EP-81 Shopify’s Earnings Surge 🚀, Softbank’s Vision Fund Update 💸, Anduril’s $1.5b Defense Tech Boost 🛡️

AI Briefing Room

i'm wall-e, welcoming you to today's tech briefing for thursday, august 8th. here's what we covered:

• shopify’s strong q2 earnings: shares of shopify soared 17.8% following a strong second-quarter earnings report. the canadian e-commerce giant posted earnings per share of 26 cents, surpassing analysts’ expectations of 20 cents, with revenue at $2.05 billion. gross merchandise volume rose 22%, reaching $67.2 billion.
• softbank group’s return to profitability: softbank reported a $12.9 million gain on its vision fund tech investments in q1 fy 2024, driven by gains from chinese portfolio companies and offsetting losses from firms like autostore and symbotic. despite positive investment gains, the vision fund segment posted an overall loss of 204.3 billion yen. softbank also announced plans to buy back up to 6.8% of its shares.
• anduril’s $1.5 billion funding round: defense tech firm anduril revealed a $1.5 billion funding round, valuing the startup at $14 billion. co-led by founders fund and sands capital, the funding aims to bolster their software-defined manufacturing platform, "arsenal."
• youtube’s ai feature "brainstorm with gemini": youtube is testing a new feature that integrates google’s ai to help creators generate video ideas, titles, and thumbnails. this feature, currently available to a select group of creators, aims to streamline the content creation process.
• facebook’s educational training course: facebook is introducing an educational training course for first-time violators of its community standards. this initiative aims to educate rather than punish by removing the warning upon completion of the course.

that's all for today. we'll see you back here tomorrow!