The office of U.S. tech giant Oracle in Dubai was damaged by falling debris, the city’s media office said on Sunday, as Iran continued to fire projectiles at targets around the Middle East in retaliation against U.S. and Israeli strikes.

“Authorities confirm that they responded to a minor incident caused by debris from an aerial interception that fell on the facade of the Oracle building in Dubai Internet City,” the Dubai Media Office said in a post on X. No one was injured in the incident, the media office said.

Oracle didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment emailed by CNBC.

A CNBC journalist in Dubai reported hearing multiple interceptions overnight.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has threatened attacks on a swath of U.S. tech companies with operations in the Middle East, including Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft and Google.

The Guard warned on Tuesday that 18 tech companies would be considered as “legitimate targets” in retaliation for U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran.

“From now on, for every assassination, an American company will be destroyed,” they said in an Guard-affiliated Telegram channel.

The list of companies also included Cisco, HP, Intel, IBM, Dell, Palantir, JPMorgan, Tesla, GE, Spire Solutions, Boeing and UAE-based artificial intelligence company G42.

James Henderson, CEO of risk management firm Healix, said the rise in threats against tech companies is not a flash in the pan, but is a sustained pattern.

“Tech assets are now treated as part of the conflict, not peripheral to it,” Henderson told CNBC.

“It also signals that future crises may target data centers and cloud platforms as much as traditional strategic sites,” he added.

Iran struck Amazon Web Services data centers in the Middle East in early March, causing outages in a number of apps and digital services in the United Arab Emirates.

#Dubai #Oracle #Iran #MiddleEast #BreakingNews #Geopolitics #TechIndustry #GlobalTensions #CyberThreat #WorldNews

Huawei’s push to develop its own artificial intelligence chip has yet to drive the double-digit revenue gains of its peers, as Chinese companies strive to narrow the gap with the U.S. on AI.

Cloud computing revenue from external customers fell by 3.5% in 2025 to 32.16 billion yuan ($4.6 billion), Huawei said. The company is the second-largest cloud provider in mainland China.

While overall cloud revenue including internal customers rose by 4.8% to 72.8 billion yuan, the main ICT infrastructure segment reported revenue growth that slowed to 2.6%, down from 4.9% in 2024.

That’s the segment that would include Huawei’s self-developed Ascend AI chip solutions, meant to rival Nvidia. Huawei’s total ICT revenue for 2025 was 375.01 billion yuan.

The U.S. has restricted Chinese companies’ access to the most advanced Nvidia chips, while Beijing has urged tech self sufficiency at home.

Rebellions CEO on the future of memory, AI chips

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Huawei’s decline in cloud revenue to external customers comes as ByteDance has rapidly grown its AI cloud business in China in the last several months, albeit from a small base.

The TikTok owner is reportedly ramping up access to high-end Nvidia chips in a partnership deal with a planned Malaysia data center. ByteDance and Alibaba also plan to place orders of Huawei’s new AI chip, Reuters reported last week, citing sources. ByteDance declined to comment. The two other Chinese companies did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.

U.S.-developed AI tools are generally considered the most capable in the world, although some Chinese models have shown an edge in video generation. Not all U.S. AI models are officially accessible in mainland China.

Huawei’s modest cloud growth figures come amid rapid industry expansion worldwide and slower economic growth in China.

Globally, spending on cloud infrastructure services rose by 29% in the fourth quarter in a sixth-straight quarter of market expansion of more than 20%, according to Omdia. The firm predicts 27% cloud growth in 2026.

Earlier this month, Alibaba, the largest cloud computing company by market share in mainland China, reported a 36% increase in segment revenue to 43.28 billion yuan in 2025. Tencent said increased cloud service revenues domestically and internationally helped drive a 22% year-on-year increase in business services revenue in 2025.

Local promotions this month in China for AI tool OpenClaw have also encouraged many locals to download the agent and pay for related cloud and AI model services. China’s consumer spending has remained tepid since the pandemic.

Consumer revenue slows

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Huawei smartphones ranked first in China last year by shipments, up by 1.7%, according to Counterpoint. But the Chinese company lost ground to Apple toward the end of 2025 after the iPhone 17′s release.

For 2025 overall, the telecommunication giant reported revenue of 880.9 billion yuan, up 2%, on net profit of 68 billion, up around 8% from a year ago.

The company spent a record 192.3 billion yuan in research and development, or 21.8% of revenue.

“In 2025, Huawei’s overall performance remained steady,” Sabrina Meng, Huawei’s rotating chairwoman, said in a brief statement, which also expressed gratitude to customers, partners and employees.

The intelligent automotive solutions unit saw revenue of 45.02 billion yuan, with growth slowing to 72% year-on-year, down from a whopping 474.4% in 2024, as the autos business captured an initial surge in electric vehicles. Huawei partners with several automobile manufacturers for in-car software and driver-assist technology.

#Huawei #AI #CloudComputing #TechNews #ChinaTech #Nvidia #AIMarket #BigTech #AICompetition #DigitalEconomy

Amazon has acquired Fauna Robotics, a startup that builds “approachable” humanoid robots for consumers and businesses, the company confirmed Tuesday. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

“We are excited about Fauna’s vision to build capable, safe, and fun robots for everyone,” an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC in a statement. “Together with Amazon’s robotics expertise and decades of experience earning customer trust in the home through our retail and devices businesses, we’re looking forward to inventing new ways to make our customers’ lives better and easier.”

Bloomberg was first to report on the acquisition.

Fauna Robotics was founded in 2024 by former Meta and Google engineers. Earlier this year, the New York-based company launched Sprout, a $50,000 bipedal robot that’s 3.5 feet tall, weighs 50 lbs, and is designed to be “approachable and human-friendly,” as well as “genuinely accessible” to software developers.

The company said at the time that it signed up Disney and Hyundai’s Boston Dynamics as early customers.

Fauna’s roughly 50 employees will join Amazon in NYC, the company said. In a LinkedIn post, Fauna co-founder and CEO Rob Cochran said he was “incredibly excited” for Fauna to join Amazon.

“We are thrilled about what joining the Amazon team means for our future,” Cochran wrote. “Going forward, we will proudly operate as Fauna Robotics, an Amazon company.”

Amazon has spent more than a decade investing in robotics, primarily for applications in its warehouse operations. It acquired Kiva Systems for $775 million in 2012, which served as the foundation for Amazon Robotics, its division focused on warehouse automation.

The company has turned to M&A again to beef up its robotics expertise. Amazon said last week it acquired Rivr, a Swiss robotics company developing machines for “doorstep delivery.”

Amazon said it hopes to leverage its robotics knowledge, as well as its long history in retail and devices, to better understand the potential of personal robots to make its customers’ lives better and easier.

The company has experimented with home robots before. Amazon launched a squat, roving personal robot called Astro in 2021, which is priced at $1,600, though the device can only be purchased via invitation.

By acquiring Fauna, Amazon is entering the increasingly crowded humanoid robot market. Tesla is developing a humanoid robot, called Optimus, and plans to manufacture these at its Fremont, California, factory.

In January, CEO Elon Musk said the company would convert former production lines for the company’s flagship Model S and X vehicles into “an Optimus factory” with the goal of “having 1 million units a year,” made there.

Other humanoid competitors include California-based 1X, Figure AI, Apptronik, Agility Robotics and China-based Unitree.

https://animalverse.social/members/0x39fbc393693d8fba1c4ffe51702e1d1326aed25a/selling-posts/

#Amazon #FaunaRobotics #Robotics #HumanoidRobot #AI #TechNews #Automation #FutureTech #SmartRobots #Innovation #BigTech #AIrobots #RobotTech #Startup #Acquisition #TechIndustry #NextGenTech #DigitalFuture #AmazonRobotics #AIRevolution

People in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia are more optimistic about artificial intelligence than those in Western Europe and North America, according to a report by Anthropic that surveyed around 81,000 people in 159 countries.

The study, published Wednesday, revealed how economic gains from AI usage formed the main aspiration for most respondents, but analysts also warned that not everyone stands to benefit equally.

Anthropic researchers invited users of its Claude large language model to participate in conversations centered around questions about usage habits, hopes and fears over the development of AI.

These conversations, held using Anthropic Interviewer — a variant of Claude trained to conduct interviews — were subsequently also analyzed with Claude. First to filter out “spammy, unserious, or extremely minimal” responses, then for classifying and tagging responses by sentiment.

Prospects of economic gains

Respondents reported having both the highest hopes for AI — and seeing its greatest benefits — in their workplaces.

According to the report, 18.8% of respondents sought “professional excellence” from their use of AI. Similarly, 32% reported that AI was most useful for boosting productivity.

Most productivity gains, according to Anthropic, involved respondents outsourcing more mundane tasks to be able to “focus on strategic, higher-level problems.” Others said AI helped to free them up for pursuits beyond work.

Some analysts were unsurprised by these sentiments, as they said the present stage of AI development suited more menial applications.

“At the moment, AI is best suited to highly repetitive, narrowly focused, goal-oriented use cases … similar to specific tasks on an assembly line,” Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at Omdia wrote in an email to CNBC.

More specifically, these applications often include administrative tasks like “HR, billing, and other backoffice functions,” according to Seema Shah, vice president of insights from the market intelligence firm Sensor Tower in an email to CNBC.

The financial spoils of AI also seemed to favor an entrepreneurial class, as independent workers — which includes entrepreneurs, small business owners, and those with side gigs — experienced more than triple the rates of economic empowerment from AI usage over salaried employees, according to Anthropic.

But recent developments have also shown that ostensibly higher-order work may be vulnerable to many of the same disruptions.

After Anthropic launched Cowork in February — a Claude variant capable of handling more complex tasks like financial modeling and data management — stocks of companies ranging from software to research firms saw a broad selloff as investors were spooked by the implications of these launches.

As companies like Anthropic and Alibaba invest billions into agentic AI, developing models now able to perform actions autonomously with limited user supervision, it may become even harder to tell how professional lives are set to be disrupted.

“These agents are going to do increasingly sophisticated tasks on behalf of people, and that is going to have massive impacts,” said Marc Einstein, research director at Counterpoint Research, in a phone call with CNBC.

Given the uncertainty with which future developments were expected to further transform human work, worries about job displacement surfaced as one of the main areas of concern in Anthropic’s study, with 22.3% of respondents expressing job concerns as their biggest sources of worry.

These displacement worries were “spread fairly evenly across job categories,” according to the report, which Anthropic undertook in December 2025.

“When I am coding now, I am mostly just an observer, not a creator anymore. I can see that even for the observer role, I might not be needed,” an unnamed software engineer from the U.S. was quoted by Anthropic as saying.

Who really benefits from AI?

Amid the dizzying pace of AI development, analysts are split on who really stands to gain from AI’s promises of economic empowerment.

“I see AI as the great equalizer,” Einstein said. “One of the beautiful things about AI is that in rural Indonesia or Brazil, [people] have access to the same AI as [in] the U.S. or Japan.”

Claude users from emerging economies, like Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America appeared to express 10-12% lower rates of negative sentiments toward AI than users from Western Europe and North America.

Respondents from Sub-Saharan Africa also expressed greater aspirations for entrepreneurship and financial independence through AI usage than users from North America. Similar divergences emerged when North American users were compared against respondents from Latin America and Asia.

But while these findings may reflect real perceptions of opportunity associated with AI usage, particularly as a mechanism for access or economic mobility, this reading of the data is also undermined by the study’s methods, said Lia Raquel Neves, founder of ethical consultancy EITIC.

While the 80,508 responses that met the researchers’ quality threshold was a large sample by any measure, Anthropic was upfront about the methodological limitations associated with conducting a voluntary study on AI from a pool of existing users.

The pool of respondents ”[skewed] toward people who have found enough value in AI to keep using it, and likely toward more positive visions than a general population sample would produce,” Anthropic wrote in its appendix.

Nearly half of all respondents also originated from North America and Western Europe.

[AI] may amplify existing vulnerabilities, namely through digital exclusion, algorithmic biases or dependence on external systems

Lia Raquel Neves

Founder, EITIC

“The results should be interpreted as an indicator of how early and active users, in different contexts, are framing their experience[s] with AI, and not as a consolidated picture,” Raquel Neves said in an email to CNBC.

While users from emerging economies seemed most excited by the prospects of economic gain from the use of AI, it remains unclear how evenly the spoils of AI development are likely to be distributed.

In a 2025 report, the United Nations Development Programme warned that future AI development could worsen existing socioeconomic inequalities, as economic benefits tended to get captured disproportionately by societies with greater capacity and access to digital infrastructure — which often means wealthier nations.

“In the absence of adequate conditions, [AI] may amplify existing vulnerabilities, namely through digital exclusion, algorithmic biases or dependence on external systems,” Raquel Neves told CNBC.

Although it may be too early to tell who stands to lose most in the AI race, there is little doubt over who the victors might be.

“Whoever successfully brings the [AI] agents that we’re all going to start using, is absolutely going to win,” Einstein said.

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Anthropic #ClaudeAI #AITrends #FutureOfWork #AIImpact #TechNews #AIAdoption #DigitalEconomy

Nvidia is planning to launch an open-source platform for artificial intelligence agents called ‘NemoClaw,’ tapping into the growing popularity of the AI tools, Wired reported Tuesday.

Citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter, the report said Nvidia has started pitching the product to enterprise software companies, seeking partnerships with Salesforce, Cisco, Google, Adobe, and CrowdStrike.

Nvidia and its potential partners did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It remains unclear whether any official partnerships have been finalized. Because the platform is expected to be open source, partners would likely get free usage, with early access granted in exchange for contributing to the project, the sources told Wired.

The report said that the platform will allow these companies to dispatch AI agents to perform tasks for their employees and is expected to include security and privacy tools.

Companies will be able to access the platform regardless of whether their products run on Nvidia’s chips, it added.

Nvidia has started to invest more resources into AI agents, as companies shift from large language models to more specialized tools that can reason, plan and act independently on complex, multi-step tasks.

For example, the company has released foundational models designed to power AI agents such as Nemotron and Cosmos in recent months.

It also has expanded its ‘NeMo’ platform, which helps clients manage the full AI agent lifecycle — from data curation and customization to monitoring and optimization.

Nvidia’s interest in agents also comes as people are embracing so-called “claws”— open-source AI tools that run locally on a user’s machine and perform sequential tasks.

Such AI agents were made famous by OpenClaw — which was first called Clawdbot, then Moltbot — when it burst onto the scene at the start of this year. OpenAI ultimately acquired the project and hired its creator.

In recent comments, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that OpenClaw was “the most important software release probably ever.”

However, experts have also flagged many security risks associated with OpenClaw’s nascent AI tools, especially for enterprise customers that Nvidia is now reportedly targeting with its AI agent platform.

The move comes as Nvidia prepares for its annual developer conference in San Jose next week, which is expected to include announcements and roadmaps on the company’s hardware and software offerings.

#Nvidia #AIagents #NemoClaw #AInews #ArtificialIntelligence #OpenSourceAI #EnterpriseAI #TechNews #AIplatform #MachineLearning #AIdriven #FutureAI #TechInnovation #AItools #AIEcosystem

People walk past the logo of Amazon Web Services (AWS) at its exhibitor stall at the India Mobile Congress 2025 at Yashobhoomi, a convention and expo center in New Delhi, India, October 8, 2025.

Anushree Fadnavis | Reuters

Amazon’s data center in Bahrain was targeted by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for the company’s support of the U.S. military, Iranian state media said Wednesday.

The company’s cloud computing unit said Monday that one of its facilities in Bahrain was damaged due to a nearby drone strike on Sunday. Two data centers in the United Arab Emirates were also damaged after they were “directly struck” by drones.

All of the facilities remain offline, according to the Amazon Web Services health dashboard.

The attack in Bahrain was launched “to identify the role of these centers in supporting the enemy’s military and intelligence activities,” Iran’s Fars News Agency said on Telegram.

The incidents came after joint U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran over the weekend. Iran has retaliated against Israeli and U.S. bases across the Gulf.

Amazon declined to comment.

Read more CNBC tech news

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In addition to structural damage, the data centers also experienced power disruptions and some water damage after firefighters worked to put out sparks and fire. Some popular AWS applications experienced “elevated error rates and degraded availability” due to the incident.

AWS advised cloud customers to back up their data, consider migrating their workloads to other regions and direct traffic away from Bahrain and the UAE.

AWS announced its Bahrain region in 2019, and it hosts significant workloads for governments there. The company also operates a corporate office in Bahrain that is primarily for AWS employees.

Earlier this week, Amazon instructed all of its corporate employees in the Middle East to work remotely and “follow local government guidelines” amid escalating instability in the region.

#AWS #Amazon #Cloud #DataCenter #Bahrain #UAE #Iran #IRGC #DroneStrike #CyberThreat #USMilitary #Israel #MiddleEast #TechNews #Breaking #Geopolitics #CloudOutage #Security #CNBC #GlobalNews

After decades confined largely to research labs, Quantum computing may be closer to its breakout moment than many on Wall Street expect.

The technology, which uses the principles of quantum mechanics to solve problems beyond the ability of the most powerful classical supercomputers, has long been described as futuristic. But rapid advancements have intensified investment in the sector and sparked discussions about how these powerful computers will integrate with industries like the already booming data center sector.

“By the end of the decade, we are confident that we will have machines in data centers that have commercial value,” Zulfi Alam, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Quantum, told CNBC.

“I would not be able to say this with this much clarity last year, but this year, I can state to claim that by 2029 you will have machines that will have commercial [value], meaning that they will be doing calculations that classical machines cannot do,” said Alam, who’s leading the development of the company’s scalable quantum machine.

Classical computers use switches, or bits, to either pass through or block an electric current at any given moment to perform calculations. The larger the number of bits, the greater the computing power. Quantum computers, on the other hand, use the ability of some materials at extremely low temperatures to exist in both an ‘on’ and ‘off’ state at the same time. This allows quantum bits, or qubits, to perform the same calculations at vastly greater speeds.

Microsoft, which last year revealed a new quantum computing chip called Majorana, is among the hyperscalers — companies that provide computing capacity that can rapidly expand as demand rises — like Google and Amazon that are investing heavily in the technology.

Patrick Moorhead, CEO and chief analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said he is also seeing hyperscalers and platform vendors ramp up investment through cloud access, pricing controls and developer platforms, while the defense sector is investing early in both quantum computing and networking.

Governments are stepping up their investments too, with China leading with just short of $18 billion in public investment in quantum technology, followed closely by the EU, according to the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE), a think tank.

Most industry roadmaps now place the implementation of these systems in the 2028–2032 timeframe, according to Ellie Brown, quantum computing and cloud economics analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence.

UBS sees the advantages of quantum computing arriving by the early 2030s, even as company roadmaps are positioning for this earlier, said Madeleine Jenkins, analyst at UBS. “A lot of companies are telling me that 2027 is going to be a big year for quantum in terms of roadmap, in terms of what’s achieved,” she said.

Taken together, these timelines signal a sector moving steadily toward real‑world deployment, while raising important questions about how today’s data infrastructure will need to evolve to support it.

Changing the energy demand

In a 103-page report published in January, UBS analysts led by Jenkins said the industry is close to completing a quantum computer that could cost tens of millions of dollars to build but has the ability to solve a problem in 200 seconds that would take a conventional supercomputer 10,000 years.

When it comes to the impact on the data center ecosystem, experts told CNBC that quantum could potentially lower the energy needs of the power-hungry facilities while also reducing the workloads needed for training AI.

I would not be able to say this with this much clarity last year, but this year, I can state to claim that by 2029 you will have machines that will have commercial [value], meaning that they will be doing calculations that classical machines cannot do.

Zulfi Alam

Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Quantum

In terms of energy, quantum computing would require a “fraction of what a data center would use,” Jenkins said.

“The big thing is time; if you’re taking the same problem that would take thousands and thousands of… hours, and you’re replacing that with a quantum computer that takes seconds or minutes, then obviously you just need a lot less energy,” she said.

Microsoft’s Alam also noted the lower power requirements of quantum computers, highlighting that Majorana 1 is “showcasing more power than the entire computation of the entire planet [in] the palm of your hands and it’s not running super-hot. It’s running cold.”

While quantum technology is advancing rapidly, it is unlikely in the near term to displace the classical computing that data centers currently host.

“Ideally, the entire efficiency of a problem-solving workload will go down, but it’s not going to be a complete substitution,” S&P’s Brown said

Microsoft’s Alam stressed that quantum systems will not operate in isolation. “A quantum machine is not a standalone entity. It’s a hybrid tool. It’s a quantum accelerator that needs a high-performance computer very close to it,” he said.

Moor Insights & Strategy’s Moorhead also noted that if quantum scales, it will likely play a complementary role, adding a new class of “special infrastructure” within data centers and shifting facility design toward “quantum pods” which come with their own power and thermal needs.

“It will not displace the dominant energy driver near-term, which is AI data center expansion, but it will add pockets of specialized load and operational complexity,” he told CNBC via emailed comments.

Ultimately, it’s likely to change the shape of demand, but not the scale, with the AI boom remaining a key driver of demand for the facilities.

Roadblocks ahead

Building that kind of system inside real data‑center environments won’t be straightforward and could require entirely new purpose-built facilities.

Only a handful of specialized quantum computers are currently deployed in data centers, with quantum vendors currently brainstorming a set of industry standards to help streamline broader adoption, according to Brown and S&P analyst Kelly Morgan.

There is still a significant amount of bespoke work that needs to be done in order to integrate quantum systems into data centers, Brown said, adding that, “we’re lacking some quantum talent to make use of that and get that installed effectively.”

But in the long term, she anticipates “a nice interplay between quantum and some of the other data center areas including AI” where the two could work together to solve problems.

Tim Adams, president and CEO of the Institute of International Finance, said that these hurdles reinforce the need for continued investment in data‑center infrastructure over the next decade.

“Data centers are necessary to move technological transformation forward and should be thought of as one of a number of likely investments on the road to very transformational achievements we are sure to see in the timeframe of the next ten years.” Adams told CNBC.

And this phase has already begun, with Brown pointing to a burst of M&A activity aimed at building the capabilities needed for quantum’s commercial phase.

“M&A has been massive over the past three months,” Brown said, noting several acquisition announcements from quantum firm IonQ. “There’s been a lot of positioning within the space not only to help improve quantum talent and technology, but also to help control that supply chain a little bit.”

Along with the opportunities that quantum computing offers, when it comes to risks, data security is arguably the biggest one.

According to UBS, a powerful enough quantum computer could break current encryption methods, meaning that security systems would no longer be reliable. The report by the Swiss bank warns that companies will have to implement new quantum-safe encryption techniques, and that investment in these will have to start in the next few years.

Even with this surge of investment, Microsoft’s Alam warned that the path ahead won’t be easy. It’s going to take a lot of “blood, sweat and tears,” he said, anticipating numerous challenges as quantum machines come online — from meeting performance benchmarks to solving complex technical problems — all of which need to “converge at the right time” for the real magic to happen.

#Quantum #DataCenters #Tech #Technology #Quantumcomputing

Shares of Chinese chip designer Montage Technology surged about 60% in its Hong Kong trading debut on Monday following an initial share sale that raised $902 million.

The stock jumped to HK$171 after pricing its offering at HK$106.89, the upper end of the range. It was 52% higher in afternoon trading.

Founded in 2004, the Shanghai-based company specializes in developing high-performance semiconductors primarily for cloud computing, data centers and artificial intelligence applications.

Its Hong Kong public tranche was subscribed more than 700 times, while the international offering was nearly 38 times covered, signaling strong investor appetite for Chinese AI and semiconductor names.

Montage Technology is also listed on the mainland, with a market capitalization of around $27 billion, according to LSEG data.

The listing adds to a growing list of Chinese AI chip firms tapping capital markets in recent months, with GigaDevice Semiconductor and OmniVision Integrated Circuits debuting in January.

Other chip firms such as Biren Technology, MetaX, Moore Threads and Shanghai Iluvatar CoreX Semiconductor have also recently listed.

The wave of IPOs comes as Beijing ramps up its self-sufficiency efforts in the advanced chip space and reduces reliance on American designers like Nvidia, which are prevented from selling its most advanced chips to China.

However, competition in the market is growing fierce, with Chinese tech giant Huawei and its chip unit HiSilicon holding a leading share of the domestic market.

Meanwhile, Nvidia could be set for a market bounce back after the Trump administration cleared the way for it to sell its H200 chip to China. While the H200 lags Nvidia’s most cutting-edge technologies, it is far more powerful than any AI chip previously sold in the Chinese market.

China, in late January, had approved a first batch of H200 imports for several domestic tech companies, including ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent and DeepSeek, according to a report from Reuters.

However, the report added that Beijing was only granting approvals under specific conditions, with the final rules still being finalized, according to anonymous sources.

#Chinese #Chip #Technology #HongKong

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A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket is on the launch pad carrying Amazon’s Project Kuiper internet network satellites, which are expected to eventually rival Elon Musk’s Starlink system, at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on April 9, 2025.

Amazon has asked the Federal Communications Commission for more time to meet a deadline that requires the company to deploy roughly 1,600 internet satellites by July 2026.

The company needs to bring more of its satellites online so it can begin offering an internet-from-space service that was recently rebranded as Amazon Leo. The company has earmarked at least $10 billion to build the network.

Delays beyond Amazon’s control, including a “shortage in the near-term availability” of rockets, necessitate an extension, the company said in a filing made public on Friday. Amazon also pointed to manufacturing disruptions, the failure and grounding of new launch vehicles and limitations on spaceport capacity.

Leo is “producing satellites considerably faster than others can launch them,” the company wrote.

The company is now seeking a 24-month extension, to July 2028, or for the FCC to waive its deadline requiring Amazon to get roughly half of its 3,236 low Earth satellites up.

In 2019, Amazon unveiled its plans to build a constellation of low Earth satellites. They are designed to provide high-speed, low-latency internet to consumers, corporations and governments, offering connections through square-shaped terminals.

Amazon has booked more than 100 launches to deploy dozens of satellites at a time. The company said in the filing that it has bought 10 more launches with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, as well as a dozen additional rides with Blue Origin, the space exploration startup of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

The company said that many of its partners have notched significant launch milestones with their respective rockets in the past year.

“Not withstanding this progress, the development timelines for these next-generation vehicles have extended beyond initial projections, contributing to Amazon Leo’s deployment delays,” the company wrote.

Amazon has sent up more than 150 satellites since April. The company said it expects to deploy about 700 satellites by July 30, “moving from the third- to the second-largest satellite constellation in orbit.” Its next launch is slated for Feb. 12, when Amazon will fling another 32 satellite into space atop a rocket from Arianespace, a French company.

Leo’s primary rival is SpaceX’s Starlink, which has more than 9,000 satellites in orbit and roughly 9 million customers. Another challenger, OneWeb, is operated by France’s Eutelsat and has a constellation of more than 600 satellites.

In November, Amazon opened up an “enterprise preview” of Leo to select users ahead of a broader commercial launch.

Amazon said if the FCC were to deny it an extension, it would “undermine” the agency’s goals of expanding spectrum access and promoting “expeditious deployment.” The company also noted that the agency has previously granted similar extensions.

“Amazon Leo is engaged in full-scale deployment and stands on the doorstep of offering U.S. customers a competitive and innovative new service,” the company said. “An extension would enable this rapid and ongoing deployment to continue, while strict enforcement would interrupt or halt this effort.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/30/amazon-asks-fcc-to-extend-satellite-limit-as-it-buys-more-spacex-rides.html?__source=twitter%7Ctech&taid=697d5bce0d6a040001323d50&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

Meta’s deprioritizing virtual reality in favor of artificial intelligence and Internet-connected smart glasses has chilled the industry, leading to concerns about its future.

“I can see how it feels like a VR winter,” said Jessica Young, an independent VR content creator specializing in Horizon Worlds, Meta’s virtual social network.

The social media giant last week laid off 10% of employees who work within its Reality Labs unit, with the cuts centering on VR-related initiatives like the Quest VR headsets, CNBC reported. Teams working on Horizon Worlds were hit hard and some in-house studios were shuttered. Approximately 1,000 jobs were cut, CNBC reported.

The move was part of the company’s effort to redirect Reality Labs investments from VR to AI and wearable devices like the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses that are co-produced with EssilorLuxottica, a spokesperson for the social media company said in a statement last week. Meta declined to comment further beyond its previous statement.

Meta’s reduced investment in VR is notable considering how much the company has helped grow the industry since its $2 billion acquisition of Oculus in 2014. The company became synonymous with VR when CEO Mark Zuckerberg changed its name from Facebook to Meta, representing the founder’s obsession with a future of digital worlds referred to as the metaverse. Since late 2020, Meta’s Reality Labs division has logged over $70 billion in cumulative losses.

Zuckerberg’s sudden reversal has some VR developers worried about their future prospects. While they said they don’t see Meta killing its VR efforts, a major shift appears to be underway.

Andrew Bosworth, chief technology officer and head of Reality Labs at Meta Platforms Inc., during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Meta traditionally announces new Quest VR headsets during its annual Connect conference in the fall, but in 2025, the company skimped on VR hardware. Instead, Meta introduced its $799 Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses that contain a single, built-in digital screen.

“If Meta’s not putting out a new headset for another year or two, it’s going to feel stale,” Young said. “It already kind of does.”

Since the layoffs, Meta tech chief Andrew Bosworth has been vocal that the social media giant is not abandoning VR.

“We’re still continuing to invest heavily in this space, but obviously, VR is growing less quickly than we hoped,” Bosworth told tech newsletter Sources. “And so you want to make sure that your investment is right-sized.”

Bosworth this week also circulated a post by Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey, who on Sunday wrote on X that Meta still employs the “largest team working on VR by about an order of magnitude.”

Although Luckey said that he feels “really bad for the people impacted” by the layoffs, the Reality Labs changes represent “a good thing thing for the long-term health of the industry, especially the ongoing incentives.”

‘The market has spoken’

Market research firm IDC said in a December report that a major transition is occurring in the so-called Extended Reality, or XR, device segment. This category includes VR and so-called mixed-reality headsets that allow users to switch between virtual environments and see their surroundings outside the helmet. The category also counts AI-powered smart glasses and more powerful versions with digital displays.

IDC projects the XR device category to have grown 41.6% year-over-year to 14.5 million units shipped for 2025. But that growth has nothing to do with VR and mixed-reality headsets — those shipments are expected to drop 42.8% to 3.9 million in 2025. The rest of this XR category, which includes AI glasses with and without displays, is projected to grow 211.2% year-over-year to 10.6 million units shipped for 2025.

Jitesh Ubrani, a research manager for market analyst firm IDC, characterized the VR headset market as niche and appealing to only a small segment of video gamers. Average consumers seem uninterested in wearing “big, bulky headsets” for lengthy VR sessions like much of the tech industry hoped for roughly a decade ago, he said.

“The market has spoken,” Ubrani said. “There are certain niche audiences that will continue to use these headsets, but it’s not going to be broadly appealing.”

Visitors experience the new AR+AI glasses flagship product at the XREAL booth at WAIC 2025 in Shanghai, China, on July 27, 2025.

Costfoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Andrew Eiche, the CEO of the Google-owned VR gaming studio Owlchemy Labs, said it was always misguided to think VR was on the cusp of having its breakthrough smartphone moment. He called it a “strategic mistake” to compare VR headsets to iPhones

The VR market, Eiche said, more closely resembles old-school Atari video game consoles that were popular before sales crashed during an infamous 1983 gaming market meltdown. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that Nintendo consoles helped revive the market, laying the groundwork for the overall industry to balloon to the massive sector it is today.

“Lot of tech people thought [VR] was going to be instantly amazing, and the same thing’s happening with AI,” Eiche said about the tech industry’s pivot to the latest craze. “When you’re looking at long-term technologies, VR is not going anywhere.”

Still, Eiche said that beyond Meta’s layoffs, other VR studios have also recently downsized as part of a broader video game industry slump. Because Quest is the dominant VR headset on the market, its app store is a key distribution channel for third-party VR.

Making matters worse, Eiche said that Meta’s Horizon Worlds push came at the expense of third-party developers who were trying to find visibility among Quest users.

“We’re at the mercy of Meta,” Eiche said, adding that it “creates a situation where if Meta pulls back, we all pull back.”

Eiche said he’s optimistic that the upcoming Steam Frame wireless VR headset from gaming company Valve will help the market, as well as the recent entries of other devices like the Samsung Galaxy XR, which debuted in October, and Apple’s Vision Pro.

But Apple’s entry into the VR space in February 2024 hasn’t done much to move the needle, and in January, IDC said that Apple’s Chinese manufacturing partner Luxshare stopped producing new Vision Pro headsets, signaling a lack of widespread consumer demand. Still, Ubrani said that Apple’s $3,499 spatial computing headset has found some footing as a business tool.

“Apple did do well in selling to a lot of developers, but they also sold into some very big companies,” Ubrani said.

VR’s hope shifts to the enterprise market

“There were certain quarters where Apple beat Meta in enterprise,” Ubrani said, due in part to the iPhone-maker’s experience selling devices to businesses.

The enterprise VR market may not be as glamorous as its consumer counterpart, but it represents an area where IDC has “seen slow but upwards movement, because companies are realizing that there is great ROI attached with deploying these headsets.”

As part of Meta’s Reality Labs cuts, the company said in a support page that it would end its Horizon managed services program that was for businesses that used Quest headsets for internal tasks like virtual employee trainings.

Meta failed to realize “how big VR could be if they adopted the bigger picture outside of gaming,” said Sean Mann, CEO of the startup RP1, which develops a “metaverse browser” for people to access virtual and augmented reality environments.

As Meta downsizes its VR ambitions and steers Horizon Worlds to be a mobile-focused online gaming platform like Roblox, Young said she plans to keep creating experiences on the platform.

Young has been able to make a living by getting paid by other Horizon developers to create trailers to promote experiences available to users on the service. She’s also earned money from Meta by winning Horizon-related competitions intended to help improve the overall platform.

But Young said she’s less enthusiastic about Horizon’s mobile push, because there was something special about the platform during its earlier, VR-centric years, particularly during the Covid era.

“Horizon became a lifeline for people isolated by the pandemic, disability, age or geography,” she said. “Many users who never imagined themselves as creators, who had no background in art or programming, were inspired by their friends to try.”

But Horizon lost is way, and “what’s frustrating now is watching people declare it dead without ever having experienced or understanding what it was,” Young said.

Ref: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/24/metas-reality-labs-cuts-sparked-fears-of-a-vr-winter.html?__source=twitter%7Ctech&taid=6974b7267707d000011242cf&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

#Meta #Reality #VirtualReality #VRLab

Led by Texas and New Hampshire, U.S. states across the national map, both red and blue in political stripes, are developing bitcoin strategic reserves and bringing cryptocurrencies onto their books through additional state finance and budgeting measures.

Texas recently became the first state to purchase bitcoin after a legislative effort that began in 2024, but numerous states have joined the “Reserve Race” to pass legislation that will allow them to ultimately buy cryptocurrencies.

New Hampshire passed its crypto strategic reserve law last May, even before Texas, giving the state treasurer the authority to invest up to 5% of the state funds in crypto ETFs, though precious metals such as gold are also authorized for purchase. Arizona passed similar legislation, while Massachusetts, Ohio, and South Dakota have legislation at various stages of committee review.

Despite much of the legislation being largely sponsored or co-sponsored by Republicans, the adoption of crypto at the state level is not expected to strictly fall along party lines. The 2024 election cycle was the first time that the cryptocurrency industry played a major role in lobbying in both state and national elections. In fact, it was the largest corporate donor in an election cycle, with support given to candidates on both sides. It is already amassing a war chest for the 2026 midterms.

Congress is currently debating a crypto market structure bill, and state-level politicians are as much out to prove that they, and their states, won’t be left out of the digital assets boom. Justin Marlowe, a public policy professor at the University of Chicago, sees the state-level trend as largely one of signaling at present. “If you’re a governor and you want to broadcast that you are amenable to innovative business development in the digital economy, these are relatively low-cost, low-risk ways to send that signal. That’s why we’ve seen leaders across the ideological spectrum and all over the country take tangible steps in this direction,” he said.

Where the state-level crypto efforts can be described as “bigger steps” — Marlowe cited Texas, Arizona, and Florida, as examples — he said it has helped to acknowledge the growing political power of crypto advocates in these states.

Similarities in the actions taken across states to date include include authorizing the state treasurer or other investment official to allow the investment of a limited amount of public funds in crypto and building out the governance structure needed to invest in crypto. This often will involve more frequent reporting requirements and stronger custodial agreements compared to traditional asset classes. The seeding of the reserve can take the form of utilizing cash or government-seized crypto, as in the recent case of the federal government. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to create a strategic bitcoin reserve last March, but limited the authorization to seized crypto in an effort to show taxpayers would bear no financial burden.

It is no surprise that Texas was the first state to fund a crypto reserve. Texas has been a crypto hub for years through its role in bitcoin mining. The state’s affordable and flexible power, as well as a political environment that has largely been pro-crypto, led Texas in recent years to a sizable position in not just the national, but global bitcoin hashing market.

“Texas has spent the last few years becoming one of the key centers of bitcoin activity, especially on the mining side,” said Christian Catalini, founder of the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab, seeing this move as one that early branded the state as “open for business” when it comes to digital assets.

“Once you’ve made that bet on infrastructure and industry, adding some Bitcoin exposure at the treasury level is a natural next step,” Catalini said. Such a move essentially makes the state’s balance sheet one that is explicitly aligned with the ecosystem it aims to attract.

Texas also has a long history with bitcoin’s traditional market competitor: gold.

“Texas has proven to be a bedrock of government adoption of bitcoin, starting with laws that allow for legal custody arrangements akin to gold storage laws that are well established there,” said Nik Bhatia, founder of The Bitcoin Layer.

When it comes to storing physical gold, Texas has clear rules on storage and ownership, and even the language invoked – vaults, custodians – helps grease the wheels for crypto assets at the state level. The Texas Bullion Depository of 2015, which allowed for state-level depository of bullion and precious metals, was specifically adapted to apply to digital assets like bitcoin. The Texas Bullion Depositary was the first state-administered precious metals depository in the nation.

Texas has not purchased any on-chain bitcoin. After passing the legislation to create a strategic bitcoin reserve that gave authorization to the state comptroller to hold the cryptocurrency, Texas purchased a stake in a bitcoin ETF — roughly $5 million in the largest bitcoin ETF, the BlackRock iShares’ Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), which since its launch in January 2024 has grown to over $72 billion in assets under management.

The Comptroller’s office made its purchase on the morning of November 20, 2025, when the price of a single bitcoin was $91,336. As of Saturday morning, bitcoin was trading at a little over $95,000.

Bhatia said the approval of bitcoin ETFs by the SEC was crucial to the state plans to be comfortable with the holdings under current U.S. securities law. “Using ETFs is a very clean and safe way to invest in bitcoin, minimizing storage logistical risk and opting for security law protection,” Bhatia said.

Texas state officials have described this purchase — which deployed only half of the $10 million set aside by the Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve — as a “placeholder” while security and storage for raw bitcoin can be put into place.

Crypto’s move into core state finance and budgeting

In addition to the concept of reserve funds, states are bringing crypto into core finance functions, with an approach that balances the inherent trepidation of venturing into new terrain with a desire to be a part of the fast-moving crypto realm.

New Hampshire, for example, became the first state to approve the issuance of a bitcoin-backed municipal bond last November, a $100 million issuance that would mark the first time cryptocurrency is used as collateral in the U.S. municipal bond market. The deal has not taken place yet, though plans are for the issuance to occur this year. “The idea is they’ll use bitcoin to back a municipal bond issue, the proceeds of which will then be divvied up into loans to smaller governments for economic development projects across the state,” Marlowe said. Repayment of these loans will recapitalize the fund.

It is a creative evolution in state finances, but like many of the mechanisms for crypto development at the state level, it utilizes existing financial structures and state goals, according to Marlowe, with similar public bonds in prior decades used for projects like clean water, school upgrades, and other infrastructure. “What’s different here is it’s bitcoin rather than taxpayer dollars as the collateral,” he said.

In numerous states, including, Colorada, Utah, and Louisiana, crypto is now accepted as payment for taxes and other state business. As more state public finance crypto efforts develop, the shift represents a change in a core philosophy of safety and liquidity that has dominated the investing of state and local funds for centuries.

In recent decades, assets including real estate and private equity expanded the investment approach of public funds, but crypto represents not only the most recent addition, but the most volatile.

“For many in the state/local investing industry, crypto-backed assets are still far too speculative and volatile for public money,” Marlowe said. “But others, and I think there’s a sort of generational shift in the works, see it as a reasonable store of value that is actually stronger on many other public sector values like transparency and asset integrity,” he added.

More info: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/17/texas-us-states-budgets-bitcoin-crypto-strategic-reserve.html?__source=twitter%7Ctech&taid=696badfd9495b60001c30257&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

A little over four years after Mark Zuckerberg changed Facebook’s name to Meta, reflecting his view that the future of work, play and socializing was going virtual, the company is making a major course correction.

Meta this week began laying off employees focused on virtual reality within its Reality Labs division and is shutting down a number of studios that were working on VR titles, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named due to confidentiality. CNBC confirmed a report from the New York Times that layoffs, amounting to more than 1,000 jobs, will impact about 10% of the hardware division, which makes Quest VR headsets, and the Horizon Worlds virtual social network.

Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer, is slated to hold an all-hands meeting with Reality Labs on Wednesday, some of the people said.

Meta is scaling back its metaverse ambitions as the company continues ramping up its investments in artificial intelligence, Zuckerberg’s more recent obsession and the technology that’s consumed Silicon Valley and the broader industry. Zuckerberg has been paying big bucks for top AI talent, most notably shelling out $14.3 billion in June to hire Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang, who’s now leading AI strategy, along with other engineers and researchers from the startup.

In October, Vishal Shah, who spent four years leading the company’s metaverse efforts, was named vice president of AI products. That month Meta lifted the range of its 2025 capital expenditures to between $70 billion and $72 billion and said dollar growth would be “notably larger” in 2026.

The studios that are closing as part of the latest changes include Armature Studio, Twisted Pixel, and Sanzaru, as well as a technical unit called Oculus Studios Central Technology, sources told CNBC. Jobs are also being cut at other studios including Ouro Interactive, which Meta debuted in 2023 to build first-party content for Horizon Worlds.

Supernatural, a VR fitness app that Meta purchased for $400 million in 2023, was moved into maintenance mode, meaning it will be run by a skeleton crew and no longer receive new content, said people with knowledge of the matter.

Meta laid the groundwork for this week’s announcement in December, when the company said it would be shifting resources within Reality Labs’ budget away from its VR initiatives toward its endeavors with AI glasses and wearable devices.

“This is part of that effort, and we plan to reinvest the savings to support the growth of wearables this year,” a Meta spokesperson said, without commenting specifically on the layoffs.

While Meta’s VR projects have never taken off, the company has had better success in AI-powered wearables, particularly through a partnership with EssilorLuxottica to make Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.

In September, the two companies unveiled the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, which cost $799 and contain a single, built-in display that shows users small messages and previews of photos. Meta said last week that it would delay the global debut of the display glasses, citing “limited” inventories amid “unprecedented” U.S. demand.

Luxottica CFO Stefano Grassi said in October that his company will be able to reach the 10 million unit capacity for the glasses that it had originally planned to hit by the end of 2026 earlier than anticipated.

More like Roblox

Despite the downsizing, Meta isn’t abandoning VR.

The company is courting developers who build games for Roblox, a virtual world gaming platform popular with kids, to build experiences for Horizon Worlds, sources said. Roblox says it has more than 150 million daily users, while Horizon, which Zuckerberg showcased at the time of the company name change, has never drawn more than a couple hundred thousand active users a month.

By taking cues from the likes of Roblox and Minecraft, which Microsoft acquired in 2014, Horizon Worlds could serve as a funnel for Meta to attract a younger audience to its services.

Last year Bosworth directed the company to turn Horizon Worlds into a hit smartphone app, after beginning a test of a mobile version in 2023, people familiar with the matter told CNBC. Meta moved employees from other parts of Reality Labs onto the Horizon Worlds team in 2025, ex-employees said.

Ben Hatton, an analyst for CCS Insight who covers connected devices, said the underperformance of VR headsets and the continuing growth of mobile forced Meta’s hand.

“It kind of follows that Meta will be moving it towards mobile as mobile gaming has become very popular over the last five years or so,” Hatton said.

Ouro is one of the studios that will be working on mobile content for Horizon Worlds, people said.

Andrew Bosworth, chief technology officer of Meta Platforms Inc., speaks during a Bloomberg Television interview on the sidelines of the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Meta’s decision to scale back its VR efforts comes 12 years after Facebook entered the market with the $2 billion purchase of Oculus VR. Since late 2020, Meta’s Reality Labs division has logged over $70 billion in cumulative losses. In its latest quarterly earnings in October, Meta said Reality Labs recorded a $4.4 billion loss on $470 million in sales.

Meanwhile, the company is wrestling with a scattershot AI strategy as it tries to keep pace with OpenAI and Google, whose large language models and AI features are soaring in popularity. Meta plans to release its next frontier model, codenamed Avocado, in the first quarter of this year, CNBC reported last month.

Meta’s stock price badly trailed Alphabet’s last year and came up short of the Nasdaq, a trend that’s continued in the early days of 2026, with the shares down more than 4% since the calendar changed.

Horizon Worlds has been a struggle from the start.

In August 2022, 10 months after Zuckerberg announced plans to go all-in on the metaverse, he posted a photo to his Facebook profile showing his avatar in front of animated versions of the Eiffel Tower and Spain’s Basílica de la Sagrada Família. The picture was lambasted on social media for its low-quality graphics. Zuckerberg posted a new image days later of an improved version of his avatar, promising users that “major updates to Horizon and avatar graphics” were coming soon.

But inside Horizon Worlds, the photo fiasco was a defining moment, according to people familiar with the matter. Zuckerberg called a meeting with the team responsible for VR avatars demanding improvements, one of the people said.

Multiple VR developers told CNBC that Horizon Worlds usage remains low based on their observations, adding that the company doesn’t share specific stats. The developers said they’re frustrated because they don’t have accurate information that could help them create more compelling games and experiences.

Rather, in Meta’s refocusing toward a more Roblox-like experience, the company last year began instructing existing third-party Horizon Worlds developers to build kid-friendly, simplistic games.

Deepak Nair, a developer advocate at Meta, discussed the strategy in August with an audience of developers in Berlin, encouraging them to mimic Roblox and Minecraft in building games that let kids create stories they can share with their friends. Nair said a key issue for developers is identifying the right demographic.

“Generally 13 to 24, right?” Nair said. “And even on other ecosystems, it’s even younger than that.”

In February, Meta launched a $50 million Creator Fund intended to entice developers to create more in-game experiences inside Horizon Worlds, with a focus on mobile. The company is planning to make it easy for Facebook and Instagram users to seamlessly access Horizon Worlds, sources said.

Ref: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/13/meta-lays-off-vr-employees-underscoring-zuckerbergs-pivot-to-ai.html?__source=twitter%7Ctech&taid=6966efdf0280f400015f3bc0&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

#Meta #Zuckerberg #Facebook #LayoffVR

The Google logo displayed on a smartphone alongside a shopping cart.

As retailers increasingly turn to artificial intelligence tools to lure shoppers and run key parts of their business, Google wants to make sure it’s in the center of the action.

At the kickoff of the National Retail Federation’s annual show on Sunday, Google announced the launch of what it’s calling the Universal Commerce Protocol. The company wants UCP to become an industry standard that retailers use for their AI agents and systems across tasks like discovery, buying and “post-purchase-support.”

Google says the open-source protocol creates a unified system spanning the shopping experience, from searching to payment, so that retailers don’t have to build their own tools and connect the various functions.

“It’s very important to have a standardized way so we can scale these things and everyone can be prepared for all the various steps to happen,” Vidhya Srinivasan, vice president of Google ads and commerce, said in an interview. “Businesses can pick and choose what they want so there’s flexibility for them.”

E-commerce has emerged as one of the major battlegrounds in the booming generative AI market, with Google facing off against OpenAI, Perplexity and Amazon, as they all try and get consumers to use their various apps and services to begin their shopping journey.

In September, OpenAI announced Instant Checkout, which allows users to buy some products through ChatGPT, taking a fee from transactions it helps orchestrate. OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol developed in partnership with Stripe, is open source and could compete with UCP.

Perplexity in May said it’s partnering with PayPal to let users buy products, book travel and secure concert tickets directly in its chat without leaving the platform, and in November said it will roll out a free agentic shopping product for U.S. users ahead of the holiday season.

And earlier last year, Amazon launched “Shop Direct,” a feature that lets consumers browse items from other brands’ sites on Amazon. Some of those items include a button labeled “Buy for Me,” an AI agent that can purchase products from other websites on a shopper’s behalf.

By 2030, the retail market could represent a $3 trillion to $5 trillion opportunity globally due to AI-powered tools and agentic commerce, according to a report in October from McKinsey.

Google said UCP was co-developed with companies including Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair and Target. The protocol will soon power a new checkout feature allowing users to buy direct from Google’s AI Mode or Gemini App. They can pay via Google Wallet, but Srinivasan said the company plans to include other payment methods like PayPal in the future.

Srinivasan said UCP will be compatible with other existing protocols.

As part of Sunday’s announcements, Google also introduced a feature called Business Agent, allowing shoppers to chat with brands.

“This is to address the newer consumer behavior which is shifted toward more conversational commerce,” Srinivasan said. “We want retailers to be able to connect to users on our surfaces but using their own voice.”

Then there’s Google’s core market: advertising.

Google said it’s testing “Direct Offers,” which will let retailers promote unique discounts, such as 20% off of a product, if a user of the AI Mode chatbot expresses intent to buy something.

“Our role in the ecosystem is that of a matchmaker and one way is with ads,” Srinivasan said. “It’s a really big focus for us to innovate in the space that adds value to both retailers and buyers.”

#Google #Platform #Commerce #Protocal

What you need to know today:
➡️ The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average snapped three-day winning streaks Wednesday.
➡️ Venezuela will ship sanctioned oil to the U.S. indefinitely, sources told CNBC.
➡️ The Warner Bros. Discovery board on Wednesday said the Paramount bid is “inferior” to a deal with Netflix.
➡️ No dividends or stock buybacks for defense firms, Trump said.
➡️ Jensen Huang expressed his liking for one firm — an analyst thinks its shares could nearly double this year.

Humanoid robots shadowboxed, danced and pretended to run small shops. Singapore-based Sharpa displayed a robotic hand playing table tennis and dealing blackjack hands.

Across Las Vegas, technology companies used the annual CES trade show to reveal their visions of the future and to loudly proclaim that physical artificial intelligence is poised for a breakout year.

“The humanoid industry is riding on the work of the AI factories we’re building for other AI stuff,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said at a news conference on Tuesday.

Nvidia Founder and CEO Jensen Huang stands in front of a photo of several humanoid robots during his keynote at CES in Las Vegas on January 5, 2026.

Nvidia

Nvidia, which last year became the world’s most valuable company, announced a new version of its vision language models called Gr00t for humanoid robots that can turn sensor inputs into robot body control, as well as a version of its Cosmos model for robot reasoning and planning.

Huang said he expects to see robots with some human-level capabilities this year.

“I know how fast the technology is moving,” he said. His company highlighted partnerships with the likes of Boston Dynamics, Caterpillar and LG.

Science fiction writers have dreamed of this moment for decades. “The Jetsons” had Rosey, a robot maid. In “Star Wars,” C-3PO helped Luke Skywalker save the galaxy. However, in real life, humanoids have so far been unable to demonstrate the intelligence or flexibility that would make them truly useful, a problem that’s long eluded engineers.

Then came generative AI with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022. The same deep learning technology that underpins ChatGPT can be used to teach the robots how to walk, use a hand or fold laundry. Many in the industry see self-driving cars as the first major commercial manifestation of physical AI.

Industry heavyweights are going big.

In addition to Nvidia, fellow chipmakers Advanced Micro Devices and Qualcomm made splashy robot-related announcements at CES. On Monday, Google’s DeepMind said it would work with Hyundai’s Boston Dynamics, formerly a division of Google, to develop new AI models for its Atlas robot.

The humanoid GENE.01 robot was showcased by AMD because it uses its chips and AI technology.

Kif Leswing / CNBC

McKinsey estimates that the market for what it calls general-purpose robotics could reach $370 billion by 2040, with top use cases including “warehouse logistics, light manufacturing, retail operations, agriculture, and healthcare.”

But some analysts were quick to point out that it’s a long way from the show floor to the factory floor, or to the home.

“Although the humanoids were the ones that grabbed everyone’s attention, and it was the best kind of eye candy for the show, we’re still a very, very long way from the commercial implementation of these,” Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight, said in an interview.

Building the brain

According to CES’ official exhibitor list, 40 companies at the event mentioned humanoid robots on the show’s website. The Consumer Technology Association, which produces CES, hasn’t said how many humanoid robot companies presented at this year’s event, but CTA President Kinsey Fabrizio said the number of industrial and consumer robots at the show has been growing.

AMD CEO Lisa Su on Monday revealed a new humanoid robot from Italy’s Generative Bionics, a company that it’s backing financially. The robot, Gene.01, is scheduled be deployed later this year in industrial environments like shipyards.

LG’s CLOiD robot made its debut this week, folding towels and loading the washing machine.

Kif Leswing / CNBC

Generative Robotics is using AMD’s cloud-based graphics processing units to train and fine-tune its models.

“This allows us to customize the next generation of the models on their GPUs,” said Generative Robotics CEO Daniele Pucci. “That is the brain.”

For now, robot chip sales are a small fraction of Nvidia’s business, and AMD reports them as “embedded” sales, a term for industrial chips. Qualcomm’s “internet of things” revenue was about 18% of the company’s sales in the latest fiscal year.

But they see an opportunity to win business from a new crop of robot makers by offering them not just chips, but an entire software ecosystem to make development easier.

“This is all about any of the major players establishing themselves as a one-stop shop for the robotics development community,” Wood said.

While the tech industry has become enamored with large language models in the generative AI boom, many robots are being enabled by vision language models. They can pair sensor data from a robot with traditional AI models to allow for reasoning or planning, such as a route through a messy floor of obstacles.

LEM Surgical says its spine surgery robot is a “humanoid.”

Kif Leswing / CNBC

Along with Nvidia’s VLM announcements at CES, Qualcomm showed off a new line of robot chips called Dragonwing that can use the company’s VLMs. Qualcomm is using tele-operations to teach its VLM specific skills like how to use actuators to grasp an object.

One particular area of excitement for Nvidia is medicine.

The company showcased a robot from a company called LEM Surgical using its Thor chip. The robot was described as a humanoid, but it didn’t have legs. Rather, it had three arms, two for using tools and one that controlled a face-like module of cameras and sensors. Its sole function is to help doctors with spine surgery.

Down the exhibit hall, Nvidia demonstrated a Chinese humanoid robot called Agibot that used a large language model to chat with attendees, though it had trouble standing on the conference center’s plush carpets.

What robots can do right now

California-based 1X became the first to launch a multi-modal home helper robot in October 2025 with its $20,000 “Neo” humanoid.

1X

Also at the show, Korea’s LG showed off its wheeled humanoid CLOiD robot for the first time.

In the demonstration, CLOiD, which is designed for the home, promised to make breakfast and took a wet towel from the presenter and stuck it in a washing machine.

But it was slow. Folding a rectangular towel that was laid out by a presenter took CLOiD about 30 seconds.

Speed isn’t the only concern. Experts are also worried about safety and the damage that could be caused by consumer robots.

“Home is very unstructured,” said Jeff Burnstein, president of the Association for Advancing Automation. “You can’t plan for a child running into the robot or the robot running over a pet.”

China-based UniTree’s G1 humanoid Koid sells for around $70,000 in the U.S.

UniTree

Some of the first humanoid robots on the market could be more about fun and flash than productivity. China’s Unitree Robotics displayed its $70,000 G1 robot at CES. Large crowds of onlookers were treated to a performance of boxing and dancing on the show floor.

The largest tech companies in the world are betting that the market is rapidly evolving. Nvidia’s Huang said this week that robots are having their “ChatGPT moment.”

Modar Alaoui, general partner at ALM Ventures, sees robots rapidly moving from novelty to reality.

“The next generation is just going to grow up with these machines whether we accept it or not,” he said.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/09/humanoid-robots-take-over-las-vegas-at-ces-tech-touts-future-of-ai.html?__source=twitter%7Ctech&taid=6960ff26445b5f0001838098&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

#Himanoid #Robot #Intel #Tech #Technology #Nvidia #LasVegas

Google is adding more Gemini features to Gmail, providing upgrades like artificial intelligence-generated summaries of email threads, the company said Thursday.

“When you open an email with dozens of replies, Gmail synthesizes the entire conversation into a concise summary of key points,” Google wrote in a blog post. The company said it’s bringing AI Overviews, which shows up at the top of search results, to Gmail inboxes.

The updates come as Google embeds its Gemini AI technology across its wide portfolio of consumer products. Google is counting on its massive customer base to provide an advantage as the company takes on the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic and others in the booming generative AI market. Google says Gmail now has more than 3 billion users.

Driven by its rapid advancements in AI, Google parent Alphabet topped Apple by market cap on Wednesday for the first time since 2019, continuing a rally that made the stock the best performer among tech megacaps last year. Meanwhile, OpenAI soared to a private market valuation of $500 billion late last year, and Anthropic said Wednesday that it’s valued at $350 billion in a new funding round.

Google said its latest updates will be rolled out in phases, and some features will be turned on by default in inboxes, meaning users who don’t want them will have to opt out.

One of the new features is “Suggested Replies,” which Google says uses the context of a user’s emails to create one-click responses. It’s an update to a prior tool called “Smart Replies.” The company is also upgrading a proofreading option for checking grammar and making messages more concise.

Last year, Google’s Gemini integration in Gmail allowed users to do things like search messages, draft emails from prompts, improve grammar and generate custom responses.

#Google #Gemini #Ai #Gmail

Ref: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/08/google-adds-gemini-features-to-gmail-message-summaries-proofreading-.html?__source=twitter%7Ctech&taid=695fadb0c49fe600014281f4&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

The Democratic mayor of San Jose, California, has come out against a proposed statewide ballot measure that would ask voters to approve a one-time 5% tax on billionaires’ net worth.

Matt Mahan, who took office in Silicon Valley’s biggest city in 2023, said in a series of X posts on Monday that the initiative would end up costing the majority of California residents.

“We need a rising economic tide to lift all boats, not a political plan that will sink California’s innovation economy,” Mahan wrote.

San Jose’s population sat just below 1 million as of mid-2024, according to a U.S. Census Bureau estimate. It’s the third-largest California city, behind Los Angeles and San Diego.

Tech investors and executives have been vocal of late in their opposition to a tax on billionaires, claiming that it will cause companies and entrepreneurs to flee for other states. The issue has become particularly contentious for Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, who backs the tax and whose district includes part of Silicon Valley, as one-time supporters in the tech industry have threatened to throw their weight behind a primary challenger.

“Even people who don’t expect this initiative to pass are still planning to leave because there will be another one is the argument,” billionaire investor Vinod Khosla wrote on X late last month. “And California will lose its most important tax payers and net off much worse.”

David Sacks, a venture capitalist now serving as President Donald Trump’s crypto and artificial intelligence czar, said on X last week that “Austin will replace SF as the tech capital.” Tech investor Peter Thiel and Google co-founder Larry Page, have considered leaving, The New York Times reported.

David O. Sacks, chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, speaks to President Donald Trump next to Sriram Krishnan, senior White House policy advisor on artificial intelligence, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick as Trump signs an executive order on AI in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, Dec. 11, 2025.

Al Drago | Reuters

“Driving billionaires out of state might feel good in the short run but working people (as is almost always the case) will pick up the tab for this political ploy,” Mahan wrote on Monday. “The people who lose in the long run are California families who will be asked to foot more of the bill for government services and infrastructure.”

Mahan said that addressing income inequality requires solutions like “closing the massive loopholes nationally that allow the wealthiest among us to essentially never pay taxes on many capital gains.”

The proposed ballot measure, dubbed the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act, is being pushed by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West labor union. If enacted, it would levy a one-time 5% tax on the assets of California billionaires to shore up an expected shortfall in the state’s health-care budget.

Should the measure garner enough signatures to qualify, it will be up to California voters to decide whether to implement the tax, which would be retroactive to Jan. 1, 2026. California will require around 875,000 signatures before placing the initiative on the ballot.

A report from some of those who drafted the measure said the tax could raise $100 billion through 2031 from the 200 wealthiest people in the state. California had over 39 million people at the start of 2025, according to state data.

A major reason that tech investors and executives are united in opposing the effort is the concern that the tax would apply to unrealized gains. That means startup founders with a net worth of over $1 billion based on the paper value of their private stock would have to pay tax on their wealth even though it’s illiquid.

Sarah Drory, a spokesperson for Rep. Khanna, told CNBC in late December that while Khanna supports a “modest wealth tax on billionaires to deal with staggering inequality and to make sure people have health care,” he also advocates “for commonsense work-arounds for startup founders whose companies are not profitable and who have illiquid stock.”

#Democratic #SiliconValley #billionaire #Tax

A general view of the Baidu logo is seen at the Shanghai New Expo Center during the World Artificial Intelligence Conference 2025 in Shanghai, China, on July 28, 2025.

Ying Tang | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Chinese tech giant Baidu plans to spin off its artificial intelligence chip subsidiary, Kunlunxin, and list it in Hong Kong, as more domestic chipmakers seek funds amid Beijing’s push for semiconductor self-sufficiency.

The company said in an announcement Friday that it had confidentially filed a listing application on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, though details of the offering, including size and structure, remain undecided.

The move would still require regulatory approvals, including from China’s securities watchdog. Baidu emphasized there is no guarantee the spin-off will proceed. The company reportedly owns about 59% of Kunlunxin.

Baidu, a major player in China’s growing AI space, is both a buyer of specialized AI chips for data centers and cloud computing, as well as a designer of them through Kunlunxin.

The firm said that the spin-off would align with its strategy to highlight Kunlunxin’s standalone potential, attract sector-specific investors, and expand financing options. Kunlunxin would remain a Baidu subsidiary, it added.

The move comes against a backdrop of intensifying U.S.-China tech tensions. Both Washington and Beijing have imposed various restrictions on Chinese AI companies’ access to leading-edge AI chips from California-based Nvidia.

Meanwhile, Beijing has increasingly encouraged domestic chip purchases and mobilized billions in public funds towards development.

In recent months, several Chinese chipmakers have announced plans to list, including Moore Threads and Biren Technology.

A Growing Business Focus

Founded in 2012, Kunlunxin is central to Baidu’s ambition to become a “full stack” AI company, spanning hardware, servers and data centers, as well as AI models and applications.

While Baidu still relies heavily on Nvidia’s chips for AI computing power, Kunlunxin has enabled the company to increasingly use a mix of its self-developed chips in data centers running its Ernie AI models.

Kunlunxin has also shifted to operate as a separate entity, expanding its sales to third-party customers outside Baidu.

“In the market, Kunlunxin is seen as one of the most practical and widely used AI chips in China,” Brady Wang, associate director at Counterpoint Research, told CNBC.

He added that one of the chipmaker’s main strengths is in software. “Instead of forcing users to adopt a closed system, Kunlunxin works well with common AI frameworks and makes it easier to move workloads from [Nvidia].”

Reuters previously reported that Kunlunxin’s revenue is projected to exceed 3.5 billion yuan ($500 million) last year, reaching break-even. External sales were expected to account for more than half of its revenue in 2025, the report added.

In another sign of strength last year, Kunlunxin won orders worth over 1 billion yuan from suppliers to China Mobile, one of the country’s biggest mobile carriers.

China Mobile also participated in the entity’s latest funding, which had raised over 2 billion yuan and valued the unit at about 21 billion yuan, according to Reuters.

In its announcement, Baidu said its plans to spin off and list Kunlunxin would better tie management incentives with performance and elevate the unit’s market presence.

Late last year, JPMorgan analysts forecast that Kunlunxin’s chip sales would increase sixfold to 8 billion Chinese yuan in 2026.

However, while Kunlunxin may help reduce China’s reliance on chips from Nvidia, it cannot fully replace them, Counterpoint’s Wang said, citing Beijing’s ongoing constraints in advanced chip manufacturing.

″[Kunlunxin’s chips] work best for inference and other workloads that are easier to move, especially for government, telecom, and state-owned cloud users, where stable supply and lower cost matter more than top performance,” he said.

“Because of this, Beijing is not relying on a single company. Instead, Kunlunxin works together with Huawei Ascend, Cambricon, Alibaba, and others to build a domestic AI computing ecosystem.”

#Baidu #SearchEngine #Alibaba #China #Hongkong #semiconductor #Chip

S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks as he holds a press conference following a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), at the U.S. Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C., U.S., Dec. 10, 2025.

WASHINGTON – The Federal Reserve on Tuesday released minutes from its highly divisive meeting earlier this month, which concluded with a vote to lower interest rates again that appeared to be an even closer call than the final vote indicated.

Officials expressed a variety of opinions during the Dec. 9-10 meeting, according to the summary provided a day ahead of its customary release due to the New Year’s holiday.

Ultimately, the Federal Open Market Committee approved a quarter percentage point cut by a 9-3 vote, the most dissents since 2019 as officials debated over the need to support the labor market against concerns about inflation. The move lowered the key funds rate to a range of 3.5%-3.75%.

“Most participants judged that further downward adjustments to the target range for the federal funds rate would likely be appropriate if inflation declined over time as expected,” the document said.

With that, though, came misgivings over how aggressive the FOMC should be in the future.

“With respect to the extent and timing of additional adjustments to the target range for the federal funds rate, some participants suggested that, under their economic outlooks, it would likely be appropriate to keep the target range unchanged for some time after a lowering of the range at this meeting,” the minutes said.

Officials expressed confidence that the economy would continue to expand around a “moderate” pace, while they saw downside risks to employment and upside risks to inflation. The extent of the two dynamics divided FOMC policymakers, with indications that the vote could have gone either way despite the six-vote victory for the cut.

“A few of those who supported lowering the policy rate at this meeting indicated that the decision was finely balanced or that they could have supported keeping the target range unchanged,” the minutes said.

The vote also came with a quarterly update of the committee’s Summary of Economic Projections, including the closely watched “dot plot” grid of individual officials’ rate expectations.

The 19 officials at the December meeting – 12 vote on rates – indicated the likelihood of another cut in 2026 then one more in 2027. That would take the funds rate down to near 3%, a level officials consider as neutral in that it neither restricts nor pushes economic growth.

The faction favoring keeping the rate steady “expressed concern that progress toward the Committee’s 2 percent inflation objective had stalled in 2025 or indicated that they needed to have more confidence that inflation was being brought down sustainably to the Committee’s objective.”

Officials said President Donald Trump’s tariffs were boosting inflation, but they also largely agreed that the impact would be temporary and likely abate into 2026.

Since the vote, economic reports have pointed to a labor market where hiring is still slow but layoffs have not accelerated. On the prices side, inflation has been slowly easing but remains a distance away from the Fed’s 2% target.

At the same time, the broader economy continues to perform well. Gross domestic product soared in the third quarter, rising at a 4.3% annualized pace that was well ahead of estimates and a half percentage point better than the strong second quarter.

However, most of the data carries a significant caveat: Reports are still trailing as government agencies round up data from the dark period during the government shutdown. Even the reports coming in that are more current, at least from official sources, are being weighed with caution due the data gaps.

Consequently, markets largely expect the FOMC to stay put over the next few meetings as policymakers weigh incoming data. The holiday season was a quiet one for Fed official commentary and the few comments out there show mostly caution heading into the new year.

The committee’s complexion also is about to change, with four new regional presidents rotating into voting roles. They will be Cleveland President Beth Hammack, who has expressed opposition not only to additional cuts but also previous ones; Philadelphia President Anna Paulson, who has joined FOMC doves in expressing concern about inflation; Dallas President Lorie Logan, who has voiced concerns about cutting; and Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari, who said he wouldn’t have voted for the October cut.

Also at the meeting, the committee voted to resume its bond-buying program. Under the new setup, the Fed will be acquiring short-term Treasury bills in an effort to calm pressures in short-term funding markets.

The central bank initiated the program by buying $40 billion a month in bills, staying around that level for several months before downshifting. A prior effort to reduce the balance sheet saw the Fed cut its holdings by about $2.3 trillion to its current $6.6 trillion.

The minutes noted that unless the buying program, known in markets as quantitative easing, was restarted, it could result in a “significant declines in reserves” that would fall below the Fed’s “ample” regime for the banking system.

#Fed #USA #USBank #Financial #Finance

#Google #Gemini #AIgiant

The opening weekend for Disney’s “Avatar: Fire and Ash” was less of a blaze and more of a simmer.

And that’s the expectation for the full theatrical run of the third installment in James Cameron’s Avatar franchise.

During its first three days in theaters, “Fire and Ash” tallied $88 million, falling well shy of analysts’ expectations, which called for a debut haul between $110 million and $125 million. For comparison, 2022′s “Avatar: The Way of Water” brought in $134 million during the same three-day period.

Internationally, the film collected $257 million, bringing the film’s global opening to an estimated $345 million.

“Fire and Ash” faced some theatrical headwinds, namely its over-three-hour runtime. There was also less pent-up demand compared to “The Way of Water,” which was released more than a decade after the first Avatar film. Some box office analysts and critics noted that “Fire and Ash” has less technological innovation than its predecessors, which had been a driving factor in past ticket sales.

Around 5.2 million domestic moviegoers went to see “Fire and Ash,” according to data from EntTelligence, a massive decline from the 8.7 million that ventured out in 2022 to see the opening weekend of “The Way of Water.”

Still, the Avatar franchise has never been front-loaded at the box office. The first film, 2009′s “Avatar,” generated just $77 million in its opening weekend domestically, but stayed in theaters for nearly a year. By the time it exited theaters, the film had generated $2.7 billion globally. With re-releases, the film now stands at $2.9 billion, according to data from Comscore.

“The Way of Water” ran in theaters for 23 weeks and has grossed $2.3 billion globally.

“With less than two weeks remaining in the box office year, the pressure on ‘Avatar: Fire And Ash’ to deliver big was intense and though the film may have come in a bit below pre-release opening weekend projections, the Avatar films have always been known for their marathon box office trajectories,” said Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Comscore.

Also aiding the franchise at the box office are premium large-format ticket sales. The Avatar films have over-indexed with the more expensive experiential screens like IMAX and Dolby as well as 3D showings. Disney reported that 3D and premium theaters accounted for 66% of the weekend total.

While 3D films have fallen out of favor with domestic audiences, they remain popular internationally —especially in China. Indeed, “Avatar” made the bulk of its money outside the U.S., with a whopping $2.08 billion coming from overseas.

#Disney #Avatar

Dina Powell McCormick, who was a member of President Donald Trump’s first administration, has resigned from Meta’s board of directors.

Powell McCormick, who previously spent 16 years working at Goldman Sachs, notified Meta of her resignation on Friday, according to a filing with the SEC. The filing did not disclose why McCormick was stepping down from Meta’s board, but said her resignation was effective immediately.

Meta does not plan on replacing her board role, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named due to confidentiality. Powell McCormick is considering a potential strategic advisory role with Meta, but nothing has been decided, the person said.

Powell McCormick joined Meta’s board in April along with Stripe co-founder and CEO Patrick Collison. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement at the time that the two executives “bring a lot of experience supporting businesses and entrepreneurs to our board.”

Powell McCormick served as a deputy national security advisor to President Trump during his first stint in office and was also an assistant secretary of state during President George W. Bush’s administration.

She is married to Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa, who took office in January.

Powell McCormick is the vice chair, president and head of global client services at BDT & MSD Partners, which formed in 2023 after the merchant bank BDT combined with Michael Dell’s investment firm MSD.

With her departure, Meta now has 14 board members, including UFC CEO Dana White, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan and former Enron executive John Arnold.

#Meta #Facebook #Social #SocialMedia

🔗 Read more here: https://cnb.cx/3MT1qxj

People walk past the logo of Amazon Web Services (AWS) at its exhibitor stall at the India Mobile Congress 2025 at Yashobhoomi, a convention and expo center in New Delhi, India, October 8, 2025.

What you need to know today:
➡️ Major U.S. indexes fell Friday, dragged down by tech names.
➡️ Oracle says it will finish data centers on time, refuting Bloomberg report.
➡️ Coinbase to have an in-house prediction market powered be Kalshi, sources say.
➡️ Aspects of Berkshire’s leadership transition suggest the conglomerate is drifting away from the decentralized “Berkshire way.”
➡️ Goldman Sachs thinks this is the best way to play China’s domestic agriculture sector.

Signage at the Broadcom Inc. headquarters in San Jose,

The sell-off in artificial intelligence stocks continued unabated Friday stateside. Broadcom shares tumbled more than 11% as investors grew concerned over lower margins and uncertain deals. Names such as Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices and Oracle fell in sympathy, which caused major U.S. indexes to close lower.

It was a motif patterning the week. Even though the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.1% week on week on the back of outperformance by financial stocks, tech names dragged down the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite, which fell 0.6% and 1.6% respectively for the week.

That said, investors could have just been jittery amid the narrative of an apparent AI bubble, and were spooked by any sign of bad news. After all, Broadcom’s earnings — as well as its guidance for the current quarter — breezed past expectations.

“Frankly we aren’t sure what else one could desire as the company’s AI story continues to not only overdeliver but is doing it at an accelerating rate,” Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon, who has a “buy” rating on Broadcom, wrote in a Friday note.

Future prospects also look rosy, according to UBS. “We expect high profitability and the accelerating impact of the AI, power and resources, and longevity themes to drive 2026 performance,” said strategist Sagar Khandelwal.

But in the near term, investors may still be flighty, unless something concretely reassuring, such as Oracle achieving positive cash flow, reassures them the snapping sound is just a twig in the forest.

What you need to know today

U.S. stocks dragged down by AI names. Major indexes fell Friday, a day after they hit record highs. Asia-Pacific markets traded lower Monday. South Korea’s Kospi retreated roughly 1.5% as of 2:45 p.m. Singapore time (1:45 a.m. ET), leading losses in the region.

China’s economic slowdown deepens. Even though the country’s retail sales and industrial production grew year on year in November, their increase missed forecasts and slowed from the previous month. Investment in fixed assets in the January-to-November period contracted from a year earlier.

The end of the ‘Berkshire way’? Several aspects of Berkshire Hathaway’s leadership transition are signaling that the conglomerate is drifting away from the famously decentralized “Berkshire way,” CNBC’s Alex Crippen writes.

Hong Kong court finds Jimmy Lai guilty. The 78-year-old pro-democracy activist and media baron was ruled guilty of sedition and collusion with foreign countries by a Hong Kong court on Monday. The results might unsettle foreign investors, analysts say.

[PRO] China’s food security strategy. The spat between Beijing and Washington over soybean purchases has highlighted the evolution of China’s domestic agriculture industry. Goldman Sachs thinks this is the best way to play the sector.

And finally…

Copper prices have soared this year, hitting multiple record highs, fueled by supply disruptions and fears over U.S. tariffs.

Imagebroker/sunny Celeste | Imagebroker | Getty Images

Copper could hit ‘stratospheric new highs’ as hoarding of the metal in U.S. continues

Copper prices have hit multiple record highs this year, fueled by supply disruptions and as fears over U.S. tariffs have led to a surge in demand. The rally is set to continue into 2026.

Citi analysts expect prices of the red metal to skyrocket on the back of stronger demand led by the energy transition and artificial intelligence sectors. Electrification, grid expansion and data-center build-outs require large amounts of the metal for wiring, power transmission and cooling infrastructure.

#Broadcom #USA #Singapore #CNBC

Coinbase is gearing up to launch an in-house prediction market, powered by Kalshi, a source close to the matter told CNBC — a strategic play to expand the number of asset classes available on the cryptocurrency exchange at a time when some investors are shying away from digital assets.

The source said Coinbase and Kalshi will formally announce the prediction market soon, with news potentially coming as early as next week. The partnership is not exclusive, but Kalshi will be the only prediction markets operator working with Coinbase when the product launches, according to the source.

Rumblings of the prediction market launch have swirled for nearly a month. An alleged screenshot of Coinbase’s prediction markets dashboard shared by Silicon Valley researcher Jane Manchun Wong in an X post dated Nov. 18 offered some clues about the new product.

The Information first reported on Nov. 19 that Coinbase planned to launch prediction markets powered by Kalshi, adding that the exchange would unveil the new product at its “Coinbase System Update” event on Dec. 17. Bloomberg published a similar report on Thursday, citing a source familiar with the matter, adding that Coinbase would also announce a tokenized stock offering at the showcase.

Coinbase declined to confirm the reports to CNBC, but said to tune into its event next week. The firm did not comment on a timeline for when its prediction markets would go live for its users.

Coinbase’s upcoming product launches underscore its push to refashion itself into an “everything exchange,” or a one-stop shop for trading all kinds of assets, including crypto tokens, tokenized stocks and event contracts. In May, CEO Brian Armstrong articulated that “everything exchange” vision to investors, saying Coinbase would aim to become a top financial services app within the next decade.

The trading platform is setting its sights on that goal as it faces intensifying competition from rivals such as Robinhood, Gemini and Kraken. All three have launched tokenized equity offerings to users outside of the U.S. within the past year, in addition to exploring prediction markets to varying extents.

Coinbase’s moves to expand the financial instruments available to its users also come as investor sentiment on digital assets cools. A series of liquidations of highly leveraged digital asset positions in mid-October triggered several pullbacks in the crypto market, prompting investors to rotate out of tokens and into gold and other safe-haven assets.

Bitcoin fell as low as around $85,000 in early December, hitting its lowest level since last March. The token was last trading at $89,951, down 23% in the past three months. Coinbase has also fallen more than 16% over the past three months.

The deal also underscores U.S.-based prediction markets operator Kalshi’s push to embed its event contracts into various brokerages, widening its reach as the prediction markets space becomes increasingly competitive.

This year, Kalshi embedded several of its prediction markets into trading platform Robinhood, as part of a non-exclusive partnership between the companies. Kalshi has also engaged in talks with several other major brokerages, including those in the crypto industry, with the aim of closing more deals like the ones it has struck with Robinhood and now Coinbase, a source familiar with the matter told CNBC.

#Coinbase #CNBC #Exchange #CryptoExchange #Crypto #Cryptocurrency #Kalshi

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks during a press conference following the Federal Open Markets Committee meeting at the Federal Reserve on Dec. 10, 2025 in Washington, DC

Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:

1. Holding out for a hero

Stocks surged yesterday after the Federal Reserve delivered a widely expected interest rate cut at its final policy gathering of the year. But the bank seemed to take the “hawkish cut” stance many were anticipating, saying that the move doesn’t signal more decreases in the near future.

Here’s the rundown:

The Fed announced a 25 basis point rate cut, marking its third decrease of 2025. Policymakers are forecasting just one rate decrease in the year ahead, projections show.
But it wasn’t a united front. This week’s meeting saw the most voting members break with the majority since 2019.
In its closely watched statement, the Fed noted an uptick in unemployment, indicating a possible shift in focus to the labor market from inflation. The central bank also said that it will purchase short-term Treasury bonds on an as-needed basis, pushing down some yields.
Chair Jerome Powell took a cautious stance in his press conference, saying the decision was a “close call” and that monetary policymakers can now “wait and see how the economy evolves.”
Wall Street liked what it heard: The Dow rose nearly 500 points in Wednesday’s session, while the S&P 500 finished just short of all-time highs.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump said the Fed could have “at least doubled” the size of its rate decrease.
Follow live markets updates here.
2. Diverging paths

A sign is posted in front of the Oracle headquarters in Redwood Shores, California, on March 11, 2024.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Oracle missed analysts’ expectations for revenue in its high-profile earnings report yesterday. Shares of the software company dropped 11% in extended trading, dragging down other artificial intelligence plays such as Nvidia and CoreWeave.

The revenue miss overshadowed Oracle’s quarterly earnings per share, which blew past Wall Street’s forecast for the second quarter. Oracle also said its remaining performance obligations soared more than 400% from a year ago, driven by new commitments from companies including Meta and Nvidia.

On the other hand, shares of Cisco rallied to an all-time closing high in yesterday’s session. As CNBC’s Jordan Novet points out, it’s the first such record for Cisco since its dot-com bubble peak in 2000.

3. Taking the tanker

A U.S. military helicopter flies near an oil tanker during a raid described by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi as its seizure by the United States off the coast of Venezuela, Dec. 10, 2025, in a still image from video.

U.S. Attorney General | Via Reuters

Trump said yesterday that the U.S. seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. He said it was “the largest one ever seized.”

Matt Smith, head U.S. analyst at energy consultancy Kpler, told CNBC that the tanker has been identified as the Skipper, a Guyana-flagged “Very Large Crude Carrier” that appeared to be en route to Cuba. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in an X post yesterday that the tanker had been sanctioned by the U.S. for years “due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations.”

The move comes as Trump continues to escalate his pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, saying in a Politico interview published Tuesday that Maduro’s “days are numbered.” Oil prices popped yesterday following Trump’s announcement.

4. Rivian’s road ahead

Rivian electric vehicles are parked at the Rivian Venice Hub in Venice, California, on Nov. 13, 2024.

Mario Tama | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Rivian is taking a turn toward artificial intelligence. The electric vehicle maker is hosting its first-ever “Autonomy and AI Day” today as it pitches shareholders on its in-house technology for new cars.

As CNBC’s Michael Wayland notes, Rivian’s AI push comes as the company’s core EV business has lagged expectations since it went public four years ago. Rivian is also losing billions of dollars annually despite efforts to reduce costs and increase software revenue.

5. Leadership refresh

Henrique Braun to become the next CEO of The Coca-Cola Company.

Courtesy: The Coca-Cola Company

The latest C-suite shakeup came last night: Coca-Cola announced operations chief Henrique Braun will succeed James Quincey as CEO next year.

Braun, who has worked at the soda giant for nearly three decades, will take the helm at the end of March. Quincey will stay with Coca-Cola as its board’s executive chairman following his eight-year stint as CEO.

Coca-Cola has mostly outperformed rival Pepsico under Quincey, and its namesake Coke brand has held on to its title as the top-selling soda in the U.S. But the company has grappled with cooling demand as lower-income consumers buckle under inflationary pressures.

The Daily Dividend

CNBC’s Hayley Cuccinello reports that investment firms of the ultra rich are using WhatsApp chats to do everything from vet deals to sell dinosaur bones. Yes, you read that correctly.

If I need something at any time of day, I can message nearly 1,000 people about a new bitcoin fund or ask who’s the best tax lawyer in Germany.

#Fed #hawkish #Federal

Illustration of the SK Hynix company logo seen displayed on a smartphone screen.

Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

South Korea’s SK Hynix on Wednesday confirmed that it is weighing a U.S. listing as the memory chipmaker’s valuation soars on global demand for artificial intelligence hardware.

The company at the center of the AI infrastructure boom said in a regulatory filing that it was “reviewing various measures to enhance corporate value, including a U.S. stock market listing utilizing treasury shares,” while noting that no final decision has been made.

A U.S. listing would give American investors direct access to SK Hynix shares, which have surged nearly 230% so far this year in trading in Seoul on the back of strong AI demand.

The Korea Exchange on Tuesday asked SK Hynix to address a Korea Economic Daily report that the company had received proposals to list about 2.4% of its shares as American depositary receipts (ADRs) backed by treasury stock.

ADRs are tradable certificates issued by U.S. banks that represent shares in a foreign company. While they tend to trade with lower liquidity than a full U.S. listing, which can deter some investors, ADRs use existing shares rather than new stock, preserving value for existing shareholders.

SK Hynix holds treasury shares equivalent to about 2.4% of its issued stock, according to the company’s investor relations website.

Shares of SK Hynix rose 4% on Wednesday following its statement, before paring gains on Thursday, trading over 2% lower.

The company has cemented its lead in high-bandwidth memory chips, which are used in Nvidia’s AI processors.

A U.S. listing could help narrow valuation gaps between the company and U.S.-listed memory rival Micron Technology, as well as Samsung Electronics.

SK Hynix has also been committing significant capital at home and abroad to expand its supply capacity, as it races to keep up with growing AI demand.

The firm has committed nearly $4 billion to an advanced packaging fab in Indiana, aligning with Washington’s aim to expand domestic chip production.

SK Hynix is also set to benefit from the government’s growing support of the local semiconductor industry.

South Korea is considering building a 4.5 trillion won ($3.06 billion) foundry, funded by state and private capital to nurture local chipmakers amid growing demand for AI chips, according to a Reuters report on Wednesday.

The report added that South Korean President Lee Jae Myung met with executives from chipmakers, including Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, on the same day to discuss plans to maintain the country’s lead in memory chips and support its local chip manufacturing.

#Nvidia #SKHynix #Ship #AIChips

Australia on Wednesday became the first country to formally bar users under the age of 16 from accessing major social media platforms, a move expected to be closely monitored by global tech companies and policymakers around the world.

Canberra’s ban, which came into effect from midnight local time, targets 10 major services, including Alphabet’s YouTube, Meta’s Instagram, ByteDance’s TikTok, Reddit, Snapchat and Elon Musk’s X.

The controversial rule requires these platforms to take “reasonable steps” to prevent underage access, using age-verification methods such as inference from online activity, facial estimation via selfies, uploaded IDs, or linked bank details.

All targeted platforms had agreed to comply with the policy to some extent. Elon Musk’s X had been one of the last holdouts, but signaled on Wednesday that it would comply.

The policy means millions of Australian children are expected to have lost access to their social accounts.

However, the impact of the policy could be even wider, as it will set a benchmark for other governments considering teen social media bans, including Denmark, Norway, France, Spain, Malaysia and New Zealand.

Controversial rollout

Ahead of the legislation’s passage last year, a YouGov survey found that 77% of Australians backed the under-16 social media ban. Still, the rollout has faced some resistance since becoming law.

Supporters of the bill have argued it safeguards children from social media-linked harms, including cyberbullying, mental health issues, and exposure to predators and pornography.

Among those welcoming the official ban on Wednesday was Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and author of The Anxious Generation, a 2024 best-selling book that linked a growing mental health crisis to smartphone and social media usage, especially for the young.

In a post on social media platform X, Haidt commended policymakers in Australia for “freeing kids under 16 from the social media trap.”

“There will surely be difficulties in the early months, but the world is rooting for your success, and many other nations will follow,” he added.

On the other hand, opponents contend that the ban infringes on freedoms of expression and access to information, raises privacy concerns through invasive age verification, and represents excessive government intervention that undermines parental responsibility.

Those critics include groups like Amnesty Tech, which said in a statement Tuesday that the ban was an ineffective fix that ignored the rights and realities of younger generations.

“The most effective way to protect children and young people online is by protecting all social media users through better regulation, stronger data protection laws and better platform design,” said Amnesty Tech Programme Director Damini Satija.

Meanwhile, David Inserra, a fellow for free expression and technology at the Cato Institute, warned in a blog post that children would evade the new policy by shifting to new platforms, private apps like Telegram, or VPNs, driving them to “more isolated communities and platforms with fewer protections” where monitoring is harder.

Tech companies like Google have also warned that the policy could be extremely difficult to enforce, while government-commissioned reports have pointed to inaccuracies in age-verification technology, such as selfie-based age-guessing software.

Indeed, on Wednesday, local reports in Australia indicated that many children had already bypassed the ban, with age-assurance tools misclassifying users, and workarounds such as VPNs proving effective.

However, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had attempted to preempt these issues, acknowledging in an opinion piece on Sunday that the system would not work flawlessly from the start, likening it to liquor laws.

“The fact that teenagers occasionally find a way to have a drink doesn’t diminish the value of having a clear national standard,” he added.

Experts told CNBC that the rollout is expected to continue to face challenges and that regulators would need to take a trial-and-error approach.

“There’s a fair amount of teething problems around it. Many young people have been posting on TikTok that they successfully evaded the age limitations and that’s to be expected,” said Terry Flew, a professor of digital communication and culture at the University of Sydney.

“You were never going to get 100% disappearance of every person under the age of 16 from every one of the designated platforms on day one,” he added.

Global implications

Experts told CNBC that the policy rollout in Australia will be closely watched by tech firms and lawmakers worldwide, as other countries consider their own moves to ban or restrict teen social media usage.

“Governments are responding to how public expectations have changed about the internet and social media, and the companies have not been particularly responsive to moral suasion,” said Flew.

“We see similar pressures are emerging, particularly, but not exclusively in Europe,” he added.

The European Parliament passed a non-binding resolution in November advocating a minimum age of 16 for social media access, allowing parental consent for 13 to 15-year-olds.

The bloc has also proposed banning addictive features such as infinite scrolling and auto-play for minors, which could lead to EU-wide enforcement against non-compliant platforms

Outside Europe, Malaysia and New Zealand have also been advancing proposals to ban social media for children under 16.

However, laws elsewhere are expected to differ from Australia’s, whether that be regarding age restrictions or age verification processes.

“My hope is that countries that are looking at implementing similar policies will monitor for what doesn’t work in Australia and learn from our mistakes,” said Tama Leaver, professor at the Department of Internet Studies at Curtin University and a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child.

“I think platforms and tech companies are also starting to realize that if they don’t want age-gating policies everywhere, they’re going to have to do much better at providing safer, appropriate experiences for young users.”

#Australia #Social #SocialMedia #SocialApp #Facebook #Twitter #Meta #Youtube #WhatsApp #Instagram #BlueSky #TruthSocial #Reddit

Elon Musk has called for the European Union to be abolished after the bloc fined his social media company X 120 million euros ($140 million) for a “deceptive” blue checkmark and lack of transparency of its advertising repository.

The European Commission hit X with the ruling on Friday following a two-year investigation into the company under the Digital Services Act (DSA), which was adopted in 2022 to regulate online platforms. At the time, in a reply on X to a post from the Commission, Musk wrote, “Bulls—.”

On Saturday he stepped up his criticism of the bloc. “The EU should be abolished and sovereignty returned to individual countries, so that governments can better represent their people,” he said in a post on X.

Musk’s comments come as top U.S. government officials have also intensified their opposition to the decision.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the fine an “attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments,” in a post on X on Friday.

“Today’s excessive €120M fine is the result of EU regulatory overreach targeting American innovation,” said Andrew Puzder, the U.S. ambassador to the EU, on X on Saturday.

“The Trump Administration has been clear: we oppose censorship and will challenge burdensome regulations that target US companies abroad. We expect the EU to engage in fair, open, & reciprocal trade — & nothing less.”

Last week, the Commission said breaches included “the deceptive design of its ‘blue checkmark,’ the lack of transparency of its advertising repository, and the failure to provide access to public data for researchers.”

“With the DSA’s first non-compliance decision, we are holding X responsible for undermining users’ rights and evading accountability,” said Henna Virkkunen, executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, at the time.

X now has 60 days to inform the Commission of plans to address the issues with “deceptive” blue checkmarks. It has 90 days to submit a plan to resolve the issues with its ads repository and access to its public data for researchers.

“Failure to comply with the non-compliance decision may lead to periodic penalty payments,” the Commission said in a statement.

X.ai, the company which owns X, and the Commission have been approached for comment. oh

Taiwan on Thursday announced an immediate one-year ban on the Chinese social media network Xiaohongshu, saying the app posed a risk of fraud.

Taiwan’s interior ministry said in a statement that it will block access to Xiaohongshu, also known in English as Rednote, calling it a potential “high-risk area for online shopping fraud.”

Authorities linked the platform to about 1,700 fraud cases that caused financial losses of over 247.7 million New Taiwan dollars ($7.9 million) since 2024, the ministry said. The app has over 3 million users on the island, the ministry said.

Officials also said that Taiwanese law enforcement agencies face “significant difficulties” obtaining necessary information because Taiwan lacks jurisdiction over the company.

The interior ministry said the app failed all 15 indicators in cybersecurity tests conducted by the National Security Bureau.

Taiwan’s internet service providers were instructed to block access to the app, Deputy Minister of the Interior Ma Shih-yuan said in a press conference Thursday.

The ministry also urged international platforms such as Google to “completely cease publishing Xiaohongshu advertisements.”

Authorities reminded the public not to download the app or stop using it if already installed.

In a Facebook post, Cheng Li-wun, chairwoman of the opposition Kuomintang party, said the move “significantly [restricts] Internet freedom,” and described the ban on Xiaohongshu as “a starting-point for building the Great Wall of the Internet,” by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party.

Xiaohongshu, Apple and Google did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comments.

In 2022, Taiwan banned Xiaohongshu from government devices, calling it a “united front” for Chinese propaganda.

Earlier this year, Taiwan sent a letter to Xiaohongshu’s parent company, Xingyin Information Technology (Shanghai), seeking “concrete improvement measures,” but the company did not reply.

Xiaohongshu is widely used in China and saw renewed interest in the U.S. earlier this year after a proposed ban on its competitor TikTok. That prompted TikTok users to flock to Xiaohongshu, adding roughly 700,000 new users to the platform, according to Reuters.

#Social #SocialMedia #Taiwan #TaiwanBannedSocial

Spencer Platt | Getty Images News | Getty Images

This is CNBC’s Morning Squawk newsletter. Subscribe here to receive future editions in your inbox.

Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:

1. Pump the breaks

The stock market’s recovery rally grinded to a halt yesterday. The culprit: A slide in cryptocurrencies, which put a damper on risk-on investing.

Here’s what to know:

The three major indexes all broke five-day win streaks. Small-cap stocks also felt the pullback, with the Russell 2000 sliding more than 1%.
Investor sentiment was soiled by a sell-off in crypto assets. Bitcoin fell 6% for its worst day since March.
Crypto-related stocks and some artificial intelligence plays also dropped in the session, signaling that animal spirits were spooked.
But retail stocks bucked the downtrend, with the State Street SPDR S&P Retail ETF (XRT) pushing its one-week gain above 6% as the holiday shopping season kicks into full swing.
Follow live markets updates here.
2. Fed head

U.S. White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett speaks to reporters at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 13, 2025.

Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

President Donald Trump has said he knows who he will nominate to be the next Federal Reserve chair, but the public will have to wait. Even so, people seem to be coming to the same conclusion: National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett.

Across the board, prediction markets are placing a high likelihood that Hassett will succeed Jerome Powell in the role. Hassett told Fox News this weekend that he’d “be happy to serve” if asked.

As CNBC’s Jeff Cox writes, the central bank’s next chair will enter the role at a pivotal time for the U.S. economy. They will also have to navigate a Fed that is currently divided on the direction of monetary policy.

3. Charging ahead

Hakan Nural | Anadolu | Getty Images

Apple said yesterday that its head of artificial intelligence, John Giannandrea, is stepping down and will be replaced by Microsoft and Google alum Amar Subramanya. As CNBC’s Kif Leswing writes, it’s the biggest shakeup to the company’s AI efforts since it launched the Apple Intelligence suite last year. The move also comes as experts warn that Apple’s AI technology is lagging that of its peers.

Meanwhile, Nvidia announced that it bought $2 billion of Synopsys stock as part of a partnership to accelerate computing and AI engineering work. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called the agreement a “huge deal” on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” yesterday. Synopsys shares surged nearly 5% in Monday’s session, while Nvidia added more than 1%.

4. Cost-co

A Costco logo is displayed outside one of their stores on Nov. 21, 2025 in San Diego, CA.

Kevin Carter | Getty Images

Costco is taking the White House to court over President Donald Trump’s tariffs. The wholesaler filed a lawsuit last week asking for a full refund of the new tariffs it has paid this year. The suit also seeks to block those levies from being collected as the Supreme Court weighs the tariffs’ legality.

Dozens of other companies have filed similar lawsuits in hopes of securing refunds if the Supreme Court rules against Trump’s tariffs. Even if the court finds the duties are illegal, Costco warned in its suit that it may not be able to get paid back later, pointing to a Dec. 15 deadline that could prevent refunds of any duties it’s already paid.

White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement that Costco’s suit underscores “the economic consequences of the failure to uphold” Trump’s tariffs.

5. Cyber Monday

Thomas Trutschel | Getty Images

Yesterday was slated to be one of the most important online shopping events of the year. But companies using Shopify faced an hours-long outage, sending shares of the e-commerce firm down nearly 6% in yesterday’s session.

Shopify said some merchants had trouble logging in, while others were not able to access point-of-sale systems. By midafternoon, Shopify — which says it handles more than 10% of all U.S. e-commerce transactions — said its platform was beginning to recover.

Silver, often nicknamed the ‘Devil’s metal’ because of its volatility, has reached record highs this year and still has further to run despite a supply crunch, according to experts.

The metal’s growth value has been running alongside gold’s, which has seen its own rally with the price surging past $4,000 an ounce this year.

Silver prices reached a historic peak of $54.47 per troy ounce in mid October, marking a 71% rise year-on-year. They’ve since pared back gains somewhat, but are now growing again, despite low supply levels.

“Some people were having to transport silver by plane rather than on cargo ships to meet delivery demand,” Paul Syms, head of EMEA ETF Fixed Income and commodity product management at Invesco, told CNBC.

“While we’ve seen the spike up, we’ve seen the price come down a little bit. Longer term, there’s a different dynamic this time that could keep silver at reasonably high prices and maybe continuing to go up for some time to come,” he added.

October was only the third time in the past 50 years where silver prices peaked. Other silver price highs include January 1980, when the Hunt brothers amassed a third of the world’s supply as they attempted to corner the market, as well as 2011, following the U.S. debt ceiling crisis when silver and gold were embraced as safe haven assets.

To read the full story, click here: https://bit.ly/487dGTj

PC and printer maker HP Inc.
said Tuesday it’ll lower its headcount by 4,000 to 6,000 people, representing a cut of up to 10%. HP also issued a lower-than-expected earnings projection for the new fiscal year.

Shares of the company fell 6% in extended trading.

Here’s how HP did versus LSEG consensus estimates:

EPS: 93 cents adjusted vs. 92 cents expected
Revenue: $14.64 billion vs. $14.48 billion expected
HP’s revenue increased 4% year over year in the quarter, which ended on Oct. 31, according to a statement. Net income of $795 million, or 84 cents per share, was up from $763 million, or 80 cents per share, in the same quarter a year ago.

For the first quarter of HP’s fiscal 2026, the company called for 73 cents to 81 cents in adjusted net earnings per share, while the LSEG consensus was 79 cents. For all of fiscal 2026, HP sees $2.90 to $3.20 in adjusted per share, below the LSEG consensus of $3.33.

“HP’s outlook reflects the added cost driven by the current U.S. trade-related regulations in place, and associated mitigations,” the company said in the statement.

The company’s personal systems unit that includes desktop and laptop computers contributed $10.35 billion in revenue, up 8% and above StreetAccount’s $10.15 billion consensus.

HP said it expects to complete the headcount reduction by the end of fiscal 2028. The company said the restructuring will result in savings of at least $1 billion in annualized gross run rate by the end of fiscal 2028. HP said it expects to incur about $650 million in charges, of which $250 million will happen in fiscal 2026.

“As we look ahead, we see a significant opportunity to embed AI into HP to accelerate product innovation, improve customer satisfaction and boost productivity,” HP CEO Enrique Lores said on a conference call with analysts.

Corporate executives across industries are hoping to draw on generative artificial intelligence products to speed up software developers and automate customer service. Cloud providers are buying large supplies of memory to meet computing demand from companies that build AI models, such as Anthropic and OpenAI, leading to a rise in the cost per gigabyte of RAM this year.

HP, whose headcount stood at 58,000 as of December, announced a similarly sized round of layoffs in 2022. Several other technology companies have announced layoffs in recent months as U.S. consumers face higher prices and interest rates.

“Memory costs are currently 15 to 18% of the cost of a typical PC, and while an increase was expected, its rate has accelerated in the last few weeks,” Lores said.

The company does expect to benefit after Microsoft
stopped supporting its Windows 10 operating system in October, which will lead people to buy new machines, Lores said. Around 60% of HP’s installed base has moved to Windows 11, he said.

HP’s printing business did $4.3 billion in revenue, down 4%. The pricing environment is competitive, and customers are putting off purchases of new models, said Karen Parkhill, the company’s finance chief.

As of Tuesday’s close, HP shares were down 25% for the year, while the S&P 500 index has gained 15% in the same period.

Click here to read the full story: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/24/how-alibaba-overcame-beijings-crackdown-to-become-an-ai-giant.html

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https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/23/microsoft-faces-uphill-climb-to-win-in-ai-chatbots-with-copilot.html?__source=twitter%7Ctech&taid=692308267569420001a09eb7&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as they meet to negotiate for an end to the war in Ukraine, at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, U.S., August 15, 2025.

Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

The possibility of another meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump is on the agenda, a senior Russian diplomat has said.

“I wouldn’t rule anything out,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in an interview for the state-owned International Affairs magazine, published on Saturday.

“The search for a way forward continues,” he said.

Ryabkov said contacts between Russia and the United States had not been suspended, and channels for dialogue continued to function.

Trump and Putin last met in Alaska in August, but failed to produce any agreement to resolve or pause Moscow’s war in Ukraine. A subsequent plan to meet in Budapest was suspended indefinitely.

“We are working on an ongoing basis. We have well-established formats and channels. Not all of these channels are visible or audible, not all of them need to be discussed publicly, but the fact remains that everything is in working order.”

Ryabkov said the progress in establishing dialogue between Russia and the U.S. was “impressive”.

Ryabkov also commented on the possibility of a trilateral meeting with China and the United States on nuclear stability, saying that Moscow did not intend to push Beijing towards it.

“We have no questions for China on the subject of arms control and strategic stability,” Ryabkov said, adding that Russia had not received any formal proposals from the U.S. regarding such a meeting.

Trump has expressed interest in getting China involved in nuclear arms reduction efforts alongside Russia and the U.S.

Last month, he said Putin had raised the prospect of a bilateral nuclear de-escalation, and China could be added to that effort.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/22/russias-ryabkov-says-potential-putin-trump-summit-is-on-the-agenda.html?taid=692196afc9b8e40001d2b98a&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_content=intl&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

This Cookie Notice (“Notice”) explains how NBCUniversal and its affiliates (“NBCUniversal” or “we”), along with our partners, including advertisers and vendors, use cookies and similar tracking technologies when you use our websites, applications, such as games, interactive TV, voice-activated assistants, and other services that link to this policy, as well as connected devices, including those used in our theme parks (“Services”). This Notice provides more information about these technologies, your choices, and is part of the NBCUniversal Privacy Policy available here. You should read the Privacy Policy and this Notice for a full picture of NBCUniversal’s use of your information.

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U.S. President Donald Trump is presented with the “Grand Order of Mugunghwa” during a meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders’ summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, October 29, 2025.

Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

Samsung Electronics and other major South Korean companies on Sunday announced fresh domestic investment plans at a meeting with President Lee Jae Myung, who hopes the moves will counter concerns that the firms would prioritize U.S. investments under a trade deal.

Lee’s meeting with business leaders came days after his government finalized a trade deal with the United States, in which Seoul pledged to invest $350 billion in U.S. industries in exchange for averting the Trump administration’s highest tariffs.

Samsung, a global leader in computer chips, said it will invest 450 trillion won ($310 billion) over the next five years to expand its domestic operations, including building another production line at its Pyeongtaek manufacturing hub to meet surging global semiconductor demands fueled by artificial intelligence.

Samsung said the new line, set to begin operations in 2028, is part of its broader effort to secure additional production capacity in anticipation of rising mid- to long-term demands for memory chips. The company also plans to build AI data centers in the country’s southwest South Jeolla Province and the southeastern city of Gumi to support government efforts to reduce the development gap between the greater Seoul metropolitan area and other regions.

Hyundai Motor, South Korea’s largest automaker, said it plans to invest 125 trillion won ($86.3 billion) from 2026 to 2030 to expand domestic research and development and advance new technologies such as AI, robotics and self-driving cars.

SK Group, another semiconductor powerhouse, and shipbuilders Hanwha Ocean and HD Hyundai also announced plans to increase their domestic investments. Both are central to South Korean commitments to boost the U.S. shipbuilding industry, a sector highlighted by President Donald Trump in negotiations with Seoul.

In his meeting with the companies’ chiefs, Lee credited the business sector for helping his government negotiate the trade deal with Washington but urged the companies to maintain strong domestic investments to ease concerns they might cut spending at home to invest more in America. He said his government is exploring various policy steps, including easing regulations, to help create a more favorable business environment for the companies.

SK Chair Chey Tae-won, whose group plans to invest at least 128 trillion won ($88.3 billion) domestically through 2028 with a focus on AI, said the finalization of trade talks with the United States eases uncertainties and paves the way for bolder domestic investment.

The two governments released the details of the trade agreement on Friday, including $150 billion in South Korean investments in the U.S. shipbuilding sector and an additional $200 billion in other American industries. Seoul says this will be capped at $20 billion per year to prevent financial instability.

The United States agreed to reduce tariffs on South Korean cars and auto parts from 25% to 15%, and to apply tariffs on South Korean semiconductors on terms “no less favorable” than those granted to comparable competitors in the future.

The U.S. Capitol is shown the morning after the Senate passed legislation to reopen the federal government on Nov. 11, 2025 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

The Senate Agriculture Committee has released a draft of its portion of a much-awaited digital assets market structure bill — a critical step toward accelerating institutional and retail adoption of cryptocurrencies.

Unveiled on Monday by Agriculture Chair John Boozman, R-Ark., and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., the bipartisan discussion draft lays the groundwork for creating guardrails for the crypto industry in the U.S. It also establishes guidelines for institutions that want to work with digital assets, from bitcoin and ether to tokenized financial instruments.

“This is the most consequential roadmap for how an institution is going to integrate digital assets into their business,” Cody Carbone, CEO of crypto trade association Digital Chamber, told CNBC. “It’s like the best possible step-by-step of what type of compliance rules requirements they would need to follow to work with crypto.”

Here are five key takeaways from the discussion draft.

1. Grants favorable regulatory status to some cryptocurrencies

The text classifies some of the largest digital assets by market capitalization such as bitcoin and ether as “digital commodities,” placing them under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s purview.

This provision removes a major blocker to digital asset adoption for institutional fiduciaries, Juan Leon, an analyst at crypto-focused asset manager Bitwise, told CNBC.

“Compliance and risk departments will finally have a federal statute to point to,” Leon said. “This shifts the internal conversation … [and] it provides the legal certainty required to move assets into a formal, strategic allocation.”

It will also create “a starkly bifurcated market” consisting of regulated and unregulated tokens, with the former class of assets seeing “a massive influx of institutional capital, deep liquidity and a robust derivatives ecosystem.”

2. Requires crypto firms to segregate funds and manage conflicts of interest

The draft calls for crypto companies to “establish governance, personnel, and financial resource separation among affiliated entities that perform distinct regulated functions.”

Bitwise’s Leon interprets the provision as a challenge to the “all-in-one” business model that is common among crypto exchanges. According to those models, an exchange, broker, custodian, and proprietary trading desk are all wrapped up into one entity.

In other words, digital asset firms could be required to keep their various businesses separated like traditional financial companies, according to Leon. The change would serve as “a foundational pillar for institutional adoption.”

3. Gives the CFTC more power to regulate digital assets

The text gives more power to the CFTC, empowering it to work in tandem with the Securities and Exchange Commission to issue joint rulemaking on crypto-related matters.

“There’s a lot more power or authority delegated to the CFTC to have jurisdiction over this industry,” Carbone said.

The shift comes after the SEC for years served as the main regulator of digital assets, after it edged out the CFTC to gain authority over the industry.

4. Allows the CFTC to collect fees

The draft calls for regulated entities to pay fees to the CFTC. Those fees would go toward registering digital commodity exchanges, brokers and dealers, in addition to conducting oversight of regulated entities and carrying out education and outreach.

5. Establishes listing standards for tokens

The text calls for crypto exchanges to only permit trading of digital commodities that are “not readily susceptible to manipulation.”

It’s a provision that could reduce the number of “rug pulls” and other scams that are still common in some parts of the crypto industry, with the goal of establishing standards and building confidence in the market.

What’s next?

The Senate Agriculture Committee’s discussion draft is far from final, but it does offer critical insights into the direction of efforts to pass crypto-friendly regulations in the U.S., according to Carbone.

“It’s not final, it’s not done, but this gives a good sense of where Congress is going and what the final rules may be,” Carbone said.

The committee will likely spend the next few weeks getting feedback on their draft, meaning it may be “almost impossible to get [a final version of this part of the bill] done by the end of the year,” he added.

However, that period will give lawmakers time to offer more concrete guidance on several issues that are bracketed – or not yet finalized – in the discussion draft. Those include provisions on anti-money laundering rules and regulations specific to decentralized finance players.

Several crypto players plan to work in tandem with lawmakers to help iron out those details, among others.

“We’ve long said crypto is a bipartisan issue, and this draft from Chairman Boozman and Senator Booker reflects that,” Moonpay President Keith Grossman told CNBC. “It’s critical that legislation distinguishes between centralized intermediaries and decentralized systems, and we look forward to working with the Committee to get it right.”

The discussion draft is only one piece of larger legislative efforts to overhaul regulations for the crypto industry, according to Carbone. Ultimately, the text will be combined with the Senate Banking Committee’s draft on the digital assets market structure in a bid to create one comprehensive bill.

And although lawmakers are nowhere near the finish line in that process, crypto firms are finding other ways to work with regulators and other authorities to meaningfully advance their industry, Grayscale Investments Chief Legal Officer Craig Salm told CNBC.

“In the absence of comprehensive legislation, we’ve still seen meaningful progress on the regulatory front,” Salm said, adding that the SEC, Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department have recently provided guidance around staking in crypto exchange-traded products. “That said, thoughtful legislation will be critical to solidifying the foundation of the digital asset industry in the U.S. and unlocking even greater value for investors and consumers.”

#Lawmakers #DigitalToken #Crypto #Cryptocurrency #CryptoMarket #DigitalAsset #Financial #Cryptocurrencies #Exchange

Meta projected that 10% of its overall sales in 2024, or about $16 billion, came from running online ads for scams and banned goods, according to a Thursday report from Reuters.

Those kinds of ads included promotions for “fraudulent e-commerce and investment schemes, illegal online casinos and the sale of banned medical products,” according to the Reuters report, which was based on internal company documents. Those documents showed the company’s attempts to measure the prevalence of fraudulent advertising on its apps like Facebook and Instagram.

Meta brought in more than $164.5 billion in overall sales for 2024. Last week, the company said that third-quarter sales rose 26% year-over-year to $51.24 billion and that it lifted the low end of its total expenses for the year by $2 billion as part of its massive investments into artificial intelligence.

The Reuters report cited a December 2024 document that showed how Meta each year generates roughly $7 billion in annualized sales from so-called “higher risk” scam ads, which are promotions that are clearly deceptive. Each day, Meta shows users an estimated 15 billion of these higher risk scam ads, the Reuters report said, citing a separate document.

Although some of the documents show that Meta aims to reduce the amount of bogus ads on its platform, the Reuters report also said that other documents suggest the company is concerned that its business projections could be impacted by any abrupt removal of the fraudulent promotions.

A Meta spokesperson said that the company “aggressively” addresses scam and fraud ads on its apps. The projections that 10% of the company’s 2024 ad sales came from bunk ads “was a rough and overly-inclusive estimate rather than a definitive or final figure; in fact, subsequent review revealed that many of these ads weren’t violating at all,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

“Unfortunately, the leaked documents present a selective view that distorts Meta’s approach to fraud and scams by focusing on our efforts to assess the scale of the challenge, not the full range of actions we have taken to address the problem,” the spokesperson said.

#Meta #Facebook #SocialPlatform

Nvidia will help train and mentor emerging deep tech startups in India as a founding member of a $2 billion investment alliance, deepening its presence in the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem.

The U.S. chipmaker has joined the India Deep Tech Alliance (IDTA) — a group of private equity and venture capital investors pledging $2 billion for deep tech investments — as a founding member. Deep tech startups are an umbrella term for emerging companies in semiconductors, space, AI, biotech, robotics, and energy.

The world’s most valuable company will offer technical talks and training through its Nvidia Deep Learning Institute to emerging startups in India.

Nvidia wants to “provide guidance on AI systems, developer enablement, and responsible deployment, and to collaborate with policymakers, investors, and entrepreneurs,” Vishal Dhupar, Nvidia’s managing director of South Asia, said.

Nvidia did not disclose any financial investment, timeline, or training targets, and did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.

“Nvidia’s depth of expertise in AI systems, software, and ecosystem-building will benefit our network of investors and entrepreneurs,” said Sriram Viswanathan, founding executive council member of the IDTA.

He told CNBC that the pace of innovation is accelerating in India and there could be a “significant number of Indian deep tech companies of global repute” in the next five years.

The Indian government is also actively encouraging research and innovation in the deep tech space through major initiatives, including over 100 billion rupees ($1.1 billion USD) under its AI Mission and a separate 1 trillion rupees ($11.2 billion) Research, Development and Innovation Scheme Fund targeting deep tech companies.

On Monday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the country will host the AI Impact Summit in February next year.

The event is likely to see the participation of heads of state and top policymakers, along with business leaders such as Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of NVIDIA, and Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind.

Nvidia’s commitment in India coincides with rising global interest in India’s AI market, where OpenAI counts the country as its second-largest user base. U.S. rivals are also deepening ties: Google recently pledged $15 billion to build an AI hub in the southern city of Visakhapatnam.

OpenAI on Wednesday announced two reasoning models that developers can use to classify a range of online safety harms on their platforms.

The artificial intelligence models are called gpt-oss-safeguard-120b and gpt-oss-safeguard-20b, and their names reflect their sizes. They are fine-tuned, or adapted, versions of OpenAI’s gpt-oss models, which the company announced in August.

OpenAI is introducing them as so-called open-weight models, which means their parameters, or the elements that improve the outputs and predictions during training, are publicly available. Open-weight models can offer transparency and control, but they are different from open-source models, whose full source code becomes available for users to customize and modify.

Organizations can configure the new models to their specific policy needs, OpenAI said. And since they are reasoning models that show their work, developers will have more direct insight into how they arrive at a particular output.

For instance, a product reviews site could develop a policy and use gpt-oss-safeguard models to screen reviews that might be fake, OpenAI said. Similarly, a video game discussion forum could classify posts that discuss cheating.

OpenAI developed the models in partnership with Discord, SafetyKit and Robust Open Online Safety Tools, or ROOST, an organization dedicated to building safety infrastructure for AI. The models are initially available in a research preview, and OpenAI said it will seek feedback from researchers and members of the safety community.

The announcement could help OpenAI placate some critics who have accused the startup of commercializing and scaling too quickly at the expense of AI ethics and safety. The startup is valued at $500 billion, and its consumer chatbot, ChatGPT, has surpassed 800 million weekly active users.

On Tuesday, OpenAI said it’s completed its recapitalization, cementing its structure as a nonprofit with a controlling stake in its for-profit business. OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit lab, but has emerged as the most valuable U.S. tech startup in the years since releasing ChatGPT in late 2022.

“As AI becomes more powerful, safety tools and fundamental safety research must evolve just as fast — and they must be accessible to everyone,” ROOST President Camille François, said in a statement.

Eligible users can download the model weights on Hugging Face, OpenAI said.

#OpenAI #ChatGPT #Artificial Intelligence

This is CNBC’s Morning Squawk newsletter. Subscribe here to receive future editions in your inbox.

Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:

1. Amazon’s cull

Amazon is laying off 14,000 workers in its latest round of corporate cuts, the company announced this morning. The layoffs are expected to be the biggest reduction in the company’s history, CNBC’s Annie Palmer reported yesterday. Nearly every business is expected to be impacted by the cuts, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice president of people experience and technology, wrote in a blog post that the company needs to be “organized more leanly” and have fewer layers. Amazon is the second-largest private employer in the U.S. with upwards of 1.5 million employees. The 14,000 cuts announced this morning represent about 4% of its corporate and tech workforce.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said earlier this year that the Washington-based company could shrink its workforce by embracing AI. The firm is part of a cohort of large-cap companies that have seen their AI-related productivity increase as the technology becomes mainstream.

2. Chips on the table

Budrul Chukrut | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

3. Running a list

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks to reporters as U.S. President Donald Trump stands next to him aboard Air Force One en route to Tokyo, Japan, for the second stop on his Asia tour, Oct. 27, 2025.

Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed there are five finalists left in the running to succeed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

On the list: Fed Governors Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh and BlackRock’s Rick Rieder. That’s the same group of candidates CNBC reported earlier this month. President Donald Trump said he will likely announce his pick by the end of 2025.

Meanwhile, the Federal Open Market Committee will kick off its two-day meeting today, with all eyes on its interest rate decision due tomorrow.

4. iBuyer

Roomba vacuums by iRobot are displayed at Best Buy store on January 19, 2024 in San Rafael, California.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Shares of iRobot tumbled more than 33% yesterday after the company warned in a securities filling that its search for a buyer has reached an impasse. The Roomba maker said negotiations with its last remaining bidder fell through following a “lengthy period of exclusive negotiations” last week.

iRobot has been trying to find a buyer for its business since March. The company has been in a rough spot since Amazon dropped its acquisition bid last year.

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5. Party crashers

Austin Andres and her son Quinn, 2, shop for pumpkins at Maple Acres Farm in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2017.

Matt Rourke | AP

If you’re in the market for pumpkin carving materials or candy this Halloween season, you’re likely in for some sticker shock. An analysis of retail pricing data shows these goods have seen jumps as big as 300% as tariffs raise costs for suppliers.

Joe Ens, CEO of Pumpkin Masters parent Signature Brands, told CNBC he hopes shoppers will accept price increases to continue traditions like pumpkin decorating. The average consumer is expected to spend a record $114 tied to Halloween this year, according to the National Retail Federation.

Meanwhile, Airbnb is hoping for a quiet Halloween weekend at its rental properties. The company said it will use anti-party technology to quell large gatherings held at bookings in the U.S. and Canada.

The Daily Dividend

In an exclusive interview with CNBC, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said climate change is “super important but has to be considered in terms of overall human welfare.”

In a letter published ahead of a U.N. climate summit next week, Gates wrote that too many resources are going toward the environment and that more money should go toward fighting poverty and disease.

#Amazon #Qualcomm#AIChip #AirBnB #ECommerce #Tech

AWS cited an “operational issue” affecting “multiple services” and said it was “working on multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery,” in an update at 2:01 a.m. PDT. More than 70 of its own services were affected.

Shortly afterward, AWS said it was seeing “significant signs of recovery.”

By 3:35 a.m. PDT, the issue had been “fully mitigated,” AWS said in an update, adding that most AWS service operations “are succeeding normally now.”

“Some requests may be throttled while we work toward full resolution,” it said, noting some services were continuing to work through a backlog.

The website Downdetector said that user reports indicated problems at sites including Amazon, Disney+, Lyft, the McDonald’s app, The New York Times, Reddit, Ring, Robinhood, Snapchat, T-Mobile, United Airlines, Venmo and Verizon.

British government websites Gov.uk and HM Revenue and Customs were also experiencing issues, per Downdetector.

A government spokesperson told CNBC: “We are aware of an incident affecting Amazon Web Services, and several online services which rely on their infrastructure. Through our established incident response arrangements, we are in contact with the company, who are working to restore services as quickly as possible.”

Lloyds Banking Group confirmed some of its services were affected and asked customers “to bear with us” while it works to restore them. Some 20 minutes later, it added that services were coming back online.

Some United and Delta customers reported on social media that they couldn’t find their reservations online, check in or drop bags.

Other social media users cited disruption across cloud-based games, including Roblox and Fortnite, while crypto exchange Coinbase said many users were unable to access the service due to the outage.

Graphic design tool Canva said it was “experiencing significantly increased error rates which are impacting functionality on Canva. There is a major issue with our underlying cloud provider.”

Generate AI search tool Perplexity is also affected. “The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it,” CEO Aravind Srinivas said in a post on X.

It’s not the first time major companies have been affected by a technical issue; in July 2024, a faulty software upgrade by cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike revealed just how fragile global technology infrastructure is when it caused Microsoft Windows systems to go dark, creating millions of dollars worth of chaos and grounding thousands of flights in the process. It also affected hospitals and banks.

“There’s no sign that this AWS outage was caused by a cyber attack – it looks like a technical fault affecting one of Amazon’s main data centres,” Rob Jardin, chief digital officer at cybersecurity company NymVPN said in a statement. “These issues can happen when systems become overloaded or a key part of the network goes down, and because so many websites and apps rely on AWS, the impact spreads quickly.”

“This incident is a reminder that cybersecurity isn’t only about defending against threats – it’s also about resilience. Businesses should plan for technical failures as seriously as they do for cyber attacks, ensuring they have redundancy, backup systems, and multi-cloud strategies to keep services running when the unexpected happens,” he added.

Ref: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/20/amazon-web-services-outage-takes-down-major-websites.html

#Amazon #WebService #AWS #Cloud #AmazonCloud

Days after suggesting that President Donald Trump should send federal troops to San Francisco, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is facing some consequences.

Prominent startup investor Ron Conway, who backed companies including Google, Airbnb and Stripe, resigned from the board of the Salesforce Foundation on Thursday, CNBC has confirmed. Conway is a longtime Democratic donor who was a member of VCs for Kamala, and donated around $500,000 to at least two funds tied to Kamala Harris’ unsuccessful 2024 election campaign.

The New York Times was first to report on Conway’s departure from the Salesforce Foundation. A Salesforce spokesperson confirmed his exit in an e-mailed statement.

“We have deep gratitude for Ron Conway and his incredible contributions to the Salesforce Foundation Board for over a decade,” the spokesperson said, noting that the group has donated, “$250 million to public schools and education nonprofits to advance opportunity and access for young people, including $30 million announced this week.”

The Trump administration recently deployed the National Guard to Portland, Oregon and Chicago, sparking protests and lawsuits and resulting in citizens and immigrants being detained without legal representation.

In a story published late last week in the New York Times, Benioff indicated that he would welcome troops to San Francisco, home to Salesforce. The company’s annual Dreamforce conference began in downtown San Francisco on Tuesday.

“We don’t have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I’m all for it,” Benioff told the Times.

Benioff later appeared to walk back his comments, writing on X that safety is “first and foremost, the responsibility of our city and state leaders.” However, by that point Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other right-wing figures had seized on his original comments, amplifying them to their audiences.

Musk, who has drawn criticism for his personal drug use, characterized downtown San Francisco as a “drug zombie apocalypse.” And on Wednesday, Trump called San Francisco “a mess,” and suggested possibly sending in the National Guard.

According to the Times, Conway told Benioff in an email that their “values were no longer aligned.” While Benioff has donated to members of both parties, he has supported Democrats for president, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris.

Conway is founder and managing partner of SV Angel, an early-stage venture firm. He has long been an advocate for tech in San Francisco, having founded trade organization sf.citi and helping start FWD.us, which focused on immigration reform.

The Salesforce Foundation isn’t his only connection to Benioff’s philanthropic efforts. Conway is also a large donor to the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.

Conway didn’t respond to a request for comment.

California Governor Gavin Newsom and San Francisco leaders on Wednesday issued statements and held press conferences to deliver the message that federal troops are not welcome in the city, and that crime is coming down.

Conway has supported Newsom, including in 2021, when he opposed a recall effort against the Democratic governor.

Reference: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/16/benioff-sf-troop-comment-lead-ron-conway-resign-salesforce-foundation.html