OpenAI partners with defense company Anduril

Published

8 months ago

December 4, 2024

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Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI, during a fireside chat organized by Softbank Ventures Asia in Seoul, South Korea, on Friday, June 9, 2023.

SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images

OpenAI and Anduril on Wednesday announced a partnership allowing the defense tech company to deploy advanced artificial intelligence systems for “national security missions.”

It’s part of a broader, and controversial, trend of AI companies not only walking back bans on military use of their products, but also entering into partnerships with defense industry giants and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Last month, Anthropic, the Amazon-backed AI startup founded by ex-OpenAI research executives, and defense contractor Palantir announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services to “provide U.S. intelligence and defense agencies access to [Anthropic’s] Claude 3 and 3.5 family of models on AWS.” This fall, Palantir signed a new five-year, up to $100 million contract to expand U.S. military access to its Maven AI warfare program.

The OpenAI-Anduril partnership announced Wednesday will “focus on improving the nation’s counter-unmanned aircraft systems (CUAS) and their ability to detect, assess and respond to potentially lethal aerial threats in real-time,” according to a release, which added that “Anduril and OpenAI will explore how leading edge AI models can be leveraged to rapidly synthesize time-sensitive data, reduce the burden on human operators, and improve situational awareness.”

Anduril, co-founded by Palmer Luckey, did not answer a question about whether reducing the onus on human operators will translate to fewer humans in the loop on high-stakes warfare decisions. Luckey founded Oculus VR, which he sold to Facebook in 2014.

OpenAI said it was working with Anduril to help human operators make decisions “to protect U.S. military personnel on the ground from unmanned drone attacks.” The company said it stands by the policy in its mission statement of prohibiting use of its AI systems to harm others.

The news comes after Microsoft-backed OpenAI in January quietly removed a ban on the military use of ChatGPT and its other AI tools, just as it had begun to work with the U.S. Department of Defense on AI tools, including open-source cybersecurity tools.

Until early January, OpenAI’s policies page specified that the company did not allow the usage of its models for “activity that has high risk of physical harm” such as weapons development or military and warfare. In mid-January, OpenAI removed the specific reference to the military, although its policy still states that users should not “use our service to harm yourself or others,” including to “develop or use weapons.”

The news comes after years of controversy about tech companies developing technology for military use, highlighted by the public concerns of tech workers — especially those working on AI.

Employees at virtually every tech giant involved with military contracts have voiced concerns after thousands of Google employees protested Project Maven, a Pentagon project that would use Google AI to analyze drone surveillance footage.

Microsoft employees protested a $480 million army contract that would provide soldiers with augmented-reality headsets, and more than 1,500 Amazon and Google workers signed a letter protesting a joint $1.2 billion, multiyear contract with the Israeli government and military, under which the tech giants would provide cloud computing services, AI tools and data centers.

— CNBC’s Morgan Brennan contributed to this report.

Technology

Circle shares fall after stablecoin issuer says it will offer 10 million shares

Published

9 hours ago

August 12, 2025

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Circle shares fall after stablecoin issuer says it will offer 10 million shares

Circle Internet Group Initial Public Offering at the New York Stock Exchange in New York City, U.S., June 5, 2025.

NYSE

Circle Internet Group stock tumbled more than 5% in extended trading Tuesday after it said it would offer 10 million Class A shares to the public.

Of the total stock being offered, 2 million shares will be offered by Circle. The remaining 8 million shares will be sold by stockholders.

The stablecoin issuer’s shares have soared more than 450% since it went public on June 5.

As part of the offering, Circle is offering its underwriters a 30-day option to buy an additional 1.5 million shares.

Circle shares closed Tuesday up 1.3% after the company reporting its first quarterly results as a publicly traded company. While charges tied to its IPO weighed on its second-quarter results and led to a loss of $4.48 per share, it saw revenue rise 53% on the back of strong stablecoin growth.

Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:

Technology

CoreWeave shares drop even as revenue tops estimates

Published

10 hours ago

August 12, 2025

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CoreWeave shares drop even as revenue tops estimates

Mike Intrator, co-founder and CEO of CoreWeave, speaks at the Nasdaq headquarters in New York on March 28, 2025.

Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images

CoreWeave shares fell about 6% in extended trading on Tuesday even as the provider of artificial intelligence infrastructure beat estimates for second-quarter revenue

Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:

Earnings per share: Loss of 21 cents
Revenue: $1.21 billion vs. $1.08 billion expected

Revenue more than tripled from $395.4 million a year earlier, CoreWeave said in a statement. The company registered a $290.5 million net loss, compared with a $323 million loss in second quarter of 2024. CoreWeave’s earnings per share figure wasn’t immediately comparable with estimates from LSEG.

CoreWeave’s operating margin shrank to 2% from 20% a year ago due primarily to $145 million in stock-based compensation costs. This is CoreWeave’s second quarter of full financial results as a public company following its IPO in March.

CoreWeave pointed to an expansion in business with OpenAI, a major client and investor. Also during the quarter, CoreWeave acquired Weights and Biases, a startup with software for monitoring AI models, for $1.4 billion.

In May, management touted 420% revenue growth, alongside widening losses and nearly $9 billion in debt. The stock still doubled anyway over the course of the next month.

CoreWeave shares became available on Nasdaq at the end of the first quarter, after the company sold 37.5 shares at $40 each, yielding $1.5 billion in proceeds. As of Tuesday’s close, the stock was trading at $148.75 for a market cap of over $72 billion.

A CoreWeave data center project with up to 250 megawatts of capacity is set to be delivered in 2026, the company said in the statement.

Executives will discuss the results and issue guidance on a conference call starting at 5 p.m. ET.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

WATCH: Citi’s Tyler Radke’s bullish call on CoreWeave, upgraded to buy

Technology

White House says it’s working out legality of Nvidia and AMD China chip deals

Published

12 hours ago

August 12, 2025

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White House says it's working out legality of Nvidia and AMD China chip deals

U.S. President Donald Trump (L) invites Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to speak in the Cross Hall of the White House during an event on “Investing in America” on April 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Andrew Harnik | Getty Images

The Trump administration is still working out the details of its 15% export tax on Nvidia and AMD and could bring deals of this kind to more companies, the White House’s Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday.

“Right now it stands with these two companies. Perhaps it could expand in the future to other companies,” said Leavitt, the White House’s spokesperson.

“The legality of it, the mechanics of it, is still being ironed out by the Department of Commerce, and I would defer you to them for any further details on how it will actually be implemented,” she continued.

President Donald Trump confirmed on Monday that he had negotiated a deal with Nvidia in which the U.S. government approves export licenses for the China-specific H20 AI chip in exchange for a 15% cut of revenue. Advanced Micro Devices also got licenses approved in exchange for a proportion of its China sales, the White House confirmed.

“I said, ‘If I’m going to do that, I want you to pay us as a country something, because I’m giving you a release,'” Trump said Monday.

“We follow rules the U.S. government sets for our participation in worldwide markets,” Nvidia said in a statement this week.

Trump said the export licenses for AMD and Nvidia were a done deal. But lawyers and experts who follow trade have warned that Trump’s deal may be complicated because of existing laws that regulate how the government can charge fees for export licenses.

The Commerce Department didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

The H20 is Nvidia’s Chinese-specific chip that is slowed down on purpose to comply with U.S. export relations. It’s related to the H100 and H200 chips that are used in the U.S., and was introduced after the Biden administration implemented export controls on artificial intelligence chips in 2023.

Earlier this year, Nvidia said that it was on track to sell more than $8 billion worth of H20 chips in a single quarter before the Trump administration in April said that it would require a license to export the chip.

Trump signaled in July that he was likely to approve export licenses for the chip after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang visited the White House.

The U.S. regulates AI chips like those made by Nvidia for national security reasons, saying that they could be used by the Chinese government to leapfrog U.S. capabilities in AI, or they could be used by the Chinese military or linked groups.

The Chinese government has been encouraging local companies in recent weeks to avoid using Nvidia’s H20 chips for any government or national security-related work, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

WATCH: Access to Nvidia’s H20 won’t hand China an AI advantage: Analyst