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Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., 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.

Victor J. Blue | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Apple announced a new iPhone model on Wednesday that is priced lower than its main iPhone models, which usually come out in September.

The new iPhone is called iPhone 16e, and it will retail for $599 when it goes on sale later this month.

The new iPhone 16e doesn’t have a home button and fingerprint sensor, instead, it uses Apple’s FaceID scanner and modern design including a sensor notch at the top of the screen. It uses Apple’s A18 chip, which is also used in the main iPhone 16 models. The updated processor means that the iPhone 16e can run all the same apps and games that more expensive iPhones can run. It comes in black and white.

The phone also includes Apple’s first cellular modem, which it calls C1. iPhones have used Qualcomm modems for the past few years. It also has a single camera lens, versus as many as three on the most advanced iPhones.

Apple is releasing a new low-cost iPhone as sales have been mixed in recent quarters and the company seeks growth for its most important product category. For the December quarter, Apple’s overall iPhone sales were down 1% on an annual basis. Apple still sold more than $69 billion of phones in the period.

Low-end iPhones are important to Apple as it gets new customers into their ecosystem, and the new device supports Apple Intelligence, making it Apple’s least expensive new phone that can access features like image generation and notification summaries.

Apple’s current models are the iPhone 16, which starts at $799, and the iPhone 16 Pro, which starts at $999. Before Wednesday’s launch, only the iPhone 16 and iPhone 15 Pro models were the only phones with access to Apple Intelligence.

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Apple has released a less-expensive iPhone model to round out the bottom of its lineup since 2016. The iPhone SE, as it was called then, got further updates in 2020 and 2022. Generally, the iPhone SE reuses an older design than the newest iPhones, but Apple updates its components such as its processor so it can receive ongoing software updates.

After the old iPhone SE sells out, there won’t be any new iPhones with a fingerprint scanner. It was also less expensive than the iPhone 16e at $429.

The launch also marks a new approach to Apple’s famous product launches, which garner media attention around the world. Previously, Apple would reveal new products live and onstage, at a presentation on its campus in California. In 2020, Apple stopped inviting people to live launches and started screening marketing videos on its website and YouTube instead.

In recent years, Apple has started to quietly release new products through press releases, such as the new Macs it announced last September. It may be testing how much buzz it can get for one of these quieter launches. Last week, ahead of Wednesday’s launch, Apple CEO Tim Cook posted a message on social media: “Get ready to meet the newest member of the family.”

Apple iPhone 16e.

Apple

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Ambarella shares soar 19% on report chip designer is exploring sale

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Ambarella shares soar 19% on report chip designer is exploring sale

Thomas Fuller | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Ambarella shares popped 19% after a report that the chip designer is currently working with bankers on a potential sale.

Bloomberg reported the news, citing sources familiar with the matter.

While no deal is imminent, the sources told Bloomberg that the firm may draw interest from semiconductor companies looking to improve their automotive business. Private equity firms have already expressed interest, according to the report.

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The Santa Clara, California-based company is known for its system-on-chip semiconductors and software used for edge artificial intelligence. Ambarella chips are used in the automotive sector for electronic mirrors and self-driving assistance systems.

Shares have slumped about 18% year to date. The company’s market capitalization last stood at nearly $2.6 billion.

Read the Bloomberg story here.

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Nvidia CEO Huang sells $15 million worth of stock, first sale of $873 million plan

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Nvidia CEO Huang sells  million worth of stock, first sale of 3 million plan

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang attends a roundtable discussion at the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 11, 2025.

Sarah Meyssonnier | Reuters

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sold 100,000 shares of the chipmaker’s stock on Friday and Monday, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The sales are worth nearly $15 million at Tuesday’s opening price.

The transactions are the first sale in Huang’s plan to sell as many as 600,000 shares of Nvidia through the end of 2025. It’s a plan that was announced in March, and it’d be worth $873 million at Tuesday’s opening price.

The Nvidia founder still owns more than 800 million Nvidia shares, according to Monday’s SEC filing. Huang has a net worth of about $126 billion, ranking him 12th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The 62-year-old chief executive sold about $700 million in Nvidia shares last year under a prearranged plan, too.

Nvidia stock is up more than 800% since December 2022 after OpenAI’s ChatGPT was first released to the public. That launch drew attention to Nvidia’s graphics processing units, or GPUs, which were needed to develop and power the artificial intelligence service.

The company’s chips remain in high demand with the majority of the AI chip market, and Nvidia has introduced two subsequent generations of its AI GPU technology.

Nvidia continues to grow. Its stock is up 9% this year, even as the company faces export control issues that could limit foreign markets for its AI chips.

In May, the company reported first-quarter earnings that showed the chipmaker’s revenue growing 69% on an annual basis to $44 billion during the quarter.

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Judge rules Anthropic did not violate authors’ copyrights with AI book training

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Judge rules Anthropic did not violate authors' copyrights with AI book training

Dario Amodei, Anthropic CEO, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 21st, 2025.

Gerry Miller | CNBC

Anthropic‘s use of books to train its artificial intelligence model Claude was “fair use” and “transformative,” a federal judge ruled late on Monday.

Amazon-backed Anthropic’s AI training did not violate the authors’ copyrights since the large language models “have not reproduced to the public a given work’s creative elements, nor even one author’s identifiable expressive style,” wrote U.S. District Judge William Alsup.

“The purpose and character of using copyrighted works to train LLMs to generate new text was quintessentially transformative,” Alsup wrote. “Like any reader aspiring to be a writer.”

The decision was a significant win for AI companies as legal battles play out over the use and application of copyrighted works in developing and training LLMs. Alsup’s ruling begins to establish the legal limits and opportunities for the industry going forward.

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A spokesperson for Anthropic said in a statement that the company was “pleased” with the ruling and that the decision was, “Consistent with copyright’s purpose in enabling creativity and fostering scientific progress.”

CNBC has reached out to the plaintiffs for comment.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, was brought by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson in August. The suit alleged that Anthropic built a “multibillion-dollar business by stealing hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books.”

Alsup did, however, order a trial on the pirated material that Anthropic put into its central library of content, even though the company did not use it for AI training.

“That Anthropic later bought a copy of a book it earlier stole off the internet will not absolve it of liability for the theft, but it may affect the extent of statutory damages,” the judge wrote.

WATCH: Anthropic unveils next AI models

Anthropic unveils next AI models

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