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The Nokia T20.
Ryan Browne | CNBC

LONDON — The company that makes Nokia-branded phones on Wednesday unveiled its first tablet, the Nokia T20, in a challenge to Apple’s iPad.

HMD Global said the tablet, which runs on Google’s Android operating system, comes with a 10.4-inch 2K display and a huge 8,200 milliamp-hour battery.

The firm promises up to 15 hours of usage on a full charge. For more power-hungry users, HMD says the T20 supports 10 hours of video streaming on platforms like YouTube and Netflix.

It also comes with family-friendly features like Google Kids Space, a “kids mode” setting that shows only safe content to children, and Family Link, a system which introduces parental controls.

The Nokia T20 starts at a price of 199 euros in Europe, or $249.99 in the U.S. It comes in two versions: one with only Wi-Fi support, and another with 4G connectivity. The latter costs a bit more, retailing at 239 euros.

The company did not disclose information on release date and availability.

Espoo, Finland-based HMD has held the license to use Nokia’s handset brand since 2016, when the company bought it off Microsoft.

The company, which is majority-owned by former Nokia executive Jean-Francois Baril, counts the likes of Google, Qualcomm and Nokia as investors.

It’s launched several smartphones over the years, as well as the non-touchscreen phones for which Nokia is most well-known. Notable product launches include revivals of the iconic Nokia 3310 and the Nokia 8110 “banana phone,” which featured in the movie “The Matrix.”

HMD’s feature phone business has performed well. However, the company has had less luck with its smartphones, which accounted for less than 1% of the market last year.

In July, HMD launched the Nokia XR20, a “rugged” smartphone designed to withstand intense environmental conditions. The company says the model has already exceeded its expectations in terms of sales.

Now, HMD is hoping to capitalize on growing demand for tablets after working from home and remote learning became the norm for many during the pandemic.

Global tablet sales were forecast to reach growth in 2020 for the first time in six years, according to data from Strategy Analytics.

At $250, the Nokia T20 could be viewed as an attempt to lure consumers away from Apple. However, HMD product marketing chief Adam Ferguson says this isn’t the aim.

“We don’t tend to build our strategy around who can we steal share off,” Ferguson said, adding the tablet was likely to attract Android users more than Apple customers.

Beyond its long battery life, the T20 also comes with four years of monthly security updates and three years of Android upgrades.

HMD is targeting business clients as well as consumers with the device. It says the T20 is included in Android’s Enterprise Recommended scheme for businesses.

Ferguson said the T20 was only one in a planned series of tablets the company plans to launch and hinted that a future model would likely come with support for new 5G networks.

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Broadcom beats on earnings and revenue

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Broadcom beats on earnings and revenue

A sign is posted in front of a Broadcom office in San Jose, California, on Dec. 12, 2024.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Broadcom reported second-quarter earnings on Thursday that beat Wall Street expectations, and the chipmaker provided robust guidance for the current period.

Here’s how the chipmaker did versus LSEG consensus estimates:

  • Earnings per share: $1.58 adjusted versus $1.56 expected
  • Revenue: $15 billion versus $14.99 billion expected

Broadcom said it expects about $15.8 billion in third-quarter revenue, versus $15.70 billion expected by Wall Street analysts. Revenue in the latest quarter rose 20% on an annual basis.

The company said net income increased to $4.97 billion, or $1.03 per share, from $2.12 billion, or 44 cents per share, in the year-ago period. The company instituted a 10-for-1 stock split a year ago.

Broadcom shares are up 12% this year after more than doubling last year on investor optimism for the company’s custom chips for artificial intelligence. In March, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said it was developing AI chips with three large cloud customers.

Broadcom said that it had $4.4 billion in AI revenue during the quarter, attributing the sales to its networking parts that connect complicated server clusters.

Tan said in a statement that Broadcom expects $5.1 billion in AI chip sales in the third quarter, adding that the company’s “hyperscale partners continue to invest.”

Hyperscalers are companies that build out large cloud systems to rent out to their own customers. They include Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

Those sales are reported in the company’s semiconductor solutions business, which had $8.4 billion in revenue during the quarter, a 17% increase from last year, and above $8.34 billion analyst estimate, according to StreetAccount.

The company’s software business, which includes VMware, grew 25% year-over-year to $6.6 billion in sales, beating the StreetAccount estimate.

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Microsoft’s stock hits fresh record, rallying despite drop in broader market

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Microsoft's stock hits fresh record, rallying despite drop in broader market

Microsoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella speaks during the Microsoft Build 2025, conference in Seattle, Washington, on May 19, 2025.

Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images

On a down day for the market, Microsoft reached a record high for the first time in 11 months.

Shares of the software giant rose 0.8% to close at $467.68. Microsoft has once again reclaimed the title of world’s largest company by market cap, with a valuation of $3.48 trillion. Nvidia has a market cap of $3.42 trillion, and Apple is valued at $3 trillion.

Microsoft last recorded a record close in July 2024. The stock is now up 11% for the year, while the Nasdaq is flat.

Tech stocks broadly dropped on Thursday, led by a plunge in Tesla, as CEO Elon Musk and President Donald Trump escalated their public beef. Musk, who was leading the Trump Administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) until last week, has slammed the Trump-backed spending bill making its way through Congress, a spat that has turned personal.

But Microsoft investors appear to be tuning out that noise.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella focused on his company’s tight relationship with artificial intelligence startup OpenAI in an interview with Bloomberg, some portions of which were published on Thursday.

“Why would any one of us want to go upset that?” he told Bloomberg. Nadella told analysts in January that OpenAI had made a large new commitment with Microsoft’s Azure cloud. In total, Microsoft has invested nearly $14 billion in OpenAI.

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Anduril raises funding at $30.5 billion valuation in round led by Founders Fund, chairman says

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Anduril raises funding at .5 billion valuation in round led by Founders Fund, chairman says

The Anduril Industries headquarters in Costa Mesa, California, US, on Thursday, Dec. 14, 2023. 

Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Defense tech startup Anduril Industries has raised $2.5 billion at a $30.5 billion valuation, including the new capital, Chairman Trae Stephens said on Thursday.

“As we continue working on building a company that has the capacity to scale into the largest problems for the national security community, we thought it was really important to shore up the balance sheet and make sure we have the ability to deploy capital into these manufacturing and production problem sets that we’re working on,” Stephens told Bloomberg TV at the publication’s tech summit in San Francisco.

Reports of the latest financing surfaced in February, around the same time the company took over Microsoft‘s multibillion-dollar augmented reality headset program with the U.S. Army. Last week, Anduril announced a deal with Meta to create virtual and augmented reality devices intended for use by the Army.

The latest funding round, which doubles Anduril’s valuation from August, was led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. The venture firm contributed $1 billion, said Stephens, who’s also a partner at the firm.

Palmer Luckey, founder of Oculus and Anduril Industries, speaks during The Wall Street Journal’s WSJ Tech Live conference in Laguna Beach, California on October 16, 2023.

Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images

Stephens said it’s the largest check Founders Fund has ever written.

Since its founding in 2017 by Oculus creator Palmer Luckey, Anduril has been working to shake up the defense contractor space currently dominated by Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

Anduril has been a member of the CNBC Disruptor 50 list three times and ranked as No. 2 last year.

Luckey founded Anduril after his ousting from Facebook, which acquired Oculus in 2014 and later made the virtual reality headsets the centerpiece of its metaverse efforts.

Stephens emphasized the importance of the recent partnership between the two sides, and “Palmer being able to go back to his roots and reach a point of forgiveness with the Meta team.”

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In April, Founders Fund closed a $4.6 billion late-stage venture fund, according to a filing with the SEC. A substantial amount of the capital was provided by the firm’s general partners, including Stephens, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC at the time.

Anduril is one of the most highly valued private tech companies in the U.S. and has been able to reel in large sums of venture money during a period of few big exits and IPOs. While the IPO market is showing signs of life after a three-plus year drought, Anduril isn’t planning to head in that direction just yet, Stephens said.

“Long term we continue to believe that Anduril is the shape of a publicly traded company,” Stephens said. “We’re not in any rapid path to doing that. We’re certainly going through the processes required to prepare for doing something like that in the medium term. Right now we’re just focused on the mission at hand, going at this as hard as we can.”

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