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Llion Jones had a big role at Google, where he worked for almost 12 years. He was one of eight authors of the pivotal Transformers research paper, which is central to the latest in generative artificial intelligence.

However, like all of his co-authors, Jones has now left Google. He’s joining fellow ex-Google researcher David Ha to build a generative AI research lab in Tokyo called Sakana AI. Jones said that while he has no ill will toward Google, he realized that the company’s size was keeping him from doing the kind of work he wanted to pursue.

“It’s just a side effect of big company-itis,” Jones told CNBC in an interview. “I think the bureaucracy had built to the point where I just felt like I couldn’t get anything done.”

Jones, who studied AI in college and has a masters in advanced computer science from the University of Birmingham, is at the center of the action. The 2017 paper he helped write at Google laid out innovations that played into OpenAI’s creation of the viral chatbot ChatGPT. The T stands for Transformers, an architecture behind much of today’s frenetic generative AI activity.

“We’re kind of crazy,” Jones said. “We’re looking at nature-inspired methods to see if we can find a different way of doing things, rather than doing a huge, humongous model.” Sakana isn’t announcing any investors.

Jones became a software engineer at Google’s YouTube in 2012. According to his LinkedIn profile, he started “researching machine intelligence and natural language understanding” at Google in 2015.

Google is one of a number of large tech companies that hired hordes of researchers in recent years, some straight from universities, to construct AI models aimed at enriching their products. Over time, Jones said he encountered questions about why the software was malfunctioning and whose fault it was. He found it all to be a distraction from the research.

“Every day I would be spending my time trying to get access to resources, trying to get access to data,” Jones said.

Now, after many years building products in labs, Google is rushing to incorporate generative AI, including large language models (LLMs), into its search engine, YouTube and other products. The models can summarize information and come up with human-like responses to written questions.

In Jones’ view, Google is focusing “the entire company around this one technology,” and innovation is more challenging “because that’s quite a restrictive framework,” he said.

Ha said he and Jones have spoken with others who want to work on LLMs, but they haven’t finalized their plans.

“I would be surprised if language models were not part of the future,” said Ha, who left Google last year to be head of research at startup Stability AI. He said he doesn’t want Sakana to just be another company with an LLM.

Both Jones and Ha have unflattering things to say about OpenAI, which has brought the concept of generative AI to the mainstream but raised billions of dollars from Microsoft and other investors to do so. Ha described it as “becoming so big and a bit bureaucratic,” no different really than groups within Google.

Jones said he doesn’t think OpenAI is all that innovative. He said that for OpenAI’s two biggest successes, ChatGPT and the DALL-E service for creating images with a few words of text, the startup took research he performed at Google and applied it on a large scale, making refinements along the way but holding off on sharing the developments with the community. While OpenAI has released neither of the technologies under an open-source license, it has published papers on some of the underlying systems.

Representatives from Google and OpenAI didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Ha said Sakana has brought on a part-time researcher from academia, and the company will eventually hire more people. Asked if they’ve added any other Google employees, Ha said, “Not yet.”

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Autonomous EV trucking company Einride going public in SPAC deal valuing it at $1.8 billion

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November 12, 2025

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Autonomous EV trucking company Einride going public in SPAC deal valuing it at .8 billion

Autonomous EV freight trucking company Einride is planning to go public on the New York Stock Exchange through a SPAC deal with Legato Merger Corp. III, a blank check company, valuing it at $1.8 billion.

The deal is expected to raise $219 million in gross proceeds, with up to an additional $100 million in PIPE capital from institutional investors, with Einride to begin trading during the first half of 2026.

In announcing its plans, the Stockholm, Sweden-based company reported a contracted annual recurring revenue base of $65 million and over $800 million in potential long-term ARR.

Founded in 2016, Einride has over 25 customers across seven countries, and regulatory permits in the United States and Europe. Its current fleet of approximately 200 electric vehicles is used by customers including GE Appliances and Swedish online pharmacy company Apotea.

“Today marks a defining moment for Einride and for the future of freight technology,” said
Roozbeh Charli, CEO of Einride, in a release. “We’ve proven the technology, built trust with global customers, and shown that autonomous and electric operations are not just possible, but better. This transaction positions us to accelerate our global expansion and continue to deliver with speed and precision for our customers,” said Charli, who took over the CEO post from co-founder and previous CEO Robert Falck last May.

Einride has made the CNBC Disruptor 50 list for three consecutive years, ranking No. 24 in 2025.

Freight trucking in the U.S. and elsewhere, estimated by Einride at a $4.6 trillion market, is both carbon-intensive and inefficient. Einride’s technology is designed to reduce emissions at scale and prove electric freight is viable both technologically and economically.

PepsiCo is among the companies that has been piloted use of Einride freight solutions, in markets including Memphis, Tennessee, and in Germany. Heineken added EV freight routes between the Netherlands and Germany in 2024, and to Austria this year. Einride also has plans to deploy 300 electric trucks across Europe by 2030 with Mars.

To date, Einride provides freight services for both driver-operated electric trucks and heavy-duty autonomous EV trucks. Its technology can be licensed to third parties, both operational planning AI software and its autonomous driving system.

In May of last year, Einride signed a deal with DP World to deploy the largest autonomous EV fleet in the Middle East, at the major UAE port, Jebel Ali, one of the world’s largest shipping points.

While many of its deals to date are for EV and not autonomous technology, in the U.S. it marked a year of autonomous operations with GE Appliances in 2024, and began autonomous freight shipments with Swedish online pharmacy company Apotea, Europe’s first daily autonomous freight trips.

The U.S. is the company’s second-largest market and it plans to continue to invest in the country to accelerate deployment of its autonomous systems. In all, Einride reports over 1,700 driverless hours in contracted customer operations, over 11 million electric miles driven, and over 350,000 executed shipments.

“This transaction with Einride aligns with our vision to bring industry-leading, innovative technology to the public markets,” said Eric Rosenfeld, chief SPAC officer of Legato, in the release. “Einride’s proven customer relationships, regulatory achievements, and technology platform position the Company to be a leader in the transformation of the freight industry.”

It competes with autonomous trucking companies including Aurora Innovation and fellow Disruptor Waabi, which recently hired Uber Freight CEO and founder Lior Ron as its chief operating officer.

According to data from Matthew Kennedy, senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, a provider of pre-IPO research and IPO-focused ETFs, Legato Merger III raised $175 million in its February 2024 IPO ($201 million including a deal overallotment). The management term’s prior two SPACs produced Algoma Steel, a Canada-based steel producer that closed its merger with Legato I in October 2021, and Southland Holdings, an engineering and construction company that completed its merger with Legato II in Feb 2023. Both stocks are currently trading below their $10 transaction price. “This is not unusual for a de-SPAC, but it does highlight the general risk of holding into the merger that we’ve seen,” Kennedy said.

The SPAC market is booming this year, raising nearly 200% more proceeds than this point last year, according to Renaissance Capital data. It is the third-biggest year ever for SPACs, behind 2020 and 2021, measured in deal flow and proceeds, with Kennedy citing an acceleration in retail trading in tech companies, “which are the wheelhouse of SPAC merger activity,” he said.

Transportation technology, in particular, has been a focus for SPAC mergers, including autonomous driving and electrification. Kennedy noted SPACs in the space have mixed track record, with winners including Joby Aviation and Quantumscape, but a significant number of losers including Nikola, Vinfast, Lilium, Vertical Aerospace, Faraday Future, Volta, Polestar, Lucid, Aeye, and Canoo.

There is another trucking-focused SPAC deal underway between Plus.AI and Churchill Capital Corp IX.

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Google sues cybercriminal group behind E-ZPass, USPS text phishing scams

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November 12, 2025

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Google sues cybercriminal group behind E-ZPass, USPS text phishing scams

Signage at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, US, on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025.

Benjamin Fanjoy | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Google filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against a foreign cybercriminal group behind a massive SMS phishing, or “smishing,” operation.

Dubbed by some cyber researchers as the “Smishing Triad,” the organization, which Google said is largely based out of China, uses a phishing-as-a-service kit named “Lighthouse” to create and deploy attacks using fraudulent texts.

The crime group has amassed over a million victims across 120 countries, Google said in a release.

“They were preying on users’ trust in reputable brands such as E-ZPass, the U.S. Postal Service, and even us as Google,” Google general counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado told CNBC. “The ‘Lighthouse’ enterprise or software creates a bunch of templates in which you create fake websites to pull users’ information.”

Google brought claims under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, the Lanham Act, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse (CFAA) Act and is seeking to dismantle the group and the “Lighthouse” platform.

The texts usually contain malicious links to a fake website designed to steal victims’ sensitive financial information, including social security numbers, banking credentials, and more.

The messages can often appear in the form of a fake fraud alert, delivery update, unpaid government fee notification, or other seemingly urgent texts.

The crime group has stolen approximately between 12.7 million and 115 million credit cards in the U.S. alone, Google said.

“The idea is to prevent its continued proliferation, deter others from doing something similarly, as well as protect both the users and brands that were misused in these websites from future harm,” DeLaine Prado said.

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The Alphabet-owned company said that it has found over 100 website templates generated by “Lighthouse” using Google’s branding on sign-in screens to trick victims into thinking the sites were legitimate.

Internal and third-party investigations found that around 2,500 members of the syndicate were corresponding on a public Telegram channel to recruit more members, share advice, and test and maintain the “Lighthouse” software itself, DeLaine Prado said.

She added that the organization also had a “data broker” group, which supplied the list of potential victims and contacts, a “spammer” group, responsible for the SMS messages, and a “theft” group that would coordinate their attacks using the procured credentials on public Telegram channels.

Google said it’s the first company to take legal action against SMS phishing scams and is additionally endorsing three bipartisan bills intended to protect against fraud and cyberattacks.

“While the lawsuit is one potential vector in which we can disrupt it, we also think that this type of cyber activity requires a policy-based approach,” DeLaine Prado said.

The trio of bills includes the Guarding Unprotected Aging Retirees from Deception (GUARD) Act, the Foreign Robocall Elimination Act, which would establish a task force targeting foreign illegal robocalls, and the Scam Compound Accountability and Mobilization Act, which targets scam compounds and supports survivors of human trafficking within the centers.

The litigation is part of Google’s broader strategy to bring cyber protection awareness to users.

The company recently rolled out more safety features, including a Key Verifier tool and artificial intelligence-powered spam detection in Google Messages.

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CNBC Daily Open: SoftBank goes all in on OpenAI as ‘Big Short’ investor issues caution on AI firms

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November 12, 2025

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CNBC Daily Open: SoftBank goes all in on OpenAI as 'Big Short' investor issues caution on AI firms

Jensen Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., left, and Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank Group Corp., during a fireside chat at the Nvidia AI Summit Japan in Tokyo, Japan, on Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024.

Akio Kon | Bloomberg | Getty Images

SoftBank is selling its entire stake in Nvidia — but not for the reasons you might think.

In its earnings statement released Tuesday, the Japanese group said that it had sold 32.1 million Nvidia shares in October for $5.83 billion.

At first blush, this could be read as a sign that Nvidia’s high valuations are causing SoftBank some unease. And if SoftBank — which infamously pumped $18.5 billion into WeWork only to value it at $2.9 billion eventually — is tamping down on its usual optimism regarding its investments, then retail traders should probably pay attention.

Adding to such worries are comments by Michael Burry — who bet against subprime mortgages before they caused a whole financial crisis in 2008 — on major artificial intelligence companies.

Burry wrote Monday in a post on X that those firms are “understating depreciation” of AI chips, which “artificially boosts earnings — one of the more common frauds of the modern era.”  CNBC could not independently confirm that companies were practicing this.

This doesn’t seem to be SoftBank’s concern, however. A person familiar with the group’s sale told CNBC that it had nothing to do with AI valuations. On the contrary, cash from offloading Nvidia chips will be redirected to SoftBank’s $22.5 billion investment in OpenAI, the person said.

Burry said in his post that he will reveal “more details” on Nov. 25, and exhorted readers to “stay tuned.” That might not be enough enticement for SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son.

— CNBC’s Yun Li, April Roach and Dylan Butts contributed to this report.

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