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Michael Saylor, chairman and CEO of MicroStrategy, speaks during the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami on April 7, 2022.

Eva Marie Uzcategui | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Whenever Michael Saylor utters the word “bitcoin,” MicroStrategy shares pop. He has been doing a lot of uttering lately.

On Monday, the MicroStrategy founder posted on social media platform X that his company had just purchased another 12,000 bitcoins for close to $822 million “using proceeds from convertible notes & excess cash.” That brings MicroStrategy’s total holdings to 205,000 bitcoins, which are now worth more than $15 billion, as the cryptocurrency continues to hit fresh highs.

Bitcoin rose 2.7% on Wednesday, topping $73,400.

MicroStrategy, a company that develops software but serves primarily as a proxy for bitcoin, climbed 11% on Wednesday, following Tuesday’s 7.4% rally, which followed Monday’s 4.1% gain and Friday’s 9.7% jump. The stock is now up 68% since March 6, the day the company announced the pricing of a debt sale, and has rocketed 180% this year after soaring 346% in 2023.

Saylor told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Monday that bitcoin is going to “eat gold.” He said many more institutional investors are going to own the digital currency as it gets added to exchange-traded funds. Plus, Saylor is bullish on next month’s halving process, which occurs every four years and slows the supply of coins, reducing the amount of selling.

Watch CNBC's full interview with MicroStrategy executive chairman Michael Saylor

“The price of bitcoin is going to have to adjust up in order to meet that investor demand,” Saylor said. “That’s what’s going to happen next for the asset class.”

MicroStrategy said on Monday that it had completed an offering of 0.625% convertible notes due in 2030, with net proceeds of about $782 million. Canaccord Genuity analysts wrote in a note that day that they believe it’s the first $800 million convert due in 2030 that is marketed at a coupon rate below 1% with such a high conversion premium.

“While much of the company’s BTC accumulation late last year and early this year was funded using equity,” the analysts wrote, “the company this time instead exploited more of its full capital structure by issuing a convert.”

MicroStrategy said in the release that it “used the net proceeds from the sale of the notes to acquire additional bitcoin.”

MicroStrategy has purchased close to 16,000 bitcoins since the start of the year.

Its stock value is appreciating at a much faster clip than the bitcoin that it’s buying. As of Monday, Canaccord’s analysis showed that MicroStrategy’s equity value premium over its bitcoin holdings was 86%.

That number has risen substantially in the past three days. Using Canaccord’s methodology, MicroStrategy’s equity value premium is now up to about 99%.

Founded in 1989, MicroStategy has a business in enterprise software and cloud-based services, but its shareholder value is almost entirely tied to its bitcoin ownership. The company announced its plan to invest in bitcoin in mid-2020, disclosing in an earnings call that it would commit $250 million over the next 12 months to “one or more alternative assets,” which could include digital currencies such as bitcoin.

At the time, MicroStrategy’s market cap was about $1.1 billion. The company is now worth $30 billion.

“Is there any company in the world that you wouldn’t like to invest in that could borrow $1 billion at less than 1% interest to invest in your best idea?” Saylor asked on CNBC. “It’s given our shareholders more bitcoin per share this week than they had a few weeks ago, so it’s very accretive for them.”

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Airbnb CEO Chesky says ChatGPT isn’t ‘quite robust enough’ to integrate into travel app

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Airbnb CEO Chesky says ChatGPT isn't 'quite robust enough' to integrate into travel app

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky on new product updates, integrating AI and state of AI tech race

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said he wants to integrate ChatGPT artificial intelligence capabilities into the travel platform but the software isn’t ready.

“The [software development kit] wasn’t quite robust enough for the things we want to do,” he told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday.

Chesky said the company would “probably” want to integrate ChatGPT eventually.

Airbnb on Tuesday launched a series of new social features, such as direct messaging, to its platform. The update also included a personalized version of the company’s chatbot launched earlier this year that can cancel and change reservations for users in North America.

In an interview with Bloomberg this week, Chesky said that the OpenAI chatbot isn’t “quite ready” for integration with Airbnb. He said the model was made using 13 different chatbots and that Airbnb is depending heavily on Alibaba’s Qwen model.

Chesky, who is a close friend of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, said it’s only the beginning of the AI revolution and he expects the technology to fuel a consumer app craze over the next few years.

“We’re all going to have to work together,” he said. “AI is going to lift up a lot of companies. If they want to vertically integrate every single thing, that’s going to be very, very difficult.”

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Meta lays off 600 employees within AI unit

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Meta lays off 600 employees within AI unit

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Meta will lay off roughly 600 employees within its artificial intelligence unit as the company looks to reduce layers and operate more nimbly, a spokesperson confirmed to CNBC on Wednesday.

The company announced the cuts in a memo from its Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, who was hired in June as part of Meta’s $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI. Workers across Meta’s AI infrastructure units, Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research unit and other product-related positions will be impacted.

Axios was first to report the cuts.

Meta has been aggressively investing in AI as it works to keep pace with rivals like OpenAI and Google, pouring billions of dollars into infrastructure projects and recruitment.

On Tuesday, the company announced a $27 billion deal with Blue Owl Capital to fund and develop its massive Hyperion data center in rural Louisiana. The data center is expected to be large enough to cover a “significant part of the footprint of Manhattan,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post in July.

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Auto giant Volkswagen warns of output stoppages amid Nexperia chip disruption

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Auto giant Volkswagen warns of output stoppages amid Nexperia chip disruption

A new Volkswagen ID.3 electric car prepares to pass final inspection at the Volkswagen plant on May 14, 2025 in Dresden, Germany.

Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images

German auto giant Volkswagen on Wednesday warned of temporary production outages citing China’s export restrictions on semiconductors made by Nexperia.

The update comes shortly after the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA), the country’s main car industry lobby, said the China-Netherlands dispute over Nexperia could lead to “significant production restrictions in the near future” if the supply interruption of chips cannot be swiftly resolved.

A spokesperson for Volkswagen told CNBC by email that while Nexperia is not a direct supplier of the company, some Nexperia parts are used in its vehicle components, which are supplied by Volkswagen’s direct suppliers.

“We are in close contact with all relevant stakeholders in light of the current situation to identify potential risks at an early stage and to be able to make decisions regarding any necessary measures,” a Volkswagen spokesperson said, noting that the firm’s production is currently unaffected.

“However, given the evolving circumstances, short-term effects on production cannot be ruled out,” they added.

Shares of Volkswagen traded 2.2% lower at 2 p.m. London time (9 a.m. ET).

Last month, the Dutch government took control of Nexperia, a Chinese-owned semiconductor maker based in the Netherlands, in what was seen as a highly unusual move.

The Dutch government seized control of the company, which specializes in the high-volume production of chips used in automotive, consumer electronics and other industries, citing fears the firm’s tech “would become unavailable in an emergency.”

China responded by blocking exports of the firm’s finished products, sparking alarm among Europe’s auto industry.

A spokesperson for Germany’s Economy Ministry said the government is concerned about chip supply chain difficulties, according to Reuters.

— CNBC’s Dylan Butts contributed to this report.

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