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Warren East, former CEO of Rolls Royce and Arm, speaking at a tech event in London on June 13, 2022.

Luke MacGregor | Bloomberg via Getty Images

CAMBRIDGE, England — The U.K. is doing a bad job of commercializing technology businesses globally and needs a mindset shift from the investor community to win on the world stage, a former CEO of British chip design firm Arm said Tuesday.

In a keynote speech at Cambridge Tech Week, Warren East, who led Arm between 1994 and 2013, said that there have been criticisms that lackluster growth and poor rates of GDP per head in the U.K. are a source of national “embarrassment.”

He added that too often firms that achieve scale in Britain have a tendency to change locations from the U.K. or list abroad in countries such as the U.S., due to difficulties with achieving global relevance from the country.

“I think we have a lot to offer in terms of U.K.-based innovative technology,” East told the audience at Cambridge Tech Week. However, he added: “We tend not to be able to realise as many global businesses as that promise would suggest.”

East was also previously the CEO of U.K. aviation engineering giant Rolls-Royce. He is currently a non-executive director on the board of Tokamak Energy.

East said that Britain “needs to get commercialization right,” adding that too much innovation gets created in the U.K. but is then exported elsewhere around the world.

There is “sadly a common story of all the wonderful stuff that gets made in Britain and then gets commercialized and exploited elsewhere,” East said. He added that he doesn’t have a “silver bullet” solution on how to fix the issue, but suggested that the U.K. needs to encourage more “risk appetite” to support high-growth tech firms.

“We’re often told that the problem isn’t the startup bit, it’s the scale up bit,” East said, explaining that there are far deeper pools of capital presence in the U.S. “Investor risk appetite in the U.S. is higher than it is in the U.K.,” he said

East noted that there have been pushes among the British entrepreneurial community and VCs for a change to capital market rules that will allow more investments from pension funds into startups and “stimulate risk appetite” in the U.K.

“Fortunately I think we can expect more of that over the coming years,” East told attendees of the Cambridge event. However, he added: “Businesses can’t guarantee that’s going to happen, and can’t wait for the rules to change.”

Last year, Arm, whose chip architectures can be found in most of the world’s smartphone processors, listed on the Nasdaq in the U.S. in a major blow to U.K. officials and the London Stock Exchange’s ambitions to hold more tech debuts in Britain.

The company remains majority-owned by Japanese tech giant SoftBank.

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What Dick’s Sporting Goods’ earnings report tells us about Nike’s turnaround

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What Dick's Sporting Goods' earnings report tells us about Nike's turnaround

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Musk’s xAI to close $15 billion funding round in December: sources

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Musk's xAI to close  billion funding round in December: sources

Elon Musk attends the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 19, 2025.

Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI is expected to close a $15 billion round at a $230 billion pre-money valuation next month, sources familiar with the matter told CNBC’s David Faber.

The deadline for allocation is the end of day on Tuesday, with the round expected to close on Dec. 19, the sources said.

This confirms earlier CNBC reporting that the company was raising $15 billion. The Tesla CEO later called the report on the round “False” in a post on the social media platform X.

At the time, sources told CNBC that xAI would use a large portion of the money for funding graphics processing units responsible for powering large language models.

CNBC had previously reported in September that the startup was looking to raise $10 billion at a $200 billion valuation.

The funding round is yet another sign of the insatiable demand for AI tools. Companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, have raised billions and reached sky-high valuations as investors pour more money into companies building foundational AI models.

Sam Altman‘s OpenAI finalized a $6.6 billion-share sale at a $500 billion valuation last month, and Reuters recently reported that the ChatGPT maker was eying a $1 trillion initial public offering.

Anthropic closed a $13 billion funding round in September that roughly tripled its valuation from March.

Musk’s xAI is responsible for creating the Grok chatbot that has come under fire for disseminating hate speech, including antisemitic content. The company recently debuted Grokipedia, an AI-powered competitor to Wikipedia.

In March, Musk announced the merger of xAI with X in a deal valuing the social media platform at $33 billion.

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TSMC stock falls as it sues former exec alleging he took trade secrets to Intel

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 TSMC stock falls as it sues former exec alleging he took trade secrets to Intel

TSMC on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against a former senior vice president it accused of leaking “confidential information” to Intel.

Wei-Jen Lo joined Intel after 21 years at TSMC, having left in July, the Taiwanese chip maker said in a statement, announcing the lawsuit.

The lawsuit is based on Lo’s employment contract and non-compete agreement with TSMC, and regulations such as the Trade Secrets Act, the statement said.

“There is a high probability that Lo uses, leaks, discloses, delivers, or transfers TSMC’s trade
secrets and confidential information to Intel,” it said.

TSMC’s share price fell on Tuesday and was last seen over 3% lower.

Intel did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

It follows earlier reports by local media and later by Reuters, which stated Lo may have taken TSMC’s technology data to Intel. Taiwan’s High Prosecutors opened an investigation into the allegations.

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan told Bloomberg News last week that his “company respects intellectual property rights” and denied any wrongdoing.

The U.S. firm’s stock price moved 1.5% lower in mid-morning trade.

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