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AI can do your taxes nowsort of. The tax software giant Intuit just struck a new deal with OpenAI that will weave AI deeply into its portfolio of financial apps, including the ones many Americans use to file their taxes. In the multiyear deal, Intuit will pay ChatGPT maker OpenAI more than $100 million annually to implement its artificial intelligence models across products like TurboTax, personal finance manager Credit Karma, email marketing platform Mailchimp, and the accounting tool QuickBooks. Through the partnership, Intuits products will also become accessible directly through ChatGPTthe latest lucrative business integration for OpenAI. We are taking a massive step forward to fuel financial success for consumers and businesses, unlocking growth for both companies, Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi said. Our partnership combines the power of Intuits proprietary financial data, credit models, and AI platform capabilities with OpenAIs scale and frontier models to give users the financial advantage they need to prosper.” Intuit owns a big swath of the financial software market, and all of those apps will be popping up in ChatGPT soon to steer users toward personalized recommendations for credit cards and loans and to answer their tax and personal finance questions. Intuit has been gravitating toward AI for a while now. Late last year, the company introduced AI-powered features into QuickBooks, inviting its users to automate rote, time-consuming tasks like sending invoices. Intuit insisted that it was being intentional about its implementation of AI, particularly given the rush for every business to boast about its AI capabilities. The idea is not to just have random sprinkles of AI across the product, Dave Talach, Intuit senior vice president of the QuickBooks platform, told Fast Company at the time. Weve been thoughtful about approaching AI, not just for the sake of AI, but we want it to show up in a cohesive way in the product that is coherent to the customer. In June, QuickBooks released a set of AI agents for QuickBooks designed to get familiar with a companys business and operations, taking over tasks to speed up bookkeeping and accounting. At the time, Intuit CEO Goodarzi emphasized that the company moved deliberately in building out its AI because it knows that missteps and inaccuracies are high stakes for the financial tools its customers rely on. If it screws up, its a big problem, he told Fast Company. ChatGPT is a platform now OpenAIs new partnership with Intuit is just the latest third-party integration for ChatGPT. In late September, OpenAI took what it called first steps toward agentic commerce with integrations for Shopify and Etsy, and went on to ink a deal with PayPal last month. OpenAI also recently introduced a developer kit that would open its hit chatbot platform to third-party appsa major shift for the chatbot that stands to remake the way that its 700 million-plus weekly users find and do things online. ChatGPTs first wave of apps included Zillow, Spotify, Canva, and Expedia, with apps from DoorDash, Peloton, Uber, and Target in the works. OpenAIs recent moves point to the companys vision of ChatGPT as an all-encompassing hub of utility that gives internet users little reason to go elsewhere. Those decisions coincide with OpenAIs seismic shift away from its complex nonprofit roots into a more traditional for-profit company, although it technically will remain under the wing of a nonprofit. We want to be able to operate and get resources in such a way that we can make our services broadly available to all of humanity, which currently requires hundreds of billions of dollars and may eventually require trillions of dollars, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a letter about the decision to change the companys structure. We believe this is the best way for us to fulfill our mission and to get people to create massive benefits for each other with these new tools.
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E-Commerce
Meta has prevailed over an existential challenge to its business that could have forced the tech giant to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp after a judge ruled that the company does not hold a monopoly in social networking. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued his ruling Tuesday after the historic antitrust trial wrapped up in late May. His decision follows two separate rulings that branded Google an illegal monopoly in both search and online advertising, dealing yet another regulatory blow to the tech industry that for years enjoyed nearly unbridled growth. The Federal Trade Commission continues to insist that Meta competes with the same old rivals it has for the last decade, that the company holds a monopoly among that small set, and that it maintained that monopoly through anticompetitive acquisitions, Boasberg wrote in his ruling. Whether or not Meta enjoyed monopoly power in the past, though, the agency must show that it continues to hold such power now. The Courts verdict today determines that the FTC has not done so. Meta, the FTC had argued, has maintained a monopoly by pursuing CEO Mark Zuckerbergs strategy, expressed in 2008: It is better to buy than compete. True to that maxim, Facebook has systematically tracked potential rivals and acquired companies that it viewed as serious competitive threats. During his April testimony, Zuckerberg pushed back against the FTCs contention that Facebook bought Instagram to neutralize a threat. In his line of questioning, FTC attorney Daniel Matheson repeatedly brought up emailsmany of them more than a decade oldwritten by Zuckerberg and his associates before and after the acquisition of Instagram. While acknowledging the documents, Zuckerberg has often sought to downplay the contents, saying he wrote them in the early stages of considering the acquisition and that what he wrote at the time didnt capture the full scope of his interest in the company. The FTCs complaint said Facebook also enacted policies designed to make it difficult for smaller rivals to enter the market and neutralize perceived competitive threats, just as the world shifted its attention to mobile devices from desktop computers. The social media landscape has changed so much since the FTC filed its lawsuit in 2020, Boasberg wrote, that each time the court examined Meta’s apps and competition, they changed. Two opinions to dismiss the casefiled in 2021 and 2022didn’t even mention popular social video platform TikTok. Today, it holds center stage as Meta’s fiercest rival. Quoting the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, that no man can ever step into the same river twice, Boasberg said the same is true for the online world of social media as well. The landscape that existed only five years ago, when the Federal Trade Commission brought this antitrust suit, has changed markedly. While it once might have made sense to partition apps into separate markets of social networking and social media, that wall has since broken down, he wrote. Facebook bought Instagramthen a scrappy photo-sharing app with no ads and a small cult followingin 2012. The $1 billion cash and stock purchase price was eye-popping at the time, though the deals value fell to $750 million after Facebooks stock price dipped following its initial public offering in May 2012. Instagram was the first company Facebook bought and kept running as a separate app. Up until then, Facebook was known for smaller acqui-hiresa type of popular Silicon Valley deal in which a company purchases a startup as a way to hire its talented workers, then shuts the acquired company down. Two years later, it did it again with the messaging app WhatsApp, which it purchased for $22 billion. WhatsApp and Instagram helped Facebook move its business from desktop computers to mobile devices, and to remain popular with younger generations as rivals like Snapchat (which it also tried, but failed, to buy) and TikTok emerged. However, the FTC has a narrow definition of Metas competitive market, excluding companies like TikTok, YouTube, and Apples messaging service from being considered rivals to Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta did not immediately respond to a message for comment. By Barbara Ortutay, AP technology writer
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E-Commerce
The most closely watched earnings report of the quarter is tomorrow. Thats when AI chipmaking giant Nvidia will announce its third-quarter results. Ahead of those results, Nvidia shares are currently down in Tuesday trading. But NVDA shares arent the only chip stock that is falling today. Heres which other chip companies are seeing significant stock price declines today, and the likely reason why. Chip stocks fall across the board As of the time of this writing, major chipmaking giants and the companies that supply them are seeing their share prices fall. These include: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMD): down 5.6% Arm Holdings plc (Nasdaq: ARM): down 3.9% ASML Holding N.V. (Nasdaq: ASML): down 2.2% Broadcom Inc. (Nasdaq: AVGO): down 1.7% Intel Corporation (Nasdaq: INTC): down 2.8% Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU): down 5.1% NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA): down 2.8% QUALCOMM Incorporated (Nasdaq: QCOM): down 2.6% Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (NYSE: TSM): down 2.6% The fall in chip stocks is part of a broader decline across multiple markets today. Currently, the S&P 500 is down 0.87%, the Dow is down 1%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq is down 1.3%. Perhaps the most significant driver behind today’s market falls is the growing fear that the tech sector is in an AI bubble, and that if that bubble pops, it could send shockwaves not just through the stock markets but also through the economy. The impact of an AI bubble popping in the broader economy is part of the reason even non-AI-related stocks are down today. In addition to chip companies, other major tech players are also seeing their shares sink this morning, especially those that have a considerable amount of exposure to AI, including Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT), down 2.5%; Amazon.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN), down 3.2%; Alphabet Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG), down 1%; and Meta Platforms, Inc. (Nasdaq: META), down 2.4%. Tech giants with more limited AI exposure, such as Apple, are trading relatively flat. Currently, shares in Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) are up about a tenth of a percent. Why are chip stocks in particular focus? Chip stocks are being scrutinized by investors today for one key reason: AI chip giant Nvidia announces its third-quarter earnings for fiscal 2026 tomorrow. As Fast Company previously reported, investor expectations for those earnings are high. Nvidia previously forecast revenue of between $52.9 billion and $55 billion for the quarter. But investor consensus estimates show that most investors expect Nvidia to come in on the high end of that spectrum. A series of consensus estimates shows that investors expect Nvidia to report revenue between $54.8 billion and $55.2 billion. But, a little more than 24 hours before Nvidia reveals if it’s met investors expectations, Wall Street seems to be getting the jitters, as investors and the media increasingly question whether the AI bubble is about to burst. It is likely that if Nvidia doesn’t hit the lofty expectations many expect, it will be taken as a sign that an AI bubble is upon us. The sell-off in chip stocks this morning is likely due to investors taking some profits in case Nvidia misses its estimates. Given that Nvidia acts as a bellwether for other chip companies and the AI sector as a whole, it is no surprise that investor jitters ahead of Nvidias earnings are spilling over to the stocks of other chipmaking companies.
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E-Commerce
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