The Securities and Exchange Commission filed 13 charges against Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, and its founder, Changpeng Zhao, alleging both comingled billions of dollars worth of user funds and sent them to a European company controlled by Zhao.
The U.S. regulator alleged Zhao and his exchange worked to subvert “their own controls” to allow high net worth U.S. investors and customers to continue trading on Binance’s unregulated international exchange.
One senior executive allegedly told a compliance officer that the company was operating as a “[f—ing] unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro.”
The complaint alleges Binance created Binance.US as a shield for the main company and Zhao, to “reveal, retard, and resolve” law enforcement targets and insulate Binance.
Two successive Binance.US CEOs expressed deep concern over Zhao’s level of control, according to the SEC. Both testified before federal regulators: Neither were named, but its first and second chief executives were Catherine Coley and Brian Brooks.
“I’m not actually the one running this company, and the mission that I believe I signed up for isn’t the mission. And as soon as I realized that, I left,” a former Binance.US CEO identified as “BAM CEO B” testified to the SEC.
Binance earned $11.6 billion in revenue, most of which came from transaction fees, from June 2018 through July 2021, the complaint said. Since its inception, the exchange has “at first overtly and later furtively” worked to entice U.S. customers, at the direction and control of its founder Zhao, the SEC alleged.
Binance knew that tens of thousands of customers were in the U.S. but chose not to act, the SEC alleged, despite federal law barring the unregistered offer and sale of securities. Binance’s ultimate compliance, in 2019, was largely a public show, the SEC complaint continues.
The SEC alleges Zhao ordered the creation of an evasion plan for high net worth customers, using a VPN service to hide their U.S. location and submitting compliance documents to obscure their country of origin.
CNBC previously reported on how Binance employees encouraged users to evade the exchange’s “know your customer” systems through VPNs.
“We do need to let users know that they can change their KYC on Binance.com and continue to use it. But the message, the message needs to be finessed very carefully because whatever we send will be public. We cannot be held accountable for it,” Zhao allegedly told his top team in 2019.
The SEC also alleged that Binance and Zhao used market-making companies that they controlled to inflate trading prices and profit off their customers.
Merit Peak and Sigma Chain allegedly acted as “market makers” for Binance’s two platforms, meaning they were always available to fill a customer order to buy or sell a crypto asset. But the SEC complaint highlighted multiple issues with the two companies’ roles: They were both beneficially owned by Zhao and collected “tens of billions of dollars” of customer money. The firms also mixed customer funds with Binance’s money, similar to allegations against bankrupt crypto exchange FTX.
Most damaging to investors, they allegedly engaged in “wash trading,” trading with themselves to artificially prop up the price of crypto assets.
Sigma Chain collected $190 million for its beneficial owner Zhao, the SEC alleged. The “proprietary trading firm” then spent $11 million to purchase a “yacht,” the complaint said.
Zhao dismissed the charges on Twitter by saying “4,” a popular refrain in Binance’s community urging users to ignore fear, uncertainty and doubt, or “FUD.”
The complaint comes after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed similar charges against the crypto exchange, alleging it failed to prevent U.S. customers from accessing it.
“We will issue a response once we see the complaint,” Zhao said on Twitter. “Media gets the info before we do.”
In a blog post that followed, Binance wrote, “We are disappointed that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chose to file a complaint today against Binance seeking, among other remedies, purported emergency relief.” The company added that it has “actively cooperated with the SEC’s investigations” and “engaged in extensive good-faith discussions to reach a negotiated settlement to resolve their investigations.”
The defendants showed a “blatant disregard” for federal law, the SEC alleged. The complaint included a “high-level” breakdown of Binance’s ownership structure, with Zhao and his holding vehicles allegedly controlling 100% of Binance and Binance.US’ various entities.
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.
Amazon ‘s latest round of layoffs may help the bottom line, but CNBC’s Jim Cramer encouraged investors to keep their eyes on what really matters. That would be Amazon Web Services. The e-commerce and cloud giant said Tuesday it will cut 14,000 corporate jobs, or about 4% of the total corporate and tech workforce, to invest in other higher-priority areas such as generative AI. The company employs roughly 1.5 million people around the world. Most of those positions are warehouse jobs. “The reductions we’re sharing today are a continuation of this work to get even stronger by further reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources to ensure we’re investing in our biggest bets,” Beth Galetti, senior vice president of people experience and technology at Amazon, wrote in a blog post. “The layoffs are good, but it doesn’t matter [for the upcoming quarter] at all,” Jim said Monday on ” Mad Money ,” previewing Amazon’s third-quarter earnings, which are set to release after Thursday’s close. “The stock’s now being graded on whether Amazon Web Services is going to grow the same way as Azure. That’s ridiculous. It’s much bigger than Azure,” Jim reiterated Tuesday on ” Squawk on the Street .” AWS, which is the largest cloud, grew 18% in the second quarter, trailing behind 39% growth for Microsoft ‘s Azure, which is No. 2. ( Alphabet ‘s Google Cloud is third , with Oracle a distant fourth but growing.) Jim estimates Amazon’s cloud unit will deliver 21% revenue growth in Q3, which could be enough to lift the stock and finally break out after months of lagging its tech peers. For years, the market has generally cheered layoff announcements, viewing them as a lift to earnings, but Amazon’s announcement did not move the needle that much, with shares up just over 1.5%. Amazon has gained less than 4% in 2025, making it the worst by far of the “Magnificent Seven” stocks year to date. The S & P 500 has advanced nearly 17% this year. Zooming out, Amazon’s stock performance looks even worse. Since Andy Jassy took over as CEO in July 2021, shares have gained nearly 30%. During that same time frame, the S & P 500 advanced roughly double that, and Microsoft surged 95%. AMZN 5Y mountain AMZN stock 5-year performance. However, Jim said the company’s underperformance under Jassy is neither a reason to sell the stock nor a ding on the CEO’s leadership. Jassy, who took over from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos , has been on a campaign to cut costs across the company over the past few years. Amazon laid off 27,000 employees between 2022 and 2023, and job reductions have continued since then to create a leaner and more efficient business. At the same time, the company has also been ramping up AI investments — just as all the other hyperscalers have been doing. “I am with Jassy,” Jim said, adding he’s sticking with Amazon even though it’s been a megacap laggard. He noted he’s not going to make the same mistake of selling Alphabet. The Club completed Alphabet exit back in March after a stretch of underperformance due to government antitrust headwinds and the threat of AI to Google search. “I’m furious I sold it,” Jim said, looking back at how Alphabet has soared since. “I did it to Alphabet. I’m not going to wreck this one,” he said, referring to Amazon. (See here for a full list of the stocks at Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
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.”
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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.”