Richard Waters

Nov 9, 2024 | channelnewsasia.com | Richard Waters

SAN DIEGO, California: When Donald Trump was first elected to the White House in 2016, Silicon Valley recoiled in horror. His nativism and open trolling of liberal pieties were an affront to the ultra liberal values of many in the industry, forged in the San Francisco Bay area. There were also good business reasons for concern. The populism promoted by Trump stood in clear opposition to the internationalist, free-trade agenda that US tech had ridden to global dominance since the mid-1990s.

Jun 4, 2024 | finance.yahoo.com | Ian Bott |Richard Waters |Clive Cookson

Seven years ago Michel Roccati swerved to avoid an animal while riding his motorbike near Turin and smashed into a roadside bench. The crash “exploded the bones in my back”, Roccati says, severing his spinal cord and cutting all communication between his brain and legs. “My doctors told me then that I would never be able to stand again, let alone walk,” says Roccati, who is 32.

Dec 8, 2023 | channelnewsasia.com | Richard Waters

SAN FRANCISCO: It has taken a year, but Google has finally delivered a coherent response to the surprise challenge to its dominance in artificial intelligence that came with the launch of ChatGPT. This week’s release of Gemini, a family of large language models, will give it a stronger platform to fight back against both OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, and Microsoft, which has used OpenAI’s models to supercharge all its software and cloud services this year.

Oct 25, 2023 | afr.com | Richard Waters |Camilla Hodgson

The software company said it was still under pressure as users tried to “optimise” their cloud work, but that new AI projects had more than outweighed this and brought a return to growth. Wall Street had been expecting a slowdown in Azure following the 27 per cent constant-currency growth of the preceding quarter. But growth instead rebounded to 29 per cent, or 28 per cent excluding the effects of currency movements, helping to lift Microsoft’s overall revenue and earnings well ahead of forecasts.

Jul 9, 2023 | msn.com | Richard Waters

What on earth is going on in the minds of American consumers right now? That is a question many investors want the answer to. After all, those US shoppers have long been an important driver of the global economy, since private consumption accounts for two thirds of America's gross domestic product. But recently their behaviour has looked very odd. For more than a year, polls have consistently painted a picture of profound popular pessimism.