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Thomas Plantenga, CEO of used fashion resale app Vinted, on center stage during Web Summit 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal.

Harry Murphy | Sportsfile for Web Summit Getty Images

LISBON, Portugal — Tech CEOs in Europe are urging region al countries to take bolder action to tackle Big Tech’s dominance and counter reliance on the U.S. for critical technologies like artificial intelligence after Donald Trump’s electoral win.

The Republican politician’s victory was a key topic among prominent tech bosses at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon, Portugal. Many attendants said they’re unsure of what to expect from the U.S. president-elect, citing this unpredictability as a core challenge at present.

Andy Yen, CEO of Swiss VPN developer Proton, says Europe should echo American protectionism and adopt a more “Europe-first” approach to technology — in part to reverse the trend of the last two decades, during which much of the Western world’s most important technologies, from web browsing to smartphones, have become dominated by a handful of large U.S. tech firms.

VPNs, or virtual private networks, are services that encrypt data and mask a user’s IP address to hide browsing activity and bypass censorship.

“It’s time for Europe to step up,” Yen told CNBC on the sidelines of Web Summit. “It’s time to be bold. It’s time to be more aggressive. And the time is now, because we now have a leader in the U.S. that is ‘America-first,’ so I think our European leaders should be ‘Europe-first.'”

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One key push for the past decade from the European Union has been to take legal action and introduce tough new regulations to tackle the dominance of large technology players, such as Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta.

As Trump prepares to come into power for a second mandate, concerns have now mounted that Europe might reel in its tough approach to tech giants out of fear of retaliation from the new administration.

US Big Tech playing ‘extremely unfairly’

Proton’s Yen, for one, urged the EU not to water down its attempts  to rein in America’s tech giants.

“Europe has been thinking in a very globalist mindset. They’re thinking we need to be fair to everybody, we need to open our market to everybody, we need to play fair, because we believe in fairness,” he told CNBC.

“Well, guess what? The Americans and the Chinese didn’t get the memo. They have been playing extremely unfairly for the last 20 years. And now they have a president that is extremely ‘America-first.'” 

Mitchell Baker, former CEO of American open internet non-profit Mozilla Foundation, said the EU’s DMA has led to meaningful changes for the Firefox browser, with activity increasing since Google implemented a “choice screen” on Android phones that enables users to select their search engine.

“The change in Firefox new users and market share on Android is noticeable,” Baker said. “That’s nice for us — but it’s also an indicator of how much power and centralized distribution that these companies have.”

She added, “This change in usage because of one choice screen isn’t the full picture. But it is an indicator of the kind of things that consumers can’t choose and that businesses can’t build successfully because of the way the tech industry is structured right now.”

Thomas Plantenga, CEO of Lithuania-headquartered used clothing resale app Vinted, urged Europe to take the “right choices” to ensure the continent can “fend for ourselves” and does not get “left behind.”

“If you look very realistically at what countries do, they try to take care of themselves and they try to form coalitions to be stronger themselves, and as a coalition be stronger,” Plantenga told CNBC in an interview. “We have a lot of very talented, well-educated people.”

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“We need [to] ensure that we can take care of our own safety, that we can take care of our own energy, that we ensure to keep on investing in our education and innovation so that we can keep up with the rest [of the world],” he stressed. “If we don’t, then we’ll be left behind. In every collaboration, it’s always a trade. And if we don’t have much to trade, we become weaker.”

‘AI sovereignty’ now a key battleground

Another theme that attracted much chatter on the ground at Web Summit was the idea of “AI sovereignty” — which refers to countries and regions localizing critical computing infrastructure behind AI services, so that these systems become more reflective of regional languages, cultures and values.

With Microsoft becoming a key player in AI, concerns have surfaced that the maker of the Windows operating system and Office productivity tools suite has secured a dominant position when it comes to foundational AI tools.

The tech giant is a key backer behind ChatGPT maker OpenAI, whose technology it also heavily uses in its own products.

For some startups, Microsoft’s decision to embrace AI has resulted in harmful, anti-competitive effects.

Last year, Microsoft hiked the fees it charges search engines to use its Bing Search APIs, which allow developers access to the tech giant’s backend search infrastructure — in part because of higher costs attached to its AI-powered search features.

“They’re gradually reducing our revenue — we’re still relying on them — and that reduces our capacity to do things,” Christian Kroll, CEO of sustainability-focused search engine Ecosia, told CNBC. “Microsoft is a very fierce competitor.”

CNBC has reached out to Microsoft for comment.

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Ecosia recently partnered with fellow search provider Qwant to build a European search index and reduce dependence on U.S. Big Tech to deliver web browsing results.

Meanwhile, the European Union’s AI Act, a landmark artificial intelligence law with global implications, introduces new transparency requirements and restrictions on companies developing and using AI.

The laws are likely to have a big impact on predominantly U.S. tech firms, since they’re the ones doing much of the development of — and investment in — AI.

With Trump set to come into power, it’s unclear what that could mean for the global AI regulatory landscape.

Shelley McKinley, chief legal officer of code repository platform GitHub, said she can’t predict what Trump will do in his second term — but that businesses are planning for a range of different scenarios in the meantime.

“We will learn in the next few months what President-elect Trump will say, and in January we will start seeing some of what President Trump does in this area,” McKinley said during a CNBC-moderated panel earlier this week.

“I do think it is important that we all, as society, as businesses, as people, continue to think about the different scenarios,” she added. “I think, as with any political change, as with any world change, we’re still all thinking about what are all of the scenarios we might operate.”

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AI chipmaker Cerebras withdraws IPO

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AI chipmaker Cerebras withdraws IPO

AI chipmaker Cerebras pulls IPO after raising $1 billion

Artificial intelligence chipmaker Cerebras Systems said on Friday that it’s withdrawing plans for an IPO, days after announcing that it raised over $1 billion in a fundraising round.

In a filing with the SEC, Cerebras said it does not intend to conduct a proposed offering “at this time,” but didn’t provide a reason. A spokesperson told CNBC on Friday that the company still hopes to go public as soon as possible.

Cerebras filed for an IPO just over a year ago, as it was ramping up to take on Nvidia in an effort to create processors for running generative AI models. The filing revealed a heavy reliance on a single customer in the United Arab Emirates, Microsoft-backed G42, which is also a Cerebras investor.

In its prospectus, Cerebras said it had given voluntary notice to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States about selling shares to G42. In March, the company announced that the committee had provided clearance.

Since its initial filing to go public on the Nasdaq, Cerebras has shifted its focus away from selling systems and more toward providing a cloud service for accepting incoming queries to models that use its chips underneath.

The announced withdrawal comes three days into a U.S. government shutdown that’s left agencies like the SEC operating with a small staff. In a plan for a shutdown published in August, the SEC said its electronic system EDGAR “is operated pursuant to a contract and thus will remain fully functional as long as funding for the contractor remains available through permitted means.”

On Tuesday, Cerebras said it had raised $1.1 billion at a valuation of $8.1 billion in a private funding round. At the time, CEO Andrew Feldman said that the company still wanted to go public, rather than continue to raise venture capital.

“I don’t think this is an indication of a preference for one or the other,” he told CNBC in an interview. “I think we have tremendous opportunities in front of us, and I think it’s good practice, when you have enormous opportunities, not to let them fall by the wayside for lack of capital.”

Feldman thought the original prospectus from last year was out of date, especially considering developments in AI, the spokesperson said on Friday.

Well heeled technology companies have been quickly signing up for additional infrastructure to handle demand. On Tuesday CoreWeave, which rents out Nvidia chips through a cloud service, said it had signed a $14.2 billion agreement with Meta. ChatGPT operator OpenAI said last week that it had committed to spending $300 billion on cloud services from Oracle.

The government shutdown did not factor into Cerebras’ decision, the spokesperson said.

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Amazon shutters 4 Fresh stores in Southern California as grocery strategy keeps shifting

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Amazon shutters 4 Fresh stores in Southern California as grocery strategy keeps shifting

An employee arranges a salad dressing display at an Amazon Fresh grocery store on December 12, 2024 in Federal Way, Washington.

David Ryder | Getty Images

Amazon is closing four more Fresh supermarkets in Southern California as the e-commerce giant continues to focus its grocery strategy around Whole Foods and delivery.

The closures will take place in the coming weeks, Amazon confirmed to CNBC. They follow the shuttering of four other U.S. locations in recent months, in Washington, Virginia, New York and a Los Angeles suburb.

“Certain locations work better than others, and after an assessment, we’ve made the decision to close these Amazon Fresh locations,” Amazon spokesperson Griffin Buch said in a statement. “We’re working closely with affected employees to help them find new roles within Amazon wherever possible.”

At one Fresh supermarket in La Verne, California, employees were told to gather for an all-hands meeting on Wednesday, according to an internal message viewed by CNBC. They learned at the meeting that the store would close in mid-November, and that employees would receive a severance package, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the details were confidential.

The other three stores that are closing are in cities of Mission Viejo, La Habra and Whittier.

Last week, Amazon said it intends to close 14 Fresh grocery stores in the U.K. and convert its five other locations there into Whole Foods markets.

Amazon said it regularly evaluates its store portfolio, which can lead to opening, reopening, relocating or closing certain locations. In the U.S., the company has more than 60 remaining Fresh stores. Last year, the company removed its “Just Walk Out” cashierless technology from the stores. It’s also been culling its footprint of Go cashierless convenience stores.

Amazon has been determined to become a major grocery player for nearly two decades. The company launched Amazon Fresh in 2007, then a pilot project for fresh food delivery, before acquiring upscale chain Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in 2017, its biggest purchase on record.

Amazon debuted its Fresh grocery chain in 2020, with an eye toward mass-market shoppers. The rollout has been turbulent since its early days.

The company opened a flurry of Fresh locations by 2022, but the expansion plans ran into CEO Andy Jassy’s widespread cost-cutting efforts as the company reckoned with the impact of rising interest rates and soaring inflation. In 2023, Amazon announced it would shut some Fresh stores and halt further openings temporarily as it evaluated how to make the chain stand out for shoppers.

While it’s closing Fresh stores, Amazon continues to “innovate and invest in making grocery shopping easier, faster, and more affordable,” Buch said. The company still maintains 500 Whole Foods locations and has opened mini “daily shop” Whole Foods stores in New York City.

On Wednesday, Amazon also launched a new “price-conscious” grocery brand that will be offered online and in its physical stores. And last month, Amazon expanded same-day delivery of fresh foods to more pockets of the U.S.

Jassy and other company executives have touted the success of sales of “everyday essentials” within its online grocery business, which refers to items such as canned goods, paper towels, dish soap and snacks. Jassy told investors at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in May that he remains “bullish” on grocery, calling it a “significant business” for Amazon.

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Quantum stocks Rigetti Computing and D-Wave surged double-digits this week. Here’s what’s driving the big move

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Quantum stocks Rigetti Computing and D-Wave surged double-digits this week. Here's what's driving the big move

Inside Google’s quantum computing lab in Santa Barbara, California.

CNBC

Quantum computing stocks are wrapping up a big week of double-digit gains.

Shares of Rigetti Computing, D-Wave Quantum and Quantum Computing have surged more than 20%. Rigetti and D-Wave Quantum have more than doubled and tripled, respectively, since the start of the year. Arqit Quantum skyrocketed more than 32% this week.

The jump in shares followed a wave of positive news in the quantum space.

Rigetti said it had purchase orders totalling $5.7 million for two of its 9-qubit Novera quantum computing systems. The owner of drugmaker Novo Nordisk and the Danish government also invested 300 million euros in a quantum venture fund.

In a blog post earlier this week, Nvidia also highlighted accelerated computing, which it argues can make “quantum computing breakthroughs of today and tomorrow possible.”

Investors have piled into quantum computing technology this year, as tech giants Microsoft, Nvidia and Amazon have embraced the technology with a wave of new chip announcements, multi-million dollar investments and research plans.

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