š Nvidia leapfrogs Aramco
Good morning, Quartz readers!
Hereās what you need to know
Nvidia beat Aramco to become the third-most valuable company in the world. The chipmaker previously topped Amazon and Google parent Alphabet to become the third-most valuable company in the U.S.
The U.S. might bar sales to China from its strategic oil reserve. A measure in a funding bill introduced to avert a government shutdown includes the prohibition.
Spirit Airlines stock plunged after its merger with JetBlue was axed. The airlines called off their $3.8 billion combination, though which carrier initiated the breakup is up for interpretation.
A flying car startup backed by a key SpaceX investor has almost 3,000 pre-orders. Alef Aeronauticsā Model A has a lot of early fans for its $300,000 Federal Aviation Administration-approved electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle.
Fordās sales got an EV jolt
Stronger demand for electric cars and hybrid vehicles boosted Fordās sales last month as the Detroit-based carmaker tries to double down on its hybrid technology to hedge against Americansā reluctance to go all-in on EVs.
That being said, gas-powered trucks and cars still make up the majority of Fordās sales.
10.5%: Gain in overall U.S. sales in February
12,045: Hybrid vehicles Ford sold, up 32% year over year
6,368: Electric vehicles sold, up 81% year over year
155,779: Traditional cars and trucks Ford sold in the same period
Quotable: OpenAI may have a reason to sweat
āIt exhibits near-human levels of comprehension and fluency on complex tasks, leading the frontier of general intelligence.ā ā AI startup Anthropic talking about its new chatbot model Opus, which outperformed GPT-4 (OpenAIās most powerful version of ChatGPT) and Googleās Gemini in undergraduate- and graduate-level reasoning, math, and common knowledge assignments.
Has OpenAI finally met its match in its Amazon-backed competitor?
One big number: $1 billion
The price tag Alaska Airlines passengers put on their suffering from the Boeing door plug fiasco.
The amount theyāre seeking is a lot more than what Boeing initially set aside to compensate family members of the 346 people who died from crashes of Boeing 737 Max aircraft between the end of 2018 and the start of 2019. Boeing later reached a $2.5 billion settlement with the Department of Justice for those crashes.
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Surprising discoveries
Texas is on track to overtake California in battery developments for its solar power grid. Cheap land is a big part of it.
Cookie Monster hates shrinkflation. Heās not happy about the size of his cookies.
Wikipedia editors who wrote 15,000 articles on U.S. roads went rogue. They took the work off the site and moved it all to one just about roads.
Mukesh Ambaniās son is getting married and the pre-ceremony party had a Rihanna performance. And a nine-page dress code. And Mark Zuckerberg. The fanfare may be unparalleled.
A bunch of helium was discovered in Minnesota and it may just be North Americaās largest reserve. Probably enough to live out your Up dreams.
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