What's up: Big Tech in the courts; marketing onboards AI; what is an AI supercomputer?

Good morning, CIOs. Sooner or later it happens to every company during its generative AI journey. One day, everyone's empowered to experiment. The next, the pros take over. 

Jim Swanson, chief information officer at Johnson & Johnson, talked with the Journal's Isabelle Bousquette about the time the healthcare conglomerate shifted its generative AI strategy away from broad experimentation to a more focused approach.

“That was a pivot we made after about a year of learning,” Swanson said. “Now we’ve moved from the thousand flowers to a really prioritized focus on GenAI.” 

That “thousand flowers” approach involved a number of use-case ideas germinating from across the company. At one point, employees were pursuing nearly 900 individual use cases, he said.

Now J&J is drilling down into high-impact generative AI use cases in areas such as drug discovery and supply chains, as well as an internal chatbot to answer questions on company policy.

“We’re prioritizing, we’re scaling, we’re looking at the things that make the most sense,” he said. “That was part of the maturation process we went through.” Read the story.

Judge rules Google operates illegal ad monopoly. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said Thursday that Google’s monopoly in ad exchanges and server markets violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, harming advertisers and consumers. The company also engaged in unlawful “tying”—conditioning access to one product on paying for the other.

The ruling marked the second time in eight months that a U.S. judge labeled Google an illegal monopolist—and could lead the Justice Department to seek a forced sale of some of the company’s advertising products.

This ad-tech case is one of several pitting Big Tech against federal agencies.

The Federal Trade Commission this week went to trial in its antitrust case against Meta Platforms. An FTC case against Amazon.com is also set to go to trial in September. Meanwhile Apple faces a Justice Department antitrust case over allegations it impedes the ability of outside software to integrate with its devices.

Marketing onboards AI. We’re not yet at the point where AI is developing, producing and approving campaigns with little or no human intervention. But some firms, including Prudential Financial, are knocking on the door, the Journal reports.

The financial and insurance company recently worked with Adobe and AI startup Gradial to create a virtual employee tasked with using behavioral, geolocation and real-time data to generate webpages tailored to the interests of each person who visits its websites.

How Nvidia plays export Whack-a-Mole. On Thursday, Chinese state media reported that Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang met with a Chinese official in Beijing. “The China market is very important to us,” Huang said in a video posted by state media. The visit came the same week the U.S. announced new restrictions on Nvidia chip sales to China.

What is a supercomputer? “Supercomputer” has generally referred to computers designed to perform calculations and simulations at a speed and scale far beyond what everyday computers can do.

So is the AI supercomputer Trump mentioned another one of these supercomputers? Not exactly. What Nvidia has in mind is a big computer packed with hundreds or thousands of graphics processing units, or GPUs.

Where will these machines be made? Nvidia said it has commissioned more than a million square feet of manufacturing space to build and test its Blackwell chips in Arizona and build AI servers in Texas.

Industry observers said the headline-grabbing announcements should be viewed with caution until the companies deliver concrete results.
 

• Apple lost its top spot in China’s smartphone market, dethroned by local rival Xiaomi as Beijing’s consumption-boosting subsidies helped buoy demand for cheaper products. The U.S. tech giant’s share of the market shrank to 13.7% during the first quarter from 15.6% a year earlier, dropping Apple to fifth place in the ranking, according to research firm International Data Corporation.
• TSMC, which makes chips for Apple and Nvidia, backed its guidance for 2025 for mid-20% growth in sales this year after posting a strong earnings beat for the first three months of the year, before the Trump administration announced a slate of tariffs.
• Netflix reported a record profit in the first quarter and beat its forecasts for core metrics including revenue and operating margin.

• Intel Chief Executive Lip-Bu Tan promoted networking chip chief Sachin Katti to be chief technology officer and artificial intelligence chief, according to a company memo seen by Reuters. 

• President Trump wants to rapidly revive the U.S.’s commercial shipping fleet as a matter of national security. America doesn’t have enough sailors to do it.
• Nuclear energy is hot again. Can AI help manage the power plants?
• U.S. private-equity exits and their total value rose in the first quarter from a year ago, but recent market volatility puts that momentum at risk.
• J.M. Smucker, the owner of Hostess baked goods like Twinkies and Ding Dongs, is courting a new group of snackers: stoners.
   

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. would pause its efforts to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine if progress isn’t made in the coming days, in an attempt to put pressure on Kyiv and Moscow to compromise. (WSJ)

Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen has met with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly sent to a Salvadoran prison by the Trump administration. (WSJ)

President Trump said he was allowing commercial fishing in the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument, "a trove of marine biodiversity" established by President George W. Bush in 2009 and expanded by President Barack Obama to nearly 500,000 square miles. (New York Times)

Housing starts, a measure of home construction, dropped 11.4% in March from February, according to new Census Bureau data. That marked the steepest plunge in a year. (WSJ)

The WSJ CIO Journal Team is Steven Rosenbush, Isabelle Bousquette and Belle Lin.

The editor, Tom Loftus, can be reached at thomas.loftus@wsj.com.