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From fake social security calls to scammers impersonating Apple or Amazon, anyone with a cellphone or landline is no stranger to robocalls.

For decades, robocall scammers have graced phones and voicemails across the nation. Between June 2020 and 2021 these scams affected more than 59 million people who lost a combined $29.8 billion, according to phone number identification app Trucaller. Some robocallers look to sell legal products like a car warranty or new roof through illegal means, while others will steal your social security number or credit card.

In an effort to curb this longstanding problem, the Federal Communications Commission is requiring voice service providers to implement caller ID authentication standards via a set of industry rules known as STIR/SHAKEN. The FCC required large carriers like AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile to implement the standards by June 30, though smaller carriers, with under 100,000 customers, have an extension.

Simultaneously, voice service providers must submit a plan highlighting their robocall mitigation efforts in a recently launched database. If the plan isn’t in the database beginning Sept. 28, carriers will have to stop accepting calls from those providers.

STIR/SHAKEN is a good start to ending this ever-evolving issue of robocalls, and, while the updates will slow scammers down, experts say they won’t disappear.

“It’s a game of Whac-A-Mole,” said Paul Schmitt, a research computer scientist at the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute. “Robocallers will find other ways to do what they want to do.”

What is STIR/SHAKEN?

STIR/SHAKEN refers to the set of industry rules requiring voice providers to authenticate that the call people receive is from the number displayed.

Attestation is the framework used for determining the legitimacy of the caller. It acts as a virtual signature indicating how confident a provider is that a caller is allowed to use a specific phone number. It’s broken down into three levels based on how much information the providers know about the caller, with the lowest level meaning the provider can verify where the call came from, but not the caller ID.

STIR/SHAKEN puts pressure on domestic carriers to increase their protected technology, create a database and will likely push illegal domestic robocalls out of the country, said Scott White, director of George Washington University’s cybersecurity program and cyber academy.

While it makes it harder to spoof or use false caller ID information to scam you, it’s not foolproof. The technology verifies that the original number is what shows up for the consumer, but scammers can falsify the number from the get-go. The system does not work on landlines.

When signing a call, some providers use the highest attestation without proper due diligence, said Josh Bercu, vice president of policy and advocacy at USTelecom, a trade group representing telecom companies. If the industry gets evidence of that, the provider could lose their ability to sign or attest.

“The industry hates these calls,” said Bercu. “We want to protect our subscribers, we’re doing everything we can and the impact is starting to really show itself.”

Fighting evolving robocalls

While STIR/SHAKEN can help crack down at home, the FCC has little jurisdiction abroad where many calls originate. The agency can work with international partners to catch scammers, but some countries won’t cooperate. Robocalls reel in billions of dollars in profits every year and many have found ways to use artificial intelligence or data to create targeted lists for scamming.

Some overseas scammers will purchase a block of numbers to make calls and disappear. Domestic scammers may use recent changes as an opportunity to move operations abroad where there’s less oversight, White added. Gateway carriers serve as the main form of entry into the U.S. for foreign calls but many operate outside the U.S.

The biggest issue is that robocalls are evolving faster than legislation can keep up, said White.

Next steps to ending robocalls

Robocalls are decreasing. In August, Americans received roughly 4.1 billion robocalls, down 4.4% from July, which decreased 4.8% from June, according to data from YouMail, a company that creates robocall blocking software.

YouMail is one of several third-party companies like Truecaller, RoboKiller and Hiya that offer spam-blocking software. YouMail’s CEO Alex Quilici, said the company can match audio to find repeat offenders, but only when they leave a voicemail.

Large telecom companies offer customers their own robocall blocking apps, with features like caller ID identification, personal blocklists and a number change. Some of these features cost customers an additional fee depending on their plan and provider.

A Verizon spokesperson said the company recently launched a social media campaign with a tech influencer to help consumers spot robocalls. Efforts to mitigate robocalls have led to 500 million fewer calls per month, they added. An AT&T spokesperson said the company labels 1 billion robocalls a month. T-Mobile verifies more than 300 million calls every weekday, a spokesperson said.

Bercu, the USTelecom VP, is working with both providers and the government on tracing back suspicious calls to shut down scammers. Another step is getting other countries to sign onto STIR/SHAKEN, said Eric Burger, a research professor of computer science at Georgetown University.

Despite concerns about its effectiveness, STIR/SHAKEN is not worthless legislation, said White. The process can help companies and the government do better analytics and gather information to use for the next attack.

“The people complained, and the government responded,” he said. “That’s what you want to see in a democracy.”

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CNBC Daily Open: It’s a boom, it’s a bubble, it’s still not enough for investors: It’s AI

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CNBC Daily Open: It's a boom, it's a bubble, it's still not enough for investors: It's AI

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (L) speaks with Microsoft Chief Technology Officer and Executive VP of Artificial Intelligence Kevin Scott during the Microsoft Build conference at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, on May 21, 2024. 

Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images

Investors can’t get enough of artificial intelligence, despite worries over the sector’s excessively high valuations.

The S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite rose Tuesday stateside, with all three notching new intraday highs. The major averages were juiced by gains in tech. Nvidia popped nearly 5%, while Microsoft climbed roughly 2%.

Both Apple and Microsoft reached a market capitalization of over $4 trillion after their shares rose. It was the first time Apple hit that milestone, though it closed just shy of that level.

Tech companies can’t get enough of each other, either.

Nvidia announced a $1 trillion investment in Nokia, which the Finnish company said will go toward developing its AI plans. For those, like me, who remember Nokia as a company that made the most desirable and bullet-proof phones: It primarily produces cellular equipment now.

Meanwhile, with its 27% stake in OpenAI’s for-profit business, Microsoft is potentially sitting on a goldmine — provided AI finds its footing as a sustainable, revenue-generating business in the long run. OpenAI on Tuesday announced it had completed its restructuring as a nonprofit with a controlling stake in its for-profit arm.

It’s not just Microsoft. Investors who have poured money into tech could potentially gain big — as Cathie Wood of Ark Invest says, “If our expectations for AI … are correct, we are at the very beginning of a technology revolution.”

What you need to know today

And finally…

Jerome Powell, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, during the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank Fall meetings at the IMF headquarters in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025.

Kent Nishimura | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The Fed has a rate cut plus a bunch of other things on its plate this week. Here’s what to expect

Markets are assigning a nearly 100% probability that the Federal Open Market Committee will approve a second consecutive quarter percentage point, or 25 basis point, reduction in the federal funds rate. The overnight lending benchmark is currently targeted between 4%-4.25%.

Beyond that, policymakers are likely to debate, among other things, the future path of reductions, the challenges posed by a lack of economic data and the timetable for ending the reduction in the Fed’s asset portfolio of Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities.

— Jeff Cox

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Nvidia-supplier SK Hynix third-quarter profit jumps 62% to a record high on AI-fueled memory demand

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Nvidia-supplier SK Hynix third-quarter profit jumps 62% to a record high on AI-fueled memory demand

A man walks past a logo of SK Hynix at the lobby of the company’s Bundang office in Seongnam on January 29, 2021.

Jung Yeon-Je | AFP | Getty Images

South Korea’s SK Hynix on Wednesday posted record quarterly revenue and profit, boosted by a strong demand for its high bandwidth memory used in generative AI chipsets.

Here are SK Hynix’s third-quarter results versus LSEG SmartEstimates, which are weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate:

  • Revenue: 24.45 trillion won ($17.13 billion) vs. 24.73 trillion won
  • Operating profit: 11.38 trillion won vs. 11.39 trillion won

Revenue rose about 39% in the September quarter compared with the same period a year earlier, while operating profit surged 62%, year on year.

On a quarter-on-quarter basis, revenue was up 10%, while operating profit grew 24%.

SK Hynix makes memory chips that are used to store data and can be found in everything from servers to consumer devices such as smartphones and laptops.

The company has benefited from a boom in artificial intelligence as a key supplier of high-bandwidth memory or HBM chips used to power AI data center servers. 

“As demand across the memory segment has soared due to customers’ expanding investments in AI infrastructure, SK Hynix once again surpassed the record-high performance of the previous quarter due to increased sales of high value-added products,” SK Hynix said in its earnings release. 

HBM falls into the broader category of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM — a type of semiconductor memory used to store data and program code that can be found in PCs, workstations and servers.

SK Hynix has set itself apart in the DRAM market by getting an early lead in HBM and establishing itself as the main supplier to the world’s leading AI chip designer, Nvidia

However, its main competitors, U.S.-based Micron and South Korean-based tech giant Samsung, have been working to catch up in the space.

“With the innovation of AI technology, the memory market has shifted to a new paradigm and demand has begun to spread to all product areas,” SK Hynix Chief Financial Officer Kim Woohyun said in the earnings release.

“We will continue to strengthen our AI memory leadership by responding to customer demand through market-leading products and differentiated technological capabilities,” he added.

The HBM market is expected to continue to boom over the next few years to around $43 billion by 2027, giving strong earnings leverage to memory manufacturers such as SK Hynix, MS Hwang, research director at Counterpoint Research, told CNBC.

“[F]or SK Hynix to continue generating profits, it’ll be important for the company to maintain and enhance its competitive edge,” he added.

A report from Counterpoint Research earlier this month showed that SK Hynix held a leading 38% share of the DRAM market by revenue in the second quarter of the year, increasing its shares after having overtaken Samsung in the first quarter. 

The report added that the global HBM  market grew 178% year over year in the second quarter, and SK Hynix dominated the space with a 64% share.

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Celestica CEO explains the company’s role in the AI boom

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Celestica CEO explains the company's role in the AI boom

Celestica CEO Rob Mionis: If AI is a speeding freight train, we’re laying the tracks ahead of it

Celestica CEO Rob Mionis explained how his company designs and manufactures infrastructure that enables artificial intelligence in a Tuesday interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer.

“If AI is a speeding freight train, we’re laying the tracks ahead of the freight train,” Mionis said.

He pushed back against the notion that the AI boom is a bubble, saying that the technology has gone from a “nice to have” to a “must have.”

Celestica reported earnings Monday after close, managing to beat estimates and raise its full-year outlook. The stock hit a 52-week high during Tuesday’s session and closed up more than 8%. Celestica has had a huge run over the past several months, and shares are currently up 253.68% year-to-date.

Mionis described some of Celestica’s business strategies, including how the Canadian outfit chose to move away from commodity markets and into design and manufacturing. He told Cramer that choice “has paid off in spades” for his company.

Celestica’s focus on design and manufacturing enables the company to “consistently execute at scale,” he added.

He detailed Celestica’s data center work, saying the company makes high-speed networking and storage system for hyperscalers, digital native companies and other enterprise names.

Mionis praised the company’s partnership with semiconductor maker Broadcom, saying Celestica uses Broadcom’s silicon in a lot of its designs.

“What it means for us is when they launch a new piece of silicon — so the Tomahawk 6 is their 1.6 terabyte silicon — when they launch that into the marketplace, they’ll work with us to develop products, and those products end up in the major hyperscalers.”

Celestica CEO Rob Mionis goes one-on-one with Jim Cramer

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