Meta shares dropped yesterday after the company forecasted higher expenses and lower than expected revenue. The expenses mainly due to its big investment in AI. Meta was still down 11% as of this recording…and lost some $200 billion in valuation yesterday, according to Reuters. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on an earnings call that the focus on AI would “grow our investment envelope meaningfully before we make much revenue from some of these new products.” Meta expects AI features like a new AI chat assistant will driver engagement on its platforms…in other words, a chatbot will make Facebook and Instagram bigger time sucks than they already are for some people!

President Biden signed the foreign aid package that includes the TikTok ban, so things are getting interesting for ByteDance, the China based parent company. Theverge.com reports that they have 9 months to sell control of TikTok to a non-Chinese owner. The president can give them an additional 3 months if it looks like they are moving towards that…otherwise it will be banned from both the Google and Apple app stores. TikTok has repeated that it will challenge the law in the courts. Although some 170 million users in the US use the app, it should be pointed out that the Chinese government forces both Apple and Google to block apps from downloading there on a regular basis. 

Threads has passed the 150 million active monthly user mark. As recently as February, they were at 130 million, so growth is accelerating quickly. Mashable.com notes that X claims 550 million active users worldwide, although some research firms dispute X’s numbers. Threads announced yesterday that they are testing the option to archive posts “with a small number of people.” Individual posts can be archived manually, but you can also automatically archive all posts after a certain period of time.

Taiwan Semiconductor will start building what they are calling ultra-advanced 1.6 nanometer chips by 2026. Right now, the fastest, most advanced chips are using 3 nanometer tech. Nikkei Asia repots that the A16 tech was revealed at the North America Technology Symposium in Santa Clara Yesterday. TSMC says the 1.6 NM chips will have greatly improved logic density and performance. The new tech delivers poswer to chips from the bottom up instead of top down…avoiding complex internal wiring and improving energy efficiency. Intel has already announced backside power, and will start making 2 NM and 1.8 NM chips in 2025. The present iPhones use TSMC’s 3 NM tech. Many tech experts believe that AI will eventually need even more advanced chips…with sizes under 1 NM. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.