Read this in The Manila Times digital edition.
BEFORE I get to the topic, this is my observation of the airport brouhaha over Cesar Chiong. About 15 years ago, I worked with Jimmy Bautista and him on a transaction for PAL that unfortunately did not proceed. I was impressed with their expertise, professionalism, and very positive and pleasant demeanor. I have not dealt with either since, but was very happy with their appointments. As the moves of the Ombudsman seem, at the very least, odd and unusual, I support the statements that various groups have released for Chiong and Irene Montalbo. The reason is with the limited resources and dealing with the infrastructure they have, operations at our inadequate airport have markedly improved and become more efficient. One of the rare instances of immediate results arising from clear expertise and putting it to use. I can see some saying, "What about those incidents early in their tenure?" I sense some might be there being new to the positions, but I would not be surprised if some were deliberate sabotage from those being threatened. I have worked in enough big companies to see vested interests' resort to that against change agents.
Last Sunday, I read in The Information that Salesforce is investing in the artificial intelligence start-up Hugging Face at $4 billion, or over 100 times its annualized revenue. Part of the reason is probably to give it a leg up on a possible future acquisition of the company when they are ready, and revenue is expected to accelerate at an exponential pace. Also, they want to catch up with Google, Microsoft and Amazon, which are seen to be ahead in this area. They join other tech behemoths, which are setting up AI only funds to invest in promising companies that are not ready to be acquired yet. Well, at least they appreciate anticipatory moves which is more than I can say for our "leave it to the private sector" crowd here who think investments should fill a need rather than anticipate or even create them.
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