Jeff Bezos has apparently decided he couldn’t stay away from running a company, even with all his billions. Bezos is now co-CEO of an AI startup called Project Prometheus…which has raised $6.2 billion in funding. This will be the first time the former Amazon founder and CEO has been in an actual working executive role since leaving the Amazon CEO position in 2021. The details are scant about Project Prometheus. On LinkedIn, the only description is ‘AI for the physical economy.’ The other co-CEO is Vic Bajaj, who formerly worked in research at Alphabet’s ‘moonshot’ division Google X. Vic is also a director at biotech startup in Seattle called Xaira Therapeutics. Bezos said earlier this year that there are signs of an AI “industrial bubble” — but also said the technology will bring massive benefits to society. “When the dust settles and you see who are the winners, society benefits from those inventions. … The benefits to society from AI are going to be gigantic,” according to Bezos.

Just last week, we reported on a major investor-a Japanese billionaire- selling all his Nvidia stock. Now comes word that tech venture capitalist Peter Thiel has sold ALL his Nvidia stock. According to raw story.com, the sale had amounted to about 40% of a Thiel controlled hedge fund. One post on line said just “Uh, oh.” This is another red flag that there is very likely an AI bubble, and that it may be getting precariously close to popping. There has been some $350 billion pumped into AI this year just in the US. The AI boom reportedly now makes up about a third of the value of the entire stock market. It isn’t helpful that Sam Altman – CEO of OpenAI – about the U.S. government being the “insurer of last resort,” suggesting that taxpayers may be forced to bail AI companies out should they financially collapse. Well, the government has bailed out banks and savings and loans…but of course, not the poor, working poor, or middle class…nor has it helped younger people get into homes. Kamala Harris’ plan to give new home buyers $25 grand to do that seems like it might have been a lot better investment for the government than bailing out billionaires that have bet big on a flaky at this point but promising technology. 

DoorDash has had a data breach that includes user phone numbers and physical addresses. Techcrunch.com says that DoorDash hasn’t released a number affected…but that it does include customers, delivery workers, and merchants. The company did say that “no sensitive information was accessed by the unauthorized third party and we have no indication the data has been misused for fraud or identity theft at this time.” No social security numbers or driver licenses, or bank information or credit card info was exposed in the hack. All affected users have been notified. 

A lot of gamers are looking at jumping to the new Linux-based Steam Machine from Valve. One sticky issue is keeping some popular games off the platform and may keep some gamers from switching. Engadget.com reports that the problem is its Linux OS. It is apparently way easy to make cheating software for Linux based operating systems. This has kept some big games like Fortnite and Rainbow Six Siege from porting to the platform. Still, for a lot of folks that are unhappy with the intrusiveness of Windows 11…and the specter of Windows 12 even possibly being subscription based like Office 360…something Microsoft has backed off of for now…I expect to see a good minority of users jump to the Steam Machine. As with the Mac Mini, you do need to get your own keyboard, mouse, and monitor…but those things are widely available. 

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