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Microsoft Excels 💪
Schooling Chegg 🦯
Asteroids ☄️
Trending Tools ⚒️
Microsoft Excels 💪
It’s earnings report SZN.
It’s kinda like when you get your report card in school - except instead of getting grilled by your parents, you get grilled by investors.
Microsoft kicked off the season for Big Tech with a Big Bang.
They killed it in the last quarter of 2023. They exceeded already high expectations by reporting $62B in revenue and net income saw its highest growth in over 2 years during the period, climbing a massive 33% to $21.2B.
B.C -> Before ChatGPT
No points for guessing the two letters responsible for the massive growth.
Hint: It starts with A and ends with I.
It’s tempting to think of Microsoft and its big AI play in quasi-biblical terms, with B.C. standing for “Before ChatGPT”. The company’s $13B stake in the chatbot’s creator, OpenAI, seems to be just that revelatory.
Analysts were eager to see how much of the AI hype has translated into real dollar bills. And our man, Satya didn’t disappoint.
“We’ve moved from talking about AI to apply AI at scale.”
Azure - On Cloud 9
The company’s Intelligent Cloud Business which includes its Azure service came in at $25.8B which represents a 30% growth QoQ.
AI services contributed 6 percentage points to growth which is crazy good, double of what it did the previous quarter.
This is not a pipe dream. This is not theoretical. GenAI is making a large financial impact right now for an already massive company.
AI 365
The other big push that Microsoft has been pushing is Co-Pilot.
Microsoft wants AI to permeate nearly every part of its business, and ensuring that pays off is something the company is heavily focused on. And it's in a perfect position to do so.
Microsoft is home to one of the biggest software product suites on the planet.
Office 365 - Word, Excel, Powerpoint. (Does anyone even use the other products?)
Microsoft Teams
Visual Studio and Github
LinkedIn
You get the point.
The company is using AI for improved utility for its existing products and bundling all of that into new subscriptions and upselling it via its ‘Copilot’ offering.
From Our Partners: Vincent Spotlight
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Schooling Chegg 🦯
Since the dawn of school, students have found ways to get help on their homework. In recent decades, one of the most reliable ways has been Chegg.
However, it seems like tides might be turning. And it doesn’t appear to be good for Chegg.
Schooled
Chegg COO - Nathan Schultz said that execs at the company had bet that an experience like GPT-4 wouldn’t be possible until at-least 2025.
Thus, Chegg did not believe that OpenAI could eat its lunch. But sirens went off in March when the company launched GPT-4.
Students who might have paid Chegg $16/month for practice exams and term paper feedback quietly opted for ChatGPT instead - the free and fast alternative.
See that cliff dive? That dive came after CEO Dan Rosensweig told investors he sees ChatGPT ‘having an impact on our new customer growth’.
It was a PR-mageddon. And life has never been the same again.
CheggMate
Dan Rosensweig did meet with Sam Altman to develop and release their own AI offering called ‘CheggMate’, which combines ChatGPT’s technology with Chegg’s library to build a Super Tutor, if you may and bolster their business.
But it doesn’t seem to have done any chegg-mating for now.
It seems like the growth story is over for Chegg, at-least for now. The company’s sales have been decreasing QoQ and the revenue decline is estimated to accelerate even further.
Chegg’s story with ChatGPT can be summed up in these wise words.
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then they join you. Then they still keep failing.
☄️ Asteroids ☄️
Amazon launches Rufus, an AI shopping buddy, in beta for some U.S. customers—expect product finding, comparisons, and tailored recommendations right in the app. 🛍️🤖
YouTube is not building a Vision Pro app, so Apollo for Reddit dev made one called Juno, a $5 app, filling the gap with resizable windows and ad support. 🍏🎥
YouTube hits 100 million subscribers for its music and video services, a key milestone in diversifying beyond ads into paid, ad-free experiences. 🎶🎉
⚒️ Trending Tools ⚒️
🖥️ BaliBam - Project Management System For IT Freelancers
📚️ Coursebox - Create a course in under one hour with AI
✍️ Flipner - Pocket-sized writing assistant
🔍️ Findr - Search all your apps, at once
📰 Recommended Reading 📰
AI Jane: Artificial intelligence investment journalist building an easy to read ai investing email newsletter. Get smarter about investing in ai in 5 minutes.
The Aurorean: This newsletter scours 100+ sources so you don’t have to. The Aurorean is your guide to discover the essential news, research, beauty and humor in science every week.
The EV Universe: Keep up with the electric vehicle industry.
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