Larry Ellison, co-founder and executive chairman of Oracle Corp., speaks during the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco on Oct. 22, 2018.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Oracle unveiled a brand-new electronic health record on Tuesday, its most significant health-care product update since acquiring the medical records giant Cerner for $28 billion in 2022.
An electronic health record, or an EHR, is a digital version of a patient’s medical history that’s updated by doctors and nurses over time. EHR software can be complex and cumbersome for clinicians to use, but it’s become an integral component of the modern U.S. health-care system.
Oracle’s latest EHR is equipped with cloud and artificial intelligence capabilities that will make it easier to navigate and set up, the company said. There are no menus or drop-down screens, and doctors can pull up the information they need by asking questions with their voices. Ideally, this will allow doctors to spend less time searching through records and more time caring for patients, Oracle said.
“It’s not just a scribe. It’s not an assistant. It’s almost like having your own resident,” Seema Verma, executive vice president and general manager of Oracle Health and Life Sciences, told CNBC in an interview.
Oracle’s new offering could help boost its position within the fiercely competitive EHR market, where it has struggled to maintain its footing in recent years. In 2023, Oracle saw its largest net hospital loss on record while market leader Epic Systems, Oracle’s top rival, was the only company that saw a net increase in acute care market share, according to a report from KLAS Research.
Cerner contributed $5.9 billion to Oracle’s total revenue in fiscal 2023. Epic generated $4.9 billion in revenue last year.
Oracle co-founder and Chairman Larry Ellison delivers a keynote address during the Oracle OpenWorld on October 22, 2018 in San Francisco, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
The new EHR has been in the works since Oracle acquired Cerner, but it was not built on top of Cerner’s existing infrastructure, Verma said. That means current Cerner customers will have to decide whether to migrate to the separate system.
“Just think about crumbling infrastructure in a house, you’re not going to put new things on top of it,” she said. “That was the conclusion that we came to when we looked at the Cerner technology, so what we’re introducing to the market is something that’s brand new.”
Suhas Uliyar, Oracle’s senior vice president for product management in clinical and health-care AI, walked CNBC through a virtual demo of the new EHR. He showcased what it might look like for a doctor to get up to speed, respond to messages and fill prescriptions ahead of a day packed full of patient visits.
The EHR is browser based, and physicians will see a search bar and a chronological list of their appointments when they open it. The interface is very simple. A doctor can click on the microphone in the search bar and ask questions like, “How many openings do I have for today?” or “How many new patients do I have on schedule for today?” The doctor will then get an AI-generated answer within seconds.
If a doctor clicks on a patient, they’ll open their chart, where they can find AI summaries as well as more detailed explanations of their medical history. The physician can see what’s changed since the patient’s last visit, whether they’re taking any new medication and other details like lab results, clinical documentation, past treatments, risk factors, messages, allergies and vitals.
Additionally, the doctor can click the microphone and ask patient-specific questions like “Has she ever complained about panic attacks or shortness of breath?,” “Has he had a CT screening for lung cancer, and are his vaccinations up to date?” or “Which antibiotics have you treated her urinary tract infection with?”
“It’s going through the entire history, all the records, and it gives me a very specific answer,” Uliyar said. “I didn’t have to go scroll through 15 different documents and find that.”
The voice-activated questions can build on one another, and the EHR’s AI will start to learn the doctor’s habits, like the types of medications they prescribe and refill often. Even when Uliyar stumbled over his words or didn’t phrase a question exactly right, the system still pulled up the information he was looking for.
If a doctor wants to go into more detail or double-check an AI-generated answer within the new EHR, they can always click on the citation and look through the original record that’s referenced, Uliyar said. And answers that include content like medication dosage information or other evidence-based recommendations will link to validated databases, he added.
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on July 12, 2023 in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
While Oracle has been developing its new EHR, the company has also been rolling out features to existing Cerner customers to try and improve their experience with the product. Uliyar said many of these features, including Oracle Health Clinical AI Agent (formerly called Oracle Clinical Digital Assistant), are already embedded within the new EHR.
Oracle announced the general availability of Clinical AI Agent in June, and it aims to automate much of the documentation that doctors are responsible for.
Physicians can access the Clinical AI Agent through an app on their phone, and they hit a button to record their visits with patients. Once they stop recording, Oracle’s AI automatically generates a clinical note based on the appointment, so the doctorsno longer need to write it themselves.
Around 70 customers are already using the Clinical AI Agent, Uliyar said. The company is currently building a similar tool for nurses.
Since the Clinical AI Agent is already embedded within the new EHR, customers will not have to worry about integrating it. The tool will also remain available as a stand-alone product that’s EHR agnostic, Uliyar said.
The early adopter program for Oracle’s new EHR begins next year, and Oracle said it will work with customers to determine the customizations they need. The company has been moving its health-care customers to the cloud, so that should make the EHR implementation process much easier, Verma said.
“We see it as very disruptive to the market,” she said. “Our EHR is going to solve a lot of long-standing problems that we’ve had in health care.”
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon speaks at the Computex forum in Taipei, Taiwan, June 3, 2024.
Ann Wang | Reuters
Qualcomm reported fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday that beat Wall Street expectations for earnings and revenue, and the company guided to a strong December quarter.
The shares rose 10% in extended trading at one point before falling to a gain of about 4%.
Here’s how the company did versus Refinitiv consensus expectations for the quarter ending Sept. 29:
Earnings per share: $2.69, adjusted $2.56 expected
Revenue: $10.24 billion versus $9.90 billion expected
Qualcomm said it expects revenue in the current quarter of between $10.5 billion and $11.3 billion, with the midpoint of that range beating LSEG consensus expectations of $10.59 billion.
The company reported $2.92 billion in net income, or $2.59 per share, a sharp jump from last year’s $1.49 billion, or $1.23 per share. Qualcomm reported $33.19 billion in total revenue in its fiscal 2024, a 9% increase from 2023.
Qualcomm’s fortunes have historically been tied to the smartphone industry, where the company provides a range of chips to handset makers, including system-on-a-chip processors, modems, and antennas. The company makes the chip at the heart of most high-end Android devices, and many lower-end phones as well. Qualcomm also sells modems and related chips to Apple for its iPhones, and last year said its contract for 5G chips ran through 2026.
Qualcomm reported a 12% increase in handset chip sales to $6.1 billion, in line with FactSet estimates. Qualcomm introduced its high-end chip for 2025, called Snapdragon 8 Elite, in October.
“In handsets we delivered greater than 20% year-over-year growth in Android revenues,” said Qualcomm CFO Akash Palkhiwala on a call with analysts.
Under CEO Cristiano Amon, the company has diversified away from being a smartphone supplier and has introduced and invested heavily in producing chips for PCs, cars, and industrial machines.
“We will continue to transform Qualcomm from a wireless communications company into a connected computing company for the age of AI,” Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said on the earnings call with analysts.
Qualcomm has also made efforts to brand itself as a leader in AI, having developed smartphone chips with specialized parts for machine learning since 2017. But unlike Nvidia, the company doesn’t produce the kind of graphics processors for data centers that are used for big AI programs like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The automotive business grew 86% on an annual basis to $899 million in sales. Qualcomm says it has billions of dollars in business with automakers currently in its development pipeline, and highlighted it was the fifth consecutive quarter of growth. Qualcomm said that it expected automotive sales in the current quarter to rise 50% on an annual basis.
The company’s “internet of things” business includes both chips for industrial purposes as well as the chips Meta uses in its Quest handsets and Ray-Ban Smart Glasses. It also includes the new business selling chips for laptops running Microsoft Windows. The division reported $1.68 billion in revenue, a 22% increase from a year earlier.
Qualcomm’s chip business, including its handset, automotive, and other chips, which together is reported as QCT, saw sales rise 18% during the quarter to $7.37 billion in total.
The company’s profitable technology licensing business, QTL, reported $1.52 billion in revenue, a 21% increase over the same period last year.
Qualcomm said its board had approved $15 billion in additional buybacks. During the fourth quarter, it repurchased $1.3 billion worth of shares and paid out $947 million in dividends.
Brian Armstrong, co-founder and chief executive officer of Coinbase Inc., speaks during the Singapore Fintech Festival, in Singapore, on Friday, Nov. 4, 2022.
Bryan van der Beek | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Election Day proved hugely successful for the crypto industry. Nobody was a bigger winner than Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.
Coinbase shares soared 31% on Wednesday, their best day on record, as investors celebrated the company’s victorious efforts to get pro-crypto candidates into office. Fairshake, the Coinbase-backed PAC, says that of the 58 candidates it supported, 46 won, with the remaining contests 12 still undecided.
Armstrong, who co-founded Coinbase in 2012 and took it public in 2021, remains the crypto exchange’s biggest investor, with ownership of well over 10% of the company’s outstanding shares. As of the latest proxy filing, he owned 34.8 million Class A and Class B shares, a stake that jumped by about $2.1 billion in value on Wednesday to almost $9 billion.
“Being anti-crypto is simply bad politics,” Armstrong wrote in a post on X, after Ohio Republican Bernie Moreno was declared the winner in his state’s Senate race over incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown.
In a lengthier follow-up post on Wednesday, Armstrong said “no matter how you slice it, this election was huge win for crypto.”
Bitcoin jumped over 9.5%, reaching a record of over $76,400.
A Coinbase spokesperson declined to comment further.
Some $40 million of crypto money was directed at defeating Brown, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. One PAC paid for five ads designed to boost awareness of Moreno, a blockchain entrepreneur with very little name recognition entering the race.
The Stand With Crypto Alliance, which Coinbase launched last year, gave Brown an “F” grade, while it issued Moreno an “A.”
Moreno flipped the seat, winning 50.3% of votes cast to 46.3% for Moreno, according to NBC News. His win helped ensure a majority for the Republicans in Senate, alongside Republican nominee Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential contest.
“I am so grateful to Ohioans for their resounding support in this race,” Moreno said in a statement Tuesday night. “I look forward to working with the new Republican Senate majority to fix our economy, secure our border, and return to American strength at home and abroad.”
Moreno’s statement made no mention of crypto, despite the fact that the industry bankrolled his campaign.
Politics pays off
For Armstrong, politics has become a big part of the job as his company fights for a friendlier Washington and more amenable regulatory environment.
Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler sued Coinbase last year over claims that it sells unregistered securities. A judge has since ruled that the case should be heard by a jury. Coinbase has fought back vociferously, and has also said that it wants to work with regulators to come up with a proper set of laws governing the nascent industry.
Republican nominee for U.S. Senate Bernie Moreno addresses supporters at Brecksville Community Center on November 4, 2024 in Brecksville, Ohio.
Stephen Maturen | Getty Images
Armstrong told CNBC in September that his visits to the nation’s capital used to take place once or twice a year. Then it got to be at least a quarterly occasion. And the pace has only increased.
“In the beginning, a lot of people didn’t know what crypto was,” Armstrong said of his earlier trips. Now, “the discussion has advanced, really, to, how do we pass clear rules, create legislation in the United States?”
In the 2024 election cycle, Coinbase was one of the top corporate donors, giving more than $75 million to Fairshake and its affiliate PACs, including a fresh pledge of $25 million to support the pro-crypto super PAC in the 2026 midterms. Armstrong personally contributed more than $1.3 million to a mix of candidates up and down the ballot.
Coinbase stayed out of the presidential contest and focused its finances exclusively on congressional races, in an effort to assemble a group of lawmakers with favorable views of the industry.
Coinbase’s big post-election pop more than makes up for the 15% drop in the stock last week after the company reported disappointing quarterly results due to lower transaction revenue and a drop in subscriptions services revenue.
Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer, attended multiple fundraisers for Trump in the months before the election. As the results were rolling in Tuesday, Grewal said in a post on X that he hopes the SEC “understands what has happened tonight.”
“Stop suing crypto,” Grewal wrote. “Start talking to crypto. Initiate rulemaking now. There’s no reason to wait.”
Armstrong reposted the Grewal’s comments, adding one word of his own: “True.”
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
Leaders of major technology companies congratulated President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance on their victory in the U.S. presidential election Wednesday.
The messages were similar, with CEOs remarking that they wish Trump success when he returns to the Oval Office, and look forward to working with his administration.
Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos celebrated Trump’s win in a post on X, calling it an “extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory.”
Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post and founded space company Blue Origin, has had a rocky relationship with Trump and was a frequent target of the former president during his first term. Trump repeatedly took aim at Bezos’ ownership of the Post, Amazon’s tax record and its relationship with the Postal Service. Bezos also took swings at Trump, remarking in a 2015 social media post, “#sendDonaldtospace.” Bezos recently struck a more conciliatory tone and in July praised Trump for his “courage under literal fire” following the attempted assassination of Trump at a Pennsylvania rally that month. Bezos has posted twice on X this year, with both posts mentioning Trump.
Andy Jassy, who took the helm from Bezos when he stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021, also extended his congratulations to Trump.
“Congratulations to President-elect @realDonaldTrump on a hard-fought victory,” Jassy wrote in a post on X. “We look forward to working with you and your administration on issues important to our customers, employees, communities, and country.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a post on X that he hopes Trump will see “huge success in the job.” In a follow up post, he wrote, “it is critically important that the US maintains its lead in developing AI with democratic values.”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Trump’s election win a “decisive victory” and said he looked forward to forward to working with the Trump administration. “We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post on Threads, Meta’s rival to Elon Musk’s X app. The two men have also had a rocky relationship at times. In 2021, Facebook banned Trump for two years shortly after the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Musk, who also runs electric vehicle maker Tesla, space exploration company SpaceX, and brain tech startup Neuralink, also unsurprisingly cheered Trump’s win.
Musk has been a key ally for Trump in his campaign for the White House, with the former president promising prior to his election to appoint Musk as the head of a government efficiency commission. Musk also contributed nearly $75 million to America PAC, a pro-Trump super political action committee that he established earlier in the year. Tesla shares rallied more than 13% on Wednesday afternoon as investors were optimistic that a Trump win would benefit the vehicle maker.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google parent Alphabet, also congratulated Trump on his victory and said he’s committed to working with the president-elect’s administration.
Microsoft CEO Sundar Pichai said: “Congratulations President Trump, we’re looking forward to engaging with you and your administration to drive innovation forward that creates new growth and opportunity for the United States and the world.”
Cisco founder and CEO Chuck Robbins wrote in a post on X that the company looks forward to working with Trump and Congress on policies around “connectivity, innovation, cybersecurity, and more.”
Box CEO Aaron Levie also sent his good wishes to Trump. He wrote in a post on X, “Wild ride. Congrats to @realDonaldTrump on becoming President again. What’s great about America is that we’re on a rocket ship right now and can keep accelerating with the right policies and execution.”
Michael Dell, CEO and chairman of Dell Technologies, added his own congratulations in a post on X.