By Jonathan Stempel (Reuters) – Netflix won the dismissal on Tuesday of a shareholder lawsuit accusing the streaming company of downplaying the impact on subscriber growth of account sharing, where paying members share user names and passwords with nonpaying members in other households. The proposed class action led by a Texas-based trustee began after Netflix revealed in April 2022 it had lost 200,000 subscribers in the prior quarter, the first decline in a decade, and … Read more…

By Jody Godoy NEW YORK (Reuters) – Facebook owner Meta Platforms will face trial in April over the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s allegations that the social media platform bought Instagram and WhatsApp to crush emerging competition, a judge in Washington said on Monday. The FTC sued in 2020, during the Trump administration, alleging the company acted illegally to maintain a monopoly on personal social networks. Meta, then known as Facebook, overpaid for Instagram in 2012 … Read more…

(Reuters) -Elon Musk’s brain technology startup Neuralink said on Monday it has received approval to launch a new feasibility study using its brain implant and an experimental robotic arm. Neuralink is conducting its PRIME study, aimed at evaluating the safety of its wireless brain-computer interface and surgical robot. It is assessing the initial effect of the implant in patients with quadriplegia, a form of paralysis, to control external devices with their thoughts. The company plans … Read more…

(Reuters) – Starbucks said the aftermath of a ransomware attack on a software supplier has been affecting its ability to pay baristas and manage their schedules, the company’s spokesperson said on Monday. The coffee giant said that an outage at a third-party vendor has disrupted a back-end Starbucks process that enables employee scheduling and time tracking. The outage is not impacting its customer service, and the company was working to ensure its employees were fully … Read more…

By Stephen Nellis (Reuters) – Nvidia on Monday showed a new artificial intelligence model for generating music and audio that can modify voices and generate novel sounds – technology aimed at the producers of music, films and video games. Nvidia, the world’s biggest supplier of chips and software used to create AI systems, said it does not have immediate plans to publicly release the technology, which it calls Fugatto, short for Foundational Generative Audio Transformer … Read more…

By Jessica DiNapoli NEW YORK (Reuters) – Procter & Gamble has been revamping its marketing and line-up of influencers on fast-growing Chinese shopping app Douyin in recent months, helping its Pantene shampoo lead growth in hair care on the platform, executives said Thursday at an investor day. The Cincinnati-based company’s investments in better packaging for Pantene in China, and improved marketing on how much to use, has led to share growth online, the company’s head … Read more…

By Arsheeya Bajwa (Reuters) -Amazon.com pumped in an additional $4 billion into artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, as the e-commerce giant goes up against Big Tech rivals in a race to capitalize on generative AI technology. This doubles Amazon’s investment in the firm known for its GenAI chatbot Claude, but it remains a minority investor, the startup said on Friday. Amazon will also be Anthropic’s main training partner for AI models. Amazon, which is Anthropic’s primary … Read more…

By Caroline Valetkevitch NEW YORK (Reuters) – Netflix shares were on track for a fifth consecutive gain on Friday and set for their biggest weekly percentage rise since January, after the streaming media company’s popular boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul. The stock was last up 0.2% at $899.06, off its intraday record high of $908 on Thursday. It has risen every session since the Nov. 15 fight, taking the stock up more … Read more…