Tuesday, 21 April 2026
Apple Inc. has announced that John Ternus, the head of hardware engineering, will succeed Tim Cook as CEO effective September 1, 2026, while Cook will transition to the role of executive chairman after 15 years in the top position. Ternus, who has been with Apple for 25 years, has played a key role in the development of major products including the iPhone and iPad, and will join the board of directors upon his appointment.
Amazon.com Inc. has announced an investment of $5 billion in Anthropic PBC, with the potential for an additional $20 billion tied to specific commercial milestones, as part of a broader agreement to enhance AI infrastructure. Anthropic has committed to spending over $100 billion on Amazon Web Services technologies over the next decade, including securing up to 5 gigawatts of capacity for its Claude AI models. This investment follows Amazon's previous $8 billion funding in Anthropic and comes shortly after a $50 billion investment in rival OpenAI.
Google has announced the general availability of Ironwood, its seventh-generation tensor processing unit (TPU) designed specifically for AI inference, which delivers ten times the peak performance of its predecessor, the TPU v5p. The new chip features 192 gigabytes of HBM3E memory and can scale to 9,216 liquid-cooled chips, producing 42.5 FP8 exaflops. This launch is part of a broader strategy that includes partnerships with four design firms and aims to challenge Nvidia's dominance in the AI chip market.
Charlie Beller, a deputy assistant attorney general for antitrust at the U.S. Justice Department, emphasized the need for caution in antitrust enforcement regarding media mergers, citing the transformative impact of artificial intelligence and streaming services on competition. Speaking at the National Association of Broadcasters conference, Beller noted that recent developments in AI influenced the DOJ's assessment of competitive effects in cases like the merger between Getty Images Holdings Inc. and Shutterstock, which the DOJ cleared, contrasting with the UK's more stringent stance. He highlighted the importance of allowing competition to evolve rather than reacting solely to prominent voices in the market.
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