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Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks during Meta Connect event at Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, California on September 27, 2023.

Josh Edelson | AFP | Getty Images

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg may not have been directly involved with the drama surrounding Sam Altman’s tumultuous departure from, then return to, OpenAI, but the social networking executive and his company could benefit from the drama.

There’s been much debate over the “winners” of the OpenAI executive saga, with some experts believing Microsoft and its CEO Satya Nadella proved victorious while the OpenAI board members who kicked off the debacle by firing Altman last Friday were the losers.

Microsoft, OpenAI’s largest financial backer, has been positioning the high-profile startup as a cornerstone cloud computing partner, promoting Altman and his team throughout the year at numerous events. It created a public association between itself and the high-flying maker of ChatGPT. But that backfired somewhat when critics questioned how the boardroom shenanigans could have escaped Nadella and his company’s watch.

Meanwhile, Meta and Zuckerberg had the luxury of watching the corporate circus from the sidelines. It could help Meta boost its open-source Llama AI initiatives, as some companies look to diversify away from relying on a single company’s large language model. And it may even help with recruiting.

Meta continues to invest heavily in the kinds of generative AI and related large language models that helped spawn OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Its AI research team is considered, with Alphabet’s DeepMind, one of the most esteemed groups in the tech industry.

Technologists looking to work in the private sector may find comfort in stability at Meta and its AI research lab following the seemingly near collapse of one of the industry’s leading AI startups.

As one user on Meta’s Twitter-like Threads service posted on Wednesday: “Everyone is saying MSFT is the big winner of [the] OpenAI fiasco. But I can easily see META being the big winner in the end.”

“If you’re an AI researcher and you’re going to work at big tech, it might as well be the company with the largest open source and public research presence,” the user said in the Threads post.

Yann LeCun, Meta’s AI chief, responded to the post with a curt “Yup.”

Then there are the potential business opportunities.

The OpenAI fiasco raised concerns among the startup’s customers and other corporate leaders about whether they should only rely on one kind of LLM as part of their AI business strategies. Multiple technologists told CNBC that the OpenAI ordeal jumpstarted a push from businesses to lessen their reliance on OpenAI’s GPT family of LLMs to incorporate others from startups like Anthropic and Cohere.

Meta could benefit if companies continue to seek multiple AI vendors, much like firms now rely on multiple cloud providers. The company has heavily touted its Llama-branded family of generative AI software, which is available for free via an open-source model. Llama is attractive because developers can access and customize the LLM to their specific needs without being tethered to a particular vendor.

The more developers access and improve Llama, the more Meta can potentially lower its overall operating and technology research costs, among other benefits.

Finally, despite Llama’s licensing concerns and other potential issues, more companies and developers may choose to build apps with Meta’s AI software without fear that the social networking giant could collapse in a matter of days.  

Watch: Sam Altman to return as OpenAI CEO

The return of Sam Altman: How power at OpenAI has shifted

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MongoDB shares sink after company issues weak guidance

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MongoDB shares sink after company issues weak guidance

Dev Ittycheria, CEO of MongoDB

Adam Jeffery | CNBC

MongoDB shares sank 16% in extended trading on Wednesday after the database software maker issued disappointing guidance.

Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:

  • Earnings per share: $1.28 adjusted vs. 66 cents expected
  • Revenue: $548.4 million vs. $519.6 million expected

Revenue increased about 20% from a year ago in the quarter that ended on Jan. 31, according to a statement. The company generated $15.8 million in net income, or 19 cents per share, which factors in stock-based compensation. In the same quarter a year ago, MongoDB had registered a net loss of $55.5 million, or 77 cents per share.

MongoDB added 1,900 customers in the quarter, bringing the total to 54,500. But the company ended the quarter with about $360 million in deferred revenue, below the StreetAccount consensus of $370.4 million.

MongoDB is seeing slower growth than it had hoped for in new applications using its Atlas cloud-based database service, Srdjan Tanjga, MongoDB’s interim finance chief, said on a conference call with analysts. Meanwhile, MongoDB is hiring rapidly to pursue more deals with large companies, while pulling back on mid-sized businesses, Tanjga said.

During the quarter, MongoDB acquired artificial intelligence startup Voyage for an undisclosed sum.

“We want to capitalize on a once-in-a-generation opportunity,” CEO Dev Ittycheria said.

For the fiscal first quarter, MongoDB called for 63 cents to 67 cents in adjusted earnings per share on $524 million to $529 million in revenue. Analysts surveyed by LSEG had expected 62 cents of per-share earnings and revenue of $526.8 million.

MongoDB said it expects adjusted earnings per share of $2.44 to $2.62 and revenue of $2.24 billion to $2.28 billion for fiscal 2026. That implies 12.7% revenue growth, which would be the slowest rate at least since the company went public in 2017. Analysts were anticipating $3.34 per share of earnings and $2.32 billion in revenue.

Prior to Wednesday’s after-hours move, MongoDB shares were up 13%, while the S&P 500 was down about 1%.

WATCH: MongoDB shares fall more than 10% as non-gross margins come in lighter-than-expected

MongoDB shares fall more than 10% as non-gross margins come in lighter-than-expected

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Digg founder teams up with former Reddit rival to buy and revive website

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Digg founder teams up with former Reddit rival to buy and revive website

Alexis Ohanian

David A. Grogan | CNBC

Content aggregator Digg is making a comeback with the help of an unlikely partner: Reddit co-founder and rival Alexis Ohanian.

Ohanian and Digg founder Kevin Rose acquired the platform for an undisclosed sum. The deal is backed by venture capital firms True Ventures, where Rose is a partner, and Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six. The partnership was announced Wednesday in a video post to the company’s X account in which Rose called the partnership a “team-up he would have never imagined 20 years ago.”

Digg was founded in 2004 and rose to prominence as a major outlet for trending news because it allowed users to rate stories. Rose made what became an infamously goofy appearance on the cover of Businessweek in 2006 as the kid who “made $60 million in 18 months.”

The company said in a release that it aims to differentiate itself in the social media market by “focusing on AI innovations designed to enhance the user experience and build a human-centered alternative.” Digg said it will also create a platform that “prioritizes transparency, rewards human effort, and fosters enriching discussions.”

Ohanian also teased the collaboration, telling X followers on Wednesday that he was “working on something new… but also old… but also very new” and is “excited” to be partnering with Rose.

At its peak in 2008, Digg was reportedly valued at about $160 million. But the rise of Facebook and other social sites caused traffic to Digg to plummet. Meanwhile, Reddit, which was founded a year after Digg by Ohanian and current CEO Steve Huffman, emerged as a direct rival to Digg by forming communities around types of content and letting users similarly rate news stories.

In 2012, Digg’s brand and website were acquired by tech incubator Betaworks for about $500,000.

Reddit has continued its ascent, reporting nearly 102 million daily active users at the end of the fourth quarter. The site gained widespread attention when it became the center of the 2020 meme stock craze as retail traders inflicted huge pain on hedge funds shorting stocks using a subreddit known as Wallstreetbets.

Reddit went public on the New York Stock Exchange last March at $34 a share and has seen its stock nearly quintuple. Shares are up about 1% year to date and added 4% during Wednesday’s session.

Ohanian has moved on to other projects since he stepped down from Reddit’s board in 2020. He’s currently partnering with billionaire Frank McCourt in a bid for TikTok after President Donald Trump extended the initial deadline for the company’s Chinese-parent ByteDance to sell the social media platform or face a ban.

Rose said in a post on X that he and Ohanian “dreamed up features that weren’t even possible with yesterday’s tech.”

“The new @digg brings some great nostalgia, but we’re not here to just rebuild the past or clone a competitor,” he wrote.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

WATCH: Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian is going long on women’s sports

Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian is going long on women's sports

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CrowdStrike slumps 9% on weak earnings outlook, overhang from outage costs

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CrowdStrike slumps 9% on weak earnings outlook, overhang from outage costs

CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz speaks at the Wall Street Journal Tech Live conference in Laguna Beach, California, on Oct. 21, 2019.

Martina Albertazzi | Bloomberg | Getty Images

CrowdStrike shares dropped 9% after issuing weak earnings guidance as the company signaled ongoing pressure from its global IT outage that rattled businesses in July.

The cybersecurity software provider said it expects fiscal first-quarter earnings to range between 64 cents and 66 cents per share, versus the average Factset estimate of 95 cents. CrowdStrike is projecting earnings for the year to range between $3.33 and $3.45 per share, excluding items. That fell short $4.42 expected by analysts polled by LSEG.

For the fiscal fourth quarter, CrowdStrike posted a net loss of $92.3 billion, or 37 cents per share, versus net income of $53.7 million, or 22 cents per share, in the year-ago period. The company also reported $21 million in costs from incident-related expenses and $49.9 million of tax expenses connected to acquisitions.

The company also said it anticipates another $73 million in expenses for the first quarter resulting from its July update that spurred a global information technology outage, grounded flights and disrupted businesses. CrowdStrike projects an additional $43 million in costs due to some deal packages offered in its wake.

The outage has also weighed on free cash flow margins, which CrowdStrike said on a conference call with analysts Tuesday it expects to return to 30% or more in fiscal 2027.

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Many on Wall Street expect headwinds from the July issue to start abating in the new fiscal year, with Bernstein’s Peter Weed expecting a pick up in CrowdStrike net retention rate in the new fiscal year.

“Although FY26 guidance marked a conservative start to the year, in our view, we expect management is setting the stage for a return to a beat-and-raise cadence we saw before the outage,” wrote JPMorgan’s Brian Essex.

CrowdStrike’s disappointing guidance offset better-than-expected fiscal fourth-quarter results. The company posted adjusted earnings of $1.03 per share on $1.06 billion in revenue and said that revenue grew 25% from a year ago.

Founder and CEO George Kurtz called the company a “comeback story” on the conference call.

“I’m extremely proud of the engagement we’ve had with customers, partners, prospects in the market navigating a year that tested CrowdStrike,” he said. “Q4 showcases the fruits of our labors, giving me strong conviction in our AI-native, single platform, excellent execution, and accelerating market opportunity.”

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