GM. This is Take Off. We're like that perfectly ripe avocado at the grocery store - a rare find, satisfying, and always leaving you wanting more.

Here's what we're serving up today:

• Meta’s Chopping Block Activated 🪓

• Buy Tesla? Yes and No 👍👎

• Open Source Treats 🍬🍭

Meta’s Chopping Block Activated 🪓

Our LinkedIn feeds yesterday were unfortunately filled with layoff posts as Meta's chopping block is back in action and this time, engineers and tech teams are in the firing line.

Reports suggest around 4,000 positions might be on the line as part of the whopping 10,000 people layoff announcement earlier on March 14th.

Recruiting got hit first, tech groups are currently taking the plunge, and business groups are next in line for May.

All this is part of the grand "year of efficiency" (more like the "year of the pink slip"), as Meta grapples with shrinking revenue and a pesky Metaverse money pit (Remind us to change our company name to our highest loss making division).

Between the end of 2019 and its peak headcount in 2022, Meta nearly doubled in size to some 87,000 employees.

But with the latest round of layoffs the company will have cut its workforce by 25% from the company’s peak just six months ago.

Buy Tesla? Yes and No 👍👎

Tesla's been on a price-cutting spree to get more people behind the wheel of their EVs, but it looks like their profits are feeling the pinch!

With a whopping 5 price cuts since January, Tesla's Q1 report shows that they raked in a cool $2.51 billion, but that's a 24% drop from the same time last year.

Even Tesla's operating margin, which used to be the envy of the industry, took a tumble from 19.2% last year to 11.4% this year. No wonder their shares dropped 4% in after-hours trading!

Tesla's price-slashing has ignited an EV price war, giving Ford, GM, and Volkswagen a run for their money (Their can only be 1 true king).

So should you buy a Tesla?
The car 🚗 - definitely ; The stock ($TSLA) - maybe not today.

Open Source Treats 🍬🍭

Hey there, AI aficionados! NVIDIA, the Gods of GPUs recently announced their latest research offering as well - drumroll please!

Align your Latents: High-Resolution Video Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models

It’s their recent research work that showcases text-to-image capabilities. While still far from commercial usage, it is a step forward in opening exciting directions for future content creation.

Have a look at this example from the paper where they ask our SpaceMan’s ex-bestie, Stormtrooper to vacuum a beach.

In other news, Stability AI, the creative masterminds behind the AI image generator Stable Diffusion have recently unveiled their latest offering - drumroll again please!

StableLM : their open-source Large Language Model (LLM)

StableLM boasts code and text generation capabilities with current models between 3-7 billion parameters (and 15-65 billion parameters promised for the future).

We’re excited for this and if you want to try it out, give the demo a spin on Hugging Face.

☄️ Asteroids ☄️

Elon Musk is considering suing Microsoft for allegedly "training illegally using Twitter data," as the tech giant's advertising platform stops supporting Twitter as API access gets a pricey makeover.

In Monday's newsletter, we covered "Heart on My Sleeve," a viral AI-generated song that featured synthesized vocals of Drake and The Weeknd. As expected Universal Music Group pulled it for containing "infringing content created with generative AI."

Snapchat's AI chatbot goes global and free, promising to "Snap" you back soon, as long as it doesn't get too carried away with its teen antics.

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