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Andy Jassy, CEO, Amazon

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After a recent infusion of government money into technology that sucks carbon out of the air, big business is getting in as well.

Amazon announced Tuesday that it will help fund the world’s largest deployment of direct air capture (DAC) technology by purchasing a quarter of a million metric tons of carbon removal over the next decade from STRATOS, the first DAC plant from 1PointFive, a carbon removal technology company. Amazon did not disclose the dollar value of the investment.

The carbon that is removed through the air capture systems will then be stored underground in saline aquifers, which are large rock formations saturated in salt water.

A quarter of a million metric tons of carbon dioxide is equivalent to the emissions in one year from 55,633 gasoline-powered cars, according to the EPA.

Amazon, through its Climate Pledge Fund, is also investing in CarbonCapture Inc., a climate tech firm that is helping to accelerate commercial deployment of new DAC materials to absorb carbon.

“With these two new investments in direct air capture, we aim to target emissions we can’t otherwise eliminate at their source,” Kara Hurst, Amazon’s VP of worldwide sustainability, said in a release. “We’re also helping launch technologies we know the world will need to avoid the worst effects of global climate change — supporting those technologies’ growth so they’ll also be available to other companies and organizations.”

Amazon is attempting to decarbonize its global operations through wind and solar renewable energy projects, delivery fleet electrification and reduction in the weight packing per shipment.

Amazon’s announcement comes on the heels of Microsoft‘s news that it has agreed to buy carbon credits from California-based startup Heirloom Carbon, which uses limestone to remove carbon from the atmosphere. The credits will remove up to 315,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide over the next decade. That would amount to at least $200 million based on market prices. The carbon offsets are equivalent of the annual emissions of roughly 70,000 gas-powered cars.

Heirloom’s DAC Hub was recently selected by the U.S. Department of Energy for up to $600 million in matching funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

“As an investor in and customer of Heirloom, we believe that Heirloom’s technical approach and plan are designed for rapid iteration to help drive down the cost of large-scale Direct Air Capture at the urgent pace needed to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement,” Brian Marrs, Microsoft’s senior director of energy and carbon, said in a release.

While these are some of the largest financial commitments to DAC, scientists say that worldwide, it’s necessary to remove about 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in this century in order to keep global warming below the 1.5 degrees Celsius-limit set by the Paris Agreement, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“Solving big problems requires innovation and invention of new technologies that don’t exist yet, and it’s important that we use all the tools available to us to make the greatest impact,” Hurst said.

 

 

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AI startup Cursor raises $2.3 billion funding round at $29.3 billion valuation

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AI startup Cursor raises .3 billion funding round at .3 billion valuation

Emilija Manevska | Moment | Getty Images

Artificial intelligence startup Cursor on Thursday announced it has closed a $2.3 billion funding round at a $29.3 billion post-money valuation, nearly triple what it was worth as of its last raise in June.

Tune in at 4:30 p.m. ET as Cursor CEO Michael Truell joins “Closing Bell: Overtime” to discuss the funding round. Watch in real time on CNBC+ or the CNBC Pro stream.

Cursor built a popular AI coding tool that helps software developers generate, edit and review code. Its parent company, Anysphere, is an applied research lab that was founded in 2022.

Cursor is one of just a handful of AI startups, including OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Safe Superintelligence and Thinking Machines, that are valued at over $10 billion.

Investors including Accel, Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, Coatue, Nvidia and Google participated in its latest funding round, according to a blog post.

“This funding will allow us to invest deeply in our research and build Cursor’s next magical moments,” Cursor said.

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Since the tool first launched in 2023, Cursor said it has crossed $1 billion in annualized revenue and swelled to more than 300 employees.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called the company his “favorite enterprise AI service” in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in October.

The company said its in-house models generate more code than “almost” any other large language models in the world.

The coding tool market has grown more crowded in recent months as it’s proved to be a lucrative AI use case. Cursor competes with companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and Cognition, which acquired the AI coding startup Windsurf in July.

OpenAI approached Anysphere earlier this year about potentially purchasing Cursor, but the deal failed to gain traction, as CNBC previously reported. OpenAI was also briefly in talks to acquire Windsurf before ultimately introducing its own coding tool called Codex in May.

In September, Anthropic said its coding tool Claude Code has already generated more than $500 million in run-rate revenue for the company since its full launch in May. As of July, Windsurf was generating $82 million in annual recurring revenue, Cognition said in a blog post at the time.

“Internally, we often talk about how high the ceiling is for how great Cursor can become, and how much work still remains to get there,” Cursor said.

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Verizon chairman Mark Bertolini says the board ‘needed to act’ to revive company

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Verizon chairman Mark Bertolini says the board 'needed to act' to revive company

Mark Bertolini on new role as Verizon chairman: Losing 30% share over the last 8 years is an issue

Verizon chairman Mark Bertolini said Thursday that the company’s new CEO, former PayPal boss Dan Schulman, is working to revive Verizon from its period of share losses under former CEO Hans Vestberg.

Bertolini, who is also the Oscar Health CEO and who was named Verizon chairman last month, told CNBC’s Becky Quick on “Squawk Box” that the company needs to “do something different” as it undergoes its leadership change.

“Verizon has gone from number one in market cap, bond ratings and market share to number three. And the network isn’t as differentiated as it used to be, in large part because everybody’s been spending money to put these 5G networks in place,” Bertolini said. “So losing 30% share over the last eight years is an issue, and we have to do something different.”

In October, the company announced Schulman would be replacing Vestberg, who had led the company since 2018. In a statement at the time, Schulman said Verizon was at a “critical juncture” and that he believed the company had a “clear opportunity to redefine our trajectory.”

Schulman previously led PayPal through significant revenue growth and has served on Verizon’s board of directors since 2018.

Vestberg is remaining on the the board of directors until the 2026 annual meeting and serving as a special advisor through Oct. 4, 2026.

Bertolini said Thursday that Schulman is evaluating underlying cost structures and other aspects of the company to ensure its success.

“We believe that once we have that plan in place, we’ll have a good story,” Bertolini said. “The Street reacted early on that there’s going to be a price war; I think it’s less about price war than the value of what we’re offering to people through the product.”

Bertolini added that Schulman will be revealing his plan for turning around the company “sooner rather than later.”

“The board needed to act, and we acted,” Bertolini said.

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Musk’s xAI raises $15 billion in latest funding round

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Musk's xAI raises  billion in latest funding round

Elon Musk announced his new company xAI, which he says has the goal to understand the true nature of the universe.

Jaap Arriens | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Elon Musk‘s artificial intelligence company xAI has raised $15 billion from investors, sources familiar with the matter told CNBC’s David Faber.

The funding adds another $5 billion to the $10 billion round CNBC reported on in September that valued the startup at $200 billion. Sources told CNBC that a lot of the money will fund graphic processing units that underpin large language models.

Artificial intelligence startups have reached sky high valuations in recent months as they raise massive amounts of capital to power seemingly endless demand for foundational models.

In September, AI startup Anthropic closed a $13 billion funding round that roughly tripled its valuation from March. Sam Altman’s OpenAI in October closed a $6.6 billion share sale at a $500 billion valuation.

Last last week, Tesla shareholders voted to approve Musk’s massive pay package worth nearly $1 trillion, and voted on a proposal for the company to invest in xAI.

Brandon Ehrhart, general counsel at Tesla, said there were more votes for than against, but noted the abstentions and said the company is considering next steps on the issue.

This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.

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