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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with a Dragon 2 spacecraft carrying supplies to the International Space Station lifts off from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. This is the 22nd resupply mission for NASA by SpaceX.
Paul Hennessy | LightRocket | Getty Images

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said on Monday that he’s bullish on space, noting that he’s an investor in Elon Musk’s SpaceX along with start-ups Astra, Swarm Technologies, and Planet Labs.

But don’t expect Benioff to join Jeff Bezos on a space trip anytime soon. Bezos, who is stepping aside as Amazon CEO in July, said on Monday that he’ll fly on the first passenger flight of his space company Blue Origin, which is expected to launch on July 20.

In an interview that aired on CNBC’s “Closing Bell,” Benioff commended Bezos on the announcement.

“I think it’s very exciting that he’s willing to basically say, ‘If you want to use my product, I will use it first,'” Benioff said. “And I think that that’s 100% the right move.”

But he’s not sure he’s personally interested in taking a similar trip.

“I think I might have to take a couple of Ativans before I climb in there,” Benioff said. (Ativan is an anti-anxiety medication.)

One of Benioff’s space investments, Astra, came out of stealth early last year. Astra said in February that it’s going public through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that values the business at $2.1 billion. On Monday, the company announced the acquisition of electric propulsion maker Apollo Fusion.

While Benioff’s investment in Astra has been reported, his involvements in the the other three companies he named have not been disclosed, and none are included among his 122 deals listed by PitchBook.

Most notable is SpaceX, the private space company that was valued by investors earlier this year at $74 billion. Benioff has commended SpaceX in the past, including a retweet of Musk in May 2020, in which Benioff said “visionary leadership.” That was just as SpaceX was preparing to launch astronauts into space.

Benioff also said he’s an investor Planet Labs, whose satellite technology takes images from space, and Swarm, which aims to provide internet connectivity from satellites.

“I actually think that space is a huge category that we should invest in,” Benioff said, noting that it’s an area where Time Ventures is active. “I think those companies are amazing in the work they’re doing. and the entrepreneurs.”

— CNBC’s Michael Sheetz contributed to this report.

WATCH: Marc Benioff says company is about to surpass SAP

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Ether falls 7% following a multimillion dollar hack of a decentralized finance protocol

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November 3, 2025

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Ether falls 7% following a multimillion dollar hack of a decentralized finance protocol

Representation of Ethereum, with its native cryptocurrency ether.

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Ether fell as much as 9% on Monday, slipping below its critical $3,600 support level, shortly after a multimillion dollar hack affected a protocol on the token’s native network. 

The cryptocurrency, which is issued on Ethereum, was last down 6.6% at around $3,600, CoinMetrics data shows. That’s roughly 25% off its high of $4,885 hit on August 22. 

The coin’s tumble came after Ethereum-based decentralized finance protocol Balancer on Monday lost possibly more than $100 million in a hack. The exploit marks the latest in a series of bearish events that have put digital assets investors on tenterhooks over the past few weeks.

In mid-October, U.S. President Donald Trump announced “massive” tariffs on China over its restriction of rare earth exports, kicking off investors’ flight from crypto to risk-off assets such as gold. And although the president later walked back that threat, his comments sparked a sell-off that triggered cascading liquidations of highly leveraged digital asset positions. 

Last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell cautioned investors about expecting future rate cuts, adding to existing bearish market sentiment.     

“These events have put investors on uneasy footing as we roll into November,” Juan Leon, senior investment strategist at Bitwise, told CNBC. “Macro volatility notwithstanding, this October’s drawdown appears to have been a healthy, albeit sharp, de-leveraging event that flushed speculative excess from the market.”

Some stocks linked to digital assets are also coming under pressure. Coinbase shares were down nearly 4%, while Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy edged down more than 1%.   

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Nvidia adds nearly $100B in market cap in a matter of days. Here is what’s going right

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November 3, 2025

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Nvidia adds nearly 0B in market cap in a matter of days. Here is what's going right

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Lambda, Microsoft agree to multibillion-dollar AI infrastructure deal with Nvidia chips

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November 3, 2025

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Lambda, Microsoft agree to multibillion-dollar AI infrastructure deal with Nvidia chips

In this photo illustration, a person is holding a smartphone with the logo of US GPU hardware company Lambda Inc. (Lambda Labs) on screen in front of website.

Timon Schneider | SOPA Images | AP

Cloud computing startup Lambda announced on Monday a multibillion-dollar deal with Microsoft for artificial intelligence infrastructure powered by tens of thousands of Nvidia chips.

The agreement comes as Lambda benefits from surging consumer demand for AI-powered services, including AI chatbots and assistants, CEO Stephen Balaban told CNBC’s “Money Movers” on Monday.

“We’re in the middle of probably the largest technology buildout that we’ve ever seen,” Balaban said. “The industry is going really well right now, and there’s just a lot of people who are using ChatGPT and Claude and the different AI services that are out there.”

Balaban said the partnership will continue the two companies’ long-term relationship, which goes back to 2018.

A specific dollar amount was not disclosed in the deal announcement.

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Founded in 2012, Lambda provides cloud services and software for training and deploying AI models, servicing over 200 thousand developers, and also rents out servers powered by Nvidia’s graphics processing units.

The new infrastructure with Microsoft will include the NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 systems, which are also deployed by hyperscaler CoreWeave, according to a release.

“We love Nvidia’s product,” Balaban said. “They have the best accelerator product on the market.”

The company has dozens of data centers and is planning to continue not only leasing data centers but also constructing its own infrastructure as well, Balaban said.

Earlier in October, Lambda announced plans to open an AI factory in Kansas City in 2026. The site is expected to launch with 24 megawatts of capacity with the potential to scale up to over 100 MW.

OpenAI signs $38B deal with Amazon: Here's what to know

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