| Hi, this is Marissa reporting from Riyadh. At Saudi Arabia's biggest investment confab, dreams of advanced artificial intelligence collide with the technology's insatiable energy needs. But first... Three things you need to know today: • Alphabet's sales beat estimates thanks to cloud services growth
• Reddit's shares jumped more than 20% after a rosy forecast
• Sony's PlayStation group is shutting down the studio behind flop Concord Some of the world's top financiers, tech CEOs and investors are in Riyadh this week for the Future Investment Initiative, also known as Davos in the Desert, for a conference that is mostly centered on AI. Despite the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, the event features an impressive lineup that includes Alphabet Inc.'s Ruth Porat, former Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt, TikTok CEO Shou Chew, Blackstone Inc.'s Stephen Schwarzman and Blackrock Inc.'s Larry Fink. The Ritz-Carlton convention center played host to some bold predictions about the future. Softbank Group Corp.'s Masayoshi Son laid out a vision of superintelligence 10,000 times that of humans by 2035. Elon Musk, in a virtual appearance, said robots would far outnumber humans by 2040. And the Saudis touted plans to make their country an AI superpower, with smart cities and personalized health care. But some of the guests at the glitzy confab are also drawing attention to the potential Achilles heel of the enterprise: the energy-hungry data centers that underpin AI are already straining electricity grids around the world. Schwarzman of Blackstone, which is building a $25 billion data center empire, estimated that the AI boom could potentially propel electricity use to soar 40% in the next decade. He warned that could slow the development of the technologies, quite aside from its disruption to global economies. "In four years, giant economies, at the rate that expansion is going to happen, are going to stock out of electricity unless there's either efficiencies in semiconductors and other types of things or you're going to have to slow down the growth or have a giant expansion," he said. Some tech giants like Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and Google are exploring nuclear energy to power their AI projects. Musk, whose autonomous cars and AI chatbot businesses require huge amounts of energy, signaled he was looking at other sources. "We need a lot of energy," Musk acknowledged in a livestreamed conversation. "In the long term, most of the energy that we'll get is going to come from the sun." The discussion in Riyadh comes as Saudi Arabia looks to pivot away from oil and diversify its economy, with an emphasis on technology and AI. "Data centers need a lower-cost energy," Saudi Arabian Oil Co. CEO Amin Nasser told the gathering. Then he made his pitch, inviting businesses to build data centers in the country and expect to pay as little as 4.8 cents per kilowatt hour when using gas as the source — or 6.8 cents with renewables. "You are going to have the lowest-cost energy to build data centers anywhere in the world because this is the place for it."
Schmidt agreed.
"There's every reason to think that Saudi in particular can become one of the big winners here," he said. "The simplest thing for this country to win is to use its abundant resources and create facilities that no one else can build. There is a huge shortage of electricity in the developed world." —Marissa Newman Just a few months ago, Samsung looked primed to benefit from the global AI boom: profits were surging and its stock was rising toward an all-time high. Now, South Korea's biggest company has become a stark example of how quickly fortunes can turn in an industry where the spoils go to those who maintain a tech edge.  SoFi raised its profit guidance for a third time this year as the fintech benefited from efforts to diversify beyond the student-lending business that made its name. SoFi CEO Anthony Noto joins Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow to discuss the latest earnings and the company's move from being "just a lender." He speaks on Bloomberg Technology. Emad Mostaque, the former CEO of Stability AI, has given up his controlling shares in the beleaguered startup. AMD's AI chip growth failed to inspire investors wary about a slowdown in demand. Elon Musk's xAI startup is seeking new funding at a roughly $40 billion valuation just months after a separate financing for the startup brought in $6 billion. Netflix is expanding a deal with Comcast's NBCUniversal, adding rights to stream live-action films to an agreement for animated pictures from the studio's DreamWorks Animation and Illumination divisions. | 
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