Google DeepMind co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Demis Hassabis gives a conference during the Mobile World Congress (MWC), the telecom industry’s biggest annual gathering, in Barcelona on February 26, 2024.
Pau Barrena | Afp | Getty Images
PARIS — Deepseek’s AI model “is probably the best work” out of China, Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind said on Sunday, but added that the company didn’t show any new scientific advances.
Last month, China’s Deepseek released a research paper that rattled global markets after claiming its AI model was trained at a fraction of the cost of leading AI players and on less-advanced Nvidia chips.
Deepseek’s announcement sparked an aggressive stock sell-off and sparked considerable debate over whether large tech firms are spending too much on AI infrastructure.
Hassabis praised Deepseek’s model as “an impressive piece of work.”
“I think its probably the best work I’ve seen come out of China,” Hassabis said at a Google-hosted event in Paris ahead of the AI Action Summit that is being hosted by the city.
The DeepMind CEO said the AI model shows that Deepseek can do “extremely good engineering” and that it “changes things on a geopolitical scale.”
However, from a technology point of view, Hassabis said it was not a big change.
“Despite the hype, there’s no actual new scientific advance … it’s using known techniques [in AI],” he said, adding that the hype around Deepseek has been “exaggerated a little bit.”
The DeepMind CEO said that the company’s Gemini 2.0 Flash models, which Google this week released to everyone, are more efficient than DeepMind’s model.
Deepseek’s claims around its low cost and the chips it uses have been questioned by experts, who think the cost of development for the Chinese firm’s models is higher.
AGI five years away
The AI world has been debating for years when the arrival of artificial general intelligence, or AGI, will happen. AGI broadly refers to AI that is smarter than humans.
Hassabis said that the AI industry is “on the path towards AGI,” which he describes as “a system that exhibits all the cognitive capabilities humans have.”
“I think we’re close now, you know, maybe we are only, you know, perhaps 5 years or something away from a system like that which would be pretty extraordinary,” Hassabis said.
“And I think society needs to get ready for that and what implications that will have. And, you know, make sure that we derive the benefits from that and the whole society benefits from that, but also we mitigate some of the risks, too.”
Hassabis’ comments mirror those of others in the industry who have suggested that AGI could be closer to reality.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman this year said that he is “confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it.”
Still, many in the industry have also flagged multiple risks associated with AGI. One of the biggest concerns is that humans will lose control of the systems they created, a view shared by prominent AI scientists Max Tegmark and Yoshua Bengio, who recently shared their concerns with CNBC over this form of AI.
The VC arms of Google and Nvidia have invested in Swedish vibe coding startup Lovable’s $330 million Series B at a $6.6 billion valuation, the company announced on Thursday.
The news confirms an earlier story from CNBC, which reported on Tuesday that Lovable had raised at that valuation, trebling its valuation from its previous round in July, and that the investors included U.S. VC firms Accel and Khosla Ventures.
CapitalG, one of Google’s VC divisions, and Menlo Ventures led the round. Alongside Accel and Khosla, Nvidia venture arm NVentures, actor Gwyneth Paltrow’s VC firm Kinship Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Databricks Ventures, Atlassian Ventures, T.Capital, Hubspot Ventures, DST Global, EQT Global, Creandum and Evantic also participated.
The fresh funds take Lovable’s total raised in 2025 to over $500 million.
“Lovable has done something rare: built a product that enterprises and founders both love,” said Laela Sturdy, managing partner at CapitalG in a statement accompanying the announcement.
“The demand we’re seeing from Fortune 500 companies signals a fundamental shift in how software gets built.”
Lovable’s platform uses AI models from providers like OpenAI and Anthropic to help users build apps and websites using text prompts, without technical knowledge of coding.
The startup reported $200 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in November, just under a year after achieving $1 million in ARR for the first time. It was founded in 2023 by Anton Osika and Fabian Hedin.
Vibe coding startups have seen big interest from VCs in recent times, as investors bet on their promise of drastically reducing the time it takes to create software and apps.
In the U.S., Anysphere, which created coding tool Cursor, raised $2.3 billion at a $29.3 billion valuation in November. In September, Replit hit a $3 billion price tag after picking up $250 million and Vercel closed a $300 million round at a $9.3 billion valuation.
During an earnings call with analysts, Micron, which makes memory storage used for computers and artificial intelligence servers, said data center needs have fueled greater demand for its products.
Micron said it expects the total addressable market for high-bandwidth memory to hit $100 billion by 2028, growing at a 40% compounded annual growth rate. Management also upped its capital expenditures guidance to $20 billion from $18 billion.
“We are more than sold out,” said business chief Sumit Sadana. “We have a significant amount of unmet demand in our models and this is just consistent with an environment where the demand is substantially higher than supply for the foreseeable future.
Micron topped Wall Street estimates for the fiscal first quarter and issued blowout guidance.
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The company reported adjusted earnings of $4.78 per share on $13.64 billion in revenue, surpassing LSEG estimates for earnings of $3.95 per share and $12.84 billion in sales.
Revenues in the current quarter are expected to hit about $18.70 billion, blowing past the $14.20 billion expected by LSEG. Adjusted earnings are forecast to reach $8.42, versus expectations of $4.78 per share.
JPMorgan upped its price target on the stock following the results, citing the favorable pricing setup, while Bank of America upgraded shares to a buy rating.
Morgan Stanley called the results the best revenue and net income upside in the “history of the U.S. semis industry” outside of Nvidia.
“If AI keeps growing as we expect, we believe that the next 12 months are going to have broader coat tails to the AI trade than just the processor names and memory would be the biggest beneficiary,” analysts wrote.
U.S. President Donald Trump delivers an address to the nation from the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 17, 2025.
Doug Mills | Via Reuters
This is CNBC’s Morning Squawk newsletter. Subscribe here to receive future editions in your inbox.
Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:
1. Trump on defense
President Donald Trump, with approval ratings sagging, touted his economic and other policies in a White House address, taking jabs at his predecessor, former President Joe Biden. “I inherited a mess,” Trump said, referring to when he returned to the White House last January. “And I am fixing it.”
Here’s what to know:
Trump projected “the largest tax refund season of all time” thanks to the tax and spending package he signed into law over the summer.
The president also announced a “warrior dividend” of $1,776 for 1,450,000 U.S. military members, that’s set to cost about $2.5 billion.
The address came as Trump’s approval ratings are sagging across the board, on issues ranging from immigration to inflation, and as Republicans seek to hold on to majorities in the House and Senate in the 2026 midterms.
Obamacare subsidies extension will go to a vote after 4 Republicans bucked leadership.
The U.S. government admitted fault, citing missteps by members of the U.S. Army and the FAA, in the fatal collision of an Army Black Hawk Helicopter with an arriving American Airlines regional jet in January that took 67 lives.
2. Return of the CPI
A shopper browses a holiday food display while shopping for groceries ahead of the Thanksgiving Day holiday at an Albertsons supermarket in Redmond, Washington, U.S., November 24, 2025.
David Ryder | Reuters
The November consumer price index report, the first since the record government shutdown ended last month, is due out at 8:30 a.m. ET.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones expect it to show a 12-month inflation rate of 3.1%. When excluding food and energy, core CPI is forecast to post an annual rate of 3.0%.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has said the release “will not include 1-month percent changes for November 2025 where the October 2025 data are missing,” because the agency canceled the October inflation report in late November, weeks before the Federal Reserve’s final meeting of the year.
3. Time for a rebound?
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Aug. 22, 2025.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
Stock futures were ticking up ahead of the return of the monthly inflation report.
Micron Technology jumped 10% in premarket trading after its latest results and forecast topped Wall Street estimates. Shares of Olive Garden parent Darden rose premarket on an improved sales outlook.
The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the previous session lower for the fourth day in a row. Oracle had dropped more than 5% after the Financial Times reported that the cloud infrastructure company’s primary investor pulled out of its $10 billion Michigan data center.
Trump Media and Technology Group on Thursday announced a merger agreement valued at more than $6 billion with TAE Technologies, a fusion power company, showing the company that operates President Donald Trump‘s Truth Social platform is branching out even further.
4. Healthy IPO market
CEO Jim Boyle celebrates with others as medical supplies giant Medline (MDLN) holds it’s IPO at the Nasdaq stock market site in Times Square in New York, Dec. 17, 2025.
Shannon Stapleton | Reuters
Shares of medical supply giant Medline, which makes everything from hospital beds to scrubs, jumped 41% in their Nasdaq debut Wednesday as the world’s biggest IPO of the year. The stock opened at $35, up from its $29 IPO price, and ended its first trading day at $41 a share, bringing Medline’s market capitalization to roughly $54 billion.
Just over 200 IPOs have priced this year despite market volatility in the spring, driven by President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs and the longest U.S. government shutdown in history in the fall. It is the largest U.S. listing since Rivian‘s $13.7 billion deal in November 2021, according to data compiled by CNBC.
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5. Delta’s platinum president is retiring
Glen Hauenstein, president of Delta Air Lines Inc., center left, and Ed Bastian, chief executive officer of Delta Air Lines Inc., center right, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, US, on Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Delta Air Lines President Glen Hauenstein, who helped shape Delta into the industry’s profit leader, will retire at the end of February. Hauenstein, who joined Delta 20 years ago, led the airline’s lucrative embrace of travelers willing to spend more for a more luxurious trip, or at least a few more inches of legroom on board.
Some of Delta’s strategies became too successful for customers’ tastes, such as its popular airport SkyClubs, which Delta recently raised the entry bar.
The Daily Dividend
And the winner is…YouTube. In a major shift away from traditional television, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Wednesday it’s signed a multiyear deal with the Google-owned service to stream the Oscars starting in 2029 and running through 2033, red carpet coverage included.
— CNBC’s Sean Conlon, Justin Papp, Kevin Breuninger, Amelia Lucas, Dan Mangan, Garrett Downs, Annika Kim Constantino, Pia Singh and Sarah Whittencontributed to this report. Melodie Warner edited this edition.