Plus, SoftBank reports a quarterly loss. And Baidu is in talks to operate robotaxis in U.A.E. Julie Chang hosts.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
[00:00:00] Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand. Marketing tools that get your products out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time from startups to scale ups online, in person and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at shopify.com slash setup.
[00:00:31] Here's your TNB Tech Minute for Wednesday, February 12th. I'm Julie Chang for The Wall Street Journal. Elon Musk's platform X has agreed to pay about $10 million to settle a lawsuit that Donald Trump brought against the company and its former CEO. The agreement makes X the second social media platform to settle litigation that Trump filed when the company deplatformed him over his role in the January 6th riot at the US Capitol. A spokesman for X didn't respond to requests for comment.
[00:00:59] All the parties involved last week filed a motion to dismiss the appeal. It was granted on Monday. SoftBank reported a quarterly loss partly due to the weakness in its technology funds business. The Japanese technology investment company said today that it booked a net loss for the three months ended in December, roughly $2.42 billion. That's compared to a net profit of about $6.15 billion in the year earlier period. This comes at a time when SoftBank announced a joint venture
[00:01:27] with OpenAI and Oracle called Stargate, aiming to invest up to $500 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the US. SoftBank said that Stargate will be funded primarily through project finance and that equity investment will be limited. And Chinese internet company Baidu is in talks with authorities in the United Arab Emirates to bring robo-taxis there. That's according to people familiar with the matter. Tests in Dubai of its Apollo Go robo-taxis could start as early as the first half
[00:01:55] of this year. Baidu received a license for testing autonomous vehicles in Hong Kong late last year. The company is beefing up its business development teams in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia, according to job postings. For a deeper dive into what's happening in tech, check out Thursday's tech news briefing podcast.