Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., greets customers during the first day of in-store sales of Apple’s latest products at Apple’s Fifth Avenue store in New York, US, on Friday, Sept. 20, 2024.
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Apple on Monday released a software update for iPhones, iPads and Macs that turns Apple Intelligence on by default for users with supported devices.
The updates, iOS 18.3, iPadOS 18.3 and macOS Sequoia 15.3, also disable AI summaries for news apps, which have gained a reputation for twisting news push notifications to display inaccurate facts.
The release is a milestone in the rollout of Apple Intelligence, the company’s suite of artificial intelligence features. Apple Intelligence is a critical service for Apple as it seeks to distinguish its products from competitors with an AI system integrated into iPhones and its other devices.
While Apple Intelligence is already featured in the company’s marketing for the latest iPhones, the rollout has been deliberate and limited. Apple says that is to allow it to test new features and make sure it has enough server capacity. The entire Apple Intelligence suite is still officially in beta, and it’s only available in a handful of English-speaking countries.
Apple’s move to turn Apple Intelligence on by default is a step toward a more complete rollout of the feature. Previously, users with supported iPhones — models that were released in 2024 as well as 2023 “Pro” level models — were prompted to turn on Apple Intelligence when setting up their phone, a process that included downloading AI models from the internet and some installation.
With the latest updates, Apple Intelligence will be turned on by default when the latest software update is installed, expanding the number of users who are exposed to the software. Apple Intelligence is marketed as being able to rewrite text, generate images, and summarize long emails and message threads.
“For users new or upgrading to iOS 18.3, Apple Intelligence will be enabled automatically during iPhone onboarding,” Apple said in the developer release notes for the update.
Users will have to navigate to the Apple Intelligence page in the Settings app to turn it off, according to Apple.
The latest software update also includes one of the most notable examples so far of Apple rolling back an AI feature after it generated controversy and subpar results. Apple joins Googleand Microsoft as companies that were forced to recall new AI features after they generated harmful content or “hallucinations” that weren’t based in reality.
Apple Intelligence can take stacks of notifications and simplify them into a three-sentence notification. However, the BBC and other news outlets discovered in December that the feature can twist news headlines into inaccurate information.
Earlier this month, Apple’s system conflated notifications from BBC’s sports app to say that “Brazilian tennis player, Rafael Nadal, comes out as gay.” Nadal is Spanish and is married to Maria Francisca Perello.
The latest update disables Apple Intelligence for news and entertainment apps. Apple Intelligence also has been updated to show any notifications generated by its AI in italics, signifying which notifications are created by generative AI and which were pushed by the app itself.
“We’re pleased that Apple has listened to our concerns and is pausing the summarization feature for news,” a BBC spokesperson told CNBC.
Apple told CNBC earlier this month that its notification summaries for news apps would return in a future update.
Founded in 2022, ElevenLabs is an AI voice generation startup based in London. It competes with the likes of Speechmatics and Hume AI.
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LONDON — ElevenLabs, a London-based startup that specializes in generating synthetic voices through artificial intelligence, has revealed plans to be IPO-ready within five years.
The company told CNBC it is targeting major global expansion as it prepares for an initial public offering.
“We expect to build more hubs in Europe, Asia and South America, and just keep scaling,” Mati Staniszewski, ElevenLabs’ CEO and co-founder, told CNBC in an interview at the firm’s London office.
He identified Paris, Singapore, Brazil and Mexico as potential new locations. London is currently ElevenLabs’ biggest office, followed by New York, Warsaw, San Francisco, Japan, India and Bangalore.
Staniszewski said the eventual aim is to get the company ready for an IPO in the next five years.
“From a commercial standpoint, we would like to be ready for an IPO in that time,” he said. “If the market is right, we would like to create a public company … that’s going to be here for the next generation.”
Undecided on location
Founded in 2022 by Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski, ElevenLabs is an AI voice generation startup that competes with the likes of Speechmatics and Hume AI.
The company divides its business into three main camps: consumer-facing voice assistants, integrations with corporates such as Cisco, and tailor-made applications for specific industries like health care.
Staniszewski said the firm hasn’t yet decided where it could list, but that this decision will largely rest on where most of its users are located at the time.
“If the U.K. is able to start accelerating,” ElevenLabs will consider London as a listing destination, Staniszewski said.
The city has faced criticisms from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists that its stock market is unfavorable toward high-growth tech firms.
Meanwhile, British money transfer firm Wiselast month said it plans to move its primary listing location to the U.S.,
Fundraising plans
ElevenLabs was valued at $3.3 billion following a recent $180 million funding round. The company is backed by the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and ICONIQ Growth, as well as corporate names like Salesforce and Deutsche Telekom.
Staniszewski said his startup was open to raising more money from VCs, but it would depend on whether it sees a valid business need, like scaling further in other markets. “The way we try to raise is very much like, if there’s a bet we want to take, to accelerate that bet [we will] take the money,” he said.
Synopsys logo is seen displayed on a smartphone with the flag of China in the background.
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The U.S. government has rescinded its export restrictions on chip design software to China, U.S.-based Synopsys announced Thursday.
“Synopsys is working to restore access to the recently restricted products in China,” it said in a statement.
The U.S. had reportedly told several chip design software companies, including Synopsys, in May that they were required to obtain licenses before exporting goods, such as software and chemicals for semiconductors, to China.
The U.S. Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.
The news comes after China signaled last week that they are making progress on a trade truce with the U.S. and confirmed conditional agreements to resume some exchanges of rare earths and advanced technology.
The Datadog stand is being displayed on day one of the AWS Summit Seoul 2024 at the COEX Convention and Exhibition Center in Seoul, South Korea, on May 16, 2024.
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Datadog shares were up 10% in extended trading on Wednesday after S&P Global said the monitoring software provider will replace Juniper Networks in the S&P 500 U.S. stock index.
S&P Global is making the change effective before the beginning of trading on July 9, according to a statement.
Computer server maker Hewlett Packard Enterprise, also a constituent of the index, said earlier on Wednesday that it had completed its acquisition of Juniper, which makes data center networking hardware. HPE disclosed in a filing that it paid $13.4 billion to Juniper shareholders.
Over the weekend, the two companies reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, which had sued in opposition to the deal. As part of the settlement, HPE agreed to divest its global Instant On campus and branch business.
While tech already makes up an outsized portion of the S&P 500, the index has has been continuously lifting its exposure as the industry expands into more areas of society.
Stocks often rally when they’re added to a major index, as fund managers need to rebalance their portfolios to reflect the changes.
New York-based Datadog went public in 2019. The company generated $24.6 million in net income on $761.6 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2025, according to a statement. Competitors include Cisco, which bought Splunk last year, as well as Elastic and cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon and Microsoft.
Datadog has underperformed the broader tech sector so far this year. The stock was down 5.5% as of Wednesday’s close, while the Nasdaq was up 5.6%. Still, with a market cap of $46.6 billion, Datadog’s valuation is significantly higher than the median for that index.