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Hungarian-born US investor and philanthropist George Soros delivers a speech on the sideline of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting, on January 24, 2019 in Davos, eastern Switzerland.
Fabrice Coffrini | AFP | Getty Images

Soros Fund Management, the asset management company founded by billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros, has revealed that it owns the cryptocurrency bitcoin.

The family office owns “some coins … but not a lot,” Dawn Fitzpatrick, CEO and chief investment officer of Soros Fund Management, said in an interview at a Bloomberg event this week.

Soros Fund Management, which is renowned for making large profits on traditional currency investments, did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment when asked how many bitcoins it owns and when it bought them.

“I’m not sure bitcoin is only viewed as an inflation hedge here,” Fitzpatrick said. “I think it’s crossed the chasm to mainstream.”

Fitzpatrick went on to explain how cryptocurrencies now have a market value of over $2 trillion, with over 200 million users.

The price of bitcoin, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, has jumped 10% from around $50,000 on Tuesday to over $55,000 on Wednesday. It was trading at $54,726 at roughly 4 a.m. ET Thursday. 

A week ago the price of bitcoin was around $43,000, while at the start of the year one bitcoin could be bought for around $29,000.

The latest bitcoin rally comes despite the continued threat of regulatory crackdowns from governments around the world and concerns about it’s enormous environmental footprint.

U.S. regulatory fears have eased this week after both Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and SEC Chair Gary Gensler said they have no plans to impose restrictions on cryptocurrency trading.

“This recent rally contrasts the stock market with assets like stocks, bonds and gold having a period of angst over high inflation and slowing economic growth,” said Freddie Evans, a sales trader at the U.K.-based digital asset broker GlobalBlock, in a statement Wednesday.

“This recent bitcoin advance could be the repeat of history following the Chinese ban on crypto activities,” he added.

Bitcoin isn’t the only cryptocurrency surging this year. Elsewhere, ether’s price has more than tripled from around $1,000 a coin at the start of the year, to over $3,000 a coin on Thursday.

Most professional investors think bitcoin is just a bubble, according to a Bank of America Fund Manager Survey that was published in April.

Some 74% of those who responded to the closely watched market gauge said they see the leading cryptocurrency as a bubble. Just 16% said no to the question, indicating the highly speculative ground they see bitcoin on.

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Amazon gets FAA approval for new delivery drone as it begins tests in Arizona

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Amazon gets FAA approval for new delivery drone as it begins tests in Arizona

Amazon said Tuesday it received regulatory approval to begin flying a smaller, quieter version of its delivery drone, the latest step in its long-running efforts to get the futuristic program off the ground.

The company unveiled the new drone, called the MK30, in November 2022. It said then that the MK30, in addition to the other changes, would fly through light rain and have twice the range of earlier models.

Amazon said the Federal Aviation Administration’s approval includes permission to fly the MK30 over longer distances and beyond the visual line of sight of pilots. The agency granted a similar waiver for Amazon’s Prime Air program in May, though that was limited to flights in College Station, Texas, one of the cities where it has been conducting tests.

Alongside the FAA approval, Matt McCardle, head of regulatory affairs for Prime Air, said the company is starting to make drone deliveries Tuesday near Phoenix, Arizona. In April, Amazon said it planned to spin up drone operations in Tolleson, a city west of Phoenix, after it shut down an earlier test site in Lockeford, California. The company will dispatch the drones near one of its warehouses in Tolleson as it looks to integrate Prime Air more closely into its existing logistics network and further speed up deliveries.

An FAA spokesperson said the agency granted Amazon permission to conduct beyond visual line of sight deliveries in Tolleson on Oct. 31.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos first unveiled plans for the ambitious service more than a decade ago, remarking at the time that the program could be up and running within five years. Despite Amazon investing billions of dollars into the program, progress has been slow. Prime Air encountered regulatory hurdles, missed deadlines and had layoffs last year, coinciding with widespread cost-cutting efforts by CEO Andy Jassy. The program also lost some key executives, including its primary liaison with the FAA and its founding leader. Amazon hired former Boeing executive David Carbon to run the operation.

It’s also encountered pushback from some residents in the cities where it’s trialing drone deliveries. Residents in College Station complained about the noise levels enough that it prompted the city’s mayor to mention the concerns in a letter to the FAA, CNBC previously reported. In response, Amazon executives told residents the company would identify a new drone delivery launch site by October 2025.

Amazon isn’t the only company trying to crack delivery by drone. It’s competing with Wing, owned by Google parent Alphabet, UPS, Walmart and a host of startups including Zipline and Matternet.

WATCH: How Amazon’s drone delivery program stacks up to competitors

Amazon drones make 100th delivery, lagging far behind Alphabet's Wing and Walmart partner Zipline

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Palantir shares jump 23% to record on uplifting guidance

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Palantir shares jump 23% to record on uplifting guidance

Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp appears on a Bloomberg television interview during the FoundryCon event in Palo Alto, California, on March 7, 2024.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Palantir shares jumped 23% on Tuesday and headed for a record close after the data analytics software maker reported robust third-quarter results and issued uplifting revenue guidance.

The stock reached a high of $51.19, above the prior record of $45.14 reached last week. If the gain holds, it will mark the stock’s biggest jump since Feb. 6, when shares popped 30%.

Revenue climbed 30% to $726 million from a year earlier, topping the $701 million average analyst estimate, according to LSEG. Adjusted earnings per share of 10 cents beat the 9-cent average estimate.

Analysts at Deutsche Bank said in a report that “the beat was driven by better-than-anticipated US Government performance,” boosted by demand for artificial intelligence tools.

“Palantir is among a handful of infrastructure software companies that have started to meaningfully monetize generative AI, where its competitive positioning benefits from longtime investment and deep expertise in complex data integration, and particularly its reputation for data security built into its ontology,” the analysts wrote.

Net income of $143.5 million, or 6 cents per share, was up from $71.5 million, or 3 cents per share, in the same quarter a year ago. The company called for fourth-quarter revenue of $767 million to $771 million. Analysts surveyed by LSEG had been looking for $741.4 million.

Palantir is targeting more than $687 million in U.S. commercial revenue for the year, implying about 24% of the total.

Bank of America bumped its price target from $50 to $55 and maintained its buy rating.

“We continue to view the adoption of PLTR’s AI-enabled products and reach in its early days, as more companies realize the time, resource, and cost savings possible,” Bank of America analysts wrote in a note to investors. “In our view, Palantir’s moat as the differentiated agnostic AI-enabler is only growing with each new use-case carrying compounding unit economics.”

— CNBC’s Jordan Novet and Michael Bloom contributed to this report.

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OpenAI hires Meta’s former Orion head to lead its robotics efforts

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OpenAI hires Meta's former Orion head to lead its robotics efforts

Jaap Arriens | NurPhoto via Getty Images

The former head of Meta’s Orion augmented reality glasses initiative has joined OpenAI to lead the startup’s robotics and consumer hardware efforts.

Caitlin “CK” Kalinowski announced her new role Monday in a post on LinkedIn and X, writing, “In my new role, I will initially focus on OpenAI’s robotics work and partnerships to help bring AI into the physical world and unlock its benefits for humanity.”

OpenAI has gained popularity for its viral chatbot, ChatGPT, but the hiring underscores its apparent efforts to move into building and selling hardware. Former Apple exec Jony Ive, who helped design some of Apple’s most iconic products from the iMac to the iPhone, has also partnered with OpenAI to create an AI device.

The announcement came the same day as that of OpenAI’s investment into Physical Intelligence, a robot startup based in San Francisco, which raised $400 million at a $2.4 billion post-money valuation. Other investors included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Thrive Capital, Lux Capital and Bond Capital.

The startup focuses on “bringing general-purpose AI into the physical world,” per its website, and it aims to do this by developing large-scale artificial intelligence models and algorithms to power robots. 

Before the new role at OpenAI, Kalinowski was a hardware executive at Meta for nearly two and a half years leading the company’s creation of Orion, previously codenamed Project Nazare, which it billed as “the most advanced pair of AR glasses ever made.” Meta unveiled its prototype glasses in September.

Before leading the Orion project, Kalinowski worked for more than nine years on virtual reality headsets at Meta-owned Oculus, and before that, nearly six years at Apple helping to design MacBooks, including Pro and Air models.

Kalinowski’s first day on the job at OpenAI is Tuesday, Nov. 5, per a LinkedIn post.

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