In today’s newsletter we discuss Amazon invests in Anthropic, YouTube launches AI-powered Studio tools, Queen’s Brian May welcomes asteroid mission home, Keanu Reeves’ band is back in town, The Devil Wears Prada townhouse sold, and Megan Rapinoe retires from U.S. National team in style.

Business

Another day, another AI partnership announcement. This time, Amazon has made a $1.25 Billion dollar strategic investment in Anthropic, that could increase to $4 Billion in the next few years. Amazon is obviously looking to compete with Google’s Bard and Microsoft-backed OpenAI, and this deal gets them a place at the AI table. As part of the deal Anthropic will use AWS’s platform and specially designed AI chips, in a rebuke to Nvidia which most of the rest of the industry uses for AI.

What I love about this deal is Amazon’s $1.25 Billion investment will probably be recouped by Anthropic’s use of their AWS platform and AI chip, so in the long run I’m guessing this deal gets Amazon a nice piece of equity for little actual investment when all is said and done - and I didn’t even need ChatGPT to give me answer!

Amazon and Anthropic announce strategic collaboration to advance generative AI

Tech

Not to be left out of the AI news of the day, Google’s YouTube announced they were “testing a new generative AI-powered tool in YouTube Studio that suggests video topics, making the brainstorming process easier for content creators.”

In 202 YouTube generated $29.2 Billion dollars in revenue, and the service reached 2.7 Billion active users in 2023. According to Oxford Economics, “in 2022 YouTube's creative ecosystem contributed over $35 billion to the U.S. GDP and supported more than 390K full-time equivalent U.S. jobs.”

As a YouTube creator I have mixed feelings about this. There are already enough faceless YouTube channels out there that feel generic, and now with generative AI -powered tools in the YouTube Studio it’s only a natural progression for their software to not only suggest a topic to make a video about but I can totally see the software asking “Would you like us to generate a script, film a video, and put it all to music?” and then every two-bit hack with a YouTube channel will be lining up for their AI-generated YouTube channels!

YouTube Studio to give creators a generative AI tool to suggest video topics

Space

It’s not everyday that a famous musician from the golden era of rock and roll welcomes home a NASA spacecraft returning the first asteroid samples from space, but that’s exactly what Queen’s Brian May did over the weekend (I sat around a campfire and puttered around my camp all weekend, but you do you Brian May!).

The OSIRUS-REx mission cost $800 Million, excluding launch of course, and is expected to last 7 years. Contrast that with Brian May who is worth an estimated $260 Million dollars (I’m guessing it more than that). So I have “expensive hobbies” according to my wife, but Brian May’s hobby is working on $800 Million dollar NASA asteroid missions. Out of this world!

Queen’s Brian May helped NASA return its first asteroid sample

Entertainment

Thank goodness for The Matrix Resurrections movie, but Keanu Reeves’ music career really needed some help. Now his band Dogstar is back at it with their third album and a tour. So it’s nice to see Keanu Reeves getting his life back together and that epic fail of a movie The Matrix Resurrections, which cost $190 Million to make and only grossed $159.2 Million worldwide to become the 1st movie to bomb in The Matrix franchise series.

How The Matrix Resurrections resurrected Keanu Reeves' rock band Dogstar

Real Estate

The Upper East side NYC townhouse featured in The Devil Wears Prada was recently listed and only lasted 8 weeks on the market before being snatched up for a cool $26.5 Million. No price history is available on my favorite real estate stalking site Zillow, but according to the article they paid $8.8 Million in 2003. I’m guessing they cleared a nice profit on the sale, minus what must have been Millions in renovations.

“The Devil Wears Prada” townhouse sold for $27M

Sports

Megan Rapinoe has won everything possible at the highest levels of women’s soccer, and she’s going out on top as one of the most prolific women’s soccer players in the world. Megan Rapinoe is retiring from the U.S. National team, and is expected to play her last game on October 6.

Megan made a reported $7 Million last year, mostly from sponsorship deals as the pay for women soccer players is nowhere near the astronomical salaries of men in the Premier League, but that’s a whole other story for a future e-Newsletter.

Megan Rapinoe brings the curtain down on her storied career

So much news, so little time. Until tomorrow we’re signing out.

— Chris