The Pulse #95: Microsoft's security fiasco with Recall
A new Windows feature takes screenshots of users screens, but Microsoft has added no encryption or audits before shipping it. Also, shock serverless bills, Robotics + AI investments, and more.
The Pulse is a series covering insights, patterns, and trends within Big Tech and startups. Notice an interesting event or trend? Send me a message.
Today, we cover:
Industry pulse. NVIDIA on-track to be the world’s most valuable company; AI overdrive at Amazon Prime; generous secondary rounds at Canva and Revolut, and more.
Microsoft security fiasco with Recall. With Microsoft being forced to vow it’ll do better on security, it’s an interesting time to ship a feature that takes screenshots and records everything people do on their computers. It does not encrypt images or data, seems to have no auditing, and doesn’t seem to scrub sensitive information. It’s the kind of feature no security team who are at the top of their game would sign off as ready to ship!
An app using serverless went viral; oops! Serverless is a wonderful technology to scale up during traffic spikes. But social media app Cara is finding out how costly popularity can be, by design.
Robotics + AI, the hottest new investment area? Several software engineers working at some of the hottest AI companies are leaving to do something potentially even more exciting: robotics. The race to build the “OpenAI for robotics” seems to be on.
1. Industry pulse
NVIDIA on track to be world’s most valuable company
Today, NVIDIA is the world’s second most valuable company, valued higher than Apple at a little over $3T. It’s been an incredible rise: just six months ago, NVIDIA was valued around a third less ($1.2T,) and was only the world’s sixth most valuable publicly traded company.
If NVIDIA’s rise continues, it could be just weeks before the GPU chip maker becomes the highest-valued publicly traded company, globally. NVIDIA’s rise has been especially dramatic, looking at the last five years:
NVIDIA being valued higher than Apple is puzzling, looking at the “hard” numbers. It generated $60B revenue and $30B profit (net income) in 2023. Apple did $383B in revenue and $97B in profit in the same time period. Investors are clearly betting NVIDIA will keep growing rapidly, to the point of overtaking Apple. For this to continue, demand for NVIDIA’s GPUs needs to increase from already-record levels, and competition needs to stay well behind. It’s anyone’s guess how long they do.