Jared Kushner’s post-White House deal-making included badly timed bet on Amazon aggregator
A video of Jared Kushner is shown on a screen, as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol holds a hearing at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, July 21, 2022.
Alex Brandon | Reuters
In March 2022, Jared Kushner was called to testify in front of the Jan. 6 House committee regarding the attack on the Capitol that occurred in the waning days of his father-in-law’s presidency. In his private life, meanwhile, Kushner was doing deals, including one that took him to a niche and soon-to-be troubled corner of Amazon’s e-commerce empire.
Weeks ahead of his testimony in Washington, Kushner and others from his private equity firm, Affinity Partners, took a boat from their beach office in South Florida to meet with a company called Unybrands at its headquarters in nearby Miami, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the talks were private.
Unybrands, founded in 2020, was one of many players in the then-booming market of Amazon seller aggregators. Companies in the space took advantage of low interest rates and pandemic-driven growth in e-commerce to collectively raise more than $16 billion from top names on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley with the intent of rolling up independent sellers on Amazon’s marketplace.
Kushner started Affinity in 2021, shortly after leaving his advisory role in the White House alongside his wife, Ivanka Trump. With Affinity, he attracted headlines for raising some $2 billion from the Saudi government, a highly controversial move given the cozy relationship between the Trump administration and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who U.S. intelligence officials said approved an operation to capture and kill journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
When it came to the Amazon aggregator market, Kushner was jumping in at the worst possible time. The tech bubble was bursting following a record wave of venture investment in 2021, when investors across the globe pumped $621 billion into startups and high-growth companies, more than double the prior record set a year earlier, according to CB Insights data. Rising rates and soaring inflation in 2022 led to slowing growth and layoffs across the industry, including at Unybrands.
Kushner was introduced to Unybrands by a tech entrepreneur whose company also had financial ties to Saudi Arabia, WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann, two people with knowledge of the matter said. Prior to its failed IPO in 2019, WeWork had raised billions of dollars from SoftBank and its Saudi-backed Vision Fund.
Neumann’s family office invested in Unybrands around the peak of the aggregator market in 2021, according to filings in the U.K., where the company has an operation. Neumann, who was ultimately ousted from WeWork by top SoftBank execs, introduced Kushner to Unybrands early the following year.
For about 90 minutes on that March day, members of Unybrands’ C-suite fielded questions from Kushner and his team, and showed off some of the eclectic mix of products the company had acquired: dietary supplements, cookware, microwavable weighted stuffed animals and the top-selling nail dryer on Amazon, the sources said.
Kushner was impressed by what he saw, they said. A month after the meeting, he wrote Unybrands a check for $75 million, according to documents viewed by CNBC.
Affinity’s investment in Unybrands, which hasn’t previously been reported, was one of the private equity firm’s earliest deals. It’s since backed a handful of companies, including a fitness technology startup, an online classifieds operator and a solar financing company, with its investments totaling a reported $1.2 billion to date.
As Kushner was getting into Unybrands, tech stocks were cratering. The IPO window slammed shut in 2022 and venture funding dried up for cash-burning startups. The Amazon aggregator space, which had blossomed during the pandemic, began to unwind as consumers tightened their belts and more people returned to brick-and-mortar stores. Aggregators that, less than a year earlier were throwing lavish cocktail parties and giving away Teslas for referrals, were suddenly strapped for cash.
The cost of doing business on Amazon — from advertising and listing fees to shipping and fulfillment — continued to creep up, making it harder for aggregators to run the companies they’d acquired profitably. Layoffs ensued, and some companies sold off underperforming brands.
The most high-profile collapse was Thrasio, which was once valued at a reported $10 billion before filing for bankruptcy in February of this year. The company then lost its CEO and a string of top executives, CNBC previously reported.
Distressed deals have been occurring across the space. Razor Group, which counts L Catterton and BlackRock among its investors, acquired SoftBank-backed Perch in March. Heyday, backed by Khosla Ventures, has been exploring tie-ups with other aggregators, a former employee said. The company laid off its entire creative and brand teams in November, said the person, who asked not to be named because of confidentiality.
Heyday approached Dragonfly, whose backers include L Catterton, about a merger but the talks fell apart in recent months, according to a separate person with knowledge of the matter.
Heyday didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Unybrands also began seeking a buyer. In February, the company sent a deck to prospective acquirers and investors, a person familiar with the matter said.
Unybrands said in an emailed statement that the company explored strategic opportunities as the aggregator space “was full of disruption” in 2023. The company and its investors ultimately decided to continue raising funds internally, Unybrands said.
Unybrands confirmed to CNBC that Affinity invested in the company in 2022, though it didn’t specify how much it raised from Kushner’s firm.
‘Kick-the-can’ mergers
Some of the consolidation is being fueled by lenders who want to avoid write-downs, sources close to a number of deals told CNBC. Jason Somerville, a founding partner of consulting firm GW Partners, which has advised sellers and aggregators on deals, echoed that sentiment.
“I call it more of a kick-the-can type of merger, where you have common debt or common equity mergers, and they jam them together to maybe restructure the debt,” Somerville said. “Pretty much 100% of these are being done in a distressed situation.”
At Unybrands, year-over-year revenue growth had slowed to 11% in March 2022, from 27% in February and 34% in January, according to internal documents reviewed by CNBC.
Following a continued slide, the company laid off roughly 10% of its staff in November 2022, according to people familiar with the matter. Unybrands held another round of job cuts last year, and again at the beginning of this year, the people said.
Unybrands told CNBC it grew almost 20% in 2022, reaching its target, though it didn’t say how much of that expansion came through acquisitions. The company also said it’s “never had a month with declining sales” and has focused on profitability and generating positive cash flow.
Unybrands didn’t directly respond to questions about whether it’s conducted layoffs. The company said headcount has grown from 115 employees in January 2022 to more than 230 employees as of this year.
For Kushner, the investment in Unybrands was part of an expanding portfolio. Kushner, now 43, was embarking on a new career in private equity after four years in the Trump administration. Prior to that, he spent nearly a decade running his family’s real estate business.
Affinity is backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which oversees $925 billion in assets and has spent years cozying up to big-name investors, particularly in technology, in an effort to diversify the kingdom’s revenue away from oil. Affinity also reportedly received hundreds of millions of dollars from wealth funds in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
President Donald Trump, flanked by White House senior advisor Jared Kushner (2nd R) and chief economic advisor Gary Cohn (R), delivers remarks to reporters after meeting with Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Crown Prince and Minister of Defense Mohammed bin Salman (L) at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia May 20, 2017.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
The sources of capital received scrutiny due to Kushner’s diplomacy work in the Middle East while he was in the White House, as well as his friendly relationship with the Saudi crown prince. The House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into the investment in 2022, looking into whether Kushner’s financial interests influenced Trump’s foreign policy.
“Your support for Saudi interests was unwavering, even as Congress and the rest of the world closely scrutinized the country’s human rights abuses in Yemen, the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi assassins tied to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Saudi Arabia’s crackdown on political dissidents at home,” Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., who was chair of the Oversight Committee, wrote in a letter to Kushner in June 2022.
Republicans on the committee have delayed Democrats’ efforts to subpoena Kushner over the matter.
On Wednesday, Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., initiated a new probe into Affinity, saying in a release on his website that he’s seeking “information pertaining to the tens of millions in payments Kushner is receiving from the Saudis and other foreign sources every year while exploiting private investment fund disclosure loopholes to shield the arrangement from public scrutiny.”
A representative for Kushner didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Taking control
Unybrands was still trying to expand as early as February of this year despite the turmoil in the market. The company announced a new funding round — an undisclosed amount from unnamed investors — alongside the acquisition of another company that would bring in six new brands to its portfolio. The investment would also go toward repaying $300 million in debt owed to asset management firm Crayhill Capital Management from a financing round in 2021.
At the same time, Unybrands overhauled its board. Co-founder and CEO Ulrich Kratz, a former Barclays and Goldman Sachs executive, resigned as a director, along with the company’s two other co-founders, according to filings.
Kratz hailed the new funding as a “huge day” for Unybrands in a February LinkedIn post.
“We’re now positioned better than ever to serve our customers and to continue to provide attractive exits for successful entrepreneurs,” he said.
While Unybrands provided scant details about the investment, filings with the U.K.’s corporate register show that in March, Unybrands transferred control of the company to a new entity owned by Kushner and affiliated with Affinity called AP Investments II.
Two years after Kushner’s first meeting with the company, U.K. records show Unybrands reincorporated as UBHoldCo. Filings indicate that AP Investments II maintains control of the business.
“The relevant legal entity holds, directly or indirectly, 75% or more of the shares of the company,” the filing says, referring to the firm’s control of UBHoldCo.
Unybrands acknowledged the ownership change in a memo to shareholders about the funding round last month, though it didn’t confirm Affinity’s involvement.
“As part of the financing the Crayhill debt was repaid,” Unybrands wrote in the memo, which was viewed by CNBC. “It also became necessary to make some changes to our corporate structure, which has meant that our group’s operating assets have been transferred to a new entity.”
UBHoldCo lists Ian Brekke, Affinity’s chief compliance officer, and Affinity partner Asad Naqvi as directors. Unybrands’ original holding company also remains active and lists two directors. One is Affinity partner Bret Pearlman, a former Blackstone managing director who also co-founded Elevation Partners with Roger McNamee. The other is Max Fink, a partner at Neumann’s family office, 166 2nd Financial Services.
It’s unclear how the entities and their boards operate within Unybrands’ corporate structure. The company notified shareholders late last month that “our investor” recently finalized its tax structuring, and that it would share more details on the financing soon, according to a document viewed by CNBC.
Unybrands told CNBC it’s in the process of consolidating its operations under one entity with one board made up of its “operating partners” and investors. The company confirmed its most recent funding round included Affinity, alongside Neumann’s family office and angel investors. The company added that Kratz continues to lead the business.
Representatives from Affinity didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. Brekke, Naqvi, Pearlman and Fink also didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Israeli-American businessman Adam Neumann speaks during The Israeli American Council (IAC) 8th Annual National Summit on January 19, 2023 in Austin, Texas.
Shahar Azran | Getty Images
Neumann, who reportedly developed a relationship with Kushner when he was in the Trump administration, had ties to Unybrands through its co-founder Eugen Miropolski, former COO of WeWork.
Several high-profile executives have also recently departed Unybrands since Affinity effectively took control. CFO Robyn Laguette stepped down in March, according to her LinkedIn profile. Mark Goldfinger, who was vice president of growth and was involved in the Affinity deal, left in April, he confirmed in an email to CNBC.
Kushner has never spoken publicly about Unybrands or acknowledged his firm’s investment in the company. He said recently that he’s focused on investing and won’t be returning to the White House should Donald Trump defeat President Joe Biden in the November election.
“I’ve been very clear that my desire at this phase of my life is to focus on my firm,” Kushner said at an Axios event in February.
While Unybrands may end up as a relatively small write-off for his multibillion-dollar firm, other questions are still swirling.
In October, Kushner appeared on the “Lex Fridman Podcast,” a popular show that’s drawn a range of guests from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West.
Asked about Affinity’s backers, Kushner said he hasn’t been accused of violating any laws or ethics rules, and said one of his goals with the firm is to build “economic links” between the Gulf and Israel.
“I think we’re doing very well with it,” Kushner said. “In terms of the criticisms, I think that I’ve been criticized in every step of everything I’ve always done in my life. And so what I would say is this business is actually an objective metric business. It’s about returns. So in three, four years from now, five years from now, see how I do. Hopefully I’ll do very well, and judge me based on that.”
Technology
AI research takes a backseat to profits as Silicon Valley prioritizes products over safety, experts say
Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI and co-founder of Tools for Humanity, participates remotely in a discussion on the sidelines of the IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington, D.C., April 24, 2025.
Brendan Smialowski | AFP | Getty Images
Not long ago, Silicon Valley was where the world’s leading artificial intelligence experts went to perform cutting-edge research.
Meta, Google and OpenAI opened their wallets for top talent, giving researchers staff, computing power and plenty of flexibility. With the support of their employers, the researchers published high-quality academic papers, openly sharing their breakthroughs with peers in academia and at rival companies.
But that era has ended. Now, experts say, AI is all about the product.
Since OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022, the tech industry has shifted its focus to building consumer-ready AI services, in many cases prioritizing commercialization over research, AI researchers and experts in the field told CNBC. The profit potential is massive — some analysts predict $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2028. The prospective repercussions terrify the corner of the AI universe concerned about safety, industry experts said, particularly as leading players pursue artificial general intelligence, or AGI, which is technology that rivals or exceeds human intelligence.
In the race to stay competitive, tech companies are taking an increasing number of shortcuts when it comes to the rigorous safety testing of their AI models before they are released to the public, industry experts told CNBC.
James White, chief technology officer at cybersecurity startup CalypsoAI, said newer models are sacrificing security for quality, that is, better responses by the AI chatbots. That means they’re less likely to reject malicious kinds of prompts that could cause them to reveal ways to build bombs or sensitive information that hackers could exploit, White said.
“The models are getting better, but they’re also more likely to be good at bad stuff,” said White, whose company performs safety and security audits of popular models from Meta, Google, OpenAI and other companies. “It’s easier to trick them to do bad stuff.”
The changes are readily apparent at Meta and Alphabet, which have deprioritized their AI research labs, experts say. At Facebook’s parent company, the Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research, or FAIR, unit has been sidelined by Meta GenAI, according to current and former employees. And at Alphabet, the research group Google Brain is now part of DeepMind, the division that leads development of AI products at the tech company.
CNBC spoke with more than a dozen AI professionals in Silicon Valley who collectively tell the story of a dramatic shift in the industry away from research and toward revenue-generating products. Some are former employees at the companies with direct knowledge of what they say is the prioritization of building new AI products at the expense of research and safety checks. They say employees face intensifying development timelines, reinforcing the idea that they can’t afford to fall behind when it comes to getting new models and products to market. Some of the people asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta Platforms, during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Meta’s AI evolution
When Joelle Pineau, a Meta vice president and the head of the company’s FAIR division, announced in April that she would be leaving her post, many former employees said they weren’t surprised. They said they viewed it as solidifying the company’s move away from AI research and toward prioritizing developing practical products.
“Today, as the world undergoes significant change, as the race for AI accelerates, and as Meta prepares for its next chapter, it is time to create space for others to pursue the work,” Pineau wrote on LinkedIn, adding that she will formally leave the company May 30.
Pineau began leading FAIR in 2023. The unit was established a decade earlier to work on difficult computer science problems typically tackled by academia. Yann LeCun, one of the godfathers of modern AI, initially oversaw the project, and instilled the research methodologies he learned from his time at the pioneering AT&T Bell Laboratories, according to several former employees at Meta. Small research teams could work on a variety of bleeding-edge projects that may or may not pan out.
The shift began when Meta laid off 21,000 employees, or nearly a quarter of its workforce, starting in late 2022. CEO Mark Zuckerberg kicked off 2023 by calling it the “year of efficiency.” FAIR researchers, as part of the cost-cutting measures, were directed to work more closely with product teams, several former employees said.
Two months before Pineau’s announcement, one of FAIR’s directors, Kim Hazelwood, left the company, two people familiar with the matter said. Hazelwood helped oversee FAIR’s NextSys unit, which manages computing resources for FAIR researchers. Her role was eliminated as part of Meta’s plan to cut 5% of its workforce, the people said.
Joelle Pineau of Meta speaks at the Advancing Sustainable Development through Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy AI event at Grand Central Terminal in New York, Sept. 23, 2024.
Bryan R. Smith | Via Reuters
OpenAI’s 2022 launch of ChatGPT caught Meta off guard, creating a sense of urgency to pour more resources into large language models, or LLMs, that were captivating the tech industry, the people said.
In 2023, Meta began heavily pushing its freely available and open-source Llama family of AI models to compete with OpenAI, Google and others.
With Zuckerberg and other executives convinced that LLMs were game-changing technologies, management had less incentive to let FAIR researchers work on far-flung projects, several former employees said. That meant deprioritizing research that could be viewed as having no impact on Meta’s core business, such as FAIR’s previous health care-related research into using AI to improve drug therapies.
Since 2024, Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox has been overseeing FAIR as a way to bridge the gap between research and the product-focused GenAI group, people familiar with the matter said. The GenAI unit oversees the Llama family of AI models and the Meta AI digital assistant, the two most important pillars of Meta’s AI strategy.
Under Cox, the GenAI unit has been siphoning more computing resources and team members from FAIR due to its elevated status at Meta, the people said. Many researchers have transferred to GenAI or left the company entirely to launch their own research-focused startups or join rivals, several of the former employees said.
While Zuckerberg has some internal support for pushing the GenAI group to rapidly develop real-world products, there’s also concern among some staffers that Meta is now less able to develop industry-leading breakthroughs that can be derived from experimental work, former employees said. That leaves Meta to chase its rivals.
A high-profile example landed in January, when Chinese lab DeepSeek released its R1 model, catching Meta off guard. The startup claimed it was able to develop a model as capable as its American counterparts but with training at a fraction of the cost.
Meta quickly implemented some of DeepSeek’s innovative techniques for its Llama 4 family of AI models that were released in April, former employees said. The AI research community had a mixed reaction to the smaller versions of Llama 4, but Meta said the biggest and most powerful Llama 4 variant is still being trained.
The company in April also released security and safety tools for developers to use when building apps with Meta’s Llama 4 AI models. These tools help mitigate the chances of Llama 4 unintentionally leaking sensitive information or producing harmful content, Meta said.
“Our commitment to FAIR remains strong,” a Meta spokesperson told CNBC. “Our strategy and plans will not change as a result of recent developments.”
In a statement to CNBC, Pineau said she is enthusiastic about Meta’s overall AI work and strategy.
“There continues to be strong support for exploratory research and FAIR as a distinct organization in Meta,” Pineau said. “The time was simply right for me personally to re-focus my energy before jumping into a new adventure.”
Meta on Thursday named FAIR co-founder Rob Fergus as Pineau’s replacement. Fergus will return to the company to serve as a director at Meta and head of FAIR, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was most recently a research director at Google DeepMind.
“Meta’s commitment to FAIR and long term research remains unwavering,” Fergus said in a LinkedIn post. “We’re working towards building human-level experiences that transform the way we interact with technology and are dedicated to leading and advancing AI research.”
Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, attends the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit at the Grand Palais in Paris, Feb. 10, 2025.
Benoit Tessier | Reuters
Google ‘can’t keep building nanny products’
Google released its latest and most powerful AI model, Gemini 2.5, in March. The company described it as “our most intelligent AI model,” and wrote in a March 25 blog post that its new models are “capable of reasoning through their thoughts before responding, resulting in enhanced performance and improved accuracy.”
For weeks, Gemini 2.5 was missing a model card, meaning Google did not share information about how the AI model worked or its limitations and potential dangers upon its release.
Model cards are a common tool for AI transparency.
A Google website compares model cards to food nutrition labels: They outline “the key facts about a model in a clear, digestible format,” the website says.
“By making this information easy to access, model cards support responsible AI development and the adoption of robust, industry-wide standards for broad transparency and evaluation practices,” the website says.
Google wrote in an April 2 blog post that it evaluates its “most advanced models, such as Gemini, for potential dangerous capabilities prior to their release.” Google later updated the blog to remove the words “prior to their release.”
Without a model card for Gemini 2.5, the public had no way of knowing which safety evaluations were conducted or whether DeepMind checked for dangerous capabilities at all.
In response to CNBC’s inquiry on April 2 about Gemini 2.5’s missing model card, a Google spokesperson said that a “tech report with additional safety information and model cards are forthcoming.” Google published an incomplete model card on April 16 and updated it on April 28, more than a month after the AI model’s release, to include information about Gemini 2.5’s “dangerous capability evaluations.”
Those assessments are important for gauging the safety of a model — whether people can use the models to learn how to build chemical or nuclear weapons or hack into important systems. These checks also determine whether a model is capable of autonomously replicating itself, which could lead to a company losing control of it. Running tests for those capabilities requires more time and resources than simple, automated safety evaluations, according to industry experts.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin
Kelly Sullivan | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
The Financial Times in March reported that Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis had installed a more rigorous vetting process for internal research papers to be published. The clampdown at Google is particularly notable because the company’s “Transformers” technology gained recognition across Silicon Valley through that type of shared research. Transformers were critical to OpenAI’s development of ChatGPT and the rise of generative AI.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin told staffers at DeepMind and Gemini in February that competition has accelerated and “the final race to AGI is afoot,” according to a memo viewed by CNBC. “We have all the ingredients to win this race but we are going to have to turbocharge our efforts,” he said in the memo.
Brin said in the memo that Google has to speed up the process of testing AI models, as the company needs “lots of ideas that we can test quickly.”
“We need real wins that scale,” Brin wrote.
In his memo, Brin also wrote that the company’s methods have “a habit of minor tweaking and overfitting” products for evaluations and “sniping” the products at checkpoints. He said employees need to build “capable products” and to “trust our users” more.
“We can’t keep building nanny products,” Brin wrote. “Our products are overrun with filters and punts of various kinds.”
A Google spokesperson told CNBC that the company has always been committed to advancing AI responsibly.
“We continue to do that through the safe development and deployment of our technology, and research contributions to the broader ecosystem,” the spokesperson said.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, is seen through glass during an event on the sidelines of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris, Feb. 11, 2025.
Aurelien Morissard | Via Reuters
OpenAI’s rush through safety testing
The debate of product versus research is at the center of OpenAI’s existence. The company was founded as a nonprofit research lab in 2015 and is now in the midst of a contentious effort to transform into a for-profit entity.
That’s the direction co-founder and CEO Sam Altman has been pushing toward for years. On May 5, though, OpenAI bowed to pressure from civic leaders and former employees, announcing that its nonprofit would retain control of the company even as it restructures into a public benefit corporation.
Nisan Stiennon worked at OpenAI from 2018 to 2020 and was among a group of former employees urging California and Delaware not to approve OpenAI’s restructuring effort. “OpenAI may one day build technology that could get us all killed,” Stiennon wrote in a statement in April. “It is to OpenAI’s credit that it’s controlled by a nonprofit with a duty to humanity.”
But even with the nonprofit maintaining control and majority ownership, OpenAI is speedily working to commercialize products as competition heats up in generative AI. And it may have rushed the rollout of its o1 reasoning model last year, according to some portions of its model card.
Results of the model’s “preparedness evaluations,” the tests OpenAI runs to assess an AI model’s dangerous capabilities and other risks, were based on earlier versions of o1. They had not been run on the final version of the model, according to its model card, which is publicly available.
Johannes Heidecke, OpenAI’s head of safety systems, told CNBC in an interview that the company ran its preparedness evaluations on near-final versions of the o1 model. Minor variations to the model that took place after those tests wouldn’t have contributed to significant jumps in its intelligence or reasoning and thus wouldn’t require additional evaluations, he said. Still, Heidecke acknowledged that OpenAI missed an opportunity to more clearly explain the difference.
OpenAI’s newest reasoning model, o3, released in April, seems to hallucinate more than twice as often as o1, according to the model card. When an AI model hallucinates, it produces falsehoods or illogical information.
OpenAI has also been criticized for reportedly slashing safety testing times from months to days and for omitting the requirement to safety test fine-tuned models in its latest “Preparedness Framework.”
Heidecke said OpenAI has decreased the time needed for safety testing because the company has improved its testing effectiveness and efficiency. A company spokesperson said OpenAI has allocated more AI infrastructure and personnel to its safety testing, and has increased resources for paying experts and growing its network of external testers.
In April, the company shipped GPT-4.1, one of its new models, without a safety report, as the model was not designated by OpenAI as a “frontier model,” which is a term used by the tech industry to refer to a bleeding-edge, large-scale AI model.
But one of those small revisions caused a big wave in April. Within days of updating its GPT-4o model, OpenAI rolled back the changes after screenshots of overly flattering responses to ChatGPT users went viral online. OpenAI said in a blog post explaining its decision that those types of responses to user inquiries “raise safety concerns — including around issues like mental health, emotional over-reliance, or risky behavior.”
OpenAI said in the blogpost that it opted to release the model even after some expert testers flagged that its behavior “‘felt’ slightly off.”
“In the end, we decided to launch the model due to the positive signals from the users who tried out the model. Unfortunately, this was the wrong call,” OpenAI wrote. “Looking back, the qualitative assessments were hinting at something important, and we should’ve paid closer attention. They were picking up on a blind spot in our other evals and metrics.”
Metr, a company OpenAI partners with to test and evaluate its models for safety, said in a recent blog post that it was given less time to test the o3 and o4-mini models than predecessors.
“Limitations in this evaluation prevent us from making robust capability assessments,” Metr wrote, adding that the tests it did were “conducted in a relatively short time.”
Metr also wrote that it had insufficient access to data that would be important in determining the potential dangers of the two models.
The company said it wasn’t able to access the OpenAI models’ internal reasoning, which is “likely to contain important information for interpreting our results.” However, Metr said, “OpenAI shared helpful information on some of their own evaluation results.”
OpenAI’s spokesperson said the company is piloting secure ways of sharing chains of thought for Metr’s research as well as for other third-party organizations.
Steven Adler, a former safety researcher at OpenAI, told CNBC that safety testing a model before it’s rolled out is no longer enough to safeguard against potential dangers.
“You need to be vigilant before and during training to reduce the chance of creating a very capable, misaligned model in the first place,” Adler said.
He warned that companies such as OpenAI are backed into a corner when they create capable but misaligned models with goals that are different from the ones they intended to build.
“Unfortunately, we don’t yet have strong scientific knowledge for fixing these models — just ways of papering over the behavior,” Adler said.
WATCH: OpenAI closes $40 billion funding round, largest private tech deal on record
Omar Marques | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Shares of stock brokerage platform eToro popped in their Nasdaq debut on Wednesday after the company raised almost $310 million in its initial public offering.
The stock opened at $69.69, or 34% above its IPO, pushing its market cap to $5.6 billion. Shares were last up more than 40%.
The Israel-based company sold nearly six million shares at $52 each, above the expected range of $46 to $50. Almost six million additional shares were sold by existing investors. At the IPO price, the company was valued at roughly $4.2 billion.
Wall Street is looking to the Robinhood competitor for signs of renewed interest in IPOs after an extended drought. Many investors saw President Donald Trump’s return to the White House as a catalyst before tariff concerns led companies to delay their plans.
Etoro isn’t the only company attempting to test the waters. Fintech company Chime filed its prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, while digital physical therapy company Hinge Health kickstarted its IPO roadshow, and said in a filing it aims to raise up to $437 million in its offering.
EToro had previously filed to go public in 2021 through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, that would have valued it at more than $10 billion. It shelved those plans in 2022 as equity markets nosedived, but remained focused on an eventual IPO.
EToro was founded in 2007 by brothers Yoni and Ronen Assia and David Ring. The company makes money through trading-related fees and nontrading activities such as withdrawals. Net income increased almost thirteenfold last year to $192.4 million from $15.3 million in 2023.
The company has steadily built a growing business in cryptocurrencies. Revenue from crypto assets more than tripled to upward of $12 million in 2024, and one-quarter of its net trading contribution stemmed from crypto last year. That is up from 10% in 2023.
EToro said that for the first quarter, it expects crypto assets to account for 37% of its commission from trading activities, down from 43% a year earlier.
Spark Capital is the company’s biggest outside investor, with 14% control after the offering, followed by BRM Group at 8.7%. CEO Yoni Assia controls 9.3%.
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