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Zipline

This week, drone delivery company Zipline was granted Federal Aviation Administration approval to fly drones beyond the visual line of sight. That’s a major milestone in efforts to extend the range of the domestic drone industry over U.S. airspace, and Zipline isn’t the only drone operator to recently receive FAA approval.

In a series of moves in August and earlier in September, the FAA gave the same clearance to UPS subsidiary Flight Forward (which delivers packages by drone), avionics provider uAvionix, and drone inspection provider Phoenix Air Unmanned. It’s a regulatory aim that the drone companies have been working towards for a decade and will pave the way for other companies to receive streamlined approval for their own drone flights beyond the visual line of sight, as well as for more consumer companies to accelerate efforts to deliver goods by unmanned aircraft. 

The FAA told aviation publication Flying that the approvals will serve as the basis for “summary grants” in the future as it continues to work towards formal rulemaking and to help fast track business models similar to the ones to receive the first approvals, meaning package delivery, drone inspections, medical supplies and drone aviation system development, such as uAvionix. 

Prior to “beyond the visual line of sight” approval, human observers were required to be stationed along the entire route a drone was flying to ensure that there was no interference with air traffic. The new regulations allow for drones to be flown without observers, which the companies say will increase accessibility and scalability of what’s still a nascent business in the U.S. 

“For the last few years, we’ve been operating in the U.S. with training wheels,” said Zipline CEO Keller Cliffton. “We were able to make deliveries to homes but we always needed to stay within a mile-and-a-half of our distribution centers, which made it easy to serve tens of thousands of people, but impossible to serve hundreds of thousands of people.”

Now he says Zipline will be able to serve “hundreds of millions of people” in the U.S.

“It unlocks the scale of the technology so that everybody can benefit. And, at scale, this technology will save people a lot of money, and it will also save lives in the U.S.,” said Cliffton, whose company began in 2014 as a drone solution for emergency medical deliveries in hard-to-reach geographies but has expanding into multiple sectors and has deals with retailers including Walmart.

Zipline releases new drone designed for rapid home deliveries

In March, Zipline released its drone Platform 2, or P2 Zip, which can carry up to eight pounds within a ten-mile radius, finish flights in about ten minutes, and land a package on a space as small as a table or doorstep.

“The reason that number is important is that when you look at e-commerce in the U.S., a vast majority of packages weigh five pounds or less,” Cliffton said in a conversation with CNBC about the new drones in March. As far back as 2020, the company was part of drone tests with Walmart in Arkansas. Early this year, Walmart announced that with partners including Zipline, DroneUp and Flytrex, it had grown to 36 drone delivery hubs across Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, Texas, Utah and Virginia.

The FAA approvals mean the regulator is satisfied that the drones can safely operate with autonomous technology to monitor airspace and avoid aircraft that they may encounter. Zipline’s drone programming enacts 500 preflight safety checks and has an acoustic avoidance system, though was still unable to fly beyond the line of sight until it received FAA approval. 

The list of products that Zipline — a five-time CNBC Disruptor 50 company that ranked No. 25 on this year’s list — is flying since it started as a medical care supplier in Rwanda has grown to include food deliveries, prescriptions, agriculture products, retail items, and medical supplies for both humans and animals. 

“Approval of an onboard perception system that enables beyond visual line of sight flight has been the holy grail for drone delivery for the last 10 years,” Cliffton said. 

And he says there are global implications of the long-awaited U.S. decision.

“Both the FAA and Congress know that it is really strategically important for the U.S. to stay in the lead when it comes to this fundamental technological transformation that’s happening, where it’s suddenly now possible to build the first logistics systems that are fully zero emission and automated,” he said.

“I think some people have seen how much other countries were growing on this front and thought maybe the U.S. was going to fall behind, and I think this is an exciting demonstration that the U.S. may be a fast follower of a few other countries, but that in general, the U.S. is going to be a global leader when it comes to this industry.”

Amazon drones make 100th delivery, lagging far behind Alphabet's Wing and Walmart partner Zipline

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Trump’s Nvidia and Intel meddling is a ‘scattershot method of crony capitalism’: Walter Isaacson

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Trump's Nvidia and Intel meddling is a 'scattershot method of crony capitalism': Walter Isaacson

U.S. government's push for Intel stake is a scattershot method of crony capitalism: Walter Isaacson

President Donald Trump‘s dealings with Intel and Nvidia amount to a “scattershot method of crony capitalism,” Walter Isaacson said Thursday.

“That state capitalism often evolves into crony capitalism, where you have favored companies and industries that pay tribute to the leader, and that is a recipe for not only disaster, but just sort of a corrupt sense of messiness,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

The Tulane University professor, widely known for his recent Elon Musk biography, argued that this method won’t succeed in reviving American manufacturing.

Isaacson’s comments come as the Trump administration wades further into influencing the way companies operate in the U.S.

The White House is pushing for a stake in embattled chipmaker Intel after Trump called CEO Lip-Bu Tan “highly CONFLICTED” and said he should resign.

Earlier this month, both Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices agreed to pay 15% of their China revenues to the U.S. government for export licenses to sell certain chips there.

Isaacson said he’s always been “dubious” of public-private partnerships. He highlighted Trump’s push for Coca-Cola to use cane sugar in its namesake soda as another example of “crony capitalism.”

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Google’s Pixel 10 launch wasn’t about the phones but the strategic AI play

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Google’s Pixel 10 launch wasn't about the phones but the strategic AI play

A person holds Google Pixel 10 Pro mobile phones during the ‘Made by Google’ event, organized to introduce the latest additions to Google’s Pixel portfolio of devices, in Brooklyn, New York, U.S., August 20, 2025.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

While Google made a big splash with its Pixel 10 series of smartphones, it was the software features that were strategically important for the tech giant’s bid to compete with players like OpenAI and Perplexity in consumer AI.

As it introduced its latest devices on Wednesday, Alphabet-owned Google showed off a slew of artificial intelligence features that are powered by the firm’s Gemini AI models. “Magic Cue,” for example, can scour various apps for information and deliver it to users when required. “Camera Coach” can give users tips on how to adjust framing and other aspects of a picture for the perfect shot. Live translation for phone calls is also available.

All of this gives a glimpse into the so-called “agentic AI” future that tech giants are hoping to reach, where super-smart AI assistants can carry out complex tasks.

It is a pivotal time for Google to come up with answers, as fears mount that users and revenue from its core search product could be eroded as more people turn to rivals like Perplexity and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Before Google lies a unique opportunity — the company develops Android, the operating system that is installed across more than three billion devices globally, many of which are smartphones.

How Android could be Google's best shot to take on OpenAI's ChatGPT

“The company is leapfrogging rivals like OpenAI and DeepSeek by leveraging its access to billions of Android users, enabling a more effective distribution, integration, and a wider range of use cases for Gemini at scale,” Neil Shah, partner at Counterpoint Research, told CNBC.

Ben Wood,  chief analyst at CCS Insight, said the smartphone is the “most pervasive consumer device on the planet” and that Google now has an “opportunity to get people hooked on Gemini.”

Google doesn’t need to sell a high volume of Pixel phones to find AI success with consumers. In fact, Pixel had just a 0.3% share of the global smartphone market in the first half of the year, compared to 23% for Samsung and 11.8% for Apple, according to the International Data Corporation.

But Google’s aim with its smartphones is to show off the best that Android has to offer in terms of software and AI. At that point, Android licensers, which include the likes of Samsung and Xiaomi, may adopt some of those features on their new handsets.

This cycle would in turn spread Google’s Gemini and AI tools to more users.

“This massive user base creates a “flywheel effect” of adoption, usage, and feedback, further solidifying Gemini’s position as a master agent on the most widely used device on the planet—the smartphone,” Shah said.

The timing is also advantageous because of struggles at rival Apple. The Cupertino giant’s lack of AI strategy has concerned investors, with the iPhone showing very few features compared to Google’s offerings.

“Google has their tails up because Apple has dropped the ball. When Apple gets AI right it will be a fantastic experience. But right now, Google and all Android licensees have a window of opportunity,” Wood said.

Yet while there is now a land grab for users between major AI players, questions still linger over how Google will eventually monetize its AI services.

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UK faces legal challenge over attempt to force through data center development

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UK faces legal challenge over attempt to force through data center development

Erik Isakson | Digitalvision | Getty Images

The U.K. government is facing a legal challenge from campaigners over its decision to override a local authority and wave through development of a new “hyperscale” data center.

Last year, the local authority of Buckinghamshire, England, denied planning permission for proposals to build a new 90-megawatt data center on green belt land. The green belt is a term in British town planning that refers to an area of open land on which building is restricted.

Data centers, large facilities that house floods of computing systems to enable remote delivery of various IT services, have seen huge demand in recent years amid a global rush to develop powerful new AI systems, such as OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT chatbot.

At the same time, they have been met with concerns from environmental campaigners and activists due to the vast amounts of power they require to keep them running on an ongoing basis. AI, in particular, has been criticized for consuming massive amounts of energy.

Plans to develop the Buckinghamshire facility were twice rejected by the council previously. However, they were again resurrected under the Labour government, which is pushing to make the U.K. a global artificial intelligence hub by ramping up national computing capacity.

Buckinghamshire council again rejected the planned data center in June 2024, saying it would be “inappropriate” to develop it on the green belt. Then, last month, British Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner granted planning permission for the project, overturning the local authority’s decision.

Campaign groups Foxglove and Global Action Plan announced on Thursday that they filed a formal planning statutory review asking a court to quash Rayner’s approval of the data center, raising concerns over the vast amounts of power and water such facilities require.

“Angela Rayner appears to either not know the difference between a power station that actually produces energy and a substation that just links you to the grid — or simply not care,” Foxglove Co-executive Director Rosa Curling, said in a statement Thursday. 

“Either way, thanks to her decision, local people and businesses in Buckinghamshire will soon be competing with a power guzzling-behemoth to keep the lights on, which as we’ve seen in the States, usually means sky-high prices.”

The U.K. Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government — which Rayner also leads — declined to comment on the legal action when asked about it by CNBC. The government has previously stressed the importance of building data center infrastructure to compete on a global level in AI development.

Thursday’s move comes after British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in January announced plans to block campaigners from making repeated legal challenges from so-called “Nimbys” to planning decisions for major infrastructure projects in England and Wales.

Nimby is a derogatory term that refers to people who protest developments they view as unpleasant or hazardous to their local area.

Europe’s battle for power spurs evolution of a new ecosystem for data centers

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