Chinese semiconductor firm Cambricon posted record profit in the first half of the year underscoring how local challengers to Nvidia are gaining traction as Beijing looks to boost its domestic industry.

Cambricon is among a plethora of companies in China that are vying to be an alternative to American giant Nvidia when it comes to providing the chips required to train and run artificial intelligence applications and models.

In the first half of the year, Cambricon said revenue surged more than 4,000% year-on-year to 2.88 billion Chinese yuan ($402.7 million) and net profit hit a record 1.04 billion yuan. The numbers remain small when compared to Nvidia which reported $44 billion of revenue in its February to April quarter. The tech giant is due to report its fiscal second-quarter earnings later today.

Still, Cambricon’s surge in revenue highlights how tech companies in China are searching for potential alternatives to Nvidia, given the continuous threat that they could be cut off from American technology.

Nvidia was blocked earlier this year from selling its pared back H20 chip to China. It has since been allowed to resume exports to China but must share 15% of its revenue from sales to the country with the U.S government.

Meanwhile, China has reportedly been discouraging local firms to buy Nvidia’s H20 chips.

Chinese tech giants have been using local chips as well as the Nvidia hardware they have been able to get their hands on, which is helping companies like Cambricon.

Shares of Cambricon have more than doubled this year and it has added north of $40 billion to its market capitalization, according to S&P Capital IQ. The total value of the company is around $80 billion.

Nvidia’s strength has not only been in its hardware but also in its software which developers have become accustomed to using. Cambricon said Wednesday that it too is improving its software offering and is working on next-generation hardware.

Nevertheless, China’s Nvidia rivals face many obstacles when it comes to beating the competition. Their technology remains far behind that of Nvidia’s while the longer term outlook looks even more challenging because of export controls cutting China off from the most advanced chipmaking techniques, blocking advancements in China’s domestic AI chip efforts.

Microsoft asked police to remove people who improperly entered a building at its headquarters in protest of the Israeli military’s alleged use of the company’s software as part of the invasion of Gaza.

On Tuesday, current and former Microsoft employees affiliated with the group No Azure for Apartheid started protesting inside a building on Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington, and gained entry into the office of Brad Smith, the company’s president. The protesters delivered a court summons notice at his office, according to a statement from the group.

“Obviously, when seven folks do as they did today — storm a building, occupy an office, block other people out of the office, plant listening devices, even in crude form, in the form of telephones, cell phones hidden under couches and behind books — that’s not OK,” Smith told reporters during a briefing.

“When they’re asked to leave and they refuse, that’s not OK. That’s why for those seven folks, the Redmond police literally had to take them out of the building.”

Smith said that out of the seven people who entered his office, two were employees.

While the company doesn’t retaliate against employees who express their views, Smith said, it’s different if they make threats. Microsoft will look at whether to discipline the employees who participated in the protest, Smith said.

Once inside Microsoft’s building 34, the No Azure For Apartheid protesters demanded that the company cut its ties with Israel and ask for an end to the country’s alleged genocide.

Tech’s megacap companies are doing more work with defense agencies, particularly as demand increases for advanced artificial intelligence technologies. Many of those activities were already controversial, but the issue has gotten more intense as Israel has escalated its military offensive in Gaza.

Last year Google fired 28 employees after some trespassed at the company’s facilities. Some employees gained access to the office of Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google’s cloud unit, which had a contract with Israel’s government.

No Azure for Apartheid has held a series of actions this year, including at Microsoft’s Build developer conference and at a celebration of the company’s 50th anniversary. A Microsoft director reached out to the Federal Bureau of Investigation as the protests continued, Bloomberg reported earlier on Tuesday.

Last week, No Azure For Apartheid mounted protests around the company’s campus, leading to 20 arrests in one day. Of the 20, 16 have never worked at Microsoft, Smith said.

The Guardian reported earlier this month that Israel’s military used Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure to store Palestinians’ phone calls, leading the company to authorize a third-party investigation into whether Israel has drawn on the company’s technology for surveillance.

“I think the responsible step from us is clear in this kind of situation: to go investigate and get to the truth of how our services are being used,” Smith said on Tuesday.

Most of Microsoft’s work with the Israeli Defense Force involves cybersecurity for Israel, he said. He added that the company cares “deeply” about the people in Israel who died from the terrorist attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, and the hostages who were taken, as well as the tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza who have died since from the war.

Microsoft intends to provide technology in an ethical way, Smith said.

WATCH: Microsoft President Brad Smith: AI is influencing the types of workers who are hired

OpenAI is detailing its plans to address ChatGPT’s shortcomings when handling “sensitive situations”
following a lawsuit from a family who blamed the chatbot for their teenage son’s death by suicide.

“We will keep improving, guided by experts and grounded in responsibility to the people who use our tools — and we hope others will join us in helping make sure this technology protects people at their most vulnerable,” OpenAI wrote on Tuesday, in a blog post titled, “Helping people when they need it most.”

Earlier on Tuesday, the parents of Adam Raine filed a product liability and wrongful death suit against OpenAI after their son died by suicide at age 16, NBC News reported. In the lawsuit, the family said that “ChatGPT actively helped Adam explore suicide methods.”

The company did not mention the Raine family or lawsuit in its blog post.

OpenAI said that although ChatGPT is trained to direct people to seek help when expressing suicidal intent, the chatbot tends to offer answers that go against the company’s safeguards after many messages over an extended period of time.

The company said it’s also working on an update to its GPT-5 model released earlier this month that will cause the chatbot to deescalate conversations, and that it’s exploring how to “connect people to certified therapists before they are in an acute crisis,” including possibly building a network of licensed professionals that users could reach directly through ChatGPT.

Additionally, OpenAI said it’s looking into how to connect users with “those closest to them,” like friends and family members.

When it comes to teens, OpenAI said it will soon introduce controls that will give parents options to gain more insight into how their children use ChatGPT.

Jay Edelson, lead counsel for the Raine family, told CNBC on Tuesday that nobody from OpenAI has reached out to the family directly to offer condolences or discuss any effort to improve the safety of the company’s products.

“If you’re going to use the most powerful consumer tech on the planet — you have to trust that the founders have a moral compass,” Edelson said. “That’s the question for OpenAI right now, how can anyone trust them?”

Raine’s story isn’t isolated.

Writer Laura Reiley earlier this month published an essay in The New York Times detailing how her 29-year-old daughter died by suicide after discussing the idea extensively with ChatGPT. And in a case in Florida, 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III died by suicide last year after discussing it with an AI chatbot on the app Character.AI.

As AI services grow in popularity, a host of concerns are arising around their use for therapy, companionship and other emotional needs.

But regulating the industry may also prove challenging.

On Monday, a coalition of AI companies, venture capitalists and executives, including OpenAI President and co-founder Greg Brockman announced Leading the Future, a political operation that “will oppose policies that stifle innovation” when it comes to AI.

If you are having suicidal thoughts or are in distress, contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 for support and assistance from a trained counselor.

WATCH: OpenAI says Musk’s filing is ‘consistent with his ongoing pattern of harassment