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FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried leaves Manhattan Federal Court after a court appearance on June 15, 2023 in New York City.

Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s fate is now in the hands of the 12 jurors who have spent the past four weeks sitting just feet away from the former crypto billionaire in a lower Manhattan courtroom.

After three days on the stand, Bankman-Fried’s testimony wrapped up Tuesday morning and the defense rested its case shortly before noon. The jury was sent home, so the judge can decide in the charging instructions what’s admissible before jurors begin their deliberations. Closing arguments will start on Wednesday.

Bankman-Fried, 31, faces a potential life sentence if convicted on fraud charges tied to the collapse of crypto exchange FTX and sister hedge fund Alameda Research late last year. He pleaded not guilty.

Tuesday’s session began with cross-examination from Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon, who has led the prosecution during the trial. Sassoon began by questioning Bankman-Fried’s relationship with Philip Davis, prime minister of the Bahamas, which was home to FTX and Bankman-Fried’s inner circle.

Bankman-Fried was asked if he’d proposed paying off more than $11 billion in national debt for the Bahamas, and he responded by saying he didn’t remember discussing the matter. Sassoon also mentioned how Bankman-Fried would joke that Ryan Salame, a former FTX executive, was effectively a member of the Bahamian government.

Sassoon asked about the prime minister’s visit to Miami and attending a Heat basketball game at the arena that carried the FTX name, and whether he and his wife were given courtside seats. She also mentioned FTX’s opening up customer withdrawals only for Bahamians. As with much of the questioning by prosecutors, Bankman-Fried said little, didn’t admit to anything and frequently responded by saying he didn’t know.

The FTX Arena in downtown Miami, Florida on Friday, June 4, 2021.

Matias J. Ocner | Miami Herald | Tribune News Service | Getty Images

Sassoon again asked Bankman-Fried about the key issue in the case — the $8 billion hole in FTX’s balance sheet. Bankman-Fried said he “deeply” regretted not taking a deeper look at it. When he asked his deputies about the hole, Bankman-Fried testified that they “told me they were busy and I should stop asking questions because it was distracting.”

With no other significant witnesses representing the defense, Bankman-Fried is relying on his ability to convince the jury that he wasn’t intentionally siphoning customer funds out of FTX to use for a host of other purposes, including covering Alameda’s losses, paying for his luxurious condo in the Bahamas, venture investments and the naming rights for the Miami arena.

Encouraging bad regulation

In his first two days on the stand, Bankman-Fried told the court that he didn’t defraud anyone or take customer funds. He testified that one central problem was a lack of a risk management team, which led to “significant oversights.” Beyond that, he spread the blame around to several of his former friends and top lieutenants, some of whom testified against him earlier as witnesses for the prosecution.

Sassoon ended her questioning on Tuesday at about 10:40 a.m. Mark Cohen, Bankman-Fried’s defense attorney, then spent a short amount of time with his redirect examination.

Cohen revisited articles that stemmed from Bankman-Fried’s press interviews after Nov. 11. Bankman-Fried estimated he gave around 50 interviews and didn’t have access to any internal documents. He said he didn’t remember every statement he made to journalists.

One notable comment he made was to Vox in mid-November. In a text exchange with the reporter, Bankman-Fried wrote “F— regulators.” Bankman-Fried testified that he was growing frustrated with regulators and skeptical about what they were doing. He said he felt all the work he’d done might have encouraged bad regulation as much as good regulation.

After the mid-morning break, Cohen asked Bankman-Fried to clarify a few things. He asked why the defendant hadn’t fired anyone when the $8 billion liability had been discovered. Bankman-Fried said he wasn’t particularly interested in blaming others and was instead focused on how to get things turned around and moving forward.

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is questioned by prosecutor Danielle Sassoon (not seen) during his fraud trial over the collapse of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange at federal court in New York City, U.S., October 31, 2023 in this courtroom sketch. 

Jane Rosenberg | Reuters

Regarding a $65 billion line of credit to Alameda, Bankman-Fried said that was the maximum withdrawal size but it was never near that amount. He said it was typically around $2 billion.

Finally, following issues raised by the prosecution about Bankman-Fried’s excessive use of a private jet, the defendant said he thought it was a valid expense as CEO. He testified that he wasn’t using it for personal travel, and that it was logistically difficult to fly from the Bahamas to Washington, D.C., where he estimated he spent more than a month in total.

With the jury gone for the rest of the day and closing arguments set to begin on Wednesday, Bankman-Fried is now out of opportunities to convince the jurors that he doesn’t deserve a lengthy prison sentence. Deliberations will start after closing arguments.

— CNBC’s Dawn Giel contributed to this report.

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Arm shares dip 8% on revenue miss

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Arm shares dip 8% on revenue miss

The replica of the ARM is an electronic chip board during a collaborative ceremony launching a partnership between Malaysia and ARM Holdings in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on March 5, 2025.

Hari Anggara | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Arm Holdings shares dipped as much as 9% in after-hours trading on the company’s first-quarter earnings results Wednesday.

 Here’s how the company did, compared with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG:

  • Earnings per share: 35 cents vs. 35 cents expected.
  • Revenue: $1.05 billion vs. $1.06 billion expected.

The company said it expects second-quarter revenue in the range of $1.01 billion to $1.11 billion, which was in line with $1.05 billion expected by analysts tracked by LSEG.

ARM is a chip technology firm that sells architecture for making chips that power billions of devices, including Apple and Qualcomm‘s chips.

During the quarter, Samsung launched the Galaxy Flip 7 based on the Exynos 2500, built on Arm’s compute subsystem platform.

CEO Rene Haas said in an interview with Reuters that the company was “consciously deciding to invest more heavily,” suggesting the company is considering designing its own processors.

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Qualcomm beats on earnings, highlights growth in Meta smartglasses

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Qualcomm beats on earnings, highlights growth in Meta smartglasses

Cristiano Amon, CEO & President, Qualcomm, on Centre Stage during day one of Web Summit 2024 at the MEO Arena in Lisbon, Portugal.

Shauna Clinton | Sportsfile | Getty Images

Qualcomm reported fiscal third-quarter earnings on Wednesday that beat Wall Street expectations and provided a stronger-than-expected guide for the current quarter. Qualcomm shares slid in extended trading.

Here’s how the chipmaker did for the quarter ending June 29 compared to LSEG consensus expectations:

  • Earnings per share: $2.77 adjusted versus $2.71 expected
  • Revenue: $10.37 billion versus $10.35 billion expected

In the current quarter, Qualcomm said it expected $2.85 per share at the midpoint of adjusted earnings on $10.7 billion in revenue at the midpoint. Analysts polled by LSEG were expecting $2.83 in adjusted earnings per share on $10.35 billion in revenue.

Net income during the quarter ending in June was $2.66 billion, or $2.43 per share, versus $2.13 billion, or $1.88 per share a year ago.

Qualcomm’s most important business is selling chips for smartphones under its Snapdragon brand, including the central processor and modem for high-end devices made by Samsung. It also provides modems to Apple. Its handset chip business reported $6.33 billion in revenue during the quarter, just shy of Wall Street expectations of $6.44 billion.

Qualcomm expects to lose Apple as a customer for its modem business in the coming years. But the company has been working to diversify its business by making chips for other devices, including Windows PCs and Meta‘s Quest virtual-reality headsets and Meta Ray-Bans smart glasses.

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Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon highlighted the company’s work with Meta in a short interview on Wednesday.

He said that making chips for devices like Meta’s Ray-Bans smart glasses was a good example of the chipmaker’s AI strategy, which was to embrace “personal AI,” or AI applications that run on devices, not the cloud.

Qualcomm reports its Meta revenues under its “Internet of Things” division, which had $1.68 billion in revenue during the quarter.

Amon referenced Mark Zuckerberg‘s AI vision statement Wednesday that focused on “personal superintelligence,” saying “the upside we had in the quarter within IoT is what we do in with smart glasses.”

CFO Akash Palkhiwala said that Meta had stronger-than-expected chip consumption during the quarter.

On Monday, Ray-Ban parent EssilorLuxottica said that sales of the smart glasses more than tripled on an annual basis.

“Mark put out a video today, just with a very clear vision of how they see personal AI and super intelligence evolving, and we are a key part of making that division happen,” Palkhiwala said.

Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are powered by a Qualcomm chip. Qualcomm, Samsung and Google are working on smart glasses, according to Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon.

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Amon also said Qualcomm would start to provide data about how much its chip business is growing without Apple — about 15% this year, he said.

Qualcomm is also looking to expand into data centers and sell versions of its chips that can be used for deploying artificial intelligence, Amon said on a call with an analysts. He said that Qualcomm was already in discussions with a major cloud company — called a hyperscaler — to supply AI chips. He said that Qualcomm could start to see revenues in its fiscal 2028.

“While we are in the early stages of this expansion, we are engaged with multiple potential customers,” Among said. “We are currently in advanced discussions with a leading hyperscaler.”

The company’s automotive business has been highlighted by Amon as one of the biggest growth opportunities for the company, but in the third quarter, it grew 21% to $984 million, below the 24% growth rate of the company’s IoT business.

Qualcomm’s other major division is QTL, which includes licensing fees for technology that Qualcomm developed and patented, including parts of the 5G standard. Overall, QTL revenues rose 11% to $1.32 billion.

Qualcomm said it spent just under $1 billion on cash dividends and $2.8 billion repurchasing 19 million shares of its stock during the quarter.

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Meta’s Reality Labs posts $4.53 billion loss in second quarter

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Meta’s Reality Labs posts .53 billion loss in second quarter

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg presents Orion AR Glasses as he makes a keynote speech during the Meta Connect annual event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.

Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters

Meta’s Reality Labs, the unit tasked with building the futuristic metaverse, continues bleeding money.

The social media company reported its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday and revealed that Reality Labs logged an operating loss of $4.53 billion while recording $370 million in sales during the period. Analysts were projecting that unit to post a second-quarter operating loss of $4.99 billion while generating $381 million in sales.

The Reality Labs division oversees the Quest line of virtual reality headsets in addition to the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which are jointly developed with the French-Italian eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica. Meta wants Reality Labs to create cutting-edge products similar to the prototype Orion augmented reality glasses that could underpin a new, immersive computing platform.

But developing VR, AR and other new devices is an expensive endeavor, with the Reality Labs division logging nearly $70 billion in cumulative losses since late 2020. Meta in April said Reality Labs recorded an operating loss of $4.2 billion during the first quarter while bringing in $412 million in sales.

Although the Quest VR headsets haven’t become breakout hits, the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are showing signs of success.

EssilorLuxottica on Monday said Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses sales more than tripled year over year for the first half of 2025. The eyewear giant and Meta debuted in June the new Oakley Meta smart glasses, which is the latest product spawned from their partnership.

Meta said in April that an undisclosed number of Reality Labs employees who were part of its Oculus Studios VR and AR software unit were laid off.

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