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CEO of The Production Board David Friedberg walks to a morning session at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 09, 2021 in Sun Valley, Idaho.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images

David Friedberg is known in Silicon Valley as an early Google executive who started farming insurance company Climate Corporation and sold it to Monsanto for $1 billion in 2013.

More recently, Friedberg has gained the nickname Queen of Quinoa on the popular All-In podcast with investors Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya and David Sacks. The lifelong vegetarian earned the nickname when he purchased Canadian quinoa supplier NorQuin in 2014.

Friedberg remains board chairman at NorQuin and is chair of Metromile, a software-powered auto insurance provider that he started a decade ago and took public through a special purpose acquisition company earlier this year.

But he’s spending the bulk of his time on a project he started four years ago with the help of old friend and Google co-founder Larry Page.

After leaving Monsanto in 2015, Friedberg began talking with Page about a way to build and finance a whole new batch of start-ups focused on agriculture technology, sustainability and advancements in life sciences. He didn’t want to return to Google, so Page — through parent company Alphabet — agreed to help finance a holding company that Friedberg would operate.

Google CEO Larry Page holds a press annoucement at Google headquarters in New York on May 21, 2012. Google announced that it will allocate 22,000 square feet of its New York headquarters to CornellNYC Tech university, free of charge for five years and six month or until the university completes its campus in New York.
EMMANUEL DUNAND | AFP | Getty Images

Friedberg launched The Production Board in 2017. He’s now revealing Alphabet’s and Page’s involvement for the first time.

The company, which Friedberg describes as a venture foundry, just raised $300 million from Alphabet along with investors including Baillie Gifford, Allen & Co., BlackRock, Koch Disruptive Technologies and Morgan Stanley’s Counterpoint Global.

While Page was the initial Alphabet sponsor, Friedberg said the Google co-founder hasn’t been involved in the company for a while. Alphabet’s Anil Patel, who leads investments for the Other Bets segment, is on TPB’s board.

TPB is an investment company, but it’s not set up as a venture fund. That means Alphabet and other outside investors own shares in the parent entity but not the portfolio companies. They only get liquidity if TPB goes public or gets acquired.

“If one of our companies were to go public or get sold, we don’t take that capital and distribute it back to our shareholders,” Friedberg said in an interview this week. “It stays on the balance sheet and we keep building.”

No shortage of problems

Friedberg said neither he nor his investors need money, but they’re all trying to find solutions to some of the planet’s gravest existential challenges. With climate disasters emerging across the globe and more parts of the world becoming uninhabitable, TPB is investing in science and research to create new systems for food, agriculture and health.

“At least for my lifetime, I don’t think there’s going to be any shortage of problems and opportunities to go after,” the 41-year-old Friedberg said. “If we have a liquidity event, we should be able to recycle that capital and use it for new work.”

Friedberg said TPB has only 15 employees but its companies have hundreds of workers combined. His strategy is to hire top scientists, follow research trends for breakthroughs in genomics and life sciences and then fund R&D to determine if his team can develop a marketable product.

If there’s a business opportunity, TPB will spin the company out and give it a CEO, management team and lab space, while still offering centralized services for legal, human resources and finance. Some of the companies have raised additional capital from other venture investors.

“They can focus on getting a product built or getting product-market fit, and then over time as they mature, we start to hand some of those operating functions off so they can operate independently,” Friedberg said.

TPB’s existing investments include Soylent, the meal replacement beverage and nutrition company, and bioreactor lab Culture Biosciences.

Soylent
Josh Edelson | AFP | Getty Images

In a blog post Friday announcing the new investment, Friedberg is naming five foundry companies that TPB launched and turned into businesses. They include Pattern Ag, which is using precision engineering to help farmers make their land more productive; UR Labs, which makes a meal replacement shake to help people with diabetes lower their blood sugar; and Ohalo Genetics, a company using gene-editing tools to breed plants that use less land and water.

TPB also started Triplebar, a company using biotechnology to try to make food production, processing and packaging more sustainable. To run Triplebar, Friedberg teamed with Jeremy Agresti, a scientist and former Harvard fellow whose research was central to the creation of 10x Genomics.

Friedberg said seeking out and recruiting talent is a major part of his job.

“I love science,” he said. “Finding awesome scientists and trying to convince them to do this work is fun for me and a good use of my time.”

Along with hiring and raising capital, Friedberg has also been busy working on a SPAC. In February, he filed a prospectus for a blank-check company called TPB Acquisition, with plans to raise $250 million. He later reduced the target to $200 million.

The SPAC is looking for companies in the same markets that interest TPB. According to the filing, the transaction could even merge one of TPB’s businesses with another company.

“We will not, however, complete an initial business combination with only TPB or a portfolio company of TPB,” the filing said.

The SPAC hasn’t started trading or announced a deal, and Friedberg said he can’t talk about it at the moment.

WATCH: How the Western ‘megadrought’ could cause more ‘water wars’

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Broadcom stock jumps 15% on new $10 billion customer that analysts say is OpenAI

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Broadcom stock jumps 15% on new  billion customer that analysts say is OpenAI

Hock Tan, CEO of Broadcom.

Martin H. Simon | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Broadcom shares soared 15% on Friday after the chipmaker said on its earnings call that it had secured a new $10 billion customer. Analysts quickly pointed to OpenAI.

Following a better-than-expected earnings report late Thursday, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan told analysts that a fourth large customer had put in orders for $10 billion in custom artificial intelligence chips, which the company calls XPUs.

“One of these prospects released production orders to Broadcom, and we have accordingly characterized them as a qualified customer for XPUs,” Tan said. He added that the order increased Broadcom’s forecast for AI revenue next year, when shipments will begin.

Analysts at Mizuho, Cantor Fitzgerald and KeyBanc all said they think AI startup OpenAI is the customer. The Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the partnership, that the two companies co-designed a chip that will hit the market next year.

OpenAI declined to comment on the report.

While Broadcom doesn’t name its large web-scale customers, analysts have said dating back to last year that its first three clients were Google, Meta and TikTok parent ByteDance.

“During the call, the company surprised us by noting that it had secured a $10B order from a fourth XPU customer (we believe this is OpenAI), adding significant upside to the company’s three current XPU customers (Google, Meta, and ByteDance),” analysts at Cantor wrote in a note late Thursday. “Shipments are expected to commence in 2026.”

Broadcom’s stock has been on a tear of late as the company has joined Nvidia at the front of the race to build the kinds of processors and infrastructures needed for massive AI workloads. The stock is up about 130% in the past year, lifting Broadcom’s market cap past $1.6 trillion.

For the fiscal third quarter, Broadcom reported earnings and revenue that topped estimates. The company said it expects $17.4 billion in fourth-quarter revenue, higher than the $17.02 billion expected by Wall Street analysts, with AI revenue reaching $6.2 billion.

But news of an incoming $10 billion customer is what got Wall Street excited.

Tan said on the call that “immediate and fairly substantial demand” boosts the outlook for next year, “and really changes our thinking of what 2026 would be starting to look like.”

The company didn’t provide specific guidance for next year, but Tan suggested that growth in its AI could be above the 50% to 60% range he’d offered in the prior call.

Analysts at Mizuho raised their AI revenue growth estimate for next year to 76% up from about 60%, which would bring the total to $35 billion. Total revenue for the year ending in October 2026 is expected to increase about 30% to $81.8 billion from $63.1 billion this fiscal year, according to analysts surveyed by LSEG.

In addition to hardware, Broadcom has a large software business, keyed by its $61 billion acquisition of server virtualization software vendor VMware in 2023. Revenue in the infrastructure software business, which includes VMWare, rose 43% to $6.79 billion.

— CNBC’s Kif Leswing contributed to this report.

WATCH: Broadcom shares spike

Broadcom shares spike briefly on Q4 beat

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Tesla’s nearly $1 trillion new pay plan for Musk would expand his voting power

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Tesla's nearly  trillion new pay plan for Musk would expand his voting power

Tesla proposes new pay plan for Elon Musk that would expand his voting power

Tesla is asking investors to approve yet another outsized pay plan for CEO Elon Musk, according to a financial filing out Friday.

The total package is worth about $975 billion based on the maximum payout, assuming share count remains.

The proposed plan for Musk, already the world’s wealthiest individual, consists of 12 tranches of shares to be granted if Tesla hits certain milestones over the next decade. It would also give Musk increased voting power over the EV maker and aspiring robotics titan, which he has publicly demanded since early 2024.

Tesla Chairwoman Robyn Denholm told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin the plan was designed to keep the CEO “motivated and focused on delivering for the company.”

“If he performs, if he hits the super ambitious milestones that are in the plan then he gets equity — it’s 1% for each half a trillion dollars of market cap, plus operational milestones he has to hit in order to do that,” Denholm said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

The full award would give Musk more than 423 million additional shares. He currently holds about a 13% stake in the company.

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Tesla one-day stock chart.

Denholm confirmed that the Tesla CEO pay plan, if approved by shareholders, would not put any limit on where and how Musk spends his time or require him to spend any minimum number of hours per week on Tesla business.

To obtain the first award in the plan, Musk and Tesla would need to almost double their current market cap to reach $2 trillion. The final benchmark is reaching an $8.5 trillion market cap.

The operational milestones in the 2025 CEO Performance Award include: 20 million Tesla vehicles delivered, ​10 million active FSD Subscriptions, ​1 million robots delivered, ​1 million Robotaxis in commercial operation and a series of adjusted EBITDA benchmarks.

Musk has remained politically embroiled, while also running a collection of companies, including aerospace and defense contractor SpaceX, drilling venture The Boring Company, health tech company Neuralink and the artificial intelligence venture, xAI, which has merged with his social network, X.

Tesla also said in the filing Friday that it will ask shareholders at the Nov. 6 meeting to vote on whether the company should invest in Musk’s newest venture, xAI.

Musk first floated the idea publicly with an informal poll on X last July, asking whether Tesla should invest $5 billion into xAI.

Founded in early 2023 in Nevada, xAI merged with Musk’s social network X earlier this year. The company now operates a massive data center in Memphis, and plans to build out another facility there to help train and run its large language models and a chatbot called Grok.

Tesla Chair Denholm: New pay plan designed to keep Musk motivated & focused on delivering for Tesla

Pay plan controversy

The new pay proposal for Musk comes after the Delaware Court of Chancery ruled last year that his 2018 pay plan was excessive, had been improperly granted by the Tesla board and must be rescinded.

In that case, Tornetta v. Musk, a judge found that the Tesla CEO had controlled pay negotiations at the automaker, and his board of directors failed to give shareholders information that they were legally entitled to before telling them they should vote to approve Musk’s performance-based pay plan.

The case is now on appeal.

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OpenAI is building an AI jobs platform that could challenge Microsoft’s LinkedIn

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OpenAI is building an AI jobs platform that could challenge Microsoft’s LinkedIn

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (L) attends a meeting of the White House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence Education in the East Room of the White House on September 04, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images News | Getty Images

OpenAI has announced it is developing an AI-centered jobs platform as part of broader efforts to expand AI literacy, and as the company grows its consumer and business-facing AI applications.

The ChatGPT maker’s “OpenAI Jobs Platform” will utilize AI to help connect qualified job candidates to companies, which could put it in competition with Microsoft’s LinkedIn. 

OpenAI and Microsoft have an uneasy partnership, with Microsoft formally labeling the AI startup as a competitor in search and news advertising in its annual filing last year. Microsoft is OpenAI’s biggest investor, having reportedly poured $13 billion in the company.

The news was announced by Fidji Simo, chief executive officer of applications and the former head of Instacart, in a blog post on Thursday. 

“Importantly, the jobs platform won’t just be a way for big companies to attract more talent. It will have a track dedicated to helping local businesses compete, and local governments find the AI talent they need to better serve their constituents,” Simo said.

She didn’t elaborate further on details regarding the platform, but a company spokesperson told TechCrunch that it expects to launch the service by mid-2026. 

Additionally, OpenAI will introduce a new certification program in connection with its “OpenAI Academy,” an online learning platform that teaches workers how to use AI on the job better. This could also put it in competition with LinkedIn’s learning platform, which also offers video courses across business, technology and creative fields, with certifications.

“[W]e’re going to expand the Academy by offering certifications for different levels of AI fluency, from the basics of using AI at work all the way up to AI-custom jobs and prompt engineering,” Simo said, adding that the program will utilize ChatGPT’s Study mode. The study feature turns the chatbot into a teacher that questions, hints and provides feedback, instead of giving direct answers.

AI is eliminating jobs and climbing the corporate ladder

Organizations will be able to make the certificate part of their own learning and development programs, with OpenAI already working with Walmart, the largest private employer in the U.S. OpenAI said it plans to certify 10 million Americans by 2030.

The plans come amid fears about how AI is impacting the labor market. Business leaders like Salesforce’s Marc Benioff have recently announced layoffs due to AI, while new studies have linked the technology to mass job loss for certain workers.  

Simo acknowledged the “disruptive” force of AI in her post, saying jobs and companies will look different and need to adapt. 

“[W]hat we can do is help more people become fluent in AI and connect them with companies that need their skills, to give people more economic opportunities. 

Recent research from labor market data company Lightcast found that roles that require AI skills pay higher salaries on average than those that don’t. 

The new initiatives were also said to come as part of OpenAI’s “commitment to the White House’s efforts toward expanding AI literacy.” 

The company has been strengthening ties with Washington, launching a new offering called OpenAI for Government on June 16, the same day it was awarded a contract of up to $200 million by the U.S. Department of Defense. OpenAI is also part of the $500 billion Stargate project, which aims to invest in AI infrastructure in the U.S. over the next four years. 

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was part of a group of tech leaders that met with U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday to discuss topics including the development of artificial intelligence. 

Before the dinner, first lady Melania Trump made a speech highlighting the importance of AI in education and American progress, but that “we must manage AI’s growth responsibly.”

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