Nathaniel Whittemore

Apple has been the only choice for local inference, and many of us have the Mac minis to prove it.

NVIDIA is looking to replicate that breakout moment and capture a new slice of the market, going head-to-head with Apple for what Huang is calling the personal AI computer.

Now, this idea of personal AI computing feels to me like it's very likely to be on display throughout the week as Microsoft Build kicks off.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella used the RTX Spark announcement as a kickoff, tweeting that their goal at Microsoft was to deliver, quote, unmetered intelligence to every home and every desk with Windows.

Now, staying on hardware for a minute, Meta is apparently joining the AI hardware competition with a new pendant.

The information reports that Meta plans to begin testing the pendant over the next year as part of a broader AI hardware strategy, a leaked memo described a push into business-focused devices, which they are calling wearables for work.

The core strategy, however, is to use wearables as the hook to increase use of Meta's AI models and drive consumer agent subscriptions.

Now, it is worth noting that Meta is coming at this competition from a slightly different place, considering that the Meta Ray-Bans are the most popular AI device on the market.

At this point, obviously, AI pendants are not a going concern for most people, but it appears that Meta wants to ensure that they have a product available just in case, preempting new devices from Google and OpenAI, and forming something of a natural conclusion of Meta acquiring AI pendant startup Limitless at the end of last year.

This also could just mark a shift in revenue strategy for Meta's beleaguered Reality Labs division.

The division behind their Metaverse efforts continues to bleed money, even with the success of the Meta Ray-Bans.

Last quarter, the division produced $4 billion in operating losses on revenue of $402 million, but Meta hopes the combination of useful consumer agents and new devices will drive new AI subscription revenue.

In the memo, VP of Wearables Alex Himmel wrote, "...to build a sustainable business beyond hardware margins, we need to monetize the software experiences that differentiate our devices."

It has actually been some time since we talked about AI wearables.

And one of the things that I'm watching most closely for on that front is whether all those efforts fall for open AI, specifically in the category of side quests that they are now trying to avoid, or whether that's still an area that they really plan on competing.

Now, one more story on the Meta front.

The company also just suffered a massive exploit, which many are blaming on AI.

On Monday, numerous Instagram accounts were hijacked, including the Obama White House and Sephora.

Users who had their account stolen said that they were unable to reach a human tech support worker.

Back in March, Meta announced that they would be rolling out AI support to all accounts across Facebook and Instagram to carry out routine tasks like password requests.