Alphabet CEO Pichai reaps over $200 million in 2022 amid cost-cutting

(Reuters) – Alphabet Inc Chief Executive Sundar Pichai received total compensation of about $226 million in 2022, more than 800 times the median employee’s pay, the company said in a securities filing on Friday. Pichai’s compensation included stock awards of about $218 million, the filing showed. The pay disparity comes at a time when Alphabet,…

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Canada, Volkswagen to invest more than C$20 billion in EV battery gigafactory

By Steve Scherer and Victoria Waldersee OTTAWA (Reuters) -Canada and Volkswagen on Friday together committed more than C$20 billion ($14.8 billion) for a battery gigafactory in St. Thomas, Ontario, the biggest single investment ever in the country’s electric-vehicle supply chain. Europe’s largest carmaker is investing up to C$7 billion to build the plant, Volkswagen said…

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Wall St posts slim gain ahead of big earnings week

By Lewis Krauskopf, Sruthi Shankar and Ankika Biswas (Reuters) – Major U.S. stock indexes ended with fractional gains on Friday following mixed earnings results as investors assessed how conflicting economic data might influence interest rates and looked ahead to a massive week of corporate reports. A survey showed U.S. business activity accelerated to an 11-month…

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Samsung hit with $303 million jury verdict in computer-memory patent lawsuit

By Blake Brittain (Reuters) – Computer-memory company Netlist Inc convinced a federal jury in Texas on Friday to award it more than $303 million for Samsung Electronics Co’s infringement of several patents related to improvements in data processing. The jury in Marshall, Texas determined after a six-day trial that Samsung’s “memory modules” for high-performance computing…

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Smart gun operating on facial recognition goes on sale in US

By Matt McKnight and Daniel Trotta BROOMFIELD, Colorado (Reuters) -Colorado-based Biofire Tech is taking orders for a smart gun enabled by facial-recognition technology, the latest development in personalized weapons that can only be fired by verified users. But in a sign of the long, challenging road that smart guns have faced, a prototype twice failed…

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Twitter drops ‘government-funded’ label on media accounts, incl in China

(Reuters) – Twitter dropped the “Government-funded” and “China state-affiliated” labels, which implies government involvement in editorial content, from the accounts of various global media organizations, their profiles showed on Friday. Twitter dropped the “Government-funded Media” label from the accounts of U.S.-based National Public Radio (NPR), British Broadcasting Corp and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). It also…

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Italy’s antitrust authority moves against Meta in music rights case

MILAN (Reuters) – Italy’s antitrust authority said on Friday it had taken measures against Meta Platforms over allegations it abused its position in the country, part of an investigation of music rights. Meta, the U.S. company which owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, last month failed to reach a deal with the Italian society of authors…

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SAP to embed ChatGPT in products as quarterly revenue beats estimates

By Andrey Sychev and Supantha Mukherjee (Reuters) – Business software maker SAP on Friday reported first-quarter revenue above analysts’ expectations, backed by growth in its cloud business but lowered its outlook for the year due to the divestment of its Qualtrics unit. SAP, which in January announced plans to cut 3,000 jobs as it looked…

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