Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook Inc.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Former Meta operating chief Sheryl Sandberg is leaving the company’s board of directors.
“With a heart filled with gratitude and a mind filled with memories, I let the Meta board know that I will not stand for reelection this May,” Sandberg wrote in a Facebook post on Wednesday.
Sandberg, 54, joined Facebook in 2008 as Mark Zuckerberg’s top deputy after spending about seven years at Google. In 2012, she became a board member at the company. During her tenure, Facebook rose from a highflying startup to become one of the most valuable companies in the world, topping a $1 trillion market cap at its peak in 2021.
Sandberg announced her departure from Meta in mid-2022, following multiple controversies that dogged the company and sullied its reputation among users, lawmakers and investors. Most notably, Facebook was central to the spread of disinformation ahead of the 2016 election and during the early days of the Covid pandemic in 2020. The company has also been in the subject of antitrust investigations and was scrutinized in Sandberg’s waning days for its insufficient efforts to combat hate on its platform.
When Sandberg stepped down as Meta COO in June 2022, she was replaced by Javier Olivan, who had been serving as Meta’s chief growth officer.
Since leaving Meta, Sandberg has dedicated much of her time on her LeanIn.org nonprofit, which focuses on empowering women tin the workplace, and related projects.
“I wanted my new chapter to be able to really make a difference,” Sandberg told CNBC Make It in August. “We’ve been in development on this since I was at Meta, but being able to have the time to put into [this launch] and to really be … a bigger part of this has meant a lot to me.”
Shortly after Sandberg’s post, Zuckerberg responded with a short reply.
“Thank you Sheryl for the extraordinary contributions you have made to our company and community over the years,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Your dedication and guidance have been instrumental in driving our success and I am grateful for your unwavering commitment to me and Meta over the years. I look forward to this next chapter together!”
Meta technology chief Adam Bosworth wrote, “Amazing run Sheryl, thank you so much for everything you did for all of us and also for me personally.”
Meta’s board consists of Zuckerberg, who serves as chairman, as well as former PayPal Executive Vice President Peggy Alford, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, former McKinsey & Company senior partner Nancy Killefer, former U.S. deputy secretary of the treasury Robert M. Kimmitt, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and Tracey T. Travis, a former CFO at Estée Lauder.
Here’s the full text of Sandberg’s post:
With a heart filled with gratitude and a mind filled with memories, I let the Meta board know that I will not stand for reelection this May. After I left my role as COO, I remained on the board to help ensure a successful transition. Under Mark’s leadership, Javi Olivan, Justin Osofsky, Nicola Mendelsohn, and their teams have proven beyond a doubt that the Meta business is strong and well-positioned for the future, so this feels like the right time to step away. Going forward, I will serve as an advisor to the company, and I will always be there to help the Meta teams.
Serving as Facebook’s – and then Meta’s – COO for 14 ½ years and a board member for 12 years has been the opportunity of a lifetime. I will always be grateful to Mark for believing in me and for his partnership and friendship; he is that truly once-in-a-generation visionary leader and he is equally amazing as a friend who stays by your side through the good times and the bad. I will always be grateful to my colleagues and teammates at Meta for all the years of working side by side and all they taught me. And I am particularly grateful to my fellow Meta board members for their lasting friendships, the guidance they provided me for so many years, and their stewardship of products that mean so much to people all over the world.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, attends the annual Allen and Co. Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference at the Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, on July 8, 2025.
David A. Grogan | CNBC
OpenAI on Monday announced it is taking an ownership stake in Thrive Holdings, a company that was launched by one of its major investors, Thrive Capital, in April.
The startup said it will embed engineering, research and product teams within Thrive Holdings’ companies to help accelerate their AI adoption and boost cost efficiency.
Thrive Holdings buys, owns and runs companies that it believes could benefit from technologies like artificial intelligence. It operates in sectors that are “core to the real economy,” starting with accounting and IT services, according to its website.
OpenAI, which is valued at $500 billion, did not disclose the financial terms of the agreement.
“We are excited to extend our partnership with OpenAI to embed their frontier models, products, and services into sectors we believe have tremendous potential to benefit from technological innovation and adoption,” Joshua Kushner, CEO and founder of Thrive Capital and Thrive Holdings, said in a statement.
It’s the latest example of OpenAI’s circular dealmaking.
The partnership is structured in a way that aligns the incentives of OpenAI and Thrive Holdings long term, according to a person familiar with the deal, who asked not to be named because the details are private.
If Thrive Holdings’ companies succeed, the size of OpenAI’s stake will grow.
It also acts as a way for OpenAI to get compensated for its services, according to another person familiar with the agreement who declined to be named because the details are confidential.
“This partnership with Thrive Holdings is about demonstrating what’s possible when frontier AI research and deployment are rapidly deployed across entire organizations to revolutionize how businesses work and engage with customers,” OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap said in a statement.
OpenAI also announced a collaboration with the consulting firm Accenture on Monday.
The startup said its business offering, ChatGPT Enterprise, will roll out to “tens of thousands” of Accenture employees.
Artificial intelligence startup Runway on Monday announced Gen 4.5, a new video model that outperforms similar models from Google and OpenAI in an independent benchmark.
Gen 4.5 allows users to generate high-definition videos based on written prompts that describe the motion and action they want. Runway said the model is good at understanding physics, human motion, camera movements and cause and effect.
The model holds the No. 1 spot on the Video Arena leaderboard, which is maintained by the independent AI benchmarking and analysis company Artificial Analysis. To determine the text-to-video model rankings, people compare two different model outputs and vote for their favorite without knowing which companies are behind them.
Google’s Veo 3 model holds second place on the leaderboard, and OpenAI’s Sora 2 Pro model is in seventh place.
“We managed to out-compete trillion-dollar companies with a team of 100 people,” Runway CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela told CNBC in an interview. “You can get to frontiers just by being extremely focused and diligent.”
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Runway was founded in 2018 and earned a spot on CNBC’s Disruptor 50 list this year. It conducts AI research and builds video and world models, which are models that are trained on video and observational data to better reflect how the physical world works.
The startup’s customers include media organizations, studios, brands, designers, creatives and students. Its valuation has swelled to $3.55 billion, according to PitchBook.
Valenzuela said Gen 4.5 was codenamed “David” in a nod to the biblical story of David and Goliath. The model was “an overnight success that took like seven years,” he said.
“It does feel like a very interesting moment in time where the era of efficiency and research is upon us,” Valenzuela said. “[We’re] excited to be able to make sure that AI is not monopolized by two or three companies.”
Gen 4.5 is rolling out gradually, but it will be available to all of Runway’s customers by the end of the week. Valenzuela said it’s the first of several major releases that the company has in store.
“It will be available through Runway’s platform, its application programming interface and through some of the company’s partners,” he said.
Nvidia on Monday announced it has purchased $2 billion of Synopsys‘ common stock as part of a strategic partnership to accelerate computing and artificial intelligence engineering solutions.
As part of the multiyear partnership, Nvidia will help Synopsys accelerate its portfolio of compute-intensive applications, advance agentic AI engineering, expand cloud access and develop joint go-to-market initiatives, according to a release. Nvidia said it purchased Synopsys’ stock at $414.79 per share.
“Our partnership with Synopsys harnesses the power of Nvidia accelerated computing and AI to reimagine engineering and design — empowering engineers to invent the extraordinary products that will shape our future,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in the release.
Synopsys stock climbed 3%. Nvidia shares rose slightly.
Tune in at 9:30 a.m. ET as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Synopsys CEO Sassine Ghazi join CNBC TV to discuss the partnership. Watch in real time on CNBC+ or the CNBC Pro stream.
Nvidia has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI boom because it makes the graphics processing units, or GPUs, that are key to building and training AI models and running large workloads.
Synopsys offers services including silicon design and electronic design automation that help its customers build AI-powered products.
“The complexity and cost of developing next-generation intelligent systems demands engineering solutions with a deeper integration of electronics and physics, accelerated by AI capabilities and compute,” Synopsys CEO Sassine Ghazi said in a statement.
The partnership is not exclusive, which means that Nvidia and Synopsys can still work with other companies in the ecosystem.
Both companies will hold a press conference to discuss the announcement at 10 a.m. ET.