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Marc Andreessen speaking at the 2017 ReCode Conference on May 30, 2017.
Asa Mathat for Vox Media

Two of Facebook’s top engineers on its blockchain and digital currency project left the company to join Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto team, the venture capital firm told CNBC on Monday.

Riyaz Faizullabhoy and Nassim Eddequiouaq spent the past two years working on Facebook’s Novi digital wallet, which was originally called Calibra. The effort has faced stiff resistance from regulators and lawmakers worldwide, and a number of its high-profile leaders have departed.

Faizullabhoy and Eddequiouaq will serve as the chief technology officer and chief information security officer, respectively, on Andreessen’s crypto team, which is called a16z Crypto. In June, the firm announced a new $2.2 billion cryptocurrency-focused fund.

“Andreessen Horowitz has shown an impressive dedication to advancing the entire crypto ecosystem over the past decade, and we jumped at the chance to join their premier team and provide technical support to their rapidly-expanding portfolio,” Faizullabhoy told CNBC in a statement.

After spending the past two years working on Facebook’s Novi digital currency wallet, Riyaz Faizullabhoy is joining Andreessen Horowitz as chief technology officer of the venture capital firm’s a16z Crypto team.
Courtesy of Andreessen Horowitz

While Andreessen has been actively investing in crypto and blockchain and made a huge windfall from an early bet on Coinbase, which went public in April, Facebook has yet to show much progress in the space.

The company announced Calibra and its Libra digital currency in 2019 with much fanfare and said it hoped to launch the products in 2020. With less than three months remaining in 2021, neither has been released, though the names have changed. Calibra became Novi, and Libra was renamed Diem last year.

Morgan Beller, one of the founders of Facebook’s crypto unit, left her position as Novi head of strategy in September 2020 to join venture capital firm NFX. Fellow co-creator Kevin Weil left in March to join satellite imagery company Planet Labs.

Marc Andreessen, who co-founded a16z in 2009, has served on Facebook’s board since a year before opening his firm. His crypto team has about 50 members, including outside advisors, said Anthony Albanese, the fund’s operating chief. The group has made three dozen investments, including in digital currencies, trading services and other crypto funds, according to its website.

After spending the past two years working on Facebook’s Novi digital currency wallet, Nassim Eddequiouaq is joining Andreessen Horowitz as chief information security officer of the venture capital firm’s a16z Crypto team.
Courtesy of Andreessen Horowitz

Albanese said the venture firm’s crypto strategy will allow Faizullabhoy and Eddequiouaq to work on a wider set of issues than what Facebook offered.

“They’re going to be advising our portfolio companies on protocols to help them make sure that they have the most secure and sophisticated systems around,” Albanese said.

“They were doing a Facebook wallet,” he said. “It was more specific. Whereas I think here, they’re really going to have an opportunity to impact the crypto ecosystem on a very broad scale.”

Prior to joining Facebook, the duo worked at Anchorage, a digital asset bank start-up. At Facebook, they established the technological infrastructure that would hold digital currency within the company’s Novi wallet.

“Crypto is a once-in-a-generation step change in technology with unlimited potential to empower everyone,” Eddequiouaq said in a statement. “It also brings a unique set of complex security challenges that every crypto project needs to recognize and address.”

WATCH: Facebook doesn’t feel like it has any wind in its sails

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Super Micro stock sinks 20% after earnings, outlook disappoint

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Super Micro stock sinks 20% after earnings, outlook disappoint

Super Micro missed Q4 estimates

Super Micro Computer shares plunged 20% on Wednesday after the company posted weaker-than-expected fiscal fourth quarter results, dented in part by President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

CEO Charles Liang told investors on a conference call that the company has “taken measures to reduce the impact” of the tariffs.

The company has in recent years benefited from surging demand for AI servers packed with Nvidia chips, but has growth has since slowed.

The server maker also offered guidance late Tuesday that fell short of consensus estimates. Super Micro said it expects 40 cents to 52 cents in adjusted earnings per share on $6 billion to $7 billion in revenue for the fiscal first quarter.

Wall Street had projected 59 cents per share and $6.6 billion in revenue for the first quarter.

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For the full year, Super Micro said it expects revenue to be at least $33 billion. That’s a step down from its forecast in February, where it projected as much as $40 billion in sales, but greater than the LSEG consensus of $29.94 billion.

Super Micro reported fourth-quarter adjusted earnings per share of 41 cents, compared with expectations for 44 cents. Revenue came in at $5.76 billion, which was below analysts’ forecasts of $5.89 billion.

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CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed reporting to this story.

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AMD stock slumps 5% on earnings miss, China AI chip concerns

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AMD stock slumps 5% on earnings miss, China AI chip concerns

Lisa Su, president and CEO of AMD, talks about the AMD EPYC processor during a keynote address at the 2019 CES in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., January 9, 2019. 

Steve Marcus | Reuters

Shares of Advanced Micro Devices slumped more than 5% after the chipmaker‘s earnings fell short of earnings expectations and raised concerns about the timing of a restart in China shipments.

The Santa Clara, California-based company reported adjusted earnings of 48 cents per share, falling short of the 49 cents per share expected by analysts polled by LSEG.

CEO Lisa Su singled out the hit from U.S. controls on artificial intelligence chips in a call with analysts.

“AI business revenue declined year over year as U.S. export restrictions effectively eliminated MI308 sales to China, and we began transitioning to our next generation,” Su said.

For the current quarter, AMD forecasted $8.7 billion in revenue, plus or minus $300 million, versus $8.3 billion expected by analysts. The company said its guidance does not account for revenue from its MI308 AI chip designed for the China market to work around chip restrictions.

During an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Wednesday, Su said the company has been working closely with the Trump administration on license requirements necessary to ship its chips to China, but took a “prudent” approach to its guide.

“From our standpoint, we think we have an extremely strong portfolio,” she said. “Tens of billions of dollars is the opportunity in a market that’s going to be, let’s call it 500 billion plus over the next few years.”

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Earlier this year, AMD said it would take a $800 million hit during the second quarter as a result of chip restrictions. AMD said in July it plans to soon resume those shipments as the Department of Commerce gets set to restart application review.

Some Wall Street analysts raised concerns over how soon those shipments may begin. Analysts at Morgan Stanley called the timing of the restart in China shipments “vague,” adding that the company requires a “near terms upside in GPU” to keep its premium.

“China upside sounds like it will take time to materialize (and it sounded like we shouldn’t count too much on it even if licenses are granted), pull-forward and inventory risks remain, and opex continues to march higher which is limiting earnings leverage,” wrote Bernstein analysts.

Investors also raised concerns about the company’s datacenter business, which grew 14% to $3.2 billion and includes its central processors and graphics processing units.

“We are more guarded on the company’s ability to drive significant scale in Datacenter GPUs over time, and think operating leverage is likely to be hampered by the significant OpEx we believe is needed for the company to support its software and systems efforts tied to datacenters,” wrote analysts at Goldman Sachs.

Su said Wednesday the company is seeing strong forecasts for compute from some of its largest customers and anticipates an “inflection point” into the third quarter.

“The data center business is actually the main driver of our growth, and we look at that as the opportunity in front of us,” she added.

Despite the post-earnings move, AMD’s revenues grew 32% from a year ago to $7.69 billion and topped a $7.42 billion estimate from analysts polled by LSEG. Net income jumped to $872 million, or 54 cents per share, up from $265 million, or 16 cents per share in the year-ago period

WATCH: Bernstein’s Stacy Rasgon on semiconductor tariffs, impact on sector and AMD Q2 results

Bernstein's Stacy Rasgon on semiconductor tariffs, impact on sector and AMD Q2 results

CNBC’s Kif Leswing contributed to this article.

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Shopify stock soars 20% on rosy guidance as CFO says tariff hit ‘did not materialize’

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Shopify stock soars 20% on rosy guidance as CFO says tariff hit 'did not materialize'

The logo of Shopify is seen outside its headquarters in Ottawa, Ontario, on Sept. 28, 2018.

Chris Wattie | Reuters

Shopify shares soared 20% Wednesday after the company topped analysts’ estimates for the second quarter, and gave rosy guidance for the third quarter.

Here’s how the company did, compared with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG:

  • Earnings per share: 35 cents adj. vs. 29 cents
  • Revenue: $2.68 billion vs. $2.55 billion

Second-quarter sales surged 31% year over year to $2.68 billion, an acceleration from a year ago, when revenue expanded roughly 20%.

The Canadian e-commerce company also offered third-quarter guidance that surpassed expectations. Shopify said it expects revenue to grow at a “mid-to-high twenties percentage rate” year over year, which is higher than the 21.7% growth projected by analysts, according to StreetAccount.

The upbeat report and guidance suggested Shopify, which sells software for e-commerce businesses, is navigating President Donald Trump‘s trade war better than feared. Last quarter, the company noted there was macroeconomic “uncertainty ahead,” but that it wasn’t seeing significant price increases among its merchants due to the tariffs.

“We had factored into our guidance some potential impact from tariffs, which did not materialize,” Shopify CFO Jeff Hoffmeister said on a conference call with investors.

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Online retail peers Amazon and eBay last week reported strong revenue growth, indicating that consumers kept buying despite concerns of tariffs and rising prices.

The company hasn’t seen any “drops in U.S. demand, whether inbound, outbound or local” and instead saw the market accelerate in the second quarter, Hoffmeister said. Many Shopify merchants have raised prices, he added.

Shoppers don’t appear to be stocking up or pulling forward demand in anticipation of the tariffs, he said.

“So far we’re seeing no slowdown from the tariffs and that includes up until early August, where we are today,” Shopify President Harley Finkelstein said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “The millions of stores on Shopify are doing really, really well.”

Shopify’s gross merchandise sales, or the total volume of merchandise sold on the platform, also came in higher than expected. GMS grew 29% year over year to $87.8 billion, surpassing Wall Street’s projected $81.5 billion, according to StreetAccount.

The company said it expects operating expenses as a percentage of revenue to be 38% to 39%, compared to 39% to 40% in the previous quarter.

Shopify has been investing heavily in adding more artificial intelligence tools to its platform as a way to attract and retain merchants. In May, the company released an “AI store builder” that generates webstores based on a few keywords. Shopify on Tuesday launched a set of tools to support shopping via AI agents.

Company executives said these investments appear to be paying off.

“As we continue to expand our platforms capabilities, add new products, and build for where commerce is heading, Shopify is becoming even more compelling to a wider range of businesses than ever before,” Hoffmeister said.

WATCH: Shopify President: We do well in times of disruption

Shopify president Harley Finkelstein: Shopify tools help merchants navigate tariffs

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