Vasco Pedro, co-founder and CEO of Unbabel, on the first day of the 2023 Web Summit at the Altice Arena in Lisbon.
Miguel Reis | SOPA | Lightrocket | Getty Images
LISBON — Unbabel on Wednesday announced a translation service powered by artificial intelligence, adding another rival to a highly competitive space — with its CEO warning that humans may not be needed for translation at all in three years.
Widn.AI is Unbabel’s new product and is based on the company’s proprietary large language model (LLM) called Tower. An LLM is an AI model that underpins applications like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Unbabel’s LLM allows AI translation in 32 languages, Vasco Pedro, the company’s CEO, told CNBC in an interview at the Web Summit in Lisbon.
“When we started in Unbabel 10 years ago, AI was not at the stage that it is now, and so we were very much focused on creating hybrid solutions that would combine AI and human,” Pedro said.
“But I think for the first time, we believe that translation is now fully in the realm of AI capabilities, and that you can do a lot of things without needing humans at all in the case of translation.”
Unbabel’s traditional product was one that combined so-called machine learning, a type of AI, to translate words, but with human editors to check the final product.
Pedro said Widn.AI will not require humans.
“I think humans still have a slight advantage in very hard use cases. But that advantage right now is so razor thin that except for really the … most difficult use cases, we believe AI is getting really there, and it’s hard for me to see right now how three years from now, you will need humans to be translating anything,” Pedro said.
“There’s still going to be humans responsible for making sure that things get translated and are delivered in the right places,” he added.
Widn.AI is the latest product in an increasingly competitive market which includes Google Translate and products from German startup DeepL.
Those companies see translation as a key area in which LLMs can be used effectively and have trained models specifically to tackle various languages.
Pedro acknowledges that the revenue per translated word is going to “drastically reduce.” But he said there will be an increase in the amount of content translated which will sustain the company’s growth.
Unbabel is speaking to investors and is looking to raise between $20 million and $50 million in funding to fuel the growth and development of Widn.AI, according to Pedro.
Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and chief executive officer of 23andme Inc., during the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas, US, on Friday, March 10, 2023.
Jordan Vonderhaar | Bloomberg | Getty Images
23andMe‘s special committee of independent directors on Monday rejected CEO Anne Wojcicki’s proposal to take the distressed genetic testing company private.
Wojcicki submitted a proposal to the committee on Sunday, offering to acquire all of the company’s outstanding shares for 41 cents each, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The stock plunged 33% on Monday to close at $1.47, down more than 99% from its peak in 2021.
Wojcicki and New Mountain Capital submitted a prior bid in February to take the company private for $2.53 per share. Days later, New Mountain told Wojcicki it was no longer interested in participating in a potential acquisition and would discontinue discussions, the filing said.
23andMe’s special committee said that Wojcicki’s proposal represented an 84% decrease from the prior offer and determined not to go forward, according to a release on Monday.
“The Special Committee has reviewed Ms. Wojcicki’s acquisition proposal in consultation with its financial and legal advisors, and has unanimously determined to reject the proposal,” the directors said.
23andMe didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Following a turbulent 2024, 23andMe announced plans in January to explore strategic alternatives, which could include a sale of the company or its assets, a restructuring or a business combination.
Wojcicki previously submitted a proposal to take the company private for 40 cents per share in July, but it was rejected by the special committee, in part because the members said it lacked committed financing and did not provide a premium to the closing price at the time.
The Huawei booth at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, 2025.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
BARCELONA — Huawei is dipping its toes back into the international smartphone market, but analysts warn the lingering effects of U.S. sanctions is likely to hamper the Chinese company’s ability to compete with leaders Apple and Samsung.
Over the past few months, Huawei has launched two key devices outside of China. The first in December was the Mate X6, a foldable smartphone, followed by the Mate XT, Huawei’s 3,499 euros ($3,660) trifold phone.
Huawei was looking to stand out from the crowd of similar-looking smartphones at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, the world’s biggest telecoms trade show. The Chinese firm had a large stand showing off its wares, including the Mate XT.
These expensive devices and Huawei’s presence at a global tech show, underscore the tech giant’s targeted approach, attempting to maintain its brand image as an innovative company while selling high-end smartphones.
“Huawei is still very cautious and conservative with what it believes it can achieve outside China with its smartphone business,” Runar Bjørhovde, an analyst at Canalys told CNBC.
“Bringing Mate XT and X6 abroad is no sign that it will make an international comeback with its smartphone business in the next years. Both of these are priced exceptionally and is instead to maintain its desired brand perception of being a cutting-edge innovator with smartphones and still sell devices to its most wealthy super-fans.”
Signage shows the Huawei Mate X6 at Huawei’s booth at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, 2025.
While Huawei has scaled back some of the glitzier aspects of its attendance, its stand remains very large as it shows off other parts of its business, in particular its telecommunications equipment which helped turn it into one of the world’s biggest tech companies.
In the consumer space, Huawei has maintained some presence outside of China with devices such as smartwatches but its smartphone business remains very limited. The firm is using 2025’s MWC to show off the Mate XT, the first of its kind device with a screen that folds twice.
However, its success in China is unlikely to be replicated with the biggest challenge being Huawei’s lack of access to Google’s Android software, analysts said.
“I don’t think they will be able to return to international markets without the full Google services,” Francisco Jeronimo, vice president for data and analytics at International Data Corporation, told CNBC.
A Huawei Technologies Mate XT smartphone arranged in Hong Kong on Sep. 24, 2024.
Lam Yik | Bloomberg | Getty Images
“They haven’t managed to grow market share in the international markets,” he said.
Google’s Android operating system is run by 80% of the world’s smartphones, according to Counterpoint Research. Outside of China, Android device users rely on the Google Play Store, which is Google’s app store, as well as the various apps from the Chrome browser to Gmail.
While Huawei has its own operating system called HarmonyOS, it still does not have the ability to offer Google apps, which the majority of users rely on.
“Expanding the smartphone business outside China will be a huge challenge,” Canalys’ Bjørhovde said.
“Not only because Harmony barely has any active users outside China, limiting its user feedback and app availability, but also because it needs the right device portfolio, operations team, marketing resources, etc. This will take years to rebuild, even with strong success in other device categories.”
CoreWeave, a provider of cloud-based Nvidia processors to companies including Meta and Microsoft, is headed for the public market.
In its IPO prospectus on Monday, CoreWeave said revenue in 2024 soared more than 700% to $1.92 billion. The company recorded a net loss of $863.4 million. In 2024, around 77% of revenue came from two customers, with 62% the total flowing from Microsoft. CoreWeave had over $15 billion in contracts that had not been fulfilled.
In the fourth quarter, it generated $747.4 million of revenue, with a gross margin, or the revenue left after accounting for the cost of goods sold, of about 76%. The company recorded operating income of $112.7 million, but a net loss of $51.4 million, due to interest expenses. Debt at the end of the year approached $8 billion.
CoreWeave filed to trade on the Nasdaq under ticker symbol “CRWV.”
Originally known as Atlantic Crypto, the company got its start in 2017 by offering infrastructure for mining the ethereum cryptocurrency. After digital currency prices fell, the company bought up additional graphics processing units (GPUs) and changed its name to CoreWeave, with an increasing focus on graphics rendering and artificial intelligence.
“We quickly started getting inundated with introductions to businesses dependent upon GPU acceleration with a common pain point: legacy cloud providers make it extremely difficult to scale because they offer a limited variety of compute options at monopolistic prices,” co-founder and CEO Michael Intrator wrote in a 2021 blog post.
Intrator controls about 38% of the company’s voting power before the offering. Hedge fund Magnetar controls 7%, while Nvidia has 1%, the filing showed.
At the end of 2024, CoreWeave’s fleet included over 250,000 Nvidia GPUs, with a majority using the previous-generation Hopper architecture, according to the filing. Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs were in full production as November. Last year, Elon Musk startup xAI quickly wired up a data center cluster in Tennessee housing 100,000 Nvidia GPUs.
Running data centers full of GPUs requires considerable energy. CoreWeave had 360 megawatts in active power, and a total of 1.3 gigawatts had been contracted, the filing said.
CoreWeave will be attempting to enter the public market during a historically slow stretch for tech offerings.
When cloud software vendor ServiceTitan hit the market in December, it market the first significant venture-backed tech IPO since Rubrik’s debut in April. A month before that, Reddit started trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
There haven’t been many other tech IPOs of note in the U.S. since late 2021, when rising interest rates and soaring inflation pushed investors out of risky assets.
Within the AI infrastructure market, one other name of interest is Cerebras. The chipmaker filed to go public in September, but the process slowed down due to a review by the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or CFIUS.
CoreWeave gained popularity after OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022, because the company could quickly provide GPUs to businesses in need. Microsoft, whose Azure cloud unit has supplied computing power to OpenAI, started working with CoreWeave in 2023 to meet OpenAI demand.
“What happened In November of ’22, like, that was just a bolt from the blue, right?” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on a podcast released in November with investors Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley. “So therefore, we had to catch up. So we said, Hey, we’re not going to in fact worry about too much inefficiency.”
Nadella described the GPU cloud leasing as a one-time event, saying Microsoft was no longer short on chips. But on a more recent podcast, the Microsoft chief said the company builds and rents heavily and will still be leasing in 2027 and 2028.
In addition to being CoreWeave’s top client, Microsoft is also a competitor, along with Amazon, Google, Oracle, and some smaller providers such as Crusoe and Lambda.
Nvidia relies on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. for GPU fabrication, and military conflict involving China and Taiwan could pose issues for CoreWeave, the company said in Monday’s filing.