Squint awfully hard at the giant black cloud hanging over the tech industry and you’ll find slivers of silver linings.
Sure, global economic instability bruised Big Tech in 2022, but most companies remain fundamentally sound and well-positioned to rebound. Yes, widespread layoffs caused cutbacks on ambitious projects, but there’s still whimsy and wonder emanating from Silicon Valley. And when a war-torn nation needed help, the tech industry rose to the moment.
We delivered lumps of coal yesterday to five of tech’s biggest losers of the past 12 months. Today, it’s time to get back in the holiday spirit, recognizing five winners who thrived, strived, and even just survived this dreadful year.
Twitter shareholders
Anytime you can get the world’s wealthiest person to grossly overpay for your unprofitable, adrift company, it’s been a good year.
Time will tell whether Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter goes down as a colossal mistake or a shrewd pickup. For now, this much is certain: Twitter would have had a market cap right now between $10 billion to $20 billion, and yet the Tesla chief plunked down $44 billion for the platform. Not too shabby, investors.
Honorable mention to Twitter board members, who stuck to their guns and didn’t let Musk worm his way out of the deal.
European regulators
As American legislators and regulators largely sat on their hands (rare exceptions: the Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuits against Microsoft and Meta), policymakers across the pond had a banner year in their quest to rein in Big Tech’s sprawling power.
The European Union finally landed two pieces of landmark legislation, the Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, designed to foster more competition in the tech industry (we’ll see whether they work as intended). Regulatory bodies issued billions of dollars in fines for privacy and competition-related violations against Amazon, Google, and Meta. And lawmakers in the U.K. inched closer to nailing down a major online safety bill, thankfully nixing a woefully vague mandate for tech companies to police legal but harmful content.
OpenAI
In a year marked by cutbacks, OpenAI reminded us that tech development remains an awe-inspiring endeavor. The research lab and startup brought generative A.I. to the masses, delivering the stunning text-to-image generator DALL-E 2 and remarkably advanced ChatGPT chatbot.
Both come with serious questions about safety, accuracy, and copyright ethics—issues that often follow the arrival of any new, disruptive product. For now, though, the folks at OpenAI allowed us to feel that rare sensation of excitement about tech’s limitless possibilities.
Apple and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
Neither tech titan had a banner year in the market, with Apple shares sliding 21% and TSMC’s Taiwan-listed stock slipping 24%. But both companies put their indestructibility on display, generating consistently strong demand despite sector-wide woes afflicting their rivals.
Apple’s iPhone demand has held steady—even as critics grumbled about the latest line’s lack of killer new features and COVID wreaked havoc on supply—while Mac saw a resurgence and services sales kept growing at a steady clip. Meanwhile, Apple’s biggest chip supplier, TSMC, plowed through a brutal stretch for semiconductor companies, reporting a 35% year-over-year increase in revenue and 52% jump in profits through the first nine months of 2022.
The intertwined firms will continue to face challenges in maintaining steady relations with China, but 2022 should reinforce their resilience.
Ukraine's defenders
When imperialist aggressor Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine this winter, the tech industry reacted swiftly and firmly.
Social media companies did their part by blocking Putin’s propaganda, Kremlin retaliation be damned. Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and many smaller cybersecurity firms lent their expertise to help Kiev stave off Russia’s digital offensive. SpaceX, Airbnb, Uber, and countless other companies made their services available free of charge to refugees and the Ukrainian resistance.
At its very best, tech remains a tool for good, for connecting and empowering those striving to make our world a little more perfect. Given the opportunity to put its professed values into action, tech delivered.
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Jacob Carpenter
