Chairman of Foxconn Young Liu delivers a speech during the Hon Hai Tech Day in Taipei on Oct. 18, 2023.
I-hwa Cheng | AFP | Getty Images
The boom in corporate investment into artificial intelligence infrastructure still has some way to go as large language models are continuing to evolve, according to the CEO of Foxconn, a key supplier to Apple.
Speaking with CNBC’s Emily Tan, Chief Executive and Chairman of Foxconn Young Liu, said that the AI boom “still has some time to go” as advanced language models from the likes of OpenAI are becoming increasingly intelligent with each new iteration that comes out.
He said that the general movement in the tech industry today is trending toward a form of AI that is as intelligent — if not more intelligent — than humans. This type of AI is referred to in the industry as “AGI,” or Artificial General Intelligence.
“We … heard about AGI, and we’ll talk about different levels of intelligence. If you divide [intelligence] into four different levels, we’re at level two. There’s still level three and level four to go,” Liu told CNBC in an interview that aired Tuesday.
OpenAI is one of the leading companies pushing for AGI. Sam Altman, CEO of the Microsoft-backed startup, has previously said AGI will be developed in the “reasonably close-ish future,” however he’s also said he thinks it will “change jobs much less than we all think.”
The company, which released its upgraded GPT-4o model this summer, revealed last week that it had raised $6.6 billion at a $157 billion valuation. OpenAI is still working toward releasing its next-generation LLM, GPT-5, however it’s yet to share timing on when the new language model will launch.
Liu said that progress toward increasingly intelligent AI can only be a good thing for the AI server industry, which has been a key boon to Foxconn’s growth this year.
“I think for the AI server industry, I think we still have some time to grow,” Liu added. “With the AGI capability growing, the age [of] AI devices will be another industry we should watch carefully.”
Strong demand for Nvidia’s Blackwell chip
Foxconn, which trades as Hon Hai locally in China and Taiwan, is the world’s largest contract manufacturer for the electronics industry. The firm produces and assembles Apple products, including about two out of every three iPhones.
On Saturday, Foxconn said that it reported better-than-expected sales figures. The firm said its revenues came in at 1.85 trillion Taiwanese dollars ($57.5 billion) in the September quarter, up 20.2% year-over-year. That “exceeded the company’s original expectations of significant growth,” according to Foxconn.
The strong performance came off the back of heightened demand for AI servers, which Foxconn manufactures for several major global tech giants, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia.
The company is currently on track to ship Nvidia’s next-generation Blackwell GPU (graphics processing unit), an advanced AI server chip, in the fourth quarter of 2024, Liu told CNBC. Blackwell is also known under the brand name GB200.
Asked about the order book for Blackwell, Liu said that demand for the chip is “much better than we thought,” adding that the firm is building new factories in Mexico to help service outsized demand for the product.
His comments tally with what Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said about demand for Blackwell previously. Last week, Huang told CNBC’s “Closing Bell Overtime” that demand for Blackwell was “insane.”
“Everybody wants to have the most and everybody wants to be first,” Huang said during the interview, which aired last Wednesday.
Blackwell, expected to cost between $30,000 and $40,000 per unit, is in hot demand from companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta and other firms building AI data centers to power products like ChatGPT and Copilot.
AI devices the next growth opportunity
Beyond producing IT infrastructure for cloud-based AI applications like ChatGPT, Foxconn is also powering the new iPhone 16, which comes with the latest generative AI features Apple hopes will breathe new life into the smartphone industry.
Foxconn’s Liu said that “on-device” AI — where data is processed directly on a mobile device, rather than a cloud or server — represents the next substantial growth opportunity for the company.
“I think the genAI-related device will be the next way to grow,” Liu told CNBC. “Currently, we’re seeing this on the cloud side. You see that genAI cloud equipment was very much booming.”
“But in the next phase, what we’re seeing will be the Gen AI devices,” he added. “We think that will be the next big way to boom … We have very high hopes on those devices.”
Still, it’s worth noting though that Apple hasn’t yet released its AI system, called Apple Intelligence, on iPhone. The company is expected to release Apple Intelligence to the public in a beta version later this fall as part of a new software update.
Smartphone sales have been gaining momentum this year after several consecutive years of declines. In the second quarter of 2024, smartphone shipments climbed 6.5% year-over-year to 285.4 million units, according to preliminary data from IDC — their fourth straight quarter of growth.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends the Saudi-U.S. Investment Forum, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 13, 2025.
Hamad I Mohammed | Reuters
Tesla’s shares have finally turned positive for the year.
After a dismal first quarter, which was the worst for the stock in any period since 2022, and a brutal start to April, following President Donald Trump’s announcement of sweeping new tariffs, Wall Street has again rallied around the electric vehicle maker.
The stock rose 3.6% on Monday to $410.26, topping its closing price of 2024 by over $6. It’s up 85% since bottoming for the year at $221.86 on April 4. A new filing revealed that CEO Elon Musk purchased about $1 billion worth of shares in the company through his family foundation.
It’s the second straight year Tesla has bounced back after a down first quarter. Last year, the shares fell 29% in the first three months before ending up 63% for 2024.
In recent weeks, analysts have praised the EV maker’s proposed pay plan for Musk, which could amount to a $1 trillion windfall for the world’s richest person over the next decade. The company has also gotten a boost from its new MegaBlocks battery energy storage systems that Tesla ships preassembled to businesses looking to lower their power costs or make greater use of electricity from renewable resources.
Even with the rebound, Tesla is the second-worst performer this year among tech’s megacaps, ahead of only Apple, which is down about 5% in 2025. Tesla is still in the midst of a multi-quarter sales slump due to an aging lineup of EVs and increased competition from lower-cost competitors in China, namely BYD.
Tesla has seen a consumer backlash, in part because of Musk’s political activities, including spending nearly $300 million to propel President Trump back to the White House and his work with the Trump administration to slash the federal workforce.
Tesla leadership has been working to shift investors’ attention to other topics such as robotaxis and humanoid robots.
However, the company has yet to deliver vehicles that are safe to use without a human onboard and ready to take control if needed. And while Musk is touting Tesla’s Optimus robots, which he says will be able to do everything from factory work to babysitting, a product is still a long way from hitting the market.
Shares of the search giant jumped more than 4% on Monday, pushing the company into territory occupied only by Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple.
The stock got a big lift in early September from an antitrust ruling by a judge, whose penalties came in lighter than shareholders feared. The U.S. Department of Justice wanted Google to be forced to divest its Chrome browser, and last year a district court ruled that the company held an illegal monopoly in search and related advertising.
But Judge Amit Mehta decided against the most severe consequences proposed by the DOJ, which sent shares soaring to a record. After the big rally, President Donald Trump congratulated the company and called it “a very good day.”
Read more CNBC tech news
Alphabet shares are now up more than 30% this year, compared to the 15% gain for the Nasdaq.
The $3 trillion milestone comes roughly 20 years after Google’s IPO and a little more than 10 years after the creation of Alphabet as a holding company, with Google its prime subsidiary.
CEO Sundar Pichai was named CEO of Alphabet in 2019, replacing co-founder Larry Page. Pichai’s latest challenge has been the surge of new competition due to the rise of artificial intelligence, which the company has had to manage through while also fending off an aggressive set of regulators in the U.S. and Europe.
The rise of Perplexity and OpenAI ended up helping Google land the recent favorable antitrust ruling. The company’s hopes of becoming a major AI player largely ride with Gemini, Google’s flagship suite of AI models.
The U.S. and China have reached a ‘framework’ deal for social media platform TikTok, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday.
“It’s between two private parties, but the commercial terms have been agreed upon,” he said from U.S.-China talks in Madrid.
Both President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet Friday to discuss the terms. Trump also said in a Truth Social post Monday that a deal was reached “on a ‘certain’ company that young people in our Country very much wanted to save.”
Bessent indicated that the framework could pivot the platform to U.S.-controlled ownership.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The comments came during the latest round of trade discussions between the U.S. and China. Relations have soured between the two countries in recent months from Trump’s tariffs and other trade restrictions.
At the same time, TikTok parent company ByteDance faces a Sept. 17 deadline to divest the platform’s U.S. business or face being shut down in the country.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Monday that the deadline may need to be pushed back to get the deal signed, but there won’t be ongoing extensions.
Read more CNBC tech news
Congress passed a law last year prohibiting app store operators like Apple and Google from distributing TikTok in the U.S. due to its “foreign adversary-controlled application” status.
But Trump postponed the shutdown in January, signing an executive order in January that gave ByteDance 75 more days to make a deal. Further extensions came by way of executive orders in April and in June.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnicksaid in July that TikTok would shutter for Americans if China doesn’t give the U.S. more autonomy over the popular short-form video app.
As for who controls the platform, Trump told Fox News in June that he had a group of “very wealthy people” ready to buy the app and could reveal their identities in two weeks. The reveal never came.
He has previously said he’d be open to Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison or Tesla CEO Elon Musk buying TikTok in the U.S. Artificial intelligence startup Perplexity has submitted a bid for an acquisition, as has businessman Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty internet advocacy group, CNBC reported in January.
Trump told CNBC in an interview last year that he believed the platform was a national security threat, although the White House started a TikTok account in August.