THE BIG STORY

Apple Stock Hits Record High

Apple stock climbed to an intra-day record high of $189.90 on Wednesday and fell just shy of closing for the first time with a market capitalization above $3 trillion, Reuters reports.

Apple's stock market value briefly peaked above $3 trillion in intra-day trading on Jan. 3, 2022, before closing the session just below that mark. Achieving a $3 trillion valuation would make Apple the first company to hit that milestone.

The iPhone maker first closed with a $1 trillion market valuation on Aug. 2, 2018; it reached $2 trillion on Aug. 20, 2020.

Fueled in part by Apple's surging stock, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite is up about 30 percent in recent trading and on pace for its best first-half performance since 1983, the Wall Street Journal reports.

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STARTUPS

Blackbird.AI’s Total Capital Raised Hits $32 Million

Blackbird.AI has raised $32 million in total capital, boosted by $20 million from a recent Series B round, the Rochester Beacon reports. Driven by artificial intelligence, Blackbird helps organizations detect and respond to threats that cause reputational and financial harm. The Rochester-based firm was founded in 2017.

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INTERNET

A $42 Billion Push to Expand High-Speed Internet Access

President Joe Biden this week announced more than $42 billion in new federal funding to expand high-speed internet access nationwide, the Washington Post reports. The funding—a centerpiece of the recent bipartisan infrastructure law—signals the largest-ever federal push to help an estimated 8.5 million families and businesses take advantage of modern-day connectivity. 

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Can AI-Detection Tools Be Fooled?

A fast-growing crop of companies, using sophisticated algorithms, now offer tools to detect which images have been made with computers, not by human photographers and artists. When the New York Times tested five new AI-detection services, using more than 100 synthetic images and real photos, the results showed that the tools are advancing rapidly, but at times can be fooled.

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SPONSORED

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QUICK HITS

• In a new survey of roughly 1,000 small-business owners conducted by digital accounting platform FreshBooks, two out of three said they are planning to test out generative AI at work within the next year and 44 percent said they expect to hire fewer people in the future because of AI capabilities.
• Germany-based 1KOMMA5, whose main product connects home solar panels with other residential energy infrastructure, is the latest startup to join the expanding club of climate tech unicorns, after landing roughly $470 million in fresh funding.
• The Supreme Court this week threw out the conviction of a Colorado man who was sent to prison for stalking based on his Facebook messages, ruling that the state courts had applied the wrong test to determine whether his statements were “true threats,” which are not protected by the First Amendment.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“They’re the company that ignited this AI arms race. They’re the natural first target.”

‍—Ryan Clarkson, whose law firm is launching a class-action lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that it violated the copyrights and privacy of countless people when it used data scraped from the internet to train ChatGPT‍

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