Marketplace Tech

This week, Palantir announced on X it’s relocating its headquarters to Miami. Plus, we look at the controversy around Ring's Search Party feature.

But first, an update to Google's AI search summaries. If you use AI-enabled search on Google, it’ll spit out an AI-generated summary with source links to the right. Now, the company is making links more prominent when users hover over certain words in the AI summary.

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Meta anticipates up to $135 billion worth of capital expenditures this year, nearly double the company’s outlay in 2025. One driver of that expenditure growth is what Meta calls its "Superintelligence Labs." This kind of spending puts it right up there with other tech giants pouring money into their AI capabilities. And it's a shift from a company that used to be hyper-focused on virtual reality. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hu...

As artificial intelligence companies roll out more sophisticated agents, many analysts and investors raised concerns that AI could replace traditional software. Some are dubbing this the “SaaSpocolypse.”

New AI tools allow users to “vibe code,” or describe what you’d like to create in plain language and have the AI generate the code for you. This could make some software easier for companies to create themselves.

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According to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, the number of students enrolling in computer and information science decreased this past fall from the year before. That's at both the graduate and undergraduate level and the first drop since 2020. Meanwhile, the Computing Research Association says there's been a decline in a number of computing-related majors. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Kari ...

Caterpillar, which manufactures heavy duty equipment like asphalt pavers, diesel engine locomotives, and industrial gas turbines, has been around for 101 years. And now, the company seems to be one of the big winners of the AI infrastructure build out.

Big tech companies are working as fast as possible to get their data centers up to power artificial intelligence. Some are building their own natural gas plants to provi...

This week, we look at Spotify's stellar quarter. Plus, there's a new AI-only social network called Moltbook. But first, Alphabet, parent of Google, went to the debt markets this week, raising tens of billions of dollars to fund its AI spending.

One of the bonds Alphabet is offering, issued in British pounds, has a maturity date of 100 years from now. This is very unusual in the corporate world. Marketplace’s Stephanie ...

Cryptocurrency is being used more frequently in illegal transactions — about $158 billion was used in illicit crypto activity last year. That’s an all-time high, according to a new report from the startup TRM Labs. This comes as the overall crypto ecosystem is growing and, it should be said, legitimate uses of crypto are growing at a faster rate than illegitimate ones. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Ari Redbord,...

NASA’s Artemis II mission, which will send humans around the moon for the first time in over five decades, could launch as early as March. This is part of a larger campaign to establish a long-term presence on the moon and eventually prepare for human space flight to Mars.

Meanwhile, China also has a goal of landing humans on the moon by 2030, setting up a kind of modern space race. One reason for the rush: It's like a...

Graphics processing units (GPUs) have become the most important commodity in the AI boom — and have made Nvidia a multi-trillion dollar company. But the tensor processing unit (TPU) could present itself as competition for the GPU.

TPUs are developed by Google specifically for AI workloads. And so far, Anthropic, OpenAI and Meta have reportedly made deals for Google’s TPUs.

Christopher Miller, historian at Tufts Uni...

According to surveys by the FINRA Foundation, our knowledge of personal finance here in the U.S. went down by 15% between 2009 and 2021. But what if it actually didn't? What if the technology we use to answer the questions is now getting in the way? In 2021, over half of all respondents used a smartphone to fill out the survey. In 2009, none of them used one, according to data from FINRA’s National Financial Capability Stu...

On this week’s “Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review,” we take a look at Nvidia's changing investment relationship with OpenAI. Plus, a stormy start for the new U.S. version of TikTok. But first, SpaceX, one of the world’s largest rocket companies, announced this week that it’s buying xAI, a two-and-half-year-old artificial intelligence startup. Both companies are controlled by Elon Musk. The new company is reportedly va...

A landmark lawsuit that accuses social media companies of intentionally designing their platforms to be addictive — and causing harm to children and teenagers' mental health — is in court this week in Los Angeles.

The defendants in this case are Meta and YouTube, both of which dispute the allegations. Snap and TikTok both settled in advance of the trial.

Some are calling this social media's "Big Tobacco" moment. Er...

You can get a pretty good workout plan from a chatbot, but the tech is also being incorporated into all kinds of existing fitness apps, from Apple's Workout Buddy, which motivates you through earbuds, to the Fitbit AI health coach, to Peloton's AI-enabled camera that tracks your form.

Nicole Nguyen, personal tech columnist at The Wall Street Journal, gave some of the most popular ones a spin. She spoke with “Marketplac...

With all the fanfare surrounding AI these days — the utopian dreams and dystopian nightmares — it can be hard to see the technology as simply a tool that anyone can use to improve their lives.

That's what tech columnist Christopher Mims at the Wall Street Journal focuses on his new book "How to AI: Cut Through the Hype. Master the Basics. Transform Your Work.” In it, he outlines two dozen “AI Laws” for how consumers an...

Is AI a bubble? It's the trillion-dollar question in the economy. So Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino decided to look to history for some answers in this week’s special episode of “Tech Bytes: Week in Review.” McCarty Carino spoke with David A. Kirsch, a historian and management professor at the University of Maryland. He’s also co-author of the book "Bubbles and Crashes: The Boom and Bust of Technological Innovation." ...