Competition is fierce in a few big markets.

There’s a lot of meat on the bones of artificial intelligence, as well as social media.

While the former is a gold rush, the latter may be more like circling vultures…

The AI craze seems to have reached the point that it’s boosting the whole S&P 500 to its highest point since August of last year.

Looking under the hood reveals just how important this new trend has been. Here’s how things would look if you take out the companies that have invested heavily in AI…

A very different story.

The biggest difference maker here is certainly Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), which is up over 34% YTD following its investment in OpenAI and its AI-powered Bing search engine improvements.

Matching those gains is the Global X Robotics & Artificial Intelligence ETF (NASDAQ: BOTZ), up 34% since October of last year.

Additionally, the chips needed to power these new AI technologies have caused the stock prices of both NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD) to roughly double over the last six months.

The recent surge of competition in social media isn’t because of a new frontier, like AI, but because the sharks smell blood in the water.

The numbers are coming in on the “eventful” run of Twitter under Elon Musk, and they’re not pretty.

Projected earnings from ads for the social media titan are sitting at $2.9 billion for the year, down dramatically from the expectations of $4.7 billion from November 2022.

Musk recently valued the company at $20 billion, which is less than half of the $44 billion he spent to purchase it in October.

Twitter clones like Mastodon and Bluesky have gained attention and popularity following Twitter’s polarizing policy changes. Now Meta (NASDAQ: META) is starting to circle, hoping to scavenge additional pieces of the social media market share.

The Facebook parent company is reportedly looking to launch their own microblogging platform by the end of the summer.

The platform has been unofficially dubbed “P90” or “Barcelona”.

Here’s what else I have my eye on this week…

	Google Is Spared a Search-Engine Switch by a Major Partner Samsung Electronics suspends internal review that contemplated changing its smartphones’ default search engine from Google to Microsoft’s Bing. Read more…
	How the CEO behind ChatGPT won over Congress OpenAI CEO Sam Altman seems to have achieved what other tech execs have been struggling to do for years: He charmed Congress. Read more…
	China bans major chip maker Micron from key infrastructure projects China says products made by US memory chip giant Micron Technology are a national security risk. Read more…
	China Seeks to Counter Musk’s Starlink With Own Satellite Network Race to roll out low-orbit fleets comes amid rising geopolitical tensions and concerns over crowded space. Read more…
	Apple’s New Headset Meets Reality The device has strayed from Tim Cook’s original vision, but it will still define the field. Read more…