Alphabet Puts a Spotlight on Subscription Growth

Alphabet generated 15 billion US dollars from subscriptions in 2023, up fivefold since 2019. It said the growth was driven by demand for YouTube Premium and Music, YouTube TV and Google One.

Alphabet's 2023 revenues of 307 billion dollars were up 9% versus 2022, with fourth quarter revenues up 13% year-on-year in both reported and constant currency.

Google Cloud reported a 26% increase in revenues for the fourth quarter to 9.2 billion dollars. It now offers an "AI Hypercomputer" - a supercomputing architecture composed of TPUs (Google’s application-specific integrated circuit for deep learning and machine learning) and GPUs (graphical processing units), AI software and multi-slice and multi-host technology.  Anthropic, Character.ai, Essential AI, and Mistral AI are among the companies building and serving AI models on the architecture. Source: Alphabet earnings transcript

Tesla Anticipates Slower Growth in 2024

Tesla warned that its "vehicle volume growth rate" may be notably lower in 2024 than in 2023, as it works on the launch of a "next-generation vehicle" at its Gigafactory Texas. Tesla said the growth rate of deployments and revenue in its energy storage business should outpace the automotive business in 2024.

In 2023, Tesla delivered 1.8 million vehicles, 38% more than in 2022, including more than 1.2 million Model Ys, making it the best-selling vehicle, of any kind, globally.  Energy storage deployments reached 14.7 GWh in 2023, more than double those in 2022.

In late December, Tesla started rolling out version 12 of its FSD (full self driving) Beta system, which is trained on data collected from more than a million vehicles. The company says the system uses AI to "influence vehicle controls (steering wheel, pedals, indicators, etc.) instead of hard-coding every driving behaviour." It also demonstrated the 2nd generation of its general purpose Optimus humanoid robot, which uses Tesla-designed actuators and sensors and improved AI capabilities. Source: Tesla statement