Hi Everyone. This is Take Off. We're like a hidden Easter egg in your favorite video game - surprising, delightful, and adding an extra layer of fun to your tech news consumption.

Here's what we're serving up today:

• Zuck is Back 🤑

• Happy 40th Birthday to The Mac 💻

• Asteroids ☄️

• Trending Tools ⚒️ 

Zuck is Back 🤑

You might have had a good day but you definitely didn’t have as good a day as Meta did last week on their earnings call. Here’s a quick rundown of some good news from Zuck:

1/ The company obliterated revenue and growth expectations. They posted a revenue of $40B, up 25% QoQ and tripled their profits to $14B.

2/ They announced a $50B stock buy-back, which is always good news for investors.

3/ For the first time in their history as a public company, they issued a dividend to their faithful investors.

It seems like Meta’s ‘Year of Efficiency’ has officially paid off. The earnings report made the wolves so happy the company gained ~197B of market cap in a single day, making it the highest market cap gain in history.

Meta’s stock has witnessed a great turn-around rising almost 5x from its lows of 2022 when all looked dark and gloomy for the company. 

Divide-nds and Conquer

Dividends at tech companies are like John Cena. You can’t see ‘em. 

Investors in Big Tech are essentially paying for growth and are fine with not receiving a dividend so that the company can reinvest back into the business.

But Meta has so much cash on their balance sheet ($63B to be precise) that Zuck decided to throw out a dividend of $0.5/share to faithful investors. 

Will I retire from this? No.

Will I order extra guac at Chipotle today? Hell Yeah.

The Reality of Reality Labs

Meta’ Reality Labs, continues to be a burden on the company. The division lost another $4.6B and is expected to burn even more cash in the coming years. 

The launch of Apple’s rival Vision Pro headset could create a jump in consumer interest in AR/VR headsets and generate a knock-on effect for Meta’s Quest line of headsets.

But Meta's Reality Labs efforts have taken a backseat in the minds of investors amid increased investments in generative AI.

The biggest take-away from all of this? 

NEVER bet against Zuck.

Happy 40th Birthday to The Mac 💻

Wanna feel old? Because we’re pretty sure the Apple Mac does as it officially hit 40 years old last week.

Apple’s 1st product, the first mass-market all-in-one computer with a GUI released on 24th Jan, 1984, named the Macintosh. It was groundbreaking and it changed the landscape of computing forever!

P.S. - Have a look at their revolutionary Super Bowl ad.

It was priced at $2,495, which is equivalent to nearly $7500 today!

The Vision Pro doesn’t sound too bad now, does it?

The Apple Silicon Glow-Up

The Mac’s pretty active for something that’s 40! The recent shift to Apple Silicon marked a new era in performance and efficiency for the Mac, as it moved out of Intel’s house to live an independent and highly successful life!

But, it hasn't been the talk of Apple’s town as of late! It no longer plays a leading role at the company it helped establish.

Even though Mac sales have been the most dominating they’ve ever been, they constitute only a small percentage of Apple’s revenue. 

Best Device in a supporting role goes to

Over the past-2 decades, Mac sales have increased more than 4 times but Apple’s overall sales have increased more than 50 times due to the introduction of multiple ground breaking products like the iPhone, iPod, iPad, Apple Watch and more. 

The Mac might not be Apple's financial superstar, but it's definitely aging gracefully. 

☄️ Asteroids ☄️

Amid AI's expansion, the call rings for including Latinx/e voices in regulatory talks. Despite their economic impact and growing tech entrepreneurship, they snag less than 2% of investment funds. 🚀🌍

SpaceX's new research program on Dragon missions could revolutionize life in space, offering co-ownership of data and IP to participants. This move opens new doors for health and fitness innovation in space. 🧬💡

Google phases out cache links in search, aiming for a streamlined experience as page reliability improves. End of an era for SEO experts and journalists who relied on the feature for insights and access. 🌐🔍

⚒️ Trending Tools ⚒️

📹️ Guidde - Create video documentation with AI

🛃 Syncly - Surface real customer pains with AI feedback analysis

💰️ Exitfund - Raising Startup Capital Made Easy Using AI

🎶 MusicFX - Generate your own music for free

📰 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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