Business News

OpenAI says Elon Musk tried to merge it with Tesla

Business News / By Ashley Cornell, email: [email protected]

OpenAI said in its first public comments on Elon Musk's lawsuit against the influential artificial intelligence research lab that Mr. Musk tried to convert the lab from a nonprofit to a for-profit operation before leaving the organization in early 2018.

The comments, in a blog post published Tuesday evening, are part of an escalating feud between Mr. Musk and OpenAI, which is now at the forefront of an industry-wide AI boom. The company said it intended to dismiss all claims in Mr. Musk's lawsuit.

Mr. Musk filed a lawsuit on Friday against OpenAI and its chief executive Sam Altman, accusing them of breaching a contract by putting profits and commercial interests ahead of building AI for the public good. He said that when the AI lab entered into a multibillion-dollar partnership with tech giant Microsoft, it abandoned its founding promise to carefully develop AI and share it freely with the public.

(The New York Times sued OpenAI and its partner Microsoft in December for copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems.)

Mr. Musk helped found OpenAI as a nonprofit organization with Mr. Altman in 2015; Greg Brockman, former chief technology officer of payments company Stripe; and several AI researchers. Before the lab was announced, Mr. Altman and Mr. Brockman planned to raise about $100 million, but Mr. Musk said they should tell the press and public that it was raising $1 billion and that he would raise the additional funds will provide, according to a contemporary email included in the blog post.

Mr. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“We need to set a much larger amount than $100 million to avoid sounding hopeless,” he wrote in the email. “I will cover everything that others don’t.”

The nonprofit has raised less than $45 million from Mr. Musk and more than $90 million from other donors, OpenAI said in its blog post.

The company said that Mr. Musk was among the OpenAI executives who realized in early 2017 that if the lab remained a nonprofit, it would not be able to raise the money needed to achieve its lofty goal of achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI ) to build a machine that can do everything the human brain can do.

“It was clear to all of us that we would need much more capital to succeed in our mission – billions of dollars per year, which was far more than any of us, especially Elon, thought we could raise as a nonprofit .” says the blog post.

When Mr. Musk and the other OpenAI founders agreed to form a for-profit company, Mr. Musk said he wanted a majority of the company's equity, initial control of the board and the chief executive position, OpenAI said. Amid the discussions, he withheld funding from the nonprofit, OpenAI said.

The other founders couldn't agree to his terms because they felt giving one person absolute control of the organization was contrary to their mission, OpenAI said. According to another email included in the blog post, Mr. Musk then suggested connecting OpenAI to his electric car maker Tesla.

“Tesla is the only way that can hold a candle to Google. Even then, the likelihood of counterbalancing Google is slim. It is simply not zero,” the email said.

With his lawsuit, Mr. Musk argued that OpenAI violated its original mission by no longer sharing its underlying technology with the public, known as “open sourcing.”

OpenAI's blog post also included an email in which Mr. Musk appeared to acknowledge that as the company gets closer to launching AGI, it would have to start holding back the technology to prevent it from causing harm.

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How each technical “gatekeeper” responds to the DMA

Business News / By Ashley Cornell, email: [email protected]

March 6 marks a long-awaited moment of change: it is the deadline for the tech industry's biggest gatekeepers to comply with the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA). The DMA requires high-performing companies to enable greater interoperability and avoid favoritism for their own digital services. It has led to disputes over which services should be included, sparked excitement among smaller competitors and led to changes in the way companies handle fundamental parts of their business. And in March 2024, the rules will come into force after years of debate.

The EU has designated six companies as gatekeepers, which it defines as large digital platforms that provide “core” services such as app stores, search engines and web browsers. The DMA's restrictions apply to specific services within these companies: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft. Here's what everyone has done to meet these demands – and combat them.

What does the DMA require?

By March 6, the six designated gatekeepers must comply with the DMA rules for the 22 covered services identified by the European Commission. By March 7, these companies must submit compliance reports to the EU explaining how they intend to comply with the rules. European officials will later assess these plans in workshops with each of the covered companies.

More generally, certain platforms need to take proactive measures that the EU believes will make digital markets fairer and more open. For example, gatekeepers must allow third-party companies to collaborate with their services, they cannot favor their own products in rankings over those of competitors, and they cannot make app store access for third-party developers conditional on using their payment systems or other services.

What is a Gatekeeper?

The European Commission considers a platform to be a gatekeeper if it meets two conditions. First, it must have an annual EU turnover of at least 7.5 billion euros in each of the last three financial years or an average market capitalization of 75 billion euros in the last financial year, while making its core platform available to at least three EU member states. Second, it must operate a core platform with at least 45 million monthly active users in the EU and more than 10,000 annual active EU business users in each of the last three financial years.

The Commission has identified specific services for each of the designated gatekeepers that it considers to be subject to the DMA rules. Gatekeepers who do not follow the rules can face fines of up to 10 percent of global sales, and up to 20 percent for repeat violations.

How does each gatekeeper respond?

alphabet

Alphabet has a sprawling empire, ranging from a dominant search engine to a major web browser to a popular mobile operating system, with many services linked together to increase their power. This means it has the broadest range of services covered under the DMA:

Google Play
Google Maps
Google Shopping
Google search
Youtube
The Android operating system
Alphabet's online advertising system
Google Chrome

As a result, the company announced a series of changes in January and March that affect everything from data sharing to search results for EU users. Highlights include:

Choice screens – one to select a default browser on Android devices and one to select a default search engine in the cross-platform Chrome browser – are coming to the European Economic Area (EEA) after March 6th.
More links to competing sites when you search Google for things like flights and hotels, including a dedicated section for comparison sites. Google will also remove some of its own widgets, such as the Google Flights box.
An opt-out of some data sharing across YouTube, search, advertising services, Google Play, Chrome, Google Shopping and Google Maps. Users' decisions will take effect on March 6th.
A new data portability API for developers, built on top of the Google Takeout service, allowing users to move data from Google services.
The option for Play Store app developers to redirect EEA users outside of their apps to promote alternative payment offerings, part of a broader overhaul of Android payments in Europe.

The company has long been a target of EU antitrust attacks, and some of these changes reflect previous concessions. Chrome on Android, for example, already offered search engine selection screens following a previous lawsuit.

Alphabet's proposed changes have sparked resentment among certain competitors, particularly smaller, specialized search platforms. Online review platform Yelp recently claimed that the search changes not only “violated the DMA's ban on self-preferencing, but actually increase the rate at which users stay within Google's walled garden,” said Megan Gray, a former attorney for rival search engine DuckDuckGo , has called into question the entire concept of choice screens as an effective tool for promoting competition. And Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, whose company is suing Google for antitrust violations in the US, has done so protested vigorously to its Android payment framework. So we probably haven't seen the end of questions about Alphabet's dominance yet – but the company has staked out its baseline.

Apple

Apple is one of the most prominent DMA targets thanks to its expansive mobile walled garden. The iOS operating system, the Safari web browser, and the App Store are all referred to as “core platform services,” and much of the discussion has been about how wide they need to be opened up.

On January 25, the company announced that it would introduce several changes in the iOS 17.4 update to comply with new EU rules, including:

Allows iOS apps to be distributed through third-party marketplaces, undermining the Apple App Store's monopoly over iPhone apps.
A new framework and APIs that enable third-party marketplace developers to manage app installations and updates.
Support for third-party browser engines that aren't based on WebKit, the engine that powers Apple's own Safari browser, and a new prompt screen that encourages iOS users to choose a default browser.
Opening the iPhone's NFC systems to enable the use of contactless payment services in banking and wallet apps in addition to Apple Pay.

This does not mean that these changes are made voluntarily. Apple has fiercely contested its services falling under the DMA, arguing that rather than a single platform, it actually operates five separate app stores (which would conveniently be small enough to avoid the EU regulation). Although this move was unsuccessful, it did convince the EU Commission that iMessage did not qualify as a gatekeeper service, thereby circumventing requirements to make it interoperable with other messaging platforms.

The changes rolling out to European users in iOS 17.4, particularly support for third-party app stores, are intended to address long-standing complaints about Apple's insular ecosystem. But numerous developers and critics have called them inadequate or even “malicious compliance.” Apple's new rules require App Store alternatives to either pay a core technology fee of €0.50 (~54 cents USD) for apps with more than 1 million downloads or adhere to the 15 to 30 percent cut that the company offers currently collects.

Given this, companies are not exactly ready to accept Apple's offer. A handful of third-party app marketplaces have been announced by Epic, MacPaw and Mobivention, but only the latter claims it will be available to iOS users on March 7, right after the DMA takes effect. Although rival web browser vendors like Google and Mozilla appear to be experimenting with new iOS browsers, neither company has officially announced when these apps will be available.

Amazon

Amazon's retail power is based on a complex data collection system and a massive third-party marketplace that some say gives sellers an unfair advantage. It has two services that fall under the DMA: its online marketplace and its advertising business.

The e-commerce giant has detailed some of the changes it is making to the way companies manage their ads and how customers control them. The company has already started asking customers who visit its EU store for permission to collect their data for personalized ads. As noted on this support page, acceptance or rejection of these Terms affects Amazon's ability to provide information about its entertainment services, including Amazon Prime Video, IMDb and Twitch, as well as its smart home devices, Kindle e-commerce Collect readers and app stores, operating systems and Fire tablets. This could make it more difficult for Amazon to sell and display personalized ads to users in the EU.

Additionally, Amazon has committed to providing advertisers and publishers with campaigns in the EU with “new, enhanced reports” that they can access via Amazon’s website. These reports provide more detailed information about how much an advertiser pays for ads and how much a publisher receives from ads displayed on a third-party website or app. The company is also launching a new “clean room” for advertisers with campaigns in the EU, allowing them to “independently verify the success and impact of their campaigns in a privacy-safe, cloud-based environment.”

However, Amazon has not yet detailed what kind of changes – if any – it is making to ensure its marketplace promotes competition under the DMA. The rules could mean the company can't give its brands preferential treatment in search results or copy third-party products, something Amazon has been accused of doing in the past. And Amazon has long been the subject of antitrust scrutiny in the EU, where regulators accused it of misusing seller data to stay ahead of competitors. The company settled those fees in 2022 and promised to stop using non-public data and make it easier for more sellers to appear in its Featured Listing box (formerly called the Buy Box), where products receive high visibility .

Microsoft

Microsoft's Windows operating system falls under the DMA regulations, and that changes the way the company promotes, or causes users to avoid, numerous other apps and services included within it.

To meet the requirements, the software giant had to make a number of changes, including the ability to disable built-in Bing web search, offer a new option to uninstall its Edge browser, and even allow companies like Google to add their own custom website searches in Windows. These options are available to users in EEA markets – this includes the EU countries as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

Microsoft will allow Windows computers in EEA markets to remove Bing results from Windows Search, potentially allowing Google to list its own search results here instead. Third parties like Google can also add feeds to the Windows Widget board. As part of the DMA rules to make it easier to uninstall pre-installed apps, Windows 11 users can also uninstall the Camera, Cortana, and Photos apps.

All of these changes have already rolled out to computers in the EEA, preparing Microsoft for compliance day. We'll now wait to see if Google decides to release its own add-in for Google search results in the Windows search interface. There could also potentially be a number of Windows widgets providers soon.

The EU initially listed a number of other Microsoft tools as gatekeeper services. But Microsoft successfully appealed Edge, Bing and Microsoft Advertising to be spared from the DMA after regulators agreed with Microsoft's argument that these services did not qualify – Microsoft argues that they are in fact “acting as challengers in the marketplace.” .

Byte Dance

Chinese giant ByteDance is so far the only non-American company designated as a gatekeeper under the DMA, and only has one covered service: the social network TikTok.

ByteDance shared earlier this week how TikTok plans to comply with the DMA. The platform has launched an API that allows European users to transfer their data to other apps that have registered with TikTok to use the tool. Registered developers can port posts, followers, and other activity from TikTok into their own apps with users' permission. TikTok said it has also improved its “Download your Data” tool, which allows individual users to export and download their posts and other information. And there will be “enhanced data portability solutions” for business accounts.

However, these changes come as the company challenges its designation as a gatekeeper, claiming that TikTok is, on the contrary, “arguably the most capable challenger to more established platform companies.” She argues that the Commission based its analysis on ByteDance's global market capitalization, which the company says reflects businesses that do not even operate in Europe, and that TikTok itself does not meet the required revenue threshold.

ByteDance's inclusion here has a unique political dimension and runs counter to some critics' arguments that the EU is unfairly targeting American companies. (A second non-U.S. company, Samsung, was initially named but was later removed from the gatekeeper list.) California Democrat Lou Correa, the ranking member on the U.S. House antitrust subcommittee, led a letter late last year with more than 20 non-partisan colleagues criticizing the “clear orientation of EU policy towards US companies, especially within the framework of the DMA”. Lawmakers criticized the fact that the European Commission did not designate Chinese firms such as Huawei, Tencent and Alibaba as gatekeepers “despite the fact that they compete aggressively with U.S. firms in the EU and other markets.”

Adi Robertson, Lauren Feiner, Jess Weatherbed, Tom Warren and Emma Roth contributed to this piece.

How each technical “gatekeeper” responds to the DMA Read More »

Crypto funding rates reset after Bitcoin’s sharp drop from $69,000

Business News / By Ashley Cornell, email: [email protected]

Bitcoin's (BTC) overnight pullback from new record highs has removed excess leverage from the market and normalized funding rates in the crypto perpetual futures market.

The leading cryptocurrency by market value fell 10% to $59,700 after hitting a new lifetime high above $69,000. The correction resulted in the forced closure of $1 billion worth of leveraged perpetual futures bets in the digital asset markets.

The CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20), a broader market indicator, rose to a high of $2,627 on Tuesday and has since fallen back to $2,496.

Since then, annual funding rates, or the cost of holding leveraged bets in perpetual futures pegged to the top 25 cryptocurrencies, have declined to less than 20%, a significant decline from the triple-digit numbers observed a few days ago.

In other words, the overheated perpetual futures market has cooled, opening the door for a prolonged rise to record highs. Funding rates rose above 100% earlier this week as Bitcoin's strong bullish momentum caused investors to jump in with both feet and use leveraged products to maximize profits.

Exchanges use the funding rate mechanism to align perpetual bond prices with spot prices. A positive funding rate indicates that perpetual bonds are trading at a premium to the spot price, indicating increased demand for bullish bets. Therefore, a high funding rate such as that seen earlier this week is said to reflect excessive optimism often seen during interim market highs.

Velo Data's chart shows that funding rates for the top 25 cryptocurrencies ranged from slightly positive to 150% or more over the past week.

The current value for most coins is below 20%.

According to John Glover, chief investment officer at Ledn, the market could continue to deleverage in the coming weeks, potentially pushing Bitcoin price back to $40,000.

“The euphoria surrounding the recent rise in BTC prices is very reminiscent of the last time we traded at $65,000. While many people will point out that the sell-off that followed after November 2021 (and previously after April 2021) was due to bad market participants, I would argue that it may have been brought about by the bad market participants “that people were too heavily indebted and had unrealistic expectations of linear appreciation to $100,000,” Glover said in an email.

“I believe we are in the same situation again and will see a correction back to the mid-to-low $40,000s in the coming weeks.” It always looks bullish at the peak,” Glover added.

Crypto funding rates reset after Bitcoin’s sharp drop from $69,000 Read More »

BlackCat Ransomware Group Implodes After Apparent $22 Million Payment by Change Healthcare – Cancer Over Security

Business News / By Ashley Cornell, email: [email protected]

There is evidence that the US healthcare giant Change healthcare made a $22 million extortion payment to the infamous man Black cat Ransomware group (also known as “ALPHV“) as the company struggles to bring its services back online while a cyberattack has crippled prescription drug services nationwide for weeks. However, the cybercriminal, who claims to have given BlackCat access to Change's network, says the crime gang cheated them out of their share of the ransom and that they still have the sensitive data that Change is allegedly paying the group to destroy have. Meanwhile, the subsidiary's disclosure appears to have prompted BlackCat to cease operations entirely.

Image: Varonis.

In the third week of February, a cyberattack at Change Healthcare crippled critical healthcare services as the company's systems were taken offline. It soon emerged that BlackCat was behind the attack, which disrupted the delivery of prescription drugs to hospitals and pharmacies across the country for nearly two weeks.

On March 1, a cryptocurrency address that security researchers had already attributed to BlackCat received a single transaction worth about $22 million. On March 3, a BlackCat partner posted a complaint on the exclusive Russian-language ransomware forum ramp Change Healthcare paid a $22 million ransom for a decryption key and prevented four terabytes of stolen data from being published online.

The partner claimed that BlackCat/ALPHV accepted the $22 million payment but never paid him his share of the ransom. BlackCat is known as a “ransomware-as-service” collective, meaning they rely on freelancers or partners to infect new networks with their ransomware. And these partners, in turn, earn commissions of 60 to 90 percent of the ransom amount paid.

“But after receiving the payment, the ALPHV team decided to block our account and continued to lie and hesitate when we contacted the ALPHV administrator,” wrote the Notchy affiliate. “Unfortunately for Change Healthcare, their data [is] still with us.”

Change Healthcare has neither confirmed nor denied the payment and responded to multiple media outlets with a similar, non-denying statement: The company is focused on its investigation and restoring services.

Given that Change Healthcare paid to prevent their data from being made public, that strategy appears to have failed: Notchy said the list of affected Change Healthcare partners from which they had stolen sensitive data was included Medicare and a variety of other large insurance and pharmacy networks.

On the bright side, Notchy's complaint appeared to be the final nail in the coffin for the BlackCat ransomware group, which was infiltrated by the FBI and foreign law enforcement partners in late December 2023. As part of this operation, the government seized BlackCat's website and released a decryption tool to help victims restore their systems.

BlackCat responded by regrouping and increasing affiliate commissions to up to 90 percent. The ransomware group also said it would officially lift any restrictions or deterrents against attacks on hospitals and healthcare providers.

However, instead of responding that they would compensate and appease Notchy, a BlackCat representative said today that the group was shutting down and that it had already found a buyer for its ransomware source code.

The seizure notice is now displayed on the BlackCat darknet website.

“There’s no point in apologizing,” wrote RAMP member “Ransom.” “Yes, we knew about the problem and tried to solve it. We told the partner to wait. We could send you our private chat logs in which we are shocked by everything that is happening and try to solve the problem with the transactions by charging a higher fee, but that makes no sense because we have decided to abandon the project completely close. We can officially say we were screwed by the government.”

An FBI seizure notice is now posted on BlackCat's website, but several researchers noted that this image appears to have simply been cut and pasted from the notice the FBI left behind when it raided the BlackCat network in December. The FBI did not respond to requests for comment.

Fabian WosarHead of ransomware research at the security company Emsisoftsaid it appears BlackCat executives are trying to run an “exit scam” against partners by withholding many ransomware payment commissions at once and shutting down the service.

“ALPHV/BlackCat has not been confiscated,” Wosar wrote on Twitter/X today. “They cheat on their partners. It is obvious when checking the source code of their new takedown notice.”

Dmitry SmilyanetsA researcher at security firm Recorded Future said the BlackCat exit scam was particularly dangerous because the partner still had all of the stolen data and could still demand additional payment or reveal the information themselves.

“The partners still have that data and are angry that they didn’t receive that money,” Smilyanets told Wired.com. “It's a good lesson for everyone. You can't trust criminals; Your word is worth nothing.”

BlackCat's apparent demise comes hot on the heels of the implosion of another major ransomware group – LockBit, a ransomware gang estimated to have extorted over $120 million in payments from more than 2,000 victims worldwide. On February 20, LockBit's website was seized by the FBI and the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) after months of infiltrating the group.

LockBit also attempted to restore its reputation on cybercrime forums by resurfacing on a new dark web site and threatening to release data from a number of major companies hacked by the group in the weeks and days leading up to the FBI attack became.

But LockBit now appears to have lost any credibility the group once had. For example, after a highly publicized attack on the government of Fulton County, Georgia, LockBit threatened to release Fulton County's data unless a ransom was paid by February 29. But when February 29 rolled around, LockBit simply deleted the listing for Fulton County from its website, along with those of several financial organizations that had previously been extorted by the group.

Fulton County held a press conference to say that neither LockBit nor anyone else had paid a ransom on their behalf, and that they, like everyone else, were in the dark as to why LockBit never followed through on its threat to release the data circle. Experts told KrebsOnSecurity that LockBit likely shied away because it was a bluff and that the FBI likely took that data away from them in their raid.

Smilyanets' comments are backed up by revelations first published by Recorded Future last month. The company quoted an NCA official as saying that LockBit never deleted the data after paying a ransom, even though that was the only reason many of its victims paid.

“If we do not provide you with decryption programs or delete your data after payment, no one will pay us in the future,” LockBit extortion notes usually say.

Hopefully, more and more companies will understand that paying cybercriminals to delete stolen data is a completely hopeless endeavor.

BlackCat Ransomware Group Implodes After Apparent $22 Million Payment by Change Healthcare – Cancer Over Security Read More »

OpenAI defends itself after lawsuit against Musk: Tesla CEO “sued us when we started making significant progress”

Business News / By Ashley Cornell, email: [email protected]

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was named in a lawsuit filed last week by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Getty

OpenAI hit back at Elon Musk in a blog post published on its website on Tuesday, responding to a lawsuit from one of its co-founders and former patrons.

Musk filed the lawsuit last week in San Francisco against the company, Chief Executive Sam Altman and President Greg Brockman, claiming the company had deviated from its mission of building responsible AI. In the post, OpenAI said Musk reacted strongly after he unsuccessfully tried to make the company part of Tesla Inc.

“We are saddened that things have come to this with someone we deeply admired,” OpenAI wrote, “someone who inspired us to aim higher, then told us we would fail, launched a competitor, and then sued us as we began development.” without him, “make significant progress toward OpenAI’s mission.”

Tesla's billionaire CEO, co-founder of OpenAI, who is no longer involved in the company, claims in his lawsuit that the startup's close relationship with Microsoft Corp. undermined its original mission to develop open source technology free from undue corporate influence.

“To this day, OpenAI Inc.'s website continues to assert that its charter is to ensure that AGI 'benefits all of humanity,'” the lawsuit says. “But in reality, OpenAI Inc. has transformed itself into a closed-source, de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft.”

AGI, or artificial general intelligence, refers to a type of AI that doesn't yet exist but could theoretically do a variety of tasks better than humans.

Musk is suing, among other things, for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and allegations of unfair business practices. He first filed the lawsuit in 2019 as a donor to the nonprofit's parent organization, seeking to force San Francisco-based OpenAI to stop personally supporting Microsoft and Altman.

OpenAI did not comment publicly on Musk's lawsuit when it was originally filed on February 29. However, in an internal memo reviewed by Bloomberg, the company said it “categorically disagrees” with the lawsuit.

OpenAI defends itself after lawsuit against Musk: Tesla CEO “sued us when we started making significant progress” Read More »

Target launches new paid membership program, Target Circle 360, with same-day delivery and other perks

Business News / By Ashley Cornell, email: [email protected]

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — Target, looking for ways to reverse sluggish sales, is moving into Amazon territory: the paid membership game.

The Minneapolis discount retailer said Tuesday that its new paid program, called Target Circle 360, will offer unlimited free same-day delivery in just one hour on orders over $35 and free two-day shipping.

It launches with a special offer for new members for $49 per year from April 7th to May 18th. After that, it costs $99 per year. However, Target Circle credit card holders can sign up for the lower rate at any time.

The company said its current Target Circle program has more than 100 million members who shop and spend more than five times more than non-members.

The launch of a new paid program was one of several moves announced at Target's annual investor meeting aimed at boosting sales and traffic. The retailer also said it would renew its stores and expand its highly successful own brands. And over the next decade, the chain will build more than 300 new stores.

The meeting came as recent financial results show Target shoppers remain cautious about spending on consumer goods as they are pressured by inflation and high borrowing and credit card costs. The company reported its first annual sales decline in seven years, down 1.7%.

Target posted a 58% rise in fourth-quarter profit, handily beating Wall Street expectations, as the retailer cut costs and maintained lean inventory during the critical holiday season.

MORE: CVS will close dozens of Target pharmacies

CVS will close some Target pharmacies

Sales increased slightly in the last quarter compared to the previous year and also exceeded forecasts. But comparable sales – those from stores or digital channels that have been in operation for at least 12 months – fell 4.4%. However, the declines slowed compared to the previous two quarters.

Target gave a cautious outlook for sales and profit, suggesting that sales will not recover quickly. Still, shares rose 12%, or $18.09, to close at $168.58.

“This is a unique moment to clarify our growth plan,” Target CEO Brian Cornell told investors at the meeting in Manhattan. “We will concentrate with all our efforts on gaining market share.”

Target is more vulnerable than Walmart and other large discount retailers. More than half of annual sales come from necessities such as toys, fashion and electronic devices, things that many Americans are wary of.

Even luxury buyers have remained discerning. Upscale department store Nordstrom reported fourth-quarter sales results Tuesday that beat analysts' expectations, but said sales could decline in the current year.

But Target has also stumbled because of its own mistakes. For several quarters, the company had to correct its inventory levels after being overwhelmed with overstocked warehouses in the summer of 2022. The oversupply of inventory forced it to discount heavily to sell out these goods.

Target has tried to find the right balance between offering value and enriching its stores with trendy goods. Last month, the retailer launched a new collection called Dealworthy, which features nearly 400 everyday basics like socks and small gadgets starting at less than $1, with most items priced under $10.

At the same time, Target's deal last year with designer Kendra Scott to offer exclusive collections of earrings and necklaces was well received by shoppers. This also applies to his new kitchenware brand under the discounter's own label Figmint.

As for its loyalty programs, Target said it sees a need to make the free Target Circle program more user-friendly. This means members see offers automatically applied during checkout, so they don't have to search for or add individual offers.

Target also renamed its Target RedCard credit card program to Target Circle to make it easier for credit card holders to access Target Circle benefits such as an additional 5% immediate discount on Target Circle offers. Additionally, credit card holders have 30 days to return an item, in addition to the regular 90-day period.

By comparison, an Amazon Prime membership launched in 2005 now costs $15 per month or $139 per year and includes free streaming of Amazon Videos, among other perks. With Walmart's paid membership program Walmart Plus, launched in 2020, members get free shipping for $12.95 per month or $98 per year.

Target told investors it was considering adding a range of perks to its paid program, but it wanted to listen to what shoppers want.

Asked how Target could compete with Amazon's Prime membership giant, Cornell told The Associated Press, “It's not like we're starting from scratch.” He noted that the company leverages the “power of the Target brand and the brand Target Circle”.

Target reported net income of $1.38 billion, or $2.98 per share, for the three-month period ended Feb. 3. In the same period last year it was $876 million, or $1.89 per share. Last quarter's final results significantly beat estimates of $2.42 per share, according to FactSet.

Revenue rose 1.7% to $31.92 billion, above forecasts of $31.83 billion.

Traffic both in-store and online fell 1.7% overall last quarter, but that was an improvement from the 4.1% decline in the third quarter.

For the current quarter, Target expects comparable sales to decline between 3% and 5%, in line with analyst estimates of 3.6%. Adjusted earnings per share are expected to be between $1.70 and $2.10. Analysts expect $2.08 per share.

For the full year, Target expects comparable sales to increase by an unchanged 2%. Adjusted earnings per share are expected to be between $8.60 and $9.60, Target said. Analysts expect $9.15 per share, according to FactSet.

Target launches new paid membership program, Target Circle 360, with same-day delivery and other perks Read More »

Apple: iPhone sales in China fall while Huawei rises, a report says

Business News / By Ashley Cornell, email: [email protected]

By Mariko Oi
Business reporter

March 6, 2024, 02:18 GMT

Updated 34 minutes ago

Image source: Getty Images

Sales of Apple's iPhone in China fell 24% in the first six weeks of 2024 compared to a year ago, according to research firm Counterpoint.

This comes as the US tech giant faces stiff competition from local rivals in the country.

During the same period, Chinese company Huawei recorded a 64% increase in sales in its home market, the report said.

Apple and Huawei did not immediately respond to BBC requests for comment.

Aside from a resurgence in Huawei sales at the pricier end of China's phone market, Apple has also been “pushed into the middle due to aggressive pricing from the likes of Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi,” wrote Counterpoint Research's Mengmeng Zhang.

China, one of Apple's largest markets, also saw a 7% decline in overall smartphone sales over the same period, the report said.

Huawei struggled with US sanctions for years, but sales increased after the release of the Mate 60 series of 5G smartphones in August.

This came as a big surprise as the Chinese company was cut off from key chips and technologies required for 5G mobile internet.

According to the report, Honor, the smartphone brand that was spun off from Huawei in 2020, was the only other top five brand to see an increase in sales in China during the period.

Sales of Vivo, Xiaomi and Oppo also fell in the first six weeks of the year, Counterpoint said.

The report also said that Apple's share of the Chinese smartphone market fell to 15.7% from 19% last year, dropping the company from second place to fourth place.

Meanwhile, Huawei moved into second place as its market share rose to 16.5% from 9.4% a year ago.

Despite a 15% decline in sales last year, Vivo remained China's top-selling smartphone maker, Counterpoint said.

Apple began offering discounts on its official websites in China last month before subsidizing certain iPhone models through its flagship stores on Alibaba's marketplace platform Tmall last week.

The company said sales in China were $20.82 billion (£16.4 billion) in the final three months of 2023, up from $23.9 billion a year earlier.

Apple shares fell 2.8% in New York trading on Tuesday.

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Bitcoin hits new all-time high above $69,000

Business News / By Ashley Cornell, email: [email protected]

Bitcoin hit a new all-time high on Tuesday, fueled by excitement in the cryptocurrency sector since a new, more widely available form of investment was approved in the American market.

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The cryptocurrency star rose to $69,191.94, surpassing its previous high of $68,991 in November 2021.

“The price of Bitcoin has reached new heights” and continues to rise, notes Tickmill analyst James Harte, who believes investors remain decidedly optimistic about “the prospects for a rise.”

The first of the cryptocurrencies by capitalization, which so far is worth more than 1,300 billion dollars, according to the website Coingecko, has been on a crazy ride for several months.

Its price has risen by more than 50% since the beginning of the year alone and has tripled in the past year, a spectacular increase after the price collapse following the collapse of several industry giants at the end of 2022.

After its previous high, Bitcoin collapsed to around $15,000 in November 2022 following the bankruptcy of the FTX exchange platform, until then a flagship company in the industry.

His then-boss, Sam Bankman-Fried, was accused, along with other executives, of using client accounts without their knowledge to fuel the speculative trades of his own investment company.

Regulators, still struggling to effectively regulate cryptoassets, regularly warn against the illusion of huge profits, which can entice buyers to place large bets and incur large losses or fall into the trap of fraudulent schemes.

In 2017, a previous cycle of frenzied enthusiasm was already followed by a price collapse.

“Buying as prices rise is rarely a good idea,” says AJ Bell’s Laith Khalaf. “Previous episodes have shown that those who get in when the frenzy is at its peak suffer extreme losses,” the analyst recalls.

Buying fever

For several months, the price of Bitcoin has been supported by the expectation of the approval of a new investment product in the American markets, a Bitcoin-indexed investment fund (ETF), which will allow a larger part of the public to invest in these cryptoassets without holding them directly .

The introduction of this investment in the United States initially triggered a wave of massive outflows, particularly among investors in the GBTC (Grayscale Bitcoin Trust) fund, who wanted to lock in their profits once this fund was converted into an ETF.

The trend has now reversed. Since their launch, funds of this type, such as that of the world's largest asset manager BlackRock, have “accrued assets representing more than 3% of all Bitcoins in existence,” notes Simon Peters, analyst at eToro, in an interview with AFP.

Reduced offer

The industry also sees this approval as evidence of the growing interest of institutional investors in cryptocurrencies, which further increases enthusiasm for Bitcoin.

Finally, another upcoming event supports prices: the “halving”, a technical phenomenon that consists of halving the Bitcoin reward given to Bitcoin “miners” – those who validate transactions to create the blockchain contribute.

The “halving” occurs every 210,000 blocks – or groups of transactions verified and included in the “blockchain” – which is approximately every four years. The next one is currently scheduled for April.

By reducing the amount of Bitcoins available for purchase, this phenomenon should therefore strengthen the value of Bitcoins, notes Charles Morris, analyst at ByteTree.

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