According to Bloomberg, the new service is named “Music Pro” and will be aimed at “super-fans.” It would include higher-quality audio, the option to mix together songs from different artists using artificial intelligence, and the opportunity to buy concert tickets through the Spotify platform.

The introduction of “Music Pro” is expected at some point in 2025 although Spotify denied commenting through its spokesperson. The company is currently working out the finer details of the service and has been involved in negotiations with record companies, promoters, and ticket sellers.

The price is expected to be set at $5.99, although that could change at some point and Spotify also intends to adjust the pricing depending on the region.

Spotify hiked its subscription prices back in June, adding $1 to the Premium Tier, $2 to the Duo Tier, and $3 to the Family Tier. The adjustment worked well for the company, as it ended up turning a profit in 2024 for the first time in its history.

Spotify stock closed the week at $638.18 per share after a slight slide on Friday and is currently 39.40% up since the beginning of the year.

The post Spotify Plans to Offer a New $5.99 Service With Added Features appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

Last week, DeepSeek presented its free-to-use AI model, DeepSeek-R1, which generated a massive buzz and rose to the top of the App Store charts over the weekend. The company says it developed the model in just two months at a cost of $6 million and that DeepSeek-R1 has on-par, if not superior, capabilities to similar models from U.S. companies like OpenAI and Meta.

 This prompted a widespread debate about the valuation of AI-centric companies and the amount of funds that tech giants are dedicating to developing AI technology. Investors responded with a sell-off that sent the shares of Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon plunging.

Nvidia, which controls up to 90% of the AI chips market, has taken the biggest hit and was down more than 11% in premarket trading.

“DeepSeek shows that it is possible to develop powerful AI models that cost less,” Vey-Sern Ling, managing director at Union Bancaire Privee, told Fortune. “It can potentially derail the investment case for the entire AI supply chain, which is driven by high spending from a small handful of hyperscalers.”

The post Tech Stocks Drop as China’s Startup DeepSeek Emerges as a Challenger to U.S. AI Dominance appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

According to Bloomberg, a group of bankers led by Morgan Stanley contacted investors ahead of the planned sale that could take place as soon as next week. Morgan Stanley was one of the banks that lent Musk the money to complete the $44 billion buyout of X in 2022, along with Bank of America and Barclays.

They’re reportedly expecting to get 90 to 95 cents on the dollar, after contacting a small group of investors to assess their interest in the buyout. This marks the bank’s latest attempt to rid themselves of $13 billion of debt tied to Musk’s purchase of X, following a recent offload of about $1 billion to multiple investors in a private transaction.

X faced many changes since Musk took control of the social media platform in 2022, from the name change to massive layoffs that impacted thousands of people. The banks’ past attempts to sell the debt associated with the Twitter buyout led to significant losses, but there’s growing optimism surrounding the social media platform after Musk was appointed the Administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency in the U.S. Government.

The post Wall Street Banks Reportedly Gearing Up to Sell $3 Billion in X Loans appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

Stargate is a joint venture between the American tech giants OpenAI and Oracle, the Japanese investment holding company SoftBank, and the Emirati sovereign wealth fund MGX. In addition to OpenAI and Oracle, Arm, NVIDIA and Microsoft will also provide the technology for this project to go forward.

According to Open AI’s official statement, “this infrastructure will secure American leadership in AI, create hundreds of thousands of American jobs, and generate massive economic benefit for the entire world,” in addition to “not only [supporting] the re-industrialization of the United States but also [providing] a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies.”

Stargate is officially moving forward after receiving the green light from the newly-appointed president, Donald Trump, who described it as “the largest AI infrastructure project by far in history.” A first injection of $100 billion will start “immediately”, and the partners are planning to invest up to $500 billion over the next four years to build new data centers data and create more than 100,000 jobs in the United States.

The post “The Stargate Project” Set to Invest $500 Billion in AI Infrastructure appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

TikTok became unavailable in the U.S. on January 18, after the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law to ban the app unless it is divested from its Chinese parent company ByteDance. It was promptly removed from Google and Apple stores, only to return a day later after President-elect Donald Trump pledged to make an executive order to delay the ban.

TikTok released an official statement announcing they’re “in the process of restoring services” on Sunday afternoon. Trump also addressed the issue by saying he’ll issue an executive order on Monday to “extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect.”

The search for a potential co-owner of TikTok continued amidst the shutdown, with Perplexity AI reportedly emerging as the top contender. According to CNBC, they submitted a bid to ByteDance to merge with TikTok U.S., while allowing for most of ByteDance’s existing investors to retain their equity stakes. This artificial intelligence search engine startup was launched in 2022, and it ended in 2024 with a valuation of about $9 billion after experiencing rapid growth.

The post Perplexity AI Eyeing Merger With TikTok Amid Polarizing U.S. Ban appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced the news through an internal memo sent to the staff and later shared by Bloomberg News.

“I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster,” Zuckerberg said. “We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year, but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle.”

According to the memo, the affected employees in the United States will be informed by early February while international employees will be notified at a later date.

Meta employs roughly 72,000 workers, meaning that around 3,600 people are set to be laid off. According to Zuckerberg, the outgoing employees will receive “generous” severance.

The layoffs are part of the company’s efforts to improve efficiency and have the “best people” in anticipation of an “intense year” that will see Meta place an even bigger focus on projects related to artificial intelligence.

Meta’s stock continued this week’s slide on Tuesday, dropping by 2.31% to close at $594.25 per share.

The post Meta to Cut 5% of Its Staff With Focus on “Low-Performers” appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

In his keynote, Huang delivered an update on several of Nvidia’s upcoming products. This included a series of new graphics processing units (GPUs), which use the same design as the company’s highly-touted Blackwell artificial intelligence chips. These GPUs will use AI to afford better performance in video games.

Additionally, Nvidia is preparing a supercomputer from its Project Digits. It will be equipped with a GB10 AI super chip and capable of running large AI models. This supercomputer, which is sized to fit on a desk, will cost $3,000 when it comes out in May.

Huang also discussed Nvidia’s additional plans for AI, robotics projects, and ventures into the autonomous vehicle sector.

Despite the upcoming lineup of Nvidia’s products causing buzz among consumers, the investors were not particularly impressed. After reaching an all-time high of $153.09 per share early on Tuesday, the company’s stock slumped by 6.22% and closed at $140.14 per share. The stock is now 3.10% up year-to-date. 

The post Nvidia’s Stock Reaches Record High Before Reversing Course After CES Presentation appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

The initial agreement between Nvidia and Run:ai attracted the attention of the European Commission, which launched a probe due to concerns it would stifle the competition. The major issue was that Nvidia already has significant control over the AI sector, holding between 70% and 95% of the market for AI chips.

The EU regulators completed the investigation in December and concluded that the deal doesn’t have anticompetitive consequences, giving it unconditional approval.

“We’re delighted to welcome the Run:ai team to Nvidia,” Nvidia said in a statement.

Run:ai, which was founded in 2018, specializes in creating software for optimizing and orchestrating GPU compute resources for artificial intelligence. It currently only supports Nvidia’s GPUs but signaled an intention to make it open source.

“We plan to open source the Run:ai software to help the community build better AI, faster. While Run:ai currently supports only NVIDIA GPUs, open sourcing the software will enable it to extend its availability to the entire AI ecosystem,” Run:ai said in a statement shared on their website.

Nvidia’s stock reacted positively to the deal, jumping by 1% on Monday for a $138.50 per share close. The stock is currently 187.52% up year-to-date.

The post Nvidia Completes the $700 Million Acquisition of AI Startup Run:ai appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

OpenAI said in a blog post shared on its official website that it needs to become a for-profit organization to allow interested parties an easier path to investments, which would allow it to receive necessary funding for projects.

“The hundreds⁠ of⁠ billions⁠ of⁠ dollars that major companies are now investing into AI development show what it will really take for OpenAI to continue pursuing the mission,” the blog post said. “We once again need to raise more capital than we’d imagined. Investors want to back us but, at this scale of capital, need conventional equity and less structural bespokeness.”

OpenAI currently has a for-profit business that is controlled by a non-profit organization. The transition would see its existing for-profit become a “Delaware Public Benefit Corporation⁠ (PBC) with ordinary shares of stock.”

The non-profit organization would see its interest in the existing for-profit arm transformed into shares in the PBC “at a fair valuation determined by independent financial advisors.” This would make it “one of the best-resourced non-profits in history,” and it would receive new leadership and pursue charitable endeavors in the fields of science, health care, and education.

During its latest funding round in October, OpenAI attracted $6.6 billion in investments, which valued the company at approximately $157 billion.

The post OpenAI Details Its For-Profit Transition Plan appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

According to xAI’s announcement, the Series C funding round saw participation from Blackrock, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Kingdom Holdings, Morgan Stanley, and Sequoia Capital among others. Semiconductor makers Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which the company refers to as strategic investors, also took part in the funding round.

“The funds from this financing round will be used to further accelerate our advanced infrastructure, ship groundbreaking products that will be used by billions of people, and accelerate the research and development of future technologies enabling the company’s mission to understand the true nature of the universe,” xAI shared in a statement.

The company also provided an update on the latest version of its AI chatbot Grok, which is labeled as its “most powerful model yet.” Grok 3 is currently being trained and will be released as soon as the process is completed. Musk previously promised that Grok 3 will roll out by the end of 2024.

xAI had its Series B funding round in May, during which it also raised $6 billion. Reportedly, only the investors who took part in Series B were allowed to participate in Series C.

The post Elon Musk’s xAI Raises $6 Billion in Latest Funding Round, Now Valued at $45 Billion appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

According to Bloomberg, the new service is named “Music Pro” and will be aimed at “super-fans.” It would include higher-quality audio, the option to mix together songs from different artists using artificial intelligence, and the opportunity to buy concert tickets through the Spotify platform.

The introduction of “Music Pro” is expected at some point in 2025 although Spotify denied commenting through its spokesperson. The company is currently working out the finer details of the service and has been involved in negotiations with record companies, promoters, and ticket sellers.

The price is expected to be set at $5.99, although that could change at some point and Spotify also intends to adjust the pricing depending on the region.

Spotify hiked its subscription prices back in June, adding $1 to the Premium Tier, $2 to the Duo Tier, and $3 to the Family Tier. The adjustment worked well for the company, as it ended up turning a profit in 2024 for the first time in its history.

Spotify stock closed the week at $638.18 per share after a slight slide on Friday and is currently 39.40% up since the beginning of the year.

The post Spotify Plans to Offer a New $5.99 Service With Added Features appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

Last week, DeepSeek presented its free-to-use AI model, DeepSeek-R1, which generated a massive buzz and rose to the top of the App Store charts over the weekend. The company says it developed the model in just two months at a cost of $6 million and that DeepSeek-R1 has on-par, if not superior, capabilities to similar models from U.S. companies like OpenAI and Meta.

 This prompted a widespread debate about the valuation of AI-centric companies and the amount of funds that tech giants are dedicating to developing AI technology. Investors responded with a sell-off that sent the shares of Nvidia, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon plunging.

Nvidia, which controls up to 90% of the AI chips market, has taken the biggest hit and was down more than 11% in premarket trading.

“DeepSeek shows that it is possible to develop powerful AI models that cost less,” Vey-Sern Ling, managing director at Union Bancaire Privee, told Fortune. “It can potentially derail the investment case for the entire AI supply chain, which is driven by high spending from a small handful of hyperscalers.”

The post Tech Stocks Drop as China’s Startup DeepSeek Emerges as a Challenger to U.S. AI Dominance appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

According to Bloomberg, a group of bankers led by Morgan Stanley contacted investors ahead of the planned sale that could take place as soon as next week. Morgan Stanley was one of the banks that lent Musk the money to complete the $44 billion buyout of X in 2022, along with Bank of America and Barclays.

They’re reportedly expecting to get 90 to 95 cents on the dollar, after contacting a small group of investors to assess their interest in the buyout. This marks the bank’s latest attempt to rid themselves of $13 billion of debt tied to Musk’s purchase of X, following a recent offload of about $1 billion to multiple investors in a private transaction.

X faced many changes since Musk took control of the social media platform in 2022, from the name change to massive layoffs that impacted thousands of people. The banks’ past attempts to sell the debt associated with the Twitter buyout led to significant losses, but there’s growing optimism surrounding the social media platform after Musk was appointed the Administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency in the U.S. Government.

The post Wall Street Banks Reportedly Gearing Up to Sell $3 Billion in X Loans appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

Stargate is a joint venture between the American tech giants OpenAI and Oracle, the Japanese investment holding company SoftBank, and the Emirati sovereign wealth fund MGX. In addition to OpenAI and Oracle, Arm, NVIDIA and Microsoft will also provide the technology for this project to go forward.

According to Open AI’s official statement, “this infrastructure will secure American leadership in AI, create hundreds of thousands of American jobs, and generate massive economic benefit for the entire world,” in addition to “not only [supporting] the re-industrialization of the United States but also [providing] a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies.”

Stargate is officially moving forward after receiving the green light from the newly-appointed president, Donald Trump, who described it as “the largest AI infrastructure project by far in history.” A first injection of $100 billion will start “immediately”, and the partners are planning to invest up to $500 billion over the next four years to build new data centers data and create more than 100,000 jobs in the United States.

The post “The Stargate Project” Set to Invest $500 Billion in AI Infrastructure appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

TikTok became unavailable in the U.S. on January 18, after the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law to ban the app unless it is divested from its Chinese parent company ByteDance. It was promptly removed from Google and Apple stores, only to return a day later after President-elect Donald Trump pledged to make an executive order to delay the ban.

TikTok released an official statement announcing they’re “in the process of restoring services” on Sunday afternoon. Trump also addressed the issue by saying he’ll issue an executive order on Monday to “extend the period of time before the law’s prohibitions take effect.”

The search for a potential co-owner of TikTok continued amidst the shutdown, with Perplexity AI reportedly emerging as the top contender. According to CNBC, they submitted a bid to ByteDance to merge with TikTok U.S., while allowing for most of ByteDance’s existing investors to retain their equity stakes. This artificial intelligence search engine startup was launched in 2022, and it ended in 2024 with a valuation of about $9 billion after experiencing rapid growth.

The post Perplexity AI Eyeing Merger With TikTok Amid Polarizing U.S. Ban appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, announced the news through an internal memo sent to the staff and later shared by Bloomberg News.

“I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster,” Zuckerberg said. “We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year, but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle.”

According to the memo, the affected employees in the United States will be informed by early February while international employees will be notified at a later date.

Meta employs roughly 72,000 workers, meaning that around 3,600 people are set to be laid off. According to Zuckerberg, the outgoing employees will receive “generous” severance.

The layoffs are part of the company’s efforts to improve efficiency and have the “best people” in anticipation of an “intense year” that will see Meta place an even bigger focus on projects related to artificial intelligence.

Meta’s stock continued this week’s slide on Tuesday, dropping by 2.31% to close at $594.25 per share.

The post Meta to Cut 5% of Its Staff With Focus on “Low-Performers” appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

In his keynote, Huang delivered an update on several of Nvidia’s upcoming products. This included a series of new graphics processing units (GPUs), which use the same design as the company’s highly-touted Blackwell artificial intelligence chips. These GPUs will use AI to afford better performance in video games.

Additionally, Nvidia is preparing a supercomputer from its Project Digits. It will be equipped with a GB10 AI super chip and capable of running large AI models. This supercomputer, which is sized to fit on a desk, will cost $3,000 when it comes out in May.

Huang also discussed Nvidia’s additional plans for AI, robotics projects, and ventures into the autonomous vehicle sector.

Despite the upcoming lineup of Nvidia’s products causing buzz among consumers, the investors were not particularly impressed. After reaching an all-time high of $153.09 per share early on Tuesday, the company’s stock slumped by 6.22% and closed at $140.14 per share. The stock is now 3.10% up year-to-date. 

The post Nvidia’s Stock Reaches Record High Before Reversing Course After CES Presentation appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

The initial agreement between Nvidia and Run:ai attracted the attention of the European Commission, which launched a probe due to concerns it would stifle the competition. The major issue was that Nvidia already has significant control over the AI sector, holding between 70% and 95% of the market for AI chips.

The EU regulators completed the investigation in December and concluded that the deal doesn’t have anticompetitive consequences, giving it unconditional approval.

“We’re delighted to welcome the Run:ai team to Nvidia,” Nvidia said in a statement.

Run:ai, which was founded in 2018, specializes in creating software for optimizing and orchestrating GPU compute resources for artificial intelligence. It currently only supports Nvidia’s GPUs but signaled an intention to make it open source.

“We plan to open source the Run:ai software to help the community build better AI, faster. While Run:ai currently supports only NVIDIA GPUs, open sourcing the software will enable it to extend its availability to the entire AI ecosystem,” Run:ai said in a statement shared on their website.

Nvidia’s stock reacted positively to the deal, jumping by 1% on Monday for a $138.50 per share close. The stock is currently 187.52% up year-to-date.

The post Nvidia Completes the $700 Million Acquisition of AI Startup Run:ai appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

OpenAI said in a blog post shared on its official website that it needs to become a for-profit organization to allow interested parties an easier path to investments, which would allow it to receive necessary funding for projects.

“The hundreds⁠ of⁠ billions⁠ of⁠ dollars that major companies are now investing into AI development show what it will really take for OpenAI to continue pursuing the mission,” the blog post said. “We once again need to raise more capital than we’d imagined. Investors want to back us but, at this scale of capital, need conventional equity and less structural bespokeness.”

OpenAI currently has a for-profit business that is controlled by a non-profit organization. The transition would see its existing for-profit become a “Delaware Public Benefit Corporation⁠ (PBC) with ordinary shares of stock.”

The non-profit organization would see its interest in the existing for-profit arm transformed into shares in the PBC “at a fair valuation determined by independent financial advisors.” This would make it “one of the best-resourced non-profits in history,” and it would receive new leadership and pursue charitable endeavors in the fields of science, health care, and education.

During its latest funding round in October, OpenAI attracted $6.6 billion in investments, which valued the company at approximately $157 billion.

The post OpenAI Details Its For-Profit Transition Plan appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.

According to xAI’s announcement, the Series C funding round saw participation from Blackrock, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Kingdom Holdings, Morgan Stanley, and Sequoia Capital among others. Semiconductor makers Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which the company refers to as strategic investors, also took part in the funding round.

“The funds from this financing round will be used to further accelerate our advanced infrastructure, ship groundbreaking products that will be used by billions of people, and accelerate the research and development of future technologies enabling the company’s mission to understand the true nature of the universe,” xAI shared in a statement.

The company also provided an update on the latest version of its AI chatbot Grok, which is labeled as its “most powerful model yet.” Grok 3 is currently being trained and will be released as soon as the process is completed. Musk previously promised that Grok 3 will roll out by the end of 2024.

xAI had its Series B funding round in May, during which it also raised $6 billion. Reportedly, only the investors who took part in Series B were allowed to participate in Series C.

The post Elon Musk’s xAI Raises $6 Billion in Latest Funding Round, Now Valued at $45 Billion appeared first on theprimarymarket.com.