Results

Typically, we wouldn't cover the Mac mini that much, but since it's a developer-meets-OpenClaw-meets-AI-agent machine these days, it's worth noting that Apple is going to unveil its first refresh in two years per Bloomberg. Follow the money folks. The old Mac minis were in short supply and the new ones will be too.

The news is live. The Mac mini systems start at $899. Apple also launched its M6 chip and Mac Studio, which starts at $2,499.

Steve Jobs and NeXT needed sales and the CIA needed some advance compute. So goes a story in The Wall Street Journal about how the CIA helped fund NeXT initially with the purchase of 20,000 computers. Later, Jobs said he was going to move on to reinvent music (head back to Apple to launch the iPod).

While Jobs is most associated with Apple, the NeXT and Pixar eras are just as important to me. Here's a DisrupTV episode on the NeXT era.

Poolside AI, an AI model-builder, is reportedly in a non-exclusive licensing deal with Nvidia for $6 billion. Per Eric Newcomer, Nvidia will also invest $1 billion in Poolside. The deal rhymes with an acquihire in that 109 employees are joining Nvidia, but the founders are staying behind.

Newcomer's newsletter has the details, but the big takeaway is that Nvidia is adding some talent for its open LLM plans. Nemotron may improve more with Poolside.

WD-40 CEO Steven Brass recently talked growth strategies including social influencers, digital sales and navigating the supply chain. But the big takeaway is that WD-40 is an AI and robotics play.

See: WD-40 touts commerce, ERP overhaul

Brass said:

"So AI data centers, drone technology around the world, particularly in agriculture is a massive growth area for us. And so tapping into that growth opportunity, again for the core product and for the more Specialist products. Growth areas like robotics, automation also need significant lubrication, et cetera. And so lots of growth opportunities across robotics, automation, drone technology. And actually, another big kind of trend out there is aging capital equipment. And so older equipment tends to need and even the automotive fleet today in the medium term is aging around the world. And so they are trends that are also kind of driving further kind of consumption. And then you've got some of the other big ones, right, growth of emerging markets. And so we're certainly tapping into that."

Marvell said Google has the right to buy nearly 59 million shares of the chipmaker at a price of $206.58 a share. In an SEC filing, Marvell said the warrants are related to an expanded partnership between the two companies.

"The expanded partnership spans a comprehensive range of custom silicon programs that attach to the TPU ecosystem, including AI inference accelerators, storage controllers, network interface controllers, memory interface controllers, and near-memory compute."