Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang arrives to attend the opening ceremony of Siliconware Precision Industries Co. (SPIL)’s Tan Ke Plant site in Taichung, Taiwan Jan. 16, 2025.
Software developers and investors are closely watching the company's new chips to see if they offer enough additional performance and efficiency to convince the company's biggest end customers — cloud companies including Microsoft, Google and Amazon — to continue spending billions of dollars to build data centers based around Nvidia chips.
"This last year is where almost the entire world got involved. The computational requirement, the scaling law of AI, is more resilient, and in fact, is hyper-accelerated," Huang said.
Tuesday's announcements are also a test of Nvidia's new annual release cadence. The company is striving to announce new chip families on an every-year basis. Before the AI boom, Nvidia released new chip architectures every other year.
Nvidia expects to start shipping systems on its next-generation GPU family in the second half of 2026.
The system has two main components: a CPU, called Vera, and a new GPU design, called Rubin. It's named after astronomer Vera Rubin.
Vera is Nvidia's first custom CPU design, the company said, and it's based on a core design they've named Olympus.
Previously when it needed CPUs, Nvidia used an off-the-shelf design from Arm. Companies that have developed custom Arm core designs, such as Qualcomm and Apple, say that they can be more tailored and unlock better performance.
The custom Vera design will be twice as fast as the CPU used in last year's Grace Blackwell chips, the company said.
Nvidia says that means that cloud providers can use Blackwell Ultra to offer a premium AI service for time-sensitive applications, allowing them to make as much as 50 times the revenue from the new chips as the Hopper generation, which shipped in 2023.
Blackwell Ultra will come in a version with two paired to an Nvidia Arm CPU, called GB300, and a version with just the GPU, called B300. It will also come in versions with eight GPUs in a single server blade and a rack version with 72 Blackwell chips.
The top four cloud companies have deployed three times the number of Blackwell chips as Hopper chips, Nvidia said.
Microsoft announces new HR executive, company veteran Amy Coleman
Microsoft's incoming chief people officer, Amy Coleman, led the development of Microsoft's human resources response to Covid and its hybrid work approach.
Microsoft said Wednesday that company veteran Amy Coleman will become its new executive vice president chief people officer, replacing Kathleen Hogan, who has held the position for the past decade.
Hogan will remain an executive vice president but move to a newly established Office of Strategy and Transformation, which is an expansion of the office of the CEO. She will join Microsoft's group of top executives, reporting directly to CEO Satya Nadella.
Coleman is stepping into a major role, given that Microsoft is among the largest employers in the U.S., with 228,000 total employees as of June 2024. She has worked at the company for more than 25 years over two stints, having first joined as a compensation manager in 1996.
Coleman had been Microsoft's corporate vice president for human resources and corporate functions for the past four years. In that role, she was responsible for 200 HR workers and led the development of Microsoft's hybrid work approach, as well as the HR aspect of the company's Covid response, according to her LinkedIn profile.
The development comes as the SEC moves quickly to reverse much of the damage in the crypto industry left by the previous administration. Last month, the agency ended its enforcement case against Coinbase; closed its investigations into Robinhood's crypto unit, Uniswap, Gemini and Consensys with no enforcement action; scaled back its crypto enforcement unit; and clarified that meme coins are not securities.
This week, the newly formed SEC crypto task force will kick off a roundtable series focused on defining the security status of digital assets.
XRP was created by the founders of Ripple in 2012. It is the native token of the open source XRP Ledger, which Ripple uses in its cross-border payments business, about 95% of which takes place outside the U.S. Ripple is the largest holder of XRP coins.
Google, Apple hit with EU antitrust actions under cloud of Trump tariff threats
EU regulators are taking steps to rein in Google and Apple on antitrust charges, even as U.S. President Donald Trump threatens to hit the bloc with tariffs.
European Union regulators are taking steps to rein in Google and Apple on antitrust charges, even as U.S. President Donald Trump threatens to hit the bloc with tariffs for alleged "overseas extortion" of America's tech giants.
The European Commission, which is the executive body of the EU, said Wednesday that it found Google parent company Alphabet in breach of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) — a landmark law aimed at tackling tech competition issues — with its Search and Google Play products.
The bloc accused Google Search of treating Alphabet's own services more favorably compared to rival ones — a practice known as "self-preferencing," which is not permitted under the DMA.
Nvidia CEO: Humanoid Robot Revolution Closer Than You Think
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang believes humanoid robots are less than five years away from seeing wide use in manufacturing facilities.
Huang on Tuesday gave a keynote address in front of a packed hockey stadium during the nearly $3 trillion company's annual developer conference in San Jose, California.
Huang unveiled software tools that he said would help humanoid robots navigate the world more easily.
Speaking to a group of journalists after the speech, Huang was asked what signs would show that AI had become ubiquitous.
Among other answers, Huang said it may be "when, literally, humanoid robots are wandering around, which is not five years away. This is not five-years-away problem, this is a few-years-away problem."
BofA CEO: Economic Growth 'Better Than People Think'
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said Wednesday despite recent surveys showing consumer confidence eroding, Americans are continuing to spend, the U.S. economy is strong, and growth will be solid, albeit slower, this year.
Although surveys indicate the public is increasingly worried about inflation and tariffs, Moynihan told CNBC, consumers are still spending fairly abundantly. However, most of their purchases are shifting from goods and into services.
“We’re in this classic moment where the consumer is saying, ‘I’m getting more pessimistic,’ in some of the surveys,” Moynihan said in the “Squawk Box” interview.
“But if you actually look what they’re doing day to day, they continue to spend, which means the economy ought to be holding up better than people think.”
The Washington Post reports an hourslong standoff between police and the man involved ended with the suspect being taken into custody. There is no indication if the man or any of the responding police officers were injured.
Law enforcement units had swarmed the area surrounding CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, after a man approached the main gate and began making threats, according to the Express.
ABC first reported the man was making threats at the gate, prompting an immediate law enforcement response.
Fairfax County had posted about a related road closure, calling the situation a "barricade incident." The county Special Operations Division had units on the scene.
Brothers, Roommate of Laken Riley's Killer to be Deported
Two brothers of the Venezuelan man who killed Georgia nursing student Laken Riley will be deported along with their former roommate after they pleaded guilty to possessing fake green cards, federal authorities say.
Two brothers of the Venezuelan man who killed Georgia nursing student Laken Riley will be deported along with their former roommate after they pleaded guilty to possessing fake green cards, federal authorities say.
Jose Ibarra, 27, was convicted in November of murder and other crimes in Riley's killing and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in a case that became a flashpoint over immigration.
The annual growth rate for domestic games accelerated in the December quarter, compared with the previous three-month period.
International games revenue jumped 15% year-on-year to 16 billion. Over the past few years, Tencent has stepped up efforts overseas with games like PUBG Mobile, as the domestic games market slowed amid macroeconomic and regulatory headwinds.
Tencent's marketing services — or its advertising business — grew 17% year-on-year to 35 billion yuan in the fourth quarter. Tencent runs WeChat, China's biggest messaging app with more than 1.38 billion monthly active users. The company has been working on monetizing those users through different advertising products such as video and search.
As CNBC previously reported, authors of SB 21 included Richards, Layton & Finger, a corporate defense firm that counts Musk and Tesla as clients. It was co-written by Delaware Law School professor Lawrence Hamermesh, as well as Chandler, the ex-chancellor, and former Delaware Supreme Court Justice Leo Strine.
Strine works for Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz, which is representing Zuckerberg in a separate matter tied to the company's involvement in the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal. In 2019, Meta agreed to pay a $5 billion fine to settle related charges with the Federal Trade Commission.
Late last week, the state Senate voted to pass an amended version of SB 21. If Delaware's House of Representatives follows suit, in a vote expected as soon as Thursday, the bill would head to the governor's desk to be signed into law.
That could remove a major overhang for Zuckerberg and Meta.
Meta has been the subject of "books and records" investigations in Delaware in recent months, according to two people directly involved in the matter who asked not to be named in order to discuss nonpublic investigations. Under current law, shareholders behind those probes could file cases alleging that Zuckerberg or other Meta directors caused billions of dollars in damages, according to the people and Delaware records viewed by CNBC.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang arrives to attend the opening ceremony of Siliconware Precision Industries Co. (SPIL)’s Tan Ke Plant site in Taichung, Taiwan Jan. 16, 2025.
Software developers and investors are closely watching the company's new chips to see if they offer enough additional performance and efficiency to convince the company's biggest end customers — cloud companies including Microsoft, Google and Amazon — to continue spending billions of dollars to build data centers based around Nvidia chips.
"This last year is where almost the entire world got involved. The computational requirement, the scaling law of AI, is more resilient, and in fact, is hyper-accelerated," Huang said.
Tuesday's announcements are also a test of Nvidia's new annual release cadence. The company is striving to announce new chip families on an every-year basis. Before the AI boom, Nvidia released new chip architectures every other year.
Nvidia expects to start shipping systems on its next-generation GPU family in the second half of 2026.
The system has two main components: a CPU, called Vera, and a new GPU design, called Rubin. It's named after astronomer Vera Rubin.
Vera is Nvidia's first custom CPU design, the company said, and it's based on a core design they've named Olympus.
Previously when it needed CPUs, Nvidia used an off-the-shelf design from Arm. Companies that have developed custom Arm core designs, such as Qualcomm and Apple, say that they can be more tailored and unlock better performance.
The custom Vera design will be twice as fast as the CPU used in last year's Grace Blackwell chips, the company said.
Nvidia says that means that cloud providers can use Blackwell Ultra to offer a premium AI service for time-sensitive applications, allowing them to make as much as 50 times the revenue from the new chips as the Hopper generation, which shipped in 2023.
Blackwell Ultra will come in a version with two paired to an Nvidia Arm CPU, called GB300, and a version with just the GPU, called B300. It will also come in versions with eight GPUs in a single server blade and a rack version with 72 Blackwell chips.
The top four cloud companies have deployed three times the number of Blackwell chips as Hopper chips, Nvidia said.
Microsoft announces new HR executive, company veteran Amy Coleman
Microsoft's incoming chief people officer, Amy Coleman, led the development of Microsoft's human resources response to Covid and its hybrid work approach.
Microsoft said Wednesday that company veteran Amy Coleman will become its new executive vice president chief people officer, replacing Kathleen Hogan, who has held the position for the past decade.
Hogan will remain an executive vice president but move to a newly established Office of Strategy and Transformation, which is an expansion of the office of the CEO. She will join Microsoft's group of top executives, reporting directly to CEO Satya Nadella.
Coleman is stepping into a major role, given that Microsoft is among the largest employers in the U.S., with 228,000 total employees as of June 2024. She has worked at the company for more than 25 years over two stints, having first joined as a compensation manager in 1996.
Coleman had been Microsoft's corporate vice president for human resources and corporate functions for the past four years. In that role, she was responsible for 200 HR workers and led the development of Microsoft's hybrid work approach, as well as the HR aspect of the company's Covid response, according to her LinkedIn profile.
The development comes as the SEC moves quickly to reverse much of the damage in the crypto industry left by the previous administration. Last month, the agency ended its enforcement case against Coinbase; closed its investigations into Robinhood's crypto unit, Uniswap, Gemini and Consensys with no enforcement action; scaled back its crypto enforcement unit; and clarified that meme coins are not securities.
This week, the newly formed SEC crypto task force will kick off a roundtable series focused on defining the security status of digital assets.
XRP was created by the founders of Ripple in 2012. It is the native token of the open source XRP Ledger, which Ripple uses in its cross-border payments business, about 95% of which takes place outside the U.S. Ripple is the largest holder of XRP coins.
Google, Apple hit with EU antitrust actions under cloud of Trump tariff threats
EU regulators are taking steps to rein in Google and Apple on antitrust charges, even as U.S. President Donald Trump threatens to hit the bloc with tariffs.
European Union regulators are taking steps to rein in Google and Apple on antitrust charges, even as U.S. President Donald Trump threatens to hit the bloc with tariffs for alleged "overseas extortion" of America's tech giants.
The European Commission, which is the executive body of the EU, said Wednesday that it found Google parent company Alphabet in breach of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) — a landmark law aimed at tackling tech competition issues — with its Search and Google Play products.
The bloc accused Google Search of treating Alphabet's own services more favorably compared to rival ones — a practice known as "self-preferencing," which is not permitted under the DMA.
Nvidia CEO: Humanoid Robot Revolution Closer Than You Think
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang believes humanoid robots are less than five years away from seeing wide use in manufacturing facilities.
Huang on Tuesday gave a keynote address in front of a packed hockey stadium during the nearly $3 trillion company's annual developer conference in San Jose, California.
Huang unveiled software tools that he said would help humanoid robots navigate the world more easily.
Speaking to a group of journalists after the speech, Huang was asked what signs would show that AI had become ubiquitous.
Among other answers, Huang said it may be "when, literally, humanoid robots are wandering around, which is not five years away. This is not five-years-away problem, this is a few-years-away problem."
BofA CEO: Economic Growth 'Better Than People Think'
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said Wednesday despite recent surveys showing consumer confidence eroding, Americans are continuing to spend, the U.S. economy is strong, and growth will be solid, albeit slower, this year.
Although surveys indicate the public is increasingly worried about inflation and tariffs, Moynihan told CNBC, consumers are still spending fairly abundantly. However, most of their purchases are shifting from goods and into services.
“We’re in this classic moment where the consumer is saying, ‘I’m getting more pessimistic,’ in some of the surveys,” Moynihan said in the “Squawk Box” interview.
“But if you actually look what they’re doing day to day, they continue to spend, which means the economy ought to be holding up better than people think.”
Armed Standoff Outside CIA Headquarters Ends
The Washington Post reports an hourslong standoff between police and the man involved ended with the suspect being taken into custody. There is no indication if the man or any of the responding police officers were injured.
Law enforcement units had swarmed the area surrounding CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, after a man approached the main gate and began making threats, according to the Express.
ABC first reported the man was making threats at the gate, prompting an immediate law enforcement response.
Fairfax County had posted about a related road closure, calling the situation a "barricade incident." The county Special Operations Division had units on the scene.
Brothers, Roommate of Laken Riley's Killer to be Deported
Two brothers of the Venezuelan man who killed Georgia nursing student Laken Riley will be deported along with their former roommate after they pleaded guilty to possessing fake green cards, federal authorities say.
Two brothers of the Venezuelan man who killed Georgia nursing student Laken Riley will be deported along with their former roommate after they pleaded guilty to possessing fake green cards, federal authorities say.
Jose Ibarra, 27, was convicted in November of murder and other crimes in Riley's killing and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in a case that became a flashpoint over immigration.
The annual growth rate for domestic games accelerated in the December quarter, compared with the previous three-month period.
International games revenue jumped 15% year-on-year to 16 billion. Over the past few years, Tencent has stepped up efforts overseas with games like PUBG Mobile, as the domestic games market slowed amid macroeconomic and regulatory headwinds.
Tencent's marketing services — or its advertising business — grew 17% year-on-year to 35 billion yuan in the fourth quarter. Tencent runs WeChat, China's biggest messaging app with more than 1.38 billion monthly active users. The company has been working on monetizing those users through different advertising products such as video and search.
reincorporate outside of the state.
As CNBC previously reported, authors of SB 21 included Richards, Layton & Finger, a corporate defense firm that counts Musk and Tesla as clients. It was co-written by Delaware Law School professor Lawrence Hamermesh, as well as Chandler, the ex-chancellor, and former Delaware Supreme Court Justice Leo Strine.
Strine works for Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz, which is representing Zuckerberg in a separate matter tied to the company's involvement in the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal. In 2019, Meta agreed to pay a $5 billion fine to settle related charges with the Federal Trade Commission.
Late last week, the state Senate voted to pass an amended version of SB 21. If Delaware's House of Representatives follows suit, in a vote expected as soon as Thursday, the bill would head to the governor's desk to be signed into law.
That could remove a major overhang for Zuckerberg and Meta.
Meta has been the subject of "books and records" investigations in Delaware in recent months, according to two people directly involved in the matter who asked not to be named in order to discuss nonpublic investigations. Under current law, shareholders behind those probes could file cases alleging that Zuckerberg or other Meta directors caused billions of dollars in damages, according to the people and Delaware records viewed by CNBC.
!summarize #aaronrodgers #minnesota #vikings #nygiants #quarterback