The Week in Numbers: the AI gold rush

STORY: From why an AI gold rush is boosting one U.S. chipmaker, to another bad week for Facebook staffers, this is the Week in Numbers…

Almost $1 trillion was the value of U.S. chipmaker Nvidia by the end of the week.

Its shares surged by around a quarter after the firm’s profit projections smashed Wall Street forecasts.

Nvidia is reaping the benefits of the AI boom, with its chips used to power things like ChatGPT.

Scharf Investments MD Eric Lynch says the firm looks perfectly placed:

“The group that made the most money during the gold rush were the suppliers, those selling shovels, turned out to be a wise idea. Nvidia is selling shovels”.

0.3% was the fall in German GDP over the first quarter, according to revised figures.

After a contraction in the previous period too, that puts the country officially in recession.

Hopes for the second half of the year are fading too, with inflation biting hard.

10,000 is the number of jobs going in the second big round of layoffs at Meta Platforms.

The move was announced earlier, but sources say the final batch of cuts began happening this week.

Marketing and communications teams are among those hardest hit, following months of waning revenue growth.

24% was the slump in sales at Lenovo over the latest quarter.

The world’s biggest PC maker is suffering as a work-from-home boom fades.

It’s betting on smartphones, servers and IT services to revive growth.

And $3 billion is the boost to interest income for JP Morgan after it took over failed regional lender First Republic.

The U.S. banking giant has become one of the main winners from the crisis in the sector, scooping up deposits as people move money out of smaller banks.