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Caroline Ellison, former chief executive officer of Alameda Research LLC, arrives to court in New York, US, on Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023. Ellison, ex-girlfriend of FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, outlined for a New York jury Wednesday how she worked with Sam Bankman-Fried to deceive lenders and customers to build his multi-billion dollar cryptocurrency empire, and their failed attempts to prevent a spectacular collapse. Photographer: Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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Caroline Ellison, the government’s star witness in its fraud case against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, took the stand for cross-examination on Thursday morning as the trial continued in a courthouse in downtown Manhattan.

Ellison was CEO of Bankman-Fried’s hedge fund, Alameda Research, and also dated him on and off while working with him. She pleaded guilty in December to two counts of wire fraud, two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Part of the 28-year-old’s plea deal with the government has involved cooperating with the prosecution’s case against Bankman-Fried.

On Thursday morning, Ellison faced aggressive questioning from Bankman-Fried’s lawyer, Mark Cohen, who spoke over her several times as she tried to testify. But Judge Lewis Kaplan also appeared annoyed at the fact that Cohen requested two sidebar conferences early on to pursue lines of questioning.

Ellison mostly avoided eye contact with the defendant, as she has during the past two days of testimony, staring down at her hands in between questions and frequently flipping her hair over her left shoulder.

Part of the cross-examination revolved around Sam Trabucco, who was Alameda’s co-CEO with Ellison from October 2021 until August 2022, months before both companies collapsed into bankruptcy as investors raced to withdraw funds from FTX amid allegations that it had used customer funds to help paper over losses at Alameda as the crypto market tanked.

Ellison testified that she and Trabucco began handling a lot of Alameda’s day-to-day business as early as 2020, well before officially taking over, and that there were periods of time where Bankman-Fried would not talk to them much. By 2021, she testified, Bankman-Fried had largely stopped coming into the Alameda office and had left more of the job to Ellison. She said that Trabucco was good under pressure and at handling extreme trading situations.

She also testified that the firm had attempted to hire several people to oversee Alameda’s accounting, but they all left and Ellison took on the role of preparing Alameda’s balance sheets from Ryan Salame, who had been the CEO of a subsidiary called FTX Digital Markets. In previous testimony, Ellison admitted that she had used FTX customer money to pay Alameda’s loans, and alleged she did so at Bankman-Fried’s suggestion.

Ellison also testified that Bankman-Fried had discussed adding a new co-CEO when Trabucco left, but she resisted.

When Cohen asked if she considered herself an ambitious person, Ellison said she didn’t think of herself as particularly ambitious, but became more so with Bankman-Fried’s encouragement as she worked for him.

Ellison’s cross-examination is likely to continue throughout Thursday morning.

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Trump AI czar Sacks says ‘no federal bailout for AI’ after OpenAI CFO’s comments

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Trump AI czar Sacks says 'no federal bailout for AI' after OpenAI CFO's comments

David Sacks, White House AI and Crypto Czar, attends a meeting of the White House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Education in the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 4, 2025.

Brian Snyder | Reuters

Venture capitalist David Sacks, who is serving as President Donald Trump’s artificial intelligence and crypto czar, said Thursday that there will be “no federal bailout for AI.”

“The U.S. has at least 5 major frontier model companies. If one fails, others will take its place,” Sacks wrote in a post on X.

Sacks’ comments came after OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar said Wednesday that the startup wants to establish an ecosystem of private equity, banks and a federal “backstop” or “guarantee” that could help the company finance its infrastructure investments.

She softened her stance later in a LinkedIn post and said OpenAI is not seeking a government backstop for its infrastructure commitments. She said her use of the word “backstop” clouded her point.

“As the full clip of my answer shows, I was making the point that American strength in technology will come from building real industrial capacity which requires the private sector and government playing their part,” Friar wrote.

The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. OpenAI directed CNBC to Friar’s LinkedIn post.

Sacks said the Trump Administration does want to make permitting and power generation easier, and that the goal is to facilitate rapid infrastructure buildouts without raising residential electricity rates.

“To give benefit of the doubt, I don’t think anyone was actually asking for a bailout. (That would be ridiculous.),” he wrote.

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White House AI czar David Sacks: AI race is even more important than the space race

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Microsoft forms superintelligence team under AI chief Suleyman ‘to serve humanity’

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Microsoft forms superintelligence team under AI chief Suleyman 'to serve humanity'

Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI and then CEO and co-founder of Inflection AI, speaks during the Axios BFD event in New York on Oct. 12, 2023.

Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters

Microsoft on Thursday said it’s forming a team that will be tasked with performing advanced artificial intelligence research.

Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of the Microsoft AI group that includes Bing and the Copilot assistant, announced the formation of the MAI Superintelligence Team, and said in a blog post that he’ll be leading it.

“We are doing this to solve real concrete problems and do it in such a way that it remains grounded and controllable,” Suleyman wrote. “We are not building an ill-defined and ethereal superintelligence; we are building a practical technology explicitly designed only to serve humanity.”

The decision comes months after Facebook parent Meta spent billions to hire talent for its new Meta Superintelligence Labs unit that’s working on research and products. The term superintelligence typically refers to machines deemed more intelligent than the smartest people.

Suleyman was a co-founder of AI lab DeepMind, which Google bought in 2014. After leaving Google in 2022, he co-founded and led AI startup Inflection. Microsoft hired Suleyman and several other Inflection employees last year.

Top technology companies have rushed to hire leading AI engineers and researchers, augmenting their products with generative AI capabilities. The boom started with OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT in 2022.

Microsoft uses OpenAI models in Bing and Copilot, while OpenAI runs workloads in Microsoft’s Azure cloud. Microsoft also owns a $135 billion equity stake in OpenAI following a restructuring.

Microsoft has taken steps to reduce its dependence on OpenAI. After the Inflection deal, the software company also began drawing on models from Google and from Anthropic, which was founded by former OpenAI executives.

The new Microsoft AI research group will focus on providing useful companions for people that can help in education and other domains, Suleyman wrote in his blog post. It will also pursue narrow areas in medicine and in renewable energy production.

“We’ll have expert level performance at the full range of diagnostics, alongside highly capable planning and prediction in operational clinical settings,” Suleyman wrote.

As investors and analysts are increasingly voicing their concerns about overspending on AI without a clear path to profits, Suleyman said he wants “to make clear that we are not building a superintelligence at any cost, with no limits.”

WATCH: Microsoft sees ‘huge’ challenge and great opportunity as global economy enters a new phase, president says

Microsoft president: 'Huge' challenge and great opportunity as global economy enters a new phase

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Doordash stock drops 15%, heads for worst day ever on spending concerns

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Doordash stock drops 15%, heads for worst day ever on spending concerns

Cheng Xin | Getty Images

Doordash‘s stock plummeted toward its worst session ever as investors rejected the company’s aggressive spending strategy.

The food delivery platform said it plans to shell out “several hundred million dollars” next year on new product initiatives like autonomous delivery and a new global tech stack.

These plans will improve its product globally, but involve “direct and opportunity costs” in the short run, Doordash said.

CEO Tony Xu defended the company’s spending decisions during the earnings call with analysts and said Doordash is running the business as it always has — to solve problems for customers in the highest quality ways.

“Our track record in investing in the areas that we currently have operating … have suggested that we’ve had some success in repeating this playbook, and we’re doing this now for future growth,” he said.

In recent months, Doordash has spent big money to open new markets and boost optionality for customers as it battles industry competitors such as Uber, and worries mount of a slowdown in consumer discretionary spending.

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This year, the California-based company purchased restaurant booking platform SevenRooms for $1.2 billion and acquired British food delivery firm Deliveroo in a deal worth $3.9 billion. Doordash also launched an autonomous robot delivery robot known as Dot in September and new DashMart fulfillment services for retailers.

The length and breadth of these investments will remain a key issue for the company’s shares, wrote Wells Fargo analyst Ken Gawrelski.

“In our view, this is one of the best operational management teams in the sector and longer duration investors are likely to remain supportive through this period,” he wrote. “However, given inconsistent disclosure, we believe patience may be required.”

Doordash’s third-quarter profit totaled 55 cents per share, falling short of the 69 cents per share forecasted by LSEG. Revenues grew 27% from a year ago to $3.45 billion, above Wall Street’s $3.36 billion estimate.

The company expects adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter between $710 million to $810 million, with a midpoint of $760 million. Analysts polled by FactSet expected $806.8 million.

Doordash expects Deliveroo to add $45 million to adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter and about $200 million in 2026.

Shares are up more than 20% this year.

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DoorDash stock sinks as company misses earnings

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