Qatari telecoms provider Ooredoo told CNBC Wednesday that its new tie-up with Nvidia is compliant of all U.S. regulations and will still allow it to have access to the latest technology.
Ooredoo earlier this week signed a partnership with Nvidia, marking the chipmaker’s first large-scale entry into the Middle East market. The companies did not disclose the value of the deal.
The deal will see thousands of Nvidia’s GPUs (graphics processing units) deployed in 26 data centers across Qatar and five other countries: Kuwait, Oman, Algeria, Tunisia and the Maldives. These chips will help the data centers process massive amounts of information, which will feed AI chatbots and other tools, essential components of a country’s AI infrastructure.
Washington does allow the export of some Nvidia chips to the region, and Nvidia, AMD and Intel have all indicated plans to create less powerful chips for export to the Chinese market. The restrictions focus on A100 and H100 chips, not GPUs (another type of semiconductor) which are central to this deal.
Ooredoo told CNBC that the deal is compliant of all U.S. regulations. Under the partnership, no new licenses for different chips have been created.
“As a telecom operator, dealing with very stringent regulation is business as usual. We are used to dealing with regulators and government authorities, whether they’re local or international,” Ooredoo’s CEO told CNBC.
“We are working very closely with the different regulators and with Nvidia to see all the required approvals and to provide all the guarantees required,” he added.
A tug of war between China and the United States has played out in the race to obtain and protect the latest artificial intelligence technology. The United Arab Emirates’ top AI group G42 vowed to phase out Chinese hardware to appease Washington, later seeing through a deal with Microsoft worth $1.5 billion.
Gulf states are leveraging their vast energy wealth to try to become pioneers in artificial intelligence, investing in developing the technology and importing massive quantities of chips used in AI data centers.
According to Ooredoo’s CEO, the chips are latest generation GPUs, catered specially for artificial intelligence and “will be able to deliver extreme machine learning and model utilization of these AI models and generative AI.”
They will be used in citizen services for governments, and to enhance productivity and efficiency for general corporations and research and development.
The cloud partnership between Ooredoo and Nvidia aims to position the chipmaker as the central source for AI technology in the region, and according to Ooredoo will drive innovation, development and create jobs. The countries will get access to Nvidia’s latest full-stack AI platform, catering to both Ooredoo and non-Ooredoo customers through independent data centers.
Ooredoo also committed to investing $1 billion to boost its regional data center capacity even before announcing its partnership with Nvidia. Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo, Ooredoo’s CEO, told CNBC’s Dan Murphy that he expects that investment to be returned in the years to come.
“The demand we’re seeing just from the cloud and now adding that layer of AI to it is already outstripping our most optimistic plan, so we will probably exceed that investment in the next three to five years.”
Qatar Investment Authority-backed Ooredoo, which is listed in both Qatar and Abu Dhabi, plans to develop a platform driven by AI and powered by Nvidia in the hope of meeting market demand.
Nvidia briefly became the world’s most valuable company last week, overtaking Microsoft. The chipmaker rebounded in Tuesday trade, reversing a three-day losing streak which wiped over $550 billion from its market value.
Mario poses at the “SUPER NINTENDO WORLD” welcome celebration at Universal Studios Hollywood on February 16, 2023 in Universal City, California.
Rodin Eckenroth | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
Nintendo on Tuesday cut forecast for Switch sales for its fiscal year ending March 2025 as demand wanes for its ageing console.
The Japanese gaming giant said it now expects to sell 12.5 million units of the Switch over the course of the period. That’s down from a previous forecast of 13.5 million units.
Nintendo has been contending with fading demand for its flagship Switch console, which is now more than seven years old.
Investors are waiting for news surrounding a successor to the Switch, which they hope will re-energize Nintendo’s gaming business. In the past, the company said that the Switch successor will be announced in its current fiscal year, which ends in March 2025.
Nintendo also cut full fiscal year forecasts for sales and operating profit. The company said it now expects sales of 1.28 trillion yen versus a previous forecast of 1.35 trillion yen. The operating profit outlook for the period was slashed from 400 billion yen to 360 billion yen.
Here’s how Nintendo did in its fiscal second quarter ended Sept. 30 versus LSEG estimates:
Revenue: 276.7 billion Japanese yen ($1.8 billion), compared with 273.34 billion yen expected.
Net profit: 27.7 billion yen, versus 48.06 billion yen expected.
Revenue fell 17% year-on-year. Net profit plunged just over 69% versus the same period last year.
Super Mario, Zelda boost fading
The Switch is Nintendo’s second best-selling console in history, behind the Nintendo DS. Despite the recent fall in sales, Nintendo has prolonged the console’s appeal for an extended period of time since its launch in 2017 by relying on its recognizable characters.
In its last fiscal year, Nintendo managed to reinvigorate sales of the Switch thanks to the the success of the “Super Mario Bros. Movie” and the highly anticipated release of the “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” game, which underscored the appeal of its iconic characters.
But that effect is fading.
On Tuesday, Nintendo noted the boost that the company received in the first half of its last fiscal year, but said “there were no such special factors in the first half of this fiscal year, and with Nintendo Switch now in its eighth year since launch, unit sales of both hardware and software decreased significantly year-on-year.”
Sales of the Switch totaled 4.72 units in the six months ended Sept. 30, compared with 6.84 million units in the same period of last year.
In the face of falling sales, Nintendo has tried to license out its intellectual property for use everywhere, from movies to theme parks. A new Super Mario movie is slated for release in 2026.
Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg plans to visit South Korea, scheduling key meetings during the trip, according to a statement by Meta on Wednesday, which did not provide further details. Reportedly, Zuckerberg is anticipated to meet with Samsung Electronics chairman Jay Y. Lee later this month to discuss AI chip supply and other generative AI issues, as per the South Korean newspaper Seoul Economic Daily, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter.
Alex Wong | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Meta extended its ban on new political ads on Facebook and Instagram past Election Day in the U.S.
The social media giant announced the political ads policy update on Monday, extending its ban on new political ads past Tuesday, the original end date for the restriction period.
Meta did not specify the day it will lift the restriction, saying only that the ad blocking will continue “until later this week.” The company did not say why it extended the political advertising restriction period.
The company announced in August that any political ads that ran at least once before Oct. 29 would still be allowed to run on Meta’s services in the final week before Election Day. Other political ads will not be allowed to run.
Organization with eligible ads will have “limited editing capabilities” while the restriction is still in place, Meta said. Those advertisers will be allowed to make scheduling, budgeting and bidding-related changes to their political ads, Meta said.
Meta enacted the same policy in 2020. The company said the policy is in place because “we recognize there may not be enough time to contest new claims made in ads.”
Google-parent Alphabet announced a similar ad policy update last month, saying it would pause ads relating to U.S. elections from running in the U.S. after the last polls close on Tuesday. Alphabet said it would notify advertisers when it lifts the pause.
Nearly $1 billion has been spent on political ads over the last week, with the bulk of the money spent on down-ballot races throughout the U.S., according to data from advertising analytics firm AdImpact.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, attends the 54th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, January 18, 2024 (L), and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos speaks during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, November 2, 2021.
Reuters
Physical Intelligence, a robot startup based in San Francisco, has raised $400 million at a $2.4 billion post-money valuation, the company confirmed Monday to CNBC.
Investors included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, OpenAI, Thrive Capital and Lux Capital, a Physical Intelligence spokesperson said. Khosla Ventures and Sequoia Capital are also listed as investors on the company’s website.
Physical Intelligence’s new valuation is about six times that of its March seed round, which reportedly came in at $70 million with a $400 million valuation. Its current roster of employees includes alumni of Tesla, Google DeepMind and X.
The startup focuses on “bringing general-purpose AI into the physical world,” per its website, and it aims to do this by developing large-scale artificial intelligence models and algorithms to power robots. The startup spent the past eight months developing a “general-purpose” AI model for robots, the company wrote in a blog post. Physical Intelligence hopes that model will be the first step toward its ultimate goal of developing artificial general intelligence. AGI is a term used to describe AI technology that equals or surpasses human intellect on a wide range of tasks.
Physical Intelligence’s vision is that one day users can “simply ask robots to perform any task they want, just like they can ask large language models (LLMs) and chatbot assistants,” the startup wrote in the blog post. In case studies, Physical Intelligence details how its tech could allow a robot to do laundry, bus tables or assemble a box.