Good morning. More than half of hotel operators say they feel pressure to continually upgrade their technology, according to a recent survey.
Which brings us to pop quiz time: In which area of today’s hotels will you find the most technology…and in which area will you find the least?
Find the answer in “Endstop triggered” below.
Today’s tech news follows; have a wonderful weekend. —Andrew Nusca
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OpenAI becomes the world's most valuable private company
Talk about grinding Elon Musk’s gears.
OpenAI has reportedly completed a secondary share sale that allowed employees to sell stock at a $500 billion valuation.
That makes the Sam Altman-led company the world's most valuable startup—besting Altman rival (and OpenAI cofounder and xAI CEO) Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has held the top spot for years with TikTok parent ByteDance.
OpenAI’s latest valuation puts its head and shoulders above category peers Anthropic ($183 billion), Perplexity ($20 billion), and Mistral ($14 billion). It also makes the private company worth as much as publicly traded corporations such as Netflix, ExxonMobil, Alibaba, or Johnson & Johnson.
Who bought $6.6 billion worth of OpenAI shares, you ask? Thrive Capital, SoftBank, Dragoneer Investment Group, the Emirati state-owned investment firm MGX, and T. Rowe Price, according to a Reuters report.
OpenAI had apparently authorized the sale of more than $10 billion—which means quite a few staff think brighter days are ahead. —AN
Walmart goes big on drone deliveries
For more than half a decade, Walmart has been testing a variety of drones to assess the viability of airborne deliveries.
Now a Walmart exec says the company is ready to make drone deliveries a key part of the retail giant’s operations.
Drone delivery will “be in most areas that we operate in,” SVP of transformation and innovation Greg Cathey said Tuesday at an industry event in Arkansas.
Cathey didn’t provide a specific timeline for that. Still, he made it clear that Walmart is moving beyond small-scale tests. “The regulatory environment is making it where this can be a viable business for us,” he added.
Drone delivery is currently available at only a handful of Walmart’s more than 4,600 U.S. locations via partnerships with drone makers Wing and Zipline.
Walmart announced in June that it would expand its partnership with Alphabet-owned Wing to offer delivery across 100 of its stores in Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Orlando, and Tampa.
This week, northwest Arkansas—where Walmart is headquartered—joined the list. “One hundred stores is just the start,” Cathey said. —Jessica Mathews
Elon Musk goes to war with Netflix
Elon Musk has published a flurry of social media posts in recent days encouraging his millions of followers to ditch their Netflix subscriptions.
“Cancel Netflix for the health of your kids,” Musk wrote on Wednesday, citing another user’s post depicting Netflix’s “transgender woke agenda” as a Trojan horse.
Musk later amplified other posts calling the streamer “an activist outfit, hellbent on ideological indoctrination” and stating that “100% of Netflix employee donation[s] are to the Democratic Party.”
(It must be said that the estimated $4.4 million donated by Netflix employees during the 2024 election cycle is dwarfed by the estimated $291 million Musk spent backing Republican interests, but I digress.)
None of Musk’s various corporate ventures—Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, Neuralink, Boring Co.—directly compete with Netflix, though his X social media service generates revenue from the same pool of advertisers used by Netflix.
The serial tech entrepreneur hasn’t shied away from politics after leaving his DOGE post earlier this year.
In April, Musk promised Tesla shareholders he would refocus his energy on his troubled electric automaker; judging by his recent X posts, he’s spending quite a bit more time criticizing organizations with which he politically disagrees than promoting Tesla’s soft-selling Cybertruck.
Netflix shares were down 3% for the week. Tesla shares were down 2%. —AN
More tech
—Sora is already infringing on IP. OpenAI’s new video generation model is apparently all too happy to create clips featuring characters from Star Wars, Super Mario, and more.
—Pour one out for Asahi’s IT department. The Japanese brewer is running out of inventory in the wake of a cyberattack that has frozen its factories.
—Meta angers its AI researchers. An insistence on extra review has reportedly not gone over well in its AI research lab.
—AI can be used to develop bioweapons that evade existing detection mechanisms, Microsoft researchers say. Joy!
—Ransomware alert: A malicious group is emailing corporate tech leaders claiming to have stolen data from Oracle databases.
—Universal, Warner near deals with AI startups. Two of music’s big three are reportedly nearing agreements with ElevenLabs, Stability AI, Suno, Udio, and Klay Vision.
—Hulu isn’t dead. Hulu will replace the Star hub on Disney+ beginning next week in non-U.S. markets in a bid to boost the brand's recognition overseas.
Endstop triggered
Answer: According to a recent Hotels.com survey, which polled more than 450 properties, the hottest location for guest-centric tech investment is the bathroom, where you can find everything from Internet-connected mirrors to digital water controls to smart toilets that put your home commodes to shame.
(Tech for guest comfort? Now that’s the ticket.)
Where is tech least likely to be found? The lobby, believe it or not. Though digital check-ins and robot butlers can certainly be found in the wild, they are not preferred by guests, according to the survey. Seven in 10 hotels say guests prefer to interact with a human…even if it’s a judgmental Tim Curry.