Solo VC Effort Offers Individual Touch to Early Startup Founders
AI chip deals: Nvidia, the leading maker of AI processors, and rival Advanced Micro Devices announced deals to supply chips to Saudi Arabia for massive data centers for artificial intelligence work. Meanwhile, the Trump administration may let the UAE buy more than a million of Nvidia's advanced AI chips, which would far exceed Biden-era limits.
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CNBC
13 minutes ago
- CNBC
Stanley Druckenmiller ramps up health-care stock exposure, gets back into Microsoft
Billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller 's top three biggest holdings at the end of June were all health-care stocks and he also invested back into one of his favorite artificial intelligence plays, Microsoft , according to a regulatory filing. The former lead portfolio manager for George Soros' Quantum Fund, who now runs his own Duquesne Family Office, hiked his stakes in Teva Pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical company Insmed last quarter, making them his fund's second and third largest holdings, the filing showed. Clinical genetic testing company Natera remained Druckenmiller's top bet, worth more than half a billion at the end of June. The legendary investor, who has never had a down year in the markets, took a $100 million stake in Microsoft in the second quarter, after exiting the tech position in the third quarter of 2024. Druckenmiller was applauded for his big win on key AI player Nvidia in 2022 as he was one of the earliest investors to see the potential in the burgeoning industry, comparing the power of AI to the internet. He once called Nvidia and Microsoft his favored names to play the theme. However, he exited the winning bet last year, later admitting it was a "big mistake" as Jensen Huang's company continued its rally. Still, Microsoft is outperforming the market again this year, up 22% year to date. The stock topped a $4 trillion market cap on July 30 for the first time ever. Druckenmiller shot to fame after helping make a $10 billion bet against the British pound in 1992. He later oversaw $12 billion as president of Duquesne Capital Management before closing his firm in 2010.
CNBC
13 minutes ago
- CNBC
OpenAI's Altman warns the U.S. is underestimating China's next-gen AI threat
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned that the U.S. may be underestimating the complexity and seriousness of China's progress in artificial intelligence, and said export controls alone likely aren't a reliable solution. "I'm worried about China," he said. Over Mediterranean tapas in San Francisco's Presidio — just five miles north of OpenAI's original office in the Mission — Altman offered a rare on-the-record briefing to a small group of reporters, including CNBC. He warned that the U.S.–China AI race is deeply entangled — and more consequential than a simple who's-ahead scoreboard. "There's inference capacity, where China probably can build faster. There's research, there's product; a lot of layers to the whole thing," he said. "I don't think it'll be as simple as: Is the U.S. or China ahead?" Despite escalating U.S. export controls on semiconductors, Altman is unconvinced that the policy is keeping up with technical reality. Asked whether it would be reassuring if fewer GPUs were reaching China, Altman was skeptical. "My instinct is that doesn't work," he said. "You can export-control one thing, but maybe not the right thing… maybe people build fabs or find other workarounds," he added, referring to semiconductor fabrication facilities, the specialized factories that produce the chips powering everything from smartphones to large-scale AI systems. "I'd love an easy solution," added Altman. "But my instinct is: That's hard." His comments come as Washington adjusts its policies designed to curb China's AI ambitions. The Biden administration initially tightened export controls, but in April, President Donald Trump went further — halting the supply of advanced chips altogether, including models previously designed to comply with Biden-era rules. Last week, however, the U.S. carved out an exception for certain "China-safe" chips, allowing sales to resume under a controversial and unprecedented agreement requiring Nvidia and AMD to give the federal government 15% of their China chip revenue. The result is a patchwork regime that may be easier to navigate than enforce. And while U.S. firms deepen their dependence on chips from Nvidia and AMD, Chinese companies are pushing ahead with alternatives from Huawei and other domestic suppliers — raising questions about whether cutting off supply is having the intended effect. China's AI progress has also influenced how OpenAI thinks about releasing its own models. While the company has long resisted calls to make its technology fully open source, Altman said competition from Chinese models — particularly open-source systems like DeepSeek — was a factor in OpenAI's recent decision to release its own open-weight models. "It was clear that if we didn't do it, the world was gonna head to be mostly built on Chinese open source models," Altman said. "That was a factor in our decision, for sure. Wasn't the only one, but that loomed large." Earlier this month, OpenAI released two open-weight language models — its first since GPT-2 in 2019 — marking a significant shift in strategy for the company that has long kept its technology gated behind application programming interfaces, or APIs. The new text-only models, called gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b, are designed as lower-cost options that developers, researchers, and companies can download, run locally, and customize. An AI model is considered open weight if its parameters — the values learned during training that determine how the model generates responses — are publicly available. While that offers transparency and control, it's not the same as open source. OpenAI is still not releasing its training data or full source code. With this release, OpenAI joins that wave and, for now, stands alone as the only major U.S. foundation model company actively leaning into a more open approach. While Meta had embraced openness with its Llama models, CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested on the company's second-quarter earnings call it may pull back on that strategy going forward. OpenAI, meanwhile, is moving in the opposite direction, betting that broader accessibility will help grow its developer ecosystem and strengthen its position against Chinese rivals. Altman had previously acknowledged that OpenAI had been "on the wrong side of history" by locking up its models. Ultimately, OpenAI's move shows it wants to keep developers engaged and within its ecosystem. That push comes as Meta reconsiders its open-source stance and Chinese labs flood the market with models designed to be flexible and widely adopted. Still, the open-weight debut has drawn mixed reviews. Some developers have called the models underwhelming, noting that many of the capabilities that make OpenAI's commercial offerings so powerful were stripped out. Altman didn't dispute that, saying the team intentionally optimized for one core use case: locally-run coding agents. "If the kind of demand shifts in the world," he said, "you can push it to something else." Watch: OpenAI's enterprise bet pays off as startups in Silicon Valley switch to GPT-5
Business Insider
13 minutes ago
- Business Insider
Kenya seeks up to $500m from citizens abroad in new bond push
Kenya, seeking to ease strained public finances, is turning to its citizens abroad with plans to issue a diaspora bond worth between $250 million and $500 million. Kenya plans to issue a diaspora bond worth $250-$500 million to ease public financial stress. The government aims to raise $3.8 billion to fund infrastructural projects such as electrification and transport. Discussions about structuring this bond are ongoing with a World Bank unit, indicating international involvement. Kenya, seeking to ease strained public finances, is turning to its citizens abroad with plans to issue a diaspora bond worth between $250 million and $500 million. The government hopes to raise as much as $3.8 billion through the program, according to Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi. The East African nation is in discussions with a World Bank unit on how to structure the security, which could fund projects ranging from rural electrification to roads, rail, and airports, Bloomberg reported. Kenya is also preparing to host an International Monetary Fund mission next month to discuss a new lending program. The country has faced fiscal pressure since being forced to abandon planned tax increases after deadly protests in 2024 that left at least 60 people dead. The economic impact was severe, with the Nairobi Securities Exchange PLC (NSE) reporting a loss of about $600 million in investor wealth in two weeks due to the protests. Privatisations, partnerships and reform push To stabilise its finances while keeping living costs in check, the government is pursuing privatisations, public-private partnerships, and asset securitisation to fund infrastructure. 'Because of the backlash from citizens, we shifted our focus toward alternative financing rather than aggressive revenue-raising measures,' Mudavadi said. 'We are working to live within our means, recognising the global economic challenges.'
