Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, attends the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in San Francisco, California, U.S. November 16, 2023.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
Former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team, according to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Nadella said on social media platform X that Altman and former OpenAI President and Board Chair Greg Brockman, alongside other colleagues, will be joining Microsoft to lead a new advanced AI research team.
Tech giant Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI and has a close technology partnership with the company.
“We look forward to moving quickly to provide them with the resources needed for their success,” Nadella said.
“We remain committed to our partnership with OpenAI and have confidence in our product roadmap, our ability to continue to innovate with everything we announced at Microsoft Ignite, and in continuing to support our customers and partners.”
Altman had been leading the company since 2019. OpenAI’s board announced late Friday that it was removing Altman and replacing him on an interim basis with technology chief Mira Murati. The post said that Altman “was not consistently candid in his communications with the board.”
This did not dissuade a group of OpenAI investors, who were pushing to bring Altman back as CEO over the weekend. Late Sunday night, OpenAI said it was bringing on board former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear to run the artificial intelligence company. Just hours after, Nadella announced that Altman and Brockman — who was removed from his role at chairman on Friday alongside Altman, and later quit the company altogether — would be absorbed in-house into the Microsoft team.
OpenAI, which was reportedly in talks as recently as last month to sell employee shares to investors at an $86 billion valuation, emerged as a household name this year after releasing its ChatGPT chatbot in late 2022. ChatGPT allows users to type in simple text queries and retrieve answers that can lead to more in-depth conversations.
— CNBC’s Ari Levy and Jordan Novet contributed to this report.
George Kurtz, co-founder and CEO of CrowdStrike Holdings Inc., during a Bloomberg Technology television interview at the RSA Conference in San Francisco on April 26, 2023.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
CrowdStrike shares dropped nearly 9% in extended trading on Tuesday after the cybersecurity software provider issued disappointing earnings guidance.
Here’s what the company reported compared to LSEG estimates:
Earnings per share: $1.03. The number doesn’t to appear to be comparable to analysts’ estimates.
Revenue: $1.06 billion vs. $1.03 billion
Revenue increased 25% from $845.3 million a year earlier, and the company posted a net loss of $92.3 billion, or 37 cents per share. In the year-ago period, the company posted net income of $53.7 million, or 22 cents per share.
For the year, CrowdStrike said it expects earnings, excluding some items, to range between $3.33 and $3.45 per share, falling short of the $4.42 expected by analysts polled by LSEG. First-quarter earnings are expected to be between 64 cents and 66 cents per share, versus the average estimate of 95 cents.
Despite the after-hours drop, CrowdStrike topped some metrics from Wall Street. The company posted $4.24 billion in annual recurring revenue, reflecting 23% growth. That topped the $4.21 billion estimate from analysts surveyed by StreetAccount and included $224 million in net annual recurring revenue.
Revenue guidance was roughly in line with estimates. CrowdStrike said it expects revenue of between $4.74 billion and $4.81 billion for the year, versus an LSEG estimate of $4.77 billion.
The earnings release comes almost eight months after a technology update from the company led to a global IT outage that grounded flights, disrupted businesses and led to class action lawsuits.
CEO George Kurtz said in the press release that artificial intelligence is becoming more important in stopping cyberattacks.
“As businesses of all sizes rapidly adopt AI, stopping the breach necessitates cybersecurity’s AI-native platform,” Kurtz said.
Todd McKinnon, CEO of Okta Inc., smiles during a Bloomberg Technology television interview in San Francisco on April 4, 2022.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Okta shares soared 22% on Tuesday after the cloud-based identity management company delivered strong fourth-quarter earnings and beat estimates on guidance.
The move put the stock on pace for its best day in more than a year.
Okta posted adjusted earnings late Monday of 78 cents per share, while revenue increased 13% from a year earlier to $682 million. That beat the average analyst estimates of 73 cents per share in earnings and $669.6 million in revenue, according to LSEG.
First-quarter revenue should come in between $678 million and $680 million, which also topped estimates.
On the company’s earnings call, CEO Todd McKinnon called it a “blowout quarter” as bookings topped $1 billion in a single period for the first time.
“We’re excited about the momentum we’ve built going into FY 2026 and are taking the right steps to advance our position as the leader in the identity market,” McKinnon said. “More and more customers are looking to consolidate their disparate and ineffective identity systems, and Okta is there to meet them with the most comprehensive identity security platform in the market today,” McKinnon added.
Okta allows companies to manage employee access or devices by providing tools such as single sign-on and multifactor authentication. Shares have rallied about 35% this year, including Tuesday’s pop, after slumping 13% in 2024. In late 2023, Okta suffered a high-profile data breach that gave access to client files through a support system.
Some Wall Street firms turned more positive on the stock after the latest results, with both D.A. Davidson and Mizuho upgrading their ratings. D.A. Davidson called the likelihood of double-digit growth “durable” as the company shows signs of stabilization.
Mizuho’s Gregg Moskowitz said the firm “underestimated” the upside to committed remaining performance obligations, or subscription backlog that the company expects to recognize as revenue over the next year.
“More broadly, OKTA continues to be a clear leader in the critically important identity management market,” Moskowitz wrote. “And we now have a higher confidence level that OKTA will increasingly benefit from its group of newer products that have already begun to drive a meaningful contribution.”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.‘s $100 billion commitment to expand manufacturing in the U.S. is “great news,” Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told CNBC on Tuesday, adding it helps with diversification of chipmaking locations.
Amon also addressed U.S President Donald Trump’s tariff policy, suggesting longer term technology trends would outweigh any short term uncertainty.
Trump announced on Monday that TSMC would invest $100 billion in the U.S. which would go toward building more chip fabrication plants in Arizona. TSMC is the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer and supplies chips to the likes of Qualcomm, Apple and Nvidia.
The U.S., under leadership of both Trump and former President Joe Biden, has sought to bring more cutting-edge chip manufacturing to American soil on the grounds that it is a matter of national and economic security to have these advanced technologies made closer to home.
Many in the technology industry have backed these plans, including Qualcomm.
“Look, this is great news,” Amon said. “It shows that semiconductors are important. It’s going to be important for … the economy. Economic security means access to semiconductors. More manufacturing is music to our ears.”
Amon said that some of Qualcomm’s chips are already manufactured in TSMC’s existing plants in Arizona and in the future, the company will get more semiconductors made in the U.S.
“TSMC is a great supplier of manufacturing for Qualcomm. They have a facility in Arizona. We already have chips built in Arizona. The more capacity that they put we’re going to use it, same way we’ve been using in Taiwan, we’re going to use it in other locations,” Amon said.
Global companies are also digesting the imposition of tariffs by the U.S. on Mexico and Canada as well as additional duties on China.
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon speaks at the Computex forum in Taipei, Taiwan, June 3, 2024.
Ann Wang | Reuters
Amon said it’s currently difficult to predict the impact on Qualcomm from the tariffs.
“It’s hard to tell because you don’t know exactly how this is going to go. The interesting thing is we’re big exporters of chips. We’re not an importer of chips … Chips are going to devices. They’re made all over the world, and it’s hard to really know what is happening,” Amon said.
“We’re just is going to navigate based on whatever the outcome is.”
The Qualcomm CEO said there are a number of key technology trends that are likely to support the U.S. giant’s business in the long term, over the short term tariff uncertainty.
We are right at the “beginning of a significant upgrade for AI smartphones. We’re seeing PCs changing to AI PCs. Cars are becoming computers. That’s what’s driving our business, not necessarily what we’re going to see in the short term,” Amon said.