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Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang on U.S.-China AI race: We need to unleash U.S. energy to enable AI boom

The U.S. may have led China in the artificial intelligence race for the past decade, according to Alexandr Wang, CEO of Scale AI, but on Christmas Day, everything changed.

Wang, whose company provides training data to key AI players including OpenAI, Google and Meta, said Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that DeepSeek, the leading Chinese AI lab, released an “earth-shattering model” on Christmas Day, then followed it up with a powerful reasoning-focused AI model, DeepSeek-R1, which competes with OpenAI’s recently released o1 model.

“What we’ve found is that DeepSeek … is the top performing, or roughly on par with the best American models,” Wang said.

In an interview with CNBC, Wang described the artificial intelligence race between the U.S. and China as an “AI war,” adding that he believes China has significantly more Nvidia H100 GPUs — AI chips that are widely used to build leading powerful AI models — than people may think, especially considering U.S. export controls.

Wang also said he believes the AI sector will reach a trillion dollars, on par with estimates that the generative AI market is poised to top $1 trillion in revenue within a decade.

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“The United States is going to need a huge amount of computational capacity, a huge amount of infrastructure,” Wang said, later adding, “We need to unleash U.S. energy to enable this AI boom.”

Earlier this week, President Donald Trump announced a joint venture with OpenAIOracle and SoftBank to invest billions of dollars in U.S. AI infrastructure. The project, Stargate, was unveiled at the White House by Trump, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Key initial technology partners will include MicrosoftNvidia and Oracle, as well as semiconductor company Arm. They said they would invest $100 billion to start and up to $500 billion over the next four years.

In the interview Thursday, Wang said he believes that it’ll take two to four years to reach artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a widely cited but vaguely defined benchmark used in the AI sector to denote a branch of AI pursuing technology that equals or surpasses human intellect on a wide range of tasks. AGI is a hotly debated topic, with some leaders saying we’re close to attaining it and some saying it’s not possible at all. Wang said his own definition of AGI is “powerful AI systems that are able to use a computer just like you or I could … and basically be a remote worker in the most capable way.”

Anthropic, the Amazon-backed AI startup founded by ex-OpenAI research executives, ramped up its technology development throughout the past year, and in October, the startup said that its AI agents were able to use computers like humans can to complete complex tasks. Anthropic’s Computer Use capability allows its technology to interpret what’s on a computer screen, select buttons, enter text, navigate websites and execute tasks through any software and real-time internet browsing, the startup said.

The tool can “use computers in basically the same way that we do,” Jared Kaplan, Anthropic’s chief science officer, told CNBC in an interview at the time. He said it can do tasks with “tens or even hundreds of steps.”

OpenAI reportedly plans to introduce a similar feature soon.

When asked which U.S. artificial intelligence startups are leading the AI race right now, Wang said that models each have their own strengths — for instance, OpenAI’s models are great at reasoning, while Anthropic’s are great at coding.

“The space is becoming more competitive, not less competitive,” he said.

Correction: This article has been updated to correct the name of DeepSeek’s reasoning-focused AI model, DeepSeek-R1.

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Intel stock climbs 7% on report Trump administration is considering stake in chipmaker

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Intel stock climbs 7% on report Trump administration is considering stake in chipmaker

Lip-Bu Tan, chief executive officer of Intel Corp., departs following a meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, Aug. 11, 2025.

Alex Wroblewski | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Intel shares rose 7% on Thursday after Bloomberg reported that the Trump administration is in talks with the chipmaker to have the U.S. government take a stake in the struggling company.

Intel is the only U.S. company with the capability to manufacture the fastest chips on U.S. shores, although rivals including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Samsung also have U.S. factories. President Donald Trump has called for more chips and high technology to be manufactured in the U.S.

The government’s stake would help fund factories that Intel is currently building in Ohio, according to the report.

Earlier this week, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan visited Trump in the White House, a meeting that took place after the president had called for Tan’s resignation based on allegations he has ties to China.

Intel said at the time that Tan is “deeply committed to advancing U.S. national and economic security interests.” An Intel representative declined to comment about reports that the government is considering taking a stake in the company.

“We look forward to continuing our work with the Trump Administration to advance these shared priorities, but we are not going to comment on rumors or speculation,” the spokesperson said.

Tan took over Intel earlier this year after the chipmaker failed to gain significant share in artificial intelligence chips, while it was spending heavily to build its foundry business, which manufactures chips for other companies.

Intel’s foundry business has yet to secure a major customer, which would be a critical step in moving towards expansion and giving other potential customers the confidence to turn to Intel for manufacturing.

In July, Tan said that Intel was canceling plans for manufacturing sites in Germany and Poland and would slow down development in Ohio, adding that spending at the chipmaker would be closely scrutinized.

Under Trump, the U.S. government has increasingly moved to put itself at the center of deals in major industries. Last week, it said it would take 15% of certain Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices chip sales to China. The Pentagon bought a $400 million equity stake in rare-earth miner MP Materials. It also took a “golden share” in U.S. Steel as part of a deal to allow Nippon Steel to buy the U.S. industrial giant.

Intel shares are now up 19% this year after losing 60% of their value in 2024, the worst year on record for the chipmaker.

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Palantir’s astronomical growth in 3 charts

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Palantir's astronomical growth in 3 charts

Alexander Karp, chief executive officer and co-founder of Palantir Technologies Inc.

Scott Eelis | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Palantir‘s astronomical rise since its public debut on the New York Stock Exchange in a 2020 direct listing has been nothing short of a whirlwind.

Over nearly five years, the Denver-based company, whose cofounders include renowned venture capitalist Peter Thiel and current CEO Alex Karp, has surged more than 1,700%. At the same time, its valuation has broken new highs, dwarfing some of the world’s technology behemoths with far greater revenues.

The artificial intelligence-powered software company continued its ascent last week after posting its first quarter with more than $1 billion in revenue, reaching new highs and soaring past a $430 billion market valuation.

Shares haven’t been below $100 since April 2025. The stock last traded below $10 in May 2023, before beginning a steady climb higher.

Retail investors are a key part of the stock’s strength.

Last month, retail poured $1.2 billion into Palantir stock, according to data from Goldman Sachs.

Here’s a closer look at Palantir’s growth over the last five years and how the company compares to megacap peers.

Government money

Government contracts have been one of Palantir’s biggest growth areas since its inception.

Last quarter, the company’s U.S. government revenue grew 53% to $426 million. Government accounted for 55% of the company’s total revenue but commercial is showing promise. Those revenues in the U.S. grew 93% last quarter, Palantir said.

Still, one of the company’s oldest customers is the U.S. Army.

Earlier this month, the company inked a contract worth up to $10 billion for data and software to streamline efficiencies and meet growing military needs. In May, the Department of Defense boosted its agreement with Palantir for AI-powered battlefield capabilities by $795 million.

“We still believe America is the leader of the free world, that the West is superior,” Karp said on an earnings call earlier this month. “We have to fight for these values; we should give American corporations, and, most importantly, our government, an unfair advantage.”

Beyond the U.S.

The U.S. has been a key driver of Palantir’s growth, especially as the company scoops up more contracts with the U.S. military.

Palantir said the U.S. currently accounts for about three-quarters of total revenues. Commercial international revenues declined 3% last quarter and analysts have raised concerns about that segment’s growth trajectory.

Over the last five years, U.S. revenues have nearly quintupled from $156 million to about $733 million. Revenues outside the U.S. have doubled from about $133 million to $271 million.

Paying a premium

Palantir’s market capitalization has rapidly ascended over the last year as investors bet on its AI tools, while its stock has soared nearly 500%.

The meteoric rise placed Palantir among the top 10 U.S. tech firms and top 20 most valuable U.S. companies. But Palantir makes a fraction of the revenue of the companies in those lists.

Last quarter, Palantir reported more than $1 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time, and its forward price-to-earnings ratio has surged past 280 times.

By comparison, Apple and Microsoft posted revenue of $94 billion and $76 billion during the period, respectively, and carry a PE ratio of nearly 30 times.

Forward PE is a valuation metric that compares a company’s future earnings to its current share price. The higher the PE, the higher the growth expectations or the more overvalued the asset. A lower price-to-earnings ratio suggests slower growth or an undervalued asset.

Most of the Magnificent Seven stocks, except for Nvidia and Tesla, have a forward PE that hovers around the 20s and 30s. Nvidia trades at more than 40 times forward earnings, while Tesla’s sits at about 198 times.

At these levels, investors are paying a jacked-up premium to own shares of one of the hottest AI stocks on Wall Street as its valuation has skyrocketed to astronomical heights.

“This is a once-in-a-generation, truly anomalous quarter, and we’re very proud,” Karp said on an earnings call following Palantir’s second-quarter results. “We’re sorry that our haters are disappointed, but there are many more quarters to be disappointed.”

CNBC’s Gabriel Cortes contributed to this story.

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Apple Watch getting redesigned blood oxygen feature following legal dispute

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Apple Watch getting redesigned blood oxygen feature following legal dispute

Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) at Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California, US, on Monday, June 9, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Apple on Thursday announced a redesigned blood oxygen feature for some Apple Watch users, following a years-long intellectual property dispute over the capability.

Apple said the redesigned feature is coming to some Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra 2 users on Thursday. The update was possible because of a recent U.S. Customs ruling, the company said.

In 2023, the International Trade Commission found that Apple’s blood oxygen sensors infringed on intellectual property from Masimo, a medical technology company. Apple paused the sale of some of its watches and began selling modified versions of the wearables without the blood oxygen feature.

“Apple’s teams work tirelessly to create products and services that empower users with industry-leading health, wellness, and safety features that are grounded in science and have privacy at the core,” the company said in a release announcing the feature rollout.

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