Latest news with #Silicon Valley
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
You Have $1,000 to Invest. Should You Buy GOOG or GOOGL?
Key Points Alphabet offers investors exposure to powerful tech megatrends like artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, and autonomous transportation -- all under one roof. Alphabet trades under two ticker symbols, but they both represent the same underlying business. Unless voting rights are important to you, either ticker is a great way to invest in this "Magnificent Seven" stock. 10 stocks we like better than Alphabet › The "Magnificent Seven" is a popular tag for the most dominant, high-performing tech companies on the planet. Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL), (NASDAQ: GOOG), Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla have delivered market-crushing returns over the past decade, in large part because their businesses are on the forefront of the most disruptive technology macrotrends in modern history. While all seven companies are juggernauts in their own right, one Magnificent Seven stock stands out due to its dominant core business, exposure to multiple megatrends, and attractive valuation relative to its cohorts. That stock is Alphabet. An unconventional company There's something else that makes Alphabet different. Unlike the other members of the Magnificent Seven, Alphabet trades under two tickers: GOOG and GOOGL. Why would Alphabet do that? A little history will provide some helpful context. Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google (Alphabet's predecessor) in 1998. When Google filed its IPO paperwork in 2004, Page declared in a letter to prospective shareholders: "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one." In that same letter, Page fretted that becoming a public company could undermine the independence and creative spirit that had been critical to Google's success. He also made it clear that the company would not "shy away from high-risk, high-reward projects" just to hit some arbitrary quarterly financial target. To ensure that Page, Brin, and the rest of the executive team would retain "control over the company's decisions and fate," Google implemented a dual-class stock structure. It's all about insider control Common stock represents partial ownership in a company, and it usually comes with the right to vote on issues such as executive compensation, board members, and mergers and acquisitions. When Google debuted as a publicly traded company in August 2004, it used the dual class structure to concentrate 99% of the voting power in the hands of its founders, executives, and board members. Here's how: Each share of Class A common stock (available to regular investors) came with one vote. Each share of Class B common stock (held by founders and insiders) came with 10 votes. At the time, Page acknowledged that this was an unconventional move for a tech company, although it wasn't uncommon for other types of businesses. Perhaps the most well-known example is Berkshire Hathaway. However, in the years since Google's 2004 IPO, a number of tech companies have adopted dual class structures to maintain insider control, including Meta Platforms, Palantir, and Roblox. . This is where it gets a little confusing In April 2014, Google added another layer of complexity to its share structure by way of a 2-for-1 stock split. On April 2, 2014, Google's shareholders received one share of newly issued Class C stock for every share of Class A stock that they already owned. Starting on April 3, 2014, two classes of Google stock were available to the public: Class A shares (GOOGL): One vote per share Class C shares (GOOG): No voting power The important thing to note is the Class C shares don't come with voting rights. That was the whole point of the 2014 stock split. By issuing nonvoting Class C shares, Google could fund acquisitions and offer stock-based compensation and incentives without diluting executives' voting power. To recap, this is the share structure that exists today: Class A shares (GOOGL): One vote per share Class B shares (held by insiders): 10 votes per share Class C shares (GOOG): No voting power Should you buy GOOG or GOOGL? Today, Google the search engine is just one piece of Alphabet, the umbrella company formed in 2015. What makes Alphabet such a compelling investment is that it's not just a search-engine provider. Owning Alphabet is a bit like owning an ETF with exposure to some of the biggest themes in tech -- from cloud computing and AI to autonomous vehicles, cybersecurity, and streaming. And as I alluded to earlier, Alphabet trades at a discount to its Magnificent Seven cohorts based on its forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio: But there's still one question left to answer: Is GOOG or GOOGL the better investment? Because GOOGL comes with voting rights, you'd think it would trade at a premium to its Class C sibling, GOOG. But interestingly enough, GOOG has outperformed GOOGL since April 3, 2014, ever-so-slightly: As of July 16, GOOG was priced at $183.77, just a hair above GOOGL at $182.97. So based on the recent price action, you could look at it this way: GOOGL gives you the same exposure to Alphabet's basket of businesses, but at a slightly lower price, with the added benefit of voting power. In reality, most regular investors can't purchase enough shares to have any meaningful impact on the company's strategic direction through their votes. And because both tickers represent the same underlying security, there likely will never be any wide variation in price between the two. So unless you care deeply about voting rights, either ticker is a great way to invest in this Magnificent Seven standout. Should you buy stock in Alphabet right now? Before you buy stock in Alphabet, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Alphabet wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $652,133!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,056,790!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,048% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of July 15, 2025 John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Josh Cable has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Palantir Technologies. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, Palantir Technologies, Roblox, and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. You Have $1,000 to Invest. Should You Buy GOOG or GOOGL? was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Priscilla Chan's recruiting pitch? We can't pay as well as tech companies, but we've got GPUs
Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is betting on GPUs and compute power to help attract top talent. His philanthropic organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, is doing the same. His wife, Priscilla Chan, talked about CZI's recruitment efforts on a recent podcast episode. Compute power is a big draw for top talent, but not just in the world of AI. Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg's wife and the cofounder of the couple's philanthropic organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, spoke about the appeal of massive GPU clusters for biology researchers during a recent episode of Ashlee Vance's "Core Memory" podcast. "The other thing researchers really care about is access to GPUs," she said. "You're not going to make the most of someone if you don't actually have the GPUs for them to work from." Chan said, "We have that at CZI," adding that the organization has roughly 1,000 GPUs in its cluster, with plans to keep growing. In short, Chan said the pitch is: "Come work with us because we're going to have the computing power to support the research that you want to do." Another important factor is compensation, which she said is "obviously important," though she added that "we cannot compete with tech companies on this." CZI has in recent years narrowed its mission to focus on its "next phase" with a "bolder, clearer identity as a science-first philanthropy." The change marks a strategic shift, as the organization previously also supported education and other causes. "While CZI remains committed to our work in education and our local communities, we recognize that science is where our biggest investments and bets have been and will be made moving forward," Chan, a pediatrician by training, wrote in a memo to staff last year. Zuckerberg made a similar point about the importance of GPUs in recruiting on a recent episode of The Information's TITV show. Meta is spending billions to build an AI division it calls Superintelligence Labs. "Historically, when I was recruiting people to different parts of the company, people are like, 'Okay, what's my scope going to be?'" the Meta CEO said. "Here, people say, 'I want the fewest number of people reporting to me and the most GPUs.'" Meta, of course, has significantly more GPUs than CZI. Zuckerberg has said the company will have 1.3 million GPUs for AI by the end of 2025. "Having basically the most compute per researcher is definitely a strategic advantage, not just for doing the work but for attracting the best people," he said. Read the original article on Business Insider Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Priscilla Chan's recruiting pitch? We can't pay as well as tech companies, but we've got GPUs
Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is betting on GPUs and compute power to help attract top talent. His philanthropic organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, is doing the same. His wife, Priscilla Chan, talked about CZI's recruitment efforts on a recent podcast episode. Compute power is a big draw for top talent, but not just in the world of AI. Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg's wife and the cofounder of the couple's philanthropic organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, spoke about the appeal of massive GPU clusters for biology researchers during a recent episode of Ashlee Vance's "Core Memory" podcast. "The other thing researchers really care about is access to GPUs," she said. "You're not going to make the most of someone if you don't actually have the GPUs for them to work from." Chan said, "We have that at CZI," adding that the organization has roughly 1,000 GPUs in its cluster, with plans to keep growing. In short, Chan said the pitch is: "Come work with us because we're going to have the computing power to support the research that you want to do." Another important factor is compensation, which she said is "obviously important," though she added that "we cannot compete with tech companies on this." CZI has in recent years narrowed its mission to focus on its "next phase" with a "bolder, clearer identity as a science-first philanthropy." The change marks a strategic shift, as the organization previously also supported education and other causes. "While CZI remains committed to our work in education and our local communities, we recognize that science is where our biggest investments and bets have been and will be made moving forward," Chan, a pediatrician by training, wrote in a memo to staff last year. Zuckerberg made a similar point about the importance of GPUs in recruiting on a recent episode of The Information's TITV show. Meta is spending billions to build an AI division it calls Superintelligence Labs. "Historically, when I was recruiting people to different parts of the company, people are like, 'Okay, what's my scope going to be?'" the Meta CEO said. "Here, people say, 'I want the fewest number of people reporting to me and the most GPUs.'" Meta, of course, has significantly more GPUs than CZI. Zuckerberg has said the company will have 1.3 million GPUs for AI by the end of 2025. "Having basically the most compute per researcher is definitely a strategic advantage, not just for doing the work but for attracting the best people," he said. Read the original article on Business Insider Sign in to access your portfolio
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Democrat mayor slammed for spending tens of thousands of taxpayer money on AI to do city employees' jobs
A California politician is slammed after spending tens of thousands of taxpayer money on AI to do his employees' jobs. San Jose Mayor, Matt Mahan, spent more than $35,000 to purchase 89 ChatGPT licenses - at $400 per account - for city workers to use. By next year, the city intends to have 1,000, or about 15 percent of its workers, trained to use AI tools for a variety of tasks, including pothole complaint response, bus routing, and using vehicle-tracking surveillance cameras to solve crimes. Mahan staff even used it to help draft talking points before a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new business, and he used it to help write a $5.6billion budget for the new fiscal year. Mahan is now pushing a growing number of the nearly 7,000 government workers running Silicon Valley's biggest city to embrace artificial intelligence technology. 'The idea is to try things, be really transparent, look for problems, flag them, share them across different government agencies, and then work with vendors and internal teams to problem solve,' Mahan said in an interview. 'It's always bumpy with new technologies.' Mahan said adopting AI tools will eliminate drudge work and help the city better serve its roughly 1million residents, but some residents are angry he's spending money on the program when the city is already in a deficit. He is not the only public or private sector executive directing an AI-or-bust strategy, though in some cases, workers have found that the costly technology can add hassles or mistakes. While some government agencies have been secretive about when they turn to chatbots for help, Mahan is open about his ChatGPT-written background memos that he turns to when making speeches. 'Historically, that would have taken hours of phone calls and reading, and you just never would have been able to get those insights,' he said. 'You can knock out these tasks at a similar or better level of quality in a lot less time.' However he added that 'you still need a human being in the loop. You can't just kind of press a couple of buttons and trust the output. You still have to do some independent verification. You have to have logic and common sense and ask questions.' However, not everyone is happy about his purchase. 'Here's a real idea for AI that works: Replace Matt Mahan with AI,' one wrote on X. 'After all, AI has been writing Mahon's speeches & possibly X posts & replies! An 'authentic' mayor, indeed.' 'If AI is being used in San José government, the results are invisible to the taxpayers footing the bill. Mahan's obsession with tech gimmicks is just a distraction from his failure to lead on the issues that matter: public safety, housing, and restoring pride in our neighborhoods,' another wrote. 'San José doesn't need more tech talk. It needs results.' Another complained of the deficient the city is in. However, not everyone is happy about his purchase. 'Here's a real idea for AI that works: Replace Matt Mahan with AI,' one wrote 'Matt, pass that good stuff you are smoking. SJC is in a recession, a $43 million SJ budget deficit & all factors blamed r Sanctuary/ DEI related,' they wrote. One of San Jose's early adopters was Andrea Arjona Amador, who leads electric mobility programs at the city's transportation department. She has already used ChatGPT to secure a $12million grant for electric vehicle chargers. Arjona Amador set up a customized 'AI agent' to review the correspondence she was receiving about various grant proposals and asked it to help organize the incoming information, including due dates. Then, she had it help draft the 20-page document. Arjona Amado started using it to help save time. 'The way it used to work, before I started using this, we spent a lot of evenings and weekends trying to get grants to the finish line,' she said. The Trump administration later rescinded the funding, so she pitched a similar proposal to a regional funder not tied to the federal government. Arjona Amador, who learned Spanish and French before she learned English, also created another customized chatbot to edit the tone and language of her professional writings. With close relationships to some of the tech industry's biggest players, including San Francisco-based OpenAI and Mountain View-based Google, the mayors of the Bay Area's biggest cities are helping to promote AI adoption. San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie announced a plan Monday to give nearly 30,000 city workers, including nurses and social workers, access to Microsoft's Copilot chatbot, which is based on the same technology that powers ChatGPT. San Francisco's plan says it comes with 'robust privacy and bias safeguards, and clear guidelines to ensure technology enhances - not replaces - human judgment.' San Jose has similar guidelines and hasn't yet reported any major mishaps with its pilot projects. Such problems have attracted attention elsewhere because of the technology's propensity to spew false information, known as hallucinations. ChatGPT's digital fingerprints were found on an error-filled document published in May by US Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.'s 'Make America Healthy Again' commission. In Fresno, California, a school official was forced to resign after saying she was too trusting of an AI chatbot that fabricated information in a document. Earlier this year, when OpenAI introduced a new pilot product called Operator, it promised a new kind of tool that went beyond a chatbot's capabilities. Instead of just analyzing documents and producing passages of text, it could also access a computer system and schedule calendars or perform tasks on a person's behalf. Developing and selling such 'AI agents' is now a key focus for the tech industry. More than an hour's drive east of Silicon Valley, where the Bay Area merges into Central Valley farm country, Jamil Niazi, director of information technology at the city of Stockton, had big visions for what he could do with such an agent. These include allowing the parks and recreation department to use an AI agent to help residents book amenities or check how busy they are before visiting. Six months later, however, after completing a proof-of-concept phase, the city didn't buy a full license for the technology due to the cost. The market research group Gartner recently predicted that over 40 percent of 'agentic AI' projects will be canceled before the end of 2027, 'due to escalating costs, unclear business value or inadequate risk controls.' San Jose's mayor remains bullish about the potential for these AI tools to help workers 'in the bowels of bureaucracy' to rapidly speed up their digital paperwork. 'There's just an amazing amount of bureaucracy that large organizations have to have,' Mahan said. 'Whether it's finance, accounting, HR or grant writing, those are the kinds of roles where we think our employees can be 20 [to] 50 percent more productive - quickly.'
South China Morning Post
3 days ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
How China's open-source AI is helping DeepSeek, Alibaba take on Silicon Valley
July 9, 2024, may be remembered as a day of humiliation for China's artificial intelligence community. On that day, US start-up OpenAI, the global leader in AI model development, blocked developers in China – including Hong Kong and Macau – from using its GPT models. Advertisement In contrast, developers from countries ranging from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe were given access, reflecting OpenAI's unspoken belief that its valuable models must be safeguarded against misuse by China, along with Iran, Russia and North Korea. Now the tide has turned. With the December 2024 launch of DeepSeek's free-for-all V3 large language model (LLM) and the January release of DeepSeek's R1, an AI reasoning model that rivals the capabilities of OpenAI's o1, the open-source movement started by Chinese firms has sent shock waves through Silicon Valley and Wall Street. The trend has not only unleashed a wave of AI applications in China, but also redefined the global AI landscape, winning the support of developers worldwide. Chinese open-source models present a viable alternative to the closed-off systems championed by US tech giants like OpenAI and Google. Open-source AI models – whose source code and model weights are available for anyone to use, modify, and distribute – encourage a collaborative approach to AI development. Advertisement While in the past, open-source computer systems like Linux failed to replace proprietary competitors like Microsoft's Windows, analysts said that this time around, China's free-to-use AI models posed a serious challenge to US counterparts.
