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Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, at the Hope Global Forums annual meeting in Atlanta on Dec. 11, 2023.

Dustin Chambers | Bloomberg | Getty Images

OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, expects about $5 billion in losses on $3.7 billion in revenue this year, CNBC has confirmed.

The company generated $300 million in revenue last month, up 1,700% since the beginning of last year, and expects to bring in $11.6 billion in sales next year, according to a person close to OpenAI who asked not to be named because the numbers are confidential.

The New York Times was first to report on OpenAI’s financials earlier on Friday after viewing company documents. CNBC hasn’t seen the financials.

OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft, is currently pursuing a funding round that would value the company at more than $150 billion, people familiar with the matter have told CNBC. Thrive Capital is leading the round and plans to invest $1 billion, with Tiger Global planning to join as well.

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told investors in an email Thursday that the funding round is oversubscribed and will close by next week. Her note followed a number of key departures, most notably technology chief Mira Murati, who announced the previous day that she was leaving OpenAI after six and a half years.

Also this week, news surfaced that OpenAI’s board is considering plans to restructure the firm to a for-profit business. The company will retain its nonprofit segment as a separate entity, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. The structure would be more straightforward for investors and make it easier for OpenAI employees to realize liquidity, the source said.

OpenAI’s services have exploded in popularity since the company launched ChatGPT in late 2022. The company sells subscriptions to various tools and licenses its GPT family of large language models, which are powering much of the generative AI boom. Running those models requires a massive investment in Nvidia’s graphics processing units.

The Times, citing an analysis by a financial professional who reviewed OpenAI’s documents, reported that the roughly $5 billion in loses this year are tied to costs for running its services as well as employee salaries and office rent. The costs don’t include equity-based compensation, “among several large expenses not fully explained in the documents,” the paper said.

WATCH: OpenAI has a lot of challengers, says Madrona’s Matt McIlwain

OpenAI has a lot of challengers, says Madrona's Matt McIlwain

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Tesla to recall 46,000 Cybertrucks, citing exterior panel that can increase ‘risk of crash’

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Tesla to recall 46,000 Cybertrucks, citing exterior panel that can increase 'risk of crash'

A Tesla Cybertruck is parked in front of the White House in Washington, U.S., March 11, 2025. 

Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

Tesla is recalling more than 46,000 of its Cybertrucks due to a cosmetic exterior trim panel that it said can “delaminate and detach from the vehicle,” potentially becoming a road hazard and “increasing the risk of a crash.”

The recall covers an exterior part of the vehicle, known as a cant rail, and it will affect all Cybertruck vehicles manufactured from November 2023 to February 2025, Tesla wrote in a filing to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The Cybertrucks’ recall comes at an already-challenging time for the embattled EV maker, whose value has dropped by more than 40% as CEO Elon Musk continues his role as a top advisor in the Trump administration.

Owners of affected vehicles can take their Cybertrucks to Tesla’s service department for free replacement of the cant rail, the company wrote in its filing.

Both Tesla and The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Following the recall filing, The Information reported that the company plans to introduce a new innovation to the Cybertruck’s battery this year that would “sharply decrease battery manufacturing costs,” citing a senior executive.

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Huawei’s $1,000 foldable will run self-developed HarmonyOS 5 as it pushes Apple, Google alternative

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Huawei's ,000 foldable will run self-developed HarmonyOS 5 as it pushes Apple, Google alternative

Richard Yu Chengdong, executive director of Huawei and chairman of the Board of Directors of the Consumer Business Group, introduces HUAWEI Pura X mobile phone at a new product launch conference on March 20, 2025 in Shenzhen, China.

Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images

Huawei’s Pura X, a foldable smartphone launched Thursday, is the first to run the tech giant’s own operating system as it looks to create a viable alternative to Google’s Android and Apple‘s iOS.

When unfolded, the Pura X has a 6.3-inch display, but its 16:10 aspect ratio gives it a wider screen area than most other smartphones on the market. The device folds in half into a compact square and has a 3.5-inch display with a camera at the front.

The Pura X starts at 7,499 Chinese yuan ($1,037).

The device is important for Huawei for two reasons.

Firstly, since the end of 2023, Huawei has seen a revival in its smartphone business in China following U.S. sanctions which had crippled its sales.

Huawei has aggressively launched more unusual devices in an effort to differentiate itself from rivals, including a trifold smartphone.

The Shenzhen-headquartered company also poses a challenge to Apple in China.

Huawei’s market share in the fourth quarter of 2024 rose to 16.2% in China versus 13.7% a year before, according to the International Data Corporation. Apple’s market share declined from 20% to 17.4% over the same period.

The second reason is that the Pura X is the first to run HarmonyOS 5, the latest version of Huawei’s self-developed operating system. It was initially launched in November as HarmonyOS Next and reportedly no longer uses code from the open-source version of Google’s Android operating system.

This is a significant step by Huawei to remove any ties to Google and Android. In 2019, U.S. sanctions forced Google to stop working with Huawei.

The Pura X is also equipped with Xiaoyi, Huawei’s AI assistant which is underpinned by its own artificial intelligence models as well as those developed by DeepSeek.

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SoftBank to acquire chip designer Ampere in $6.5 billion deal

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SoftBank to acquire chip designer Ampere in .5 billion deal

The logo of Japanese company SoftBank Group is seen outside the company’s headquarters in Tokyo on January 22, 2025. 

Kazuhiro Nogi | Afp | Getty Images

SoftBank Group said Wednesday that it will acquire Ampere Computing, a startup that designed an Arm-based server chip, for $6.5 billion. The company expects the deal to close in the second half of 2025, according to a statement.

Carlyle Group and Oracle both have committed to selling their stakes in Ampere, SoftBank said.

Ampere will operate as an independent subsidiary and will keep its headquarters in Santa Clara, California, the statement said.

“Ampere’s expertise in semiconductors and high-performance computing will help accelerate this vision, and deepens our commitment to AI innovation in the United States,” SoftBank Group Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son was quoted as saying in the statement.

The startup has 1,000 semiconductor engineers, SoftBank said in a separate statement.

Chips that use Arm’s instruction set represent an alternative to chips based on the x86 architecture, which Intel and AMD sell. Arm-based chips often consume less energy. Ampere’s founder and CEO, Renee James, established the startup in 2017 after 28 years at Intel, where she rose to the position of president.

Leading cloud infrastructure provider Amazon Web Services offers Graviton Arm chip for rent that have become popular among large customers. In October, Microsoft started selling access to its own Cobalt 100 Arm-based cloud computing instances.

This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.

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