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Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon.
Carlo Allegri | Reuters

Qualcomm stock rose more than 12% on Thursday, one day after it reported September quarter earnings that not only beat what Wall Street expected, but also included bullish guidance for the December quarter.

Part of the reason for the strong guidance is that Qualcomm, a leading semiconductor company, is more optimistic about the global chip shortage than many of its rivals. For example, Apple says chip shortages will cost it more than $6 billion in the December quarter.

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said on Wednesday that it expected its own supply issues to be materially better by the end of December and the company will have enough supply to meet demand by the second half of next year.

That’s sooner than predictions about the end of global chip shortage from Intel, which predicts that shortages will persist through 2023, and closer to AMD‘s forecast, which says that challenges related to chip supply will persist until the second half of 2022.

“We had been cautious on Qualcomm ahead of supply issues but those are fading into the rear view now,” Goldman Sachs analyst Rod Hall wrote in a note on Wednesday.

Amon said Qualcomm’s ability to increase chip revenue 56% during a global shortage was the result of the company’s moves from earlier this year, and that new capacity from suppliers that was planned months and years ago is starting to come online.

“Supply worked exactly as we planned,” Amon told CNBC on Thursday. “Scale helps, we addressed the issue early … we put capacity plans in place and it’s working exactly as we planned.”

Here’s why Qualcomm was able to navigate the ongoing chip shortage and why it’s optimistic about next year.

Multiple suppliers

Qualcomm’s biggest individual line of business is in systems-on-a-chip, or SoCs, that combine central processing with cellular connectivity, and are the most expensive and most important component in an Android smartphone. Nearly every top-tier Android smartphone uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip.

Sales for handset chips grew 56% annually in the September quarter, Amon said.

These chips are made using what is called leading node processes, or the most advanced and capital intensive chip manufacturing techniques. Leading node processes create smaller transistors, which can be packed tightly together, creating faster chips that use less power and therefore more desirable smartphones.

It turns out, Qualcomm is able to manufacture its processors using two different foundries, or chip factories. Currently, Samsung and TSMC are operating the most advanced leading node, called 5-nanometer, so Qualcomm is buying from both.

“We are one of the few companies that have the ability to do multi-sourcing at the leading node, and we have done a lot of that with our roadmap,” Amon said in April.

That’s in comparison to companies like Apple, which relies on one supplier — TSMC — for its own SoCs.

On Wednesday, Amon credited double sourcing as a major reason that it was able to increase chip sales, and said that the company had three different parts on sale that were coming from two sources.

“We act early, we put a lot of things in place, multi-sourcing, capacity expansions, and we said that we expect to see material improvement in our supply towards the end of the calendar year,” Amon said Wednesday on a call with analysts.

Match issues and moving upmarket

However, other executives have said in the past month the main issue isn’t with leading node chips, but instead on the less-advanced but still essential chips, like display or power chips.

Both Intel and AMD’s CEOs have called this a “match set” issue, where PC makers “may have the CPU, but you don’t have the LCD, or you don’t have the Wi-Fi,” as Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said in an interview last month.

Qualcomm supplies more smartphone makers than PC original equipment manufacturers, but it’s facing the same issues, said Qualcomm CFO Akash Palkhiwala.

“We’re definitely seeing some mismatch of parts in the short-term at some of our customers,” Palkhiwala said. “But you should think of those as really timing issues.”

Qualcomm officials went on to say that when smartphone makers don’t have enough parts, they prioritize more expensive models. Premium phones use Qualcomm’s most advanced processors, which cost more, and the company is able to “allocate” its supply capacity to prioritize more profitable chips.

Unit sales of premium devices with the most advanced Qualcomm chips increased 21% in the September quarter, Qualcomm said.

“We’re focusing really on the premium and high-tier units, and so when our customers have supply mismatch, they actually end up supplying the premium in high-tier devices,” Palkhiwala said, saying that match issues are not “a big factor” for Qualcomm in the short term.

Qualcomm says it still has supply constraints, and that while the company would still “ship more” if it could make more, it sees the global chip shortage going according to its plans.

“We do have constraints really across-the-board and you have to figure out how the demand would have played out if there was supply across the industry,” Palkhiwala said. “But we feel pretty comfortable that the overall supply picture is playing out exactly as we had planned.”

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AI startup Cursor raises $2.3 billion funding round at $29.3 billion valuation

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AI startup Cursor raises .3 billion funding round at .3 billion valuation

Emilija Manevska | Moment | Getty Images

Artificial intelligence startup Cursor on Thursday announced it has closed a $2.3 billion funding round at a $29.3 billion post-money valuation, nearly triple what it was worth as of its last raise in June.

Tune in at 4:30 p.m. ET as Cursor CEO Michael Truell joins “Closing Bell: Overtime” to discuss the funding round. Watch in real time on CNBC+ or the CNBC Pro stream.

Cursor built a popular AI coding tool that helps software developers generate, edit and review code. Its parent company, Anysphere, is an applied research lab that was founded in 2022.

Cursor is one of just a handful of AI startups, including OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Safe Superintelligence and Thinking Machines, that are valued at over $10 billion.

Investors including Accel, Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, Coatue, Nvidia and Google participated in its latest funding round, according to a blog post.

“This funding will allow us to invest deeply in our research and build Cursor’s next magical moments,” Cursor said.

Read more CNBC tech news

Since the tool first launched in 2023, Cursor said it has crossed $1 billion in annualized revenue and swelled to more than 300 employees.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called the company his “favorite enterprise AI service” in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in October.

The company said its in-house models generate more code than “almost” any other large language models in the world.

The coding tool market has grown more crowded in recent months as it’s proved to be a lucrative AI use case. Cursor competes with companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and Cognition, which acquired the AI coding startup Windsurf in July.

OpenAI approached Anysphere earlier this year about potentially purchasing Cursor, but the deal failed to gain traction, as CNBC previously reported. OpenAI was also briefly in talks to acquire Windsurf before ultimately introducing its own coding tool called Codex in May.

In September, Anthropic said its coding tool Claude Code has already generated more than $500 million in run-rate revenue for the company since its full launch in May. As of July, Windsurf was generating $82 million in annual recurring revenue, Cognition said in a blog post at the time.

“Internally, we often talk about how high the ceiling is for how great Cursor can become, and how much work still remains to get there,” Cursor said.

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Verizon chairman Mark Bertolini says the board ‘needed to act’ to revive company

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Verizon chairman Mark Bertolini says the board 'needed to act' to revive company

Mark Bertolini on new role as Verizon chairman: Losing 30% share over the last 8 years is an issue

Verizon chairman Mark Bertolini said Thursday that the company’s new CEO, former PayPal boss Dan Schulman, is working to revive Verizon from its period of share losses under former CEO Hans Vestberg.

Bertolini, who is also the Oscar Health CEO and who was named Verizon chairman last month, told CNBC’s Becky Quick on “Squawk Box” that the company needs to “do something different” as it undergoes its leadership change.

“Verizon has gone from number one in market cap, bond ratings and market share to number three. And the network isn’t as differentiated as it used to be, in large part because everybody’s been spending money to put these 5G networks in place,” Bertolini said. “So losing 30% share over the last eight years is an issue, and we have to do something different.”

In October, the company announced Schulman would be replacing Vestberg, who had led the company since 2018. In a statement at the time, Schulman said Verizon was at a “critical juncture” and that he believed the company had a “clear opportunity to redefine our trajectory.”

Schulman previously led PayPal through significant revenue growth and has served on Verizon’s board of directors since 2018.

Vestberg is remaining on the the board of directors until the 2026 annual meeting and serving as a special advisor through Oct. 4, 2026.

Bertolini said Thursday that Schulman is evaluating underlying cost structures and other aspects of the company to ensure its success.

“We believe that once we have that plan in place, we’ll have a good story,” Bertolini said. “The Street reacted early on that there’s going to be a price war; I think it’s less about price war than the value of what we’re offering to people through the product.”

Bertolini added that Schulman will be revealing his plan for turning around the company “sooner rather than later.”

“The board needed to act, and we acted,” Bertolini said.

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Musk’s xAI raises $15 billion in latest funding round

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Musk's xAI raises  billion in latest funding round

Elon Musk announced his new company xAI, which he says has the goal to understand the true nature of the universe.

Jaap Arriens | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Elon Musk‘s artificial intelligence company xAI has raised $15 billion from investors, sources familiar with the matter told CNBC’s David Faber.

The funding adds another $5 billion to the $10 billion round CNBC reported on in September that valued the startup at $200 billion. Sources told CNBC that a lot of the money will fund graphic processing units that underpin large language models.

Artificial intelligence startups have reached sky high valuations in recent months as they raise massive amounts of capital to power seemingly endless demand for foundational models.

In September, AI startup Anthropic closed a $13 billion funding round that roughly tripled its valuation from March. Sam Altman’s OpenAI in October closed a $6.6 billion share sale at a $500 billion valuation.

Last last week, Tesla shareholders voted to approve Musk’s massive pay package worth nearly $1 trillion, and voted on a proposal for the company to invest in xAI.

Brandon Ehrhart, general counsel at Tesla, said there were more votes for than against, but noted the abstentions and said the company is considering next steps on the issue.

This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.

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