BERLIN, GERMANY – SEPTEMBER 03: People arrive to attend the Huawei keynote address at the IFA 2020 Special Edition consumer electronics and appliances trade fair on the fair’s opening day on September 03, 2020 in Berlin, Germany. The fair is taking place despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, albeit in a reduced form and without personal access for the general public. The IFA 2020 Special Edition will take place from September 3-5. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The U.S. has revoked certain licenses for chip exports to Chinese tech giant Huawei, the Commerce Department told CNBC on Tuesday, in its latest efforts to curb China’s tech power.
“We continuously assess how our controls can best protect our national security and foreign policy interests, taking into consideration a constantly changing threat environment and technological landscape,” a Commerce spokesperson said in a statement.
“As part of this process, as we have done in the past, we sometimes revoke export licenses,” the spokesperson said, declining to comment on specific licenses. “But we can confirm that we have revoked certain licenses for exports to Huawei.”
Huawei was placed on a U.S. trade blacklist in 2019, which banned U.S. firms from selling technology – including 5G chips – to the Chinese tech giant over national security concerns. In 2020, the U.S. tightened chip restrictions on Huawei, requiring foreign manufacturers using American chipmaking equipment to obtain a license before they can sell semiconductors to Huawei.
Huawei’s consumer business, which includes smartphones and laptops, is seeing a resurgence after launching the Mate 60 Pro smartphone in August.
A TechInsights analysis of Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro smartphone revealed an advanced chip made by China’s top chip maker, SMIC. The smartphone is also said to be equipped with 5G connectivity – a feature which U.S. sanctions had sought to block.
U.S. chip firms Qualcomm and Intel are two of the companies that supply chips to Huawei. Qualcomm in an SEC filing earlier this month said it expects operations to be “further impacted” from its customers, such as Huawei, developing their own chips.
“While we have continued to sell integrated circuit products to Huawei under our licenses, we do not expect to receive product revenues from Huawei beyond the current calendar year,” Qualcomm said.
“Additionally, to the extent that Huawei’s 5G devices take share from Chinese original equipment manufacturers that utilize our 5G products or from non-Chinese OEMs that utilize our 5G products in devices they sell into China, our revenues, results of operations and cash flows could be further impacted,” Qualcomm said.
Last month, Huawei launched a fresh lineup of phones – the Pura 70 series – in a bid to challenge Apple in China.
Apple is facing pressure from Huawei in China as iPhone sales plunged 19.1% in the first quarter while Huawei’s smartphone sales soared 69.7%, according to Counterpoint Research.
Huawei’s net profit in 2023 grew by 144.5% from a year ago to 87 billion yuan (about $12 billion) partially helped by the sales of Mate 60 Pro in China, the firm revealed in March.
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.