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DCG, Luno’s parent company, has been grappling with the ongoing fallout from last year’s plunge in token prices and the collapse of FTX.

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Vijay Ayyar, a senior executive at cryptocurrency exchange Luno and one of its earliest employees, is leaving the company.

Ayyar, who is Luno’s vice president of corporate development and international, resigned from the firm after seven years working there, he told CNBC Tuesday.

It comes after the company, which is owned by Digital Currency Group, announced the closure of its operation in Singapore, where Ayyar is based.

Ayyar said the move was not related to Luno’s decision to exit Singapore, however, and that he quit to join another company in the crypto and Web3 space. Ayyar did not disclose which company he is joining next.

“I’ll be leaving Luno after 7 years at the company,” Ayyar said in a WhatsApp message. “Given the time I’d spent at Luno, just seemed like it was time for another challenge.”

A Luno spokesperson confirmed Ayyar’s decision Tuesday.

“Vijay will be leaving after seven years,” the spokesperson said. “His role is a global one and isn’t tied to anything related to our Singapore closure. He’s leaving to pursue a new opportunity in the industry.”

Ayyar held a number of roles at Luno over the years. He was most recently tasked with building out the firm’s business-facing services, pitching Luno accounts to funds, fintech companies, and businesses wanting to use crypto.

Before that, Ayyar led Luno’s partnership efforts globally and helped the exchange launch in over 40 markets across Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, and the U.S.

In addition to his corporate responsibilities at Luno, Ayyar also serves as something of a crypto market guru, providing frequent commentary to the press on moves in markets.

His departure comes as Luno undergoes a major restructuring effort to contend with the lull in crypto markets. Luno laid off 35% of its workforce in January, joining a host of other crypto exchanges that have cut jobs.

The company also lost its co-founder and chief technology officer, Timothy Stranex, in December.

In March, Luno announced its CEO Marcus Swanepoel was stepping down and would be replaced with Chief Operating Officer James Lanigan.

The company hired Canaccord Genuity, the investment bank, to court outside investors for the first time since it was taken over by DCG in 2020.

DCG, Luno’s parent company, has been grappling with the ongoing fallout from last year’s plunge in token prices, and the collapse of FTX, the controversial exchange whose failure in November sparked a series of bankruptcies in the industry.

WATCH: FTX’s collapse is shaking crypto to its core. The pain may not be over

FTX's collapse is shaking crypto to its core. The pain may not be over

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Michael Dell says ‘at some point there’ll be too many’ AI data centers, but not yet

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Michael Dell says 'at some point there'll be too many' AI data centers, but not yet

Dell CEO Michael Dell: AI demand is very solid

Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell said Tuesday that while demand for computing power is “tremendous,” the production of artificial intelligence data centers will eventually top out.

“I’m sure at some point there’ll be too many of these things built, but we don’t see any signs of that,” Dell said on “Closing Bell: Overtime.”

The hardware maker’s server networking business grew 58% last year and was up 69% last quarter, Dell said. As large language models have evolved to more multimodal and multi-agent systems, the demand for AI processing power and capacity has continued to be strong.

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Dell’s AI servers are powered by Nvidia‘s Blackwell Ultra chips. The company then sells its devices to customers like cloud service provider CoreWeave and xAI, Elon Musk’s startup.

Dell shares rose over 3% Tuesday after increasing its expected long-term revenue and profit growth in an analyst meeting.

The computer maker raised its expected annual revenue growth to 7% to 9%, up from its previous target of 3% to 4%, with diluted earnings per share now expected to be 15% higher, up from its previous 8% target.

The company reported strong second-quarter earnings in August, and said it planned to ship $20 billion worth of AI servers in fiscal 2026. That is double what it sold last year.

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OpenAI’s Sora 2 must stop allowing copyright infringement, Motion Picture Association says

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OpenAI's Sora 2 must stop allowing copyright infringement, Motion Picture Association says

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The Motion Picture Association on Monday urged OpenAI to “take immediate and decisive action” against its new video creation model Sora 2, which is being used to produce content that it says is infringing on copyrighted media.

Following the Sora app’s rollout last week, users have been swarming the platform with AI-generated clips featuring characters from popular shows and brands.

“Since Sora 2’s release, videos that infringe our members’ films, shows, and characters have proliferated on OpenAI’s service and across social media,” MPA CEO Charles Rivkin said in a statement.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman clarified in a blog post that the company will give rightsholders “more granular control” over how their characters are used.

But Rivkin said that OpenAI “must acknowledge it remains their responsibility – not rightsholders’ – to prevent infringement on the Sora 2 service,” and that “well-established copyright law safeguards the rights of creators and applies here.”

OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.

Concerns erupted immediately after Sora videos were created last week featuring everything from James Bond playing poker with Altman to body cam footage of cartoon character Mario evading the police.

Although OpenAI previously held an opt-out system, which placed the burden on studios to request that characters not appear on Sora, Altman’s follow-up blog post said the platform was changing to an opt-in model, suggesting that Sora would not allow the usage of copyrighted characters without permission.

However, Altman noted that the company may not be able to prevent all IP from being misused.

“There may be some edge cases of generations that get through that shouldn’t, and getting our stack to work well will take some iteration,” Altman wrote.

Copyright concerns have emerged as a major issue during the generative AI boom.

Disney and Universal sued AI image creator Midjourney in June, alleging that the company used and distributed AI-generated characters from their films and disregarded requests to stop. Disney also sent a cease-and-desist letter to AI startup Character.AI in September, warning the company to stop using its copyrighted characters without authorization.

WATCH: OpenAI’s Sora 2 sparks AI ‘slop’ backlash

OpenAI's Sora 2 sparks AI 'slop' backlash

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Billionaire tech investor Orlando Bravo says ‘valuations in AI are at a bubble’

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Billionaire tech investor Orlando Bravo says 'valuations in AI are at a bubble'

Orlando Bravo: AI valuations are in a bubble

Thoma Bravo co-founder Orlando Bravo said that valuations for artificial intelligence companies are “at a bubble,” comparing it to the dotcom era.

But one key difference in the market now, he said, is that large companies with “healthy balance sheets” are financing AI businesses.

Bravo’s private equity firm boasts more than $181 billion in assets under management as of June, and focuses on buying and selling enterprise tech companies, with a significant chunk of its portfolio invested in cybersecurity.

Bravo told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Tuesday that investors can’t value a $50 million annual recurring revenue company at $10 billion.

“That company is going to have to produce a billion dollars in free cash flow to double an investor’s money, ultimately,” he said. “Even if the product is right, even if the market’s right, that’s a tall order, managerially.”

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OpenAI recently finalized a secondary share sale that would value the ChatGPT-maker at $500 billion. The company is projected to make $13 billion in revenue for 2025.

Nvidia recently said it would invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI, in part, to help the ChatGPT maker lease its chips and build out supercomputing facilities in the coming years.

Other public companies have soared on AI promises, with Palantir’s market cap climbing to $437 billion, putting it among the 20 most valuable publicly traded companies in the U.S., and AppLovin now worth $213 billion.

Even early-stage valuations are massive in AI, with Thinking Machines Lab notching a $12 billion valuation on a $2 billion seed round.

Despite the inflated numbers, Bravo emphasized that there’s a “big difference” between the dotcom collapse and the current landscape of AI.

“Now you have some really big companies and some big balance sheets and healthy balance sheets financing this activity, which is different than what happened roughly 25 years ago,” he said.

Oracle shares fall on report the company is struggling to make money renting out Nvidia chips

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