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Shoppers carry bags of purchased merchandise at the King of Prussia Mall on December 11, 2022 in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

Mark Makela | Getty Images

Google announced Thursday new artificial intelligence tools that can help you with holiday shopping. So, if you’re shopping for a 4-year-old nephew this year, it can help you find ideas on what he might like with a command like “gifts for a 4-year-old who likes science.”

It’s the first time that generative artificial intelligence is available in Google Shopping, and comes ahead of the holiday season which might attract people to use the site over other options. Holiday spending is expected to reach record highs, according to the National Retail Federation, with its projection ranging from $957.3 billion to $966.6 billion.

Google Shopping has three new features that were announced Thursday:

  • It can tell you what kind of gift a person might like depending on the interests you provide in search.
  • It can generate a photorealistic image of an item you might want, all you have to do is describe it.
  • It now offers 40 photos of men and women of various shapes, sizes and backgrounds to attempt to give a virtual clothing try-on experience.

People can opt into the new options by going into Search Labs and turning on Search Generative Experiences (SGE.)

Here’s a look at what’s new:

The first feature, which is a part of Google’s search generative experience, lets you type in a phrase to the search bar, like “great gifts for home cooks” and Google will return a list of gifts, descriptions of items that a home cook would like and other non-physical items like cooking classes.

You can also get more specific and type in something like “gifts for a 7-year-old who wants to be an inventor.” In that case, it recommended a $25 Inventor’s Box set from Target, among other products.

Google’s second new tool also uses SGE and is designed so you can specify exactly what you’re looking for by describing it. So, if you wanted to search for a “puffy, colorful metallic-looking jacket” it might return results like the picture below:

Google will generate photorealistic images to attempt to make shopping easier.

Google

AI creates a photorealistic image of a variety of items that fit the description you type, and then actual products that are similar to the generated image will appear after you click. This one is designed more for when you are looking for something for yourself, but don’t know exactly what you want. It launches in the U.S. in December.

Google has 40 photos of men and women of different shapes, sizes and backgrounds to try to give people a virtual try-on experience.

Google

The last new function lets you see how a product might look on you. You can search, for example, “brown jacket at J-Crew” and Google will show you photos of 40 different men and women of different shapes, sizes and backgrounds so you can see what a piece of clothing looks like on different models. A version of this already existed for women’s tops, but it is now a more broad-reaching tool.

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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.

Read more CNBC tech news

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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