthropic is advocating for its own regulation -- before it's too late. On Thursday, the company, which stands out in the industry for its focus on safety, released recommendations for governments to implement "targeted regulation" alongside potentially worrying data on the rise of what it calls "catastrophic" AI risks.

The risks

In a blog post, Anthropic noted how much progress AI models have made in coding and cyber offense in just one year. "On the SWE-bench software engineering task, models have improved from being able to solve 1.96% of a test set of real-world coding problems (Claude 2, October 2023) to 13.5% (Devin, March 2024) to 49% (Claude 3.5 Sonnet, October 2024)," the company wrote. "Internally, our Frontier Red Team has found that current models can already assist on a broad range of cyber offense-related tasks, and we expect that the next generation of models -- which will be able to plan over long, multi-step tasks -- will be even more effective."

Read Anthropic’s recommendations of targeted regulations for governments

Catching Up With Scale AI: Conversation With Founder and CEO, Alexandr Wang

Index partner Mike Volpi recently caught up with Alexandr Wang, founder and CEO of Scale AI, at Scale’s new San Francisco office. They discussed the future of AI, the critical role of high-quality data, and the challenges of moving AI projects from prototype to production. Alex also shared his thoughts on the importance of AI safety and the broader geopolitical dynamics shaping the industry today.

Visa Has Deployed Hundreds of AI Use Cases. It’s Not Stopping.

‘Impatience is a virtue,’ said Visa’s president of technology, Rajat Taneja

Visa is leaning on staff to quickly drum up generative AI use cases even as the payments giant streamlines its international business and cuts jobs.

President of Technology Rajat Taneja said the company already has more than 500 generative artificial intelligence applications in use, the result of a go-fast strategy designed to reap the AI’s benefits sooner and keep pace with bad actors whose fraud methods are becoming more sophisticated. “This is a time when I think we have to innovate very fast,” Taneja said.

At the same time, Visa is contending with a restructuring of its international business. The company plans to lay off around 1,400 employees and contractors by the end of the year, according to people familiar with the matter. Roughly 1,000 are technology positions, they said. Visa said it continuously evolves to better serve clients and support growth, “which can lead to the elimination of some roles.”

“We don’t invest in AI to displace our talent; we invest in AI to help our employees be more productive, continue to protect consumers from fraud, and to drive consistent innovation in payments,” a spokesman said.

Exploring Intel's Tiber AI Cloud Solutions

Intel's Tiber AI Cloud offers a production-ready environment for deploying AI solutions at scale. In this episode, Marcus Flierl, Corporate VP of Intel Tiber AI Cloud, shares insights on the latest trends and offerings in cloud services and AI.

With a rich background that spans Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and NVIDIA, Marcus discusses his journey to Intel, their exciting work on the Tiber AI Cloud and how they are addressing the challenges and opportunities in AI infrastructure, cost management, and data security.

He also discusses how AI is transforming Intel itself, and how their partnership with Inflection is helping them reimagine various aspects of their company.

Intel’s Gaudi AI Chips Are Far Behind Nvidia and AMD, Won’t Even Hit $500M

AI is already billions or tens of billions to other chipmakers, but not necessarily Intel.

Nvidia made a fortune on the AI boom. AMD’s rival AI chip became the fastest ramping product in its history, already pulling in $1 billion per quarter and inspiring AMD to remake itself as an AI company too. But Intel, which suggested it would pull in $1 billion, even $2 billion on the back of AI in 2024, now says it won’t even meet its more modest $500 million goal for its Gaudi AI accelerator this year.

“We will not achieve our target of $500 million in revenue for Gaudi in 2024,” CEO Pat Gelsinger just said on the company’s Q3 2024 earnings call today.

Though Intel just launched its recent Gaudi 3 accelerator this past quarter, said Gelsinger, “the overall uptake of Gaudi has been slower than we anticipated as adoption rates were impacted by the product transition from Gaudi 2 to Gaudi 3 and software ease of use.” Despite the missed goal, Gelsinger says “we remain encouraged by the market available to us.”

More about Intel’s Gaudi chip and new AI focus on The Verge

AI and Big Data Accelerating Sustainability in Energy

LAB 1: “How Will AI and Big Data Accelerate Sustainability in the Energy Sector” took place at the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center in Riyadh on October 30, 2024, during the 8th Edition of Future Investment Initiative. The integration of digital technologies like AI and Big Data is revolutionizing the oil and gas sector, transforming exploration, production, and resource management.

According to Aramco, AI-driven analytics are being applied to predictive maintenance, optimizing energy use, and reducing CO2 emissions at key facilities, leading to an 8% reduction in emissions. How can the oil and gas industry further leverage AI to enhance operational efficiency while contributing to the energy transition?

SPEAKERS: Nomi Ahmad, President & CEO, Financial Services, GE Vernova Fahad Dhubaib, Senior Vice-President, Strategy & Market Analysis, Aramco Rebeca Minguela, Founder & CEO, Clarity AI Dr. Angela Wilkinson, Secretary General & CEO, World Energy Council

Thats all for today, however new advancements, investments, and partnerships are happening as you read this. Subscribe today, so you don’t miss any AI related news.