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Executive women platform Chief opened a new clubhouse in San Francisco this week.

Chief

In a bustling building in New York’s Flatiron district, two executive women who work at separate companies discuss marketing strategies for their respective businesses. Next to them, three retired women in their sixties share a champagne toast. Across the room, several other women, sitting at single wooden tables, have their heads down at their laptops. Whitney Houston’s “I’m Every Woman” plays in the background.

“I’m in the middle of a career transition,” says one woman to another she just met at the nearby bar. She says she works for Cushman & Wakefield but plans to change careers from her job in human resources.

“I’ve done big companies for far too long and I think it’s time to move on to something smaller,” she continued. “Covid did us all in,” the other woman said, agreeably nodding.

It may sound like a typical professional networking environment but one thing about this building is different: there’s not a single man in sight.

‘Sense that this is a first’

Chief’s San Francisco clubhouse includes a full-service bar.

The recently-opened clubhouse is located adjacent to the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco’s financial district. Silicon Valley had the highest demand from members, said founders Lindsay Kaplan and Carolyn Childers. The region is home to 2,000 local members working for Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Zoom and Stanford among others.

The 8,600 square-foot space features a full-service bar with specialty coffee, open lounge space, meeting rooms, private call booths and a Mothers Room. All the artwork in Chief’s clubhouses comes from the women-led company Uprise Art, founded by member Tze Chun.

Over 300 members attended the launch event at the San Francisco clubhouse. Members flew in for the clubhouse opening night in late October. Some arrived straight from the airport. “So exciting!” one woman rolling a suitcase said as she greeted Childers and Kaplan with hugs. “I’ve f—–g earned this,” Kaplan recalled another saying.

Susan Cevallos Coleman, a global vice president at GoPro attended the opening night. “I just looked around and had a moment,” Coleman said.

“You have the profound sense that this is a first,” said Attica Jaques, Global Head of Brand Marketing at Google who also attended the opening night.

‘Full Circle’

A month after the San Francisco Chief club’s opening, women say they already see it as a milestone moment that represents more than just a new building.

Silicon Valley has historically had the highest density of homogeneous demographics that favored white men in executive ranks. It’s also historically been unfriendly to women as exclusionary “boys clubs” long overtook the world’s tech epicenter. Unlike other nearby clubhouses like the Battery, Chief’s new clubhouse is a place designed just for them.

“I know deeply the feeling of the tech industry led by white men,” Jaques said. “It’s interesting coming full-circle and it feels long overdue.”

Executive women platform Chief opened a new clubhouse in San Francisco this week.

Chief

Jaques, a San Francisco native who moved back to San Francisco from New York in 2019, said “we tend to always feel like we have to pull up a seat at the table if it’s not there, so we’ve built a muscle around it.”

Coleman added: “The women who have somehow, some way made it to where we are now, can now influence the younger women who may be hesitant to dip their toes in the lake because what they read is it may not be a friendly place for them.”

“But when I walk into the Chief space, that premise that tech is exclusionary no longer feels true,” she said.

Coleman, who’s spent her career working in tech auditing in Silicon Valley since the early 2000s at Sun Microsystems, said she’s looking forward to using the space as a central meeting place for her core group of Chief members dispersed across the Bay Area. Jaques said she’s looking forward to networking happy hours and programming speakers. The platform hosted a virtual event with speaker Melinda French Gates in early November when around 2,000 Chief members tuned in.

“This is the physical manifestation of what I’ve been benefitting from,” Coleman said after the opening. “I saw so many amazing women, including one I worked with three companies ago.”

The Covid-19 pandemic bolstered Chief’s business as women flocked to Chief’s platform, which served as a support system during a time of solitude, members said. More than 20,000 senior executives have signed on from over 8,500 companies including HBO, American Express, Nike, Google, Goldman Sachs, NASA and Apple. Annual membership starts at $5,800 for women at the vice president level and $7,900 for C-suite executives. About 70% of members are sponsored by their employers.

With backing from Alphabet’s venture arm and a business model that relies on subscription to its digital platform, it’s more sustainable than a real-estate-focused business like The Wing, which was forced to close its doors over the summer.

The platform has a massive waitlist of 60,000 people, but Childers and Kaplan say they should be able to start vetting applicants more quickly now that the company has additional money to hire people and build out the technology.

Less ‘pantsuits and bad cheese plates’

Kaplan briefly worried about a dusty rose art piece at the center of the main San Francisco clubhouse room. “We might have to change that,” she remarked. “It’s kind of pink. I just don’t want it to be like ’this a space for women and this is pink.'”

“So often, executive spaces for women look like a space full of pantsuits and bad cheese plates in the corner but we’re in a moment where we can redefine what it looks like,” she added.

A large open floor plan with leather couches and chairs and high ceilings with bookshelves makes it feel more like a living room for casual, serendipitous interactions, members said.

Bathrooms have brushed gold finishes on faucets and around mirrors. Marble countertops lie under Chief-branded disposable towels by each sink while low-volume music plays overhead. The bar features a mid-century modern design with wooden paneling and a large chandelier made of hundreds of glasses.

The space has several “phone booths” with ring lights built in for Zoom meetings. A room on the other side of the main space is much lighter with eggshell-colored walls, a grand piano, and plush white lounge chairs that appear like furniture from a spa.

“There’s a relaxed atmosphere, no competition,” Coleman said. “We’re just finding ways to support one another.”

“It’s a beautiful space to accompany this feeling that things are profoundly changing,” Jaques said. “Being able to walk and have a new space that you feel welcomed in and meeting other women is going to be incredible and it just feels like there’s no going back to what was before.”

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Jensen Huang says Nvidia’s AI chips are now being manufactured in Arizona

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Jensen Huang says Nvidia's AI chips are now being manufactured in Arizona

Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., speaks to members of the media prior to the keynote address at the Nvidia AI summit in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025.

Kent Nishimura | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said at the company’s GTC conference on Tuesday that its Blackwell graphics processing units — the company’s fastest AI chips — are now in full production in Arizona.

Previously, Nvidia’s fastest GPUs were solely manufactured in Taiwan.

Huang said that President Donald Trump had asked him nine months ago to bring manufacturing back to U.S. shores.

“The first thing that President Trump asked me for is bring manufacturing back,” Huang said. “Bring manufacturing back because it’s necessary for national security. Bring manufacturing back because we want the jobs. We want that part of the economy.”

Earlier this month, Nvidia and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company announced that the first Blackwell wafers had been produced in a facility in Phoenix, Arizona. Wafers are the base material on which semiconductors are etched onto.

Nvidia said in a video that Blackwell-based systems will now be assembled in the U.S., too.

Much of what the company announced on Tuesday at its conference in Washington was for an audience of policymakers to convince them of the essential role that Nvidia plays, and that it would hurt U.S. interests to restrict its exports.

Huang said on Tuesday on a panel before his speech that Nvidia was holding its conference in Washington to allow Trump to attend, according to CNBC’s Kristina Partsinevelos, but the president is currently on a trip in Asia.

Trump said on Tuesday that he planned to meet with Huang on Wednesday, according to a Reuters report

Demand for the company’s GPUs remains high, with 6 million Blackwell GPUs shipped in the last four quarters, Huang said Tuesday. Nvidia expects $500 billion in GPU sales between the Blackwell generation and next year’s Rubin chips combined, he added.

Cell networks ‘built on foreign technologies’

Additionally, Huang Tuesday said Nvidia would partner with Finland-based Nokia to build gear for telecommunications, an industry that he said was worth $3 trillion. As part of the partnership, Nvidia will take a $1 billion stake in Nokia.

Huang said that Nvidia is building chips for 5G and 6G base stations because it’s important to have wireless networks based on American technology.

“Thank you for helping the United States bring telecommunication technology back to America,” Huang said to Nokia CEO Justin Hotard during his speech.

The deal is an appeal to Western policymakers who have long had concerns about the amount of technology from China’s Huawei that is used for cellular networks around the world.

“Our fundamental communication fabric is built on foreign technologies,” Huang said. “That has to stop, and we have an opportunity to do that, especially during this fundamental platform shift.”

Nokia will use Nvidia chips in its future base stations, which are the pricey computers that distribute cellular signals. Huawei gear, the market leader, was effectively banned in the U.S. in 2018, leaving Nokia and Ericcson as the primary equipment vendors for U.S. networks. 

Huang said that Nokia would be using a new product called Nvidia ARC that combines its Grace GPU, a Blackwell GPU and the company’s networking parts. Huang said that AI delivered over next-generation 6G networks could help operate robots and deliver more accurate weather forecasts.

Stakes are high

The location of the conference carries significance as Nvidia makes the case that it is a core part of the “U.S technology stack.”

Huang has argued that it would be better for American interests if Chinese AI developers got used to U.S. technology like Nvidia’s chips, rather than forcing the Chinese to develop their own AI chips. 

“Nvidia is a proud American company building the U.S. AI infrastructure that will ensure our country leads the world in shaping the future of innovation,” Kari Briski, Nvidia’s vice president of generative AI software for enterprise, told reporters on a Monday call. 

The stakes are high for Nvidia. U.S. export restrictions have already cost Nvidia billions of dollars in lost sales.

In April, the U.S. government informed Nvidia that its H20 chip, which was specially designed to comply with U.S. export controls, would require a license to ship to China. In May, Nvidia said it would have recorded about $10.5 billion in H20 sales over two quarters if the government hadn’t made the license requirement.

Then, in July, Huang visited Trump in Washington and again tried to persuade him and other administration officials that it is in U.S. interests to ship Nvidia chips to China. The Trump administration said it would approve license requests for the H20, but that Nvidia would have to pay the U.S. government 15% of China sales. 

Still, Nvidia’s China business isn’t yet back on track.

Earlier this month, Huang said at a financial conference that Nvidia is currently “100% out of China” and has no market share there. While Nvidia said it would receive licenses for the H20 chip, the company hasn’t revealed a newer chip for China based on the company’s current generation of Blackwell GPUs.

Quantum computing

Many of Nvidia’s announcements on Tuesday were partnerships intended to signal that the company works with a variety of U.S. companies.

Among those announcements was NVQLink, a new way to connect quantum chips to Nvidia’s GPUs.

The U.S. having a lead in quantum computing is important to policymakers because military officials are worried that a foreign adversary may be able to spy on military communications if it gets a working quantum computer first. 

Nvidia officials said in a Monday call that its chips can be used to correct errors that pop up during quantum computing and advance the technology. Nvidia said that 17 different quantum computing startups would produce hardware compatible with NVQLink.

“Researchers will be able to do more than just error correction,” Huang said Tuesday. “They will also be able to orchestrate quantum devices and AI supercomputers to run quantum GPU applications.”

Nvidia also said it will partner with the Department of Energy to build seven new supercomputers.

WATCH: Nvidia CEO: We brought GTC to DC so President Trump could attend

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Cramer: Amazon layoffs will help costs, but growth in this one area is what’s needed most

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Cramer: Amazon layoffs will help costs, but growth in this one area is what's needed most

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GitHub unites OpenAI, Google and Anthropic AI agents in one place to bring ‘order to the chaos’

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GitHub unites OpenAI, Google and Anthropic AI agents in one place to bring 'order to the chaos'

Signage at the Microsoft campus in Mountain View, California, US, on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025.

Benjamin Fanjoy | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Microsoft’s GitHub unit on Tuesday announced Agent HQ, a new “mission control” interface that will allow software developers to manage coding agents from multiple vendors on a single platform. 

An artificial intelligence agent is a tool that can independently complete tasks on behalf of a user. Several companies, including GitHub, have built and released popular agents that are specifically designed for programming. 

Developers have a range of new capabilities at their fingertips because of these agents, but it can require a lot of effort to keep track of them all individually, said GitHub COO Kyle Daigle.

Developers will now be able to manage agents from GitHub, OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, xAI and Cognition in one place with Agent HQ.  

“We want to bring a little bit of order to the chaos of innovation,” Daigle told CNBC in an interview. “With so many different agents, there’s so many different ways of kicking off these asynchronous tasks, and so our big opportunity here is to bring this all together.”  

Read more CNBC tech news

Agent HQ users will be able to access a command center where they can assign, steer and monitor the work of multiple agents.

That means they’ll be able to see what their agents are working on and course correct in real time if they get off track.

The third-party agents will begin rolling out to GitHub Copilot subscribers in the coming months, but Copilot Pro+ users will be able to access OpenAI Codex in VS Code Insiders this week, the company said.

GitHub was acquired by Microsoft in 2018, and it allows users to store, share and collaborate on code. Its platform now supports more than 180 million developers, and the company said it is growing at its fastest rate ever. 

“This is an era of abundance for AI and we just want to make sure that that abundance doesn’t turn to chaos,” Daigle said. “We can allow you to have a great experience using all of these tools via a very open GitHub platform.”

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Bill Gates: AI is the biggest technical thing ever in my lifetime

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