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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks during an event at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, on Feb. 7, 2023.

Chona Kasinger | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Microsoft said Thursday that it’s dispensing with the waiting list it has had in place for the past three months for its revamped Bing search engine, allowing anyone with a Microsoft account to use it. The new Bing, revealed in February, features a chatbot smartened up with the GPT-4 artificial intelligence model from OpenAI that’s similar to the startup’s viral ChatGPT bot.

Google remains the leader in search advertising. Microsoft wants to become a more formidable challenger after introducing Bing in 2009, with help from OpenAI. Microsoft has said that for every percentage point of share it gains in the highly profitable search category, its revenue will increase by $2 billion.

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With its appearance in late November, ChatGPT has sparked a wave of interest in generative AI technologies that create text, images and other content in response to human input. Microsoft provides cloud services for ChatGPT and offers GPT-4 to businesses looking to draw on generative AI.

In addition to augmenting Bing with the GPT-4, Microsoft has announced plans to incorporate the AI model into its Microsoft 365 productivity software and bring out a chatbot for security practitioners, among other products. Google, for its part, is working to add generative AI to its search engine, and it has a language model rivaling GPT-4 that developers have begun using.

“We have really good, positive signal from the time we launched,” Divya Kumar, global head of marketing for search and AI at Microsoft, told CNBC in an interview. Last week, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Bing had crossed 100 million daily active users.

But while Bing has taken share of consumer web searches, it has not won share of search revenue in the nearly three months since Microsoft introduced the new version during a press event on its Redmond, Washington, campus, Bernstein analysts led by Mark Shmulik wrote in a Wednesday note to clients.

“At its heights Bing hit #4 on the US iOS App download rank in early February,” the Bernstein analysts wrote, citing Apptopia data. “Following the launch of the new Bing, Bing’s total app download volume has increased by 4x. However, Bing download momentum declined throughout March and April.” Bernstein has the equivalent of buy ratings on Google parent Alphabet and Microsoft shares.

Now, Microsoft is bulking up Bing with more capabilities in addition to broadening access.

Microsoft is adding a way to get back to previous chat conversations, which ChatGPT has offered for months. It will provide a way to export chats to Microsoft Word documents. It also will start showing images and other media in chat messages when appropriate.

And over time, Bing will add integrations to third-party services such as OpenTable and Wolfram Alpha, enabling people to view and take action on current information when talking with the chatbot. OpenAI announced a similar concept called plug-ins for ChatGPT in March, but those wishing to try them must first join a waiting list.

Kumar said the company will provide more details on how developers can build for the Bing chatbot at its Microsoft Build developer conference, which starts on May 23.

People still must go through Microsoft’s Edge web browser on PCs or the Bing app on mobile devices in order to use the new Bing, including its chatbot. That means Google has yet to allow people to use the Bing chatbot from Google’s dominant Chrome browser. “We’re still early in the journey and were still learning,” Kumar said.

Edge has increased its share of the web browsing market every quarter for the past two years, Yusuf Mehdi, consumer marketing chief, wrote in a blog post. Microsoft includes Edge in its Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems, and the default search engine in Edge is Bing.

Microsoft is updating Edge so that when people open a result that appears during a Bing chat, the chat will move to a sidebar in Edge in order to keep the conversation going, Mehdi wrote.

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South Korea’s LG Energy Solution signs $4.3 billion battery supply deal with undisclosed party

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South Korea's LG Energy Solution signs .3 billion battery supply deal with undisclosed party

The logo of LG Electronics is seen on the opening day of the Integrated Systems Europe exhibition in Barcelona on January 31, 2023.

Pau Barrena | Afp | Getty Images

South Korea-based LG Energy Solution announced Wednesday that it had signed a $4.3 billion contract for supplying batteries to a major corporation, without naming the customer.

The effective date of contract — receipt of orders — began Tuesday and will conclude at the end of July, 2030. During this period, the counterparty will not be disclosed to maintain business confidentiality, the company’s filing with the Korea Exchange showed Wednesday. Reuters reported that Tesla was the counterparty.

Earlier this week, Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that the EV maker was behind a previously undisclosed $16.5 billion chip contract with South Korea’s Samsung Electronics. 

LG Energy said in its filing that details of the contract such as the deal amount were subject to change and the contract period could be extended by up to seven years. 

“Investors are advised to carefully consider the possibility of changes or termination of the contract when making investment decisions,” the company cautioned. It’s shares were trading 0.26% lower. 

The filing did not clarify whether the lithium iron phosphate batteries would be used in vehicles or energy storage systems. Its major battery customers include American electric-vehicle makers Tesla and General Motors.

The company has been expanding its battery production in the U.S., and is constructing a plant in Arizona that will produce lithium iron phosphate batteries. 

LG Energy Solution and Tesla did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment. 

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CyberArk’s stock jumps on report Palo Alto Networks in talks to buy company for over $20 billion

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CyberArk's stock jumps on report Palo Alto Networks in talks to buy company for over  billion

Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks, looks on during the closing bell at the Nasdaq Market in New York City, U.S., March 25, 2025.

Jeenah Moon | Reuters

CyberArk shares soared as much as 18% on Tuesday after The Wall Street Journal reported that cybersecurity provider Palo Alto Networks has held discussions to buy the identity management software maker for over $20 billion.

Cloud security is becoming an increasingly critical piece of the enterprise tech stack, especially as rapid advancements in artificial intelligence bring with them a whole new set of threats, and as ransomware attacks become more commonplace.

Founded in 2005, Palo Alto Networks has emerged in recent years as a consolidator in the cybersecurity industry and has grown into the biggest player in the space by market cap, with a valuation of over $130 billion. CEO Nikesh Arora, who was appointed to the job in 2018, has been on a spending spree, snapping up Protect AI in a deal that closed in July, and in 2023 buying Talon Cyber Security, Dig Security and Zycada Networks.

But CyberArk would represent by far Arora’s biggest bet yet. The Israeli company, which went public in 2014, provides technology that helps companies streamline the process of logging on to applications for employees.

CyberArk faces competition from Microsoft, Okta and IBM‘s HashiCorp. Another rival, SailPoint, returned to the public markets in February.

With Tuesday’s rally, CyberArk shares climbed to a record, surpassing their prior all-time high reached in February. The stock is up 29% this year, pushing the company’s market cap to almost $21 billion, after jumping 52% in 2024. Palo Alto shares, meanwhile, slid 3.5% on the report and are now up about 9% for the year.

Representatives from Palo Alto Networks and CyberArk declined to comment.

During the first quarter, CyberArk generated around $11.5 million in net income on around $318 million in revenue, which was up 43% from a year earlier.

It’s been an active stretch for big deals in the cyber market. Google said in March that it was spending $32 billion on Wiz, its largest acquisition on record by far, and a purchase intended to bolster its cloud business with greater AI security technology.

Networking giant Cisco also made its biggest deal ever in the security space, buying Splunk in 2023 for $28 billion. Splunk’s technology helps businesses monitor and analyze their data to minimize the risk of hacks and resolve technical issues faster.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report

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Spotify stock falls on revenue miss, lackluster guidance

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Spotify stock falls on revenue miss, lackluster guidance

Thomas Fuller | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Spotify shares dropped about 4% Tuesday after the music streaming platform fell short of Wall Street’s expectations and posted weak guidance for the current quarter.

Here’s how the company did versus LSEG estimates:

  • Loss: Loss of .42 euros vs earnings of 1.90 euros per share expected
  • Revenue: 4.19 billion euros vs. 4.26 billion expected

The Sweden-based music platform’s revenues rose 10% from about 3.81 billion euros in the year-ago period. The company posted a net loss of 86 million euros, or a loss of .42 euros per share, down from net income of 225 million euros, or 1.10 euros per share a year ago.

Third-quarter guidance came up short of Wall Street’s forecast.

The company expects revenues to reach 4.2 billion euros, compared to a 4.47 billion euro estimate from StreetAccount. Spotify said the forecast accounts for a 490-basis-point headwind due to foreign exchange rates.

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Monthly active users on the platform jumped 11% to 696 million, while paying subscribers rose 12% from a year ago to 276 million.

For the current quarter, Spotify said it expects to reach 710 million monthly active users, with 14 million net adds. The company expects 5 million net new premium subscribers in the third quarter to reach 281 million subscriptions.

During the period, Spotify said it rolled out a request feature for its artificial intelligence DJ. The company said engagement with the offering has roughly doubled over the last year.

In 2024, Spotify posted its first full year of profitability. Shares are up 57% this year.

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