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Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks at a panel at the CEO Summit of the Americas hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on June 09, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. The CEO Summit entered its second day of events with a formal signing for the “International Coalition to Connect Marine Protected Areas” and a speech from U.S. President Joe Biden. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees on Wednesday to take a few hours during the week to test the company’s artificial intelligence chat tool Bard as he faces criticism for leadership’s slow response to ChatGPT and rival Microsoft.

“I know this moment is uncomfortably exciting, and that’s to be expected: the underlying technology is evolving rapidly with so much potential,” Pichai wrote in a companywide email, which was viewed by CNBC.

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Pichai asked employees to spend two to four hours of their time on Bard, adding that next week the company will send more detailed instructions. He reminded staffers that Google has not always been the first to release a product, but that hasn’t hampered its ability to win.

“Some of our most successful products were not first to market,” Pichai wrote. “They gained momentum because they solved important user needs and were built on deep technical insights.”

Numerous search engines existed before Google hit the market in 1996, and yet they almost all vanished as Google came to dominate the industry. In mobile, Google didn’t introduce Android until years after the BlackBerry existed, and it also followed companies like Palm. Now, Android is the most popular mobile operating system in the world.

Still, Google parent Alphabet was slammed by investors last week after the company was upstaged by Microsoft’s announcement of a ChatGPT-integrated Bing search engine. Google unveiled its conversation technology Bard, but a series of missteps around the rushed announcement pushed the stock price down nearly 9%.

At the time, Pichai issued a rallying cry, asking for “every Googler to help shape Bard and contribute through a special company-wide dogfood,” referring to the practice of using its own product before launching it. Employees criticized Pichai for the mishaps, describing the rollout internally as “rushed,” “botched” and “comically short sighted.” 

Pichai’s latest email to employees went on to say that “this will be a long journey for everyone, across the field.”

“The most important thing we can do right now is to focus on building a great product and developing it responsibly,” he wrote.

In December, shortly after OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public, Google executives warned that they had to be deliberate in introducing AI search tools because the company has much more “reputational risk” and is moving “more conservatively than a small startup.”

Pichai said on Wednesday that the company has thousands of external and internal people testing Bard’s responses “for quality, safety, and groundedness in real-world information.”

“AI has gone through many winters and springs,” Pichai wrote. “And now it is blooming again.” He said it’s time to “embrace the challenge and keep iterating.”

“Channel the energy and excitement of the moment into our products,” Pichai wrote. “Pressure test Bard and make the product better.”

WATCH: CNBC’s full interview with Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai

Watch CNBC's full interview with Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai

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Tesla investor support for Elon Musk’s massive pay plan was lower in 2025 than in 2018

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Tesla investor support for Elon Musk's massive pay plan was lower in 2025 than in 2018

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, speaks during the 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting on Nov. 6, 2025.

Courtesy: Tesla

Tesla shareholders voted last week to give CEO Elon Musk a record pay package, one that could net him about $1 trillion in company stock over the next decade. But Musk received less support than he did for an earlier pay plan in 2018.

Setting aside holdings owned by board members and executives, about 66.9% of shares tabulated in the vote were in favor of the package, according to a filing on Friday. When shareholders voted on the 2018 plan, that number was 73%, according to an analysis by Andrew Droste, head of corporate governance at investment firm Columbia Threadneedle.

In announcing the preliminary results on Thursday at the company’s annual shareholders meeting, Tesla said the plan received 75% support among voting shares. The company count included insiders like Musk, who held around a 15% stake in Tesla going into the proxy and was allowed to vote his shares.

The decline from the prior vote follows a tumultuous stretch for Musk and Tesla. Sales slumped in the first half of the year, in part because of Musk’s inflammatory political rhetoric and his work for the Trump administration, slashing the size of the federal government. Tesla’s brand value has also deteriorated.

Still, Droste said in an email that even at just under 70%, the vote represents “broad support for Elon among Tesla’s shareholder base.” Most investors recognize that Tesla and Elon Musk are “inextricably linked,” he wrote, and were “unwilling to risk his potential departure by allowing this vote to fail.”

Board members recommended shareholders approve the pay plan, which they introduced in September. Top proxy advisors Glass Lewis and ISS had recommended that investors vote against it.

The pay package for Musk, already the world’s richest person, consists of 12 tranches of shares to be granted if Tesla hits certain milestones over the next decade. The first tranche of stock gets paid out if Tesla hits a market capitalization of $2 trillion, about $500 billion more than the current valuation. Awards tied to market cap gains are paired with operational achievements.

Musk could still collect more than $50 billion by hitting a handful of the more attainable goals laid out for him by the board in the new pay plan. There are also a list of “covered events” in the award terms that would allow him to earn his shares without meeting required operational milestones.

Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Correction: A prior version of this story had an incorrect figure for the vote in support of the pay package.

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CoreWeave’s stock slides on weak guidance even as revenue more than doubles

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CoreWeave's stock slides on weak guidance even as revenue more than doubles

Michael Intrator, co-founder and CEO of CoreWeave, speaks at the Semafor World Economy Summit during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Spring meetings in Washington on April 25, 2025.

Kent Nishimura | Bloomberg | Getty Images

CoreWeave, a provider of infrastructure for artificial intelligence companies, reported better-than-expected third-quarter revenue on Monday, but the company delivered disappointing full-year guidance. The stock dropped 6% in extended trading.

Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:

  • Earnings: Loss of 22 cents per share
  • Revenue: $1.36 billion vs. $1.29 billion expected

Revenue in the quarter soared 134% from $583.9 million a year ago, according to a statement. The company reported a net loss of $110 million, narrowing from about $360 million in the same quarter last year.

CoreWeave’s growth is tied directly to the AI boom, as the company rents out Nvidia graphics processing units and has won business from leading cloud infrastructure providers, including Google and Microsoft. The company’s backlog now stands at $55.6 billion, with 2.9 gigawatts in contracted power, up from 2.2 gigawatts on June 30, according to the statement.

However, CoreWeave now sees 2025 revenue coming in between $5.05 billion and $5.15 billion, trailing the average analyst estimate of $5.29 billion, according to LSEG.

A third-party data center developer is behind schedule, CEO Mike Intrator said on the company’s earnings call. But he added that the delay won’t affect CoreWeave’s backlog.

“There was a problem at one data center that’s impacting us, but there are 32 data centers in our portfolio,” Intrator said.

During the quarter, CoreWeave announced a $6.5 billion expansion of its business with OpenAI and a six-year deal with Meta worth up to $14.2 billion. CoreWeave also received its sixth contract from “a leading hyperscaler.”

The company remains supply-constrained, Intrator said. The shortage is not in power but instead has to do with the availability of partly completed “powered-shell” data centers in which CoreWeave can set up its own equipment, he said.

Meanwhile, CoreWeave is building its own data center infrastructure from the ground up in Pennsylvania, he said.

“The overwhelming majority of the delay that you’re seeing should be taken care of within Q1 of next year.” Intrator said.

CoreWeave went public on the Nasdaq in March, selling shares at $40 each. On Monday the stock closed at $105.61, representing a 164% return. The Nasdaq has gained 32% over a similar period. CoreWeave shares slipped in extended trading on Monday.

Less than four months after its IPO, CoreWeave announced its intent to acquire data center infrastructure operator Core Scientific for $9 billion, but Core Scientific shareholders voted against the proposed deal.

CoreWeave’s 2026 capital expenditures should be “well in excess of double” the total for 2025, which will end up between $12 billion and $14 billion, said Nitin Agrawal, the company’s finance chief.

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Nvidia CEO’s ask of Taiwan Semi means more upside for this portfolio stock

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