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From left, Playground Global partners Peter Barrett, Pat Gelsinger, Jory Bell, Bruce Leak and Ben Kim.

Playground Global

After a tumultuous four years running Intel, Pat Gelsinger is going into venture capital.

Gelsinger, who was ousted by the chipmaker in December, has joined Playground Global as a general partner. Started in 2015 by a group that included Android founder Andy Rubin, Playground focuses on early-stage investments in deep technology.

Gelsinger told CNBC in an interview that he considered starting a venture firm with someone else, but opted to go with a structure that was already up and running.

“It’s about scale,” Gelsinger said, adding that starting from scratch would require “10 hard years to get it.”

Before joining Playground, Gelsinger made a handful of private investments in startups including church outreach software startup Gloo, wearable maker Oura and artificial intelligence chip developer Fractile. At Playground, he’ll join the board of portfolio company xLight, which is developing lasers for semiconductor manufacturing.

Gelsinger is entering VC after 45 years in the technology industry. He spent three decades at Intel, becoming its first chief technology officer, and left in 2009 for data center hardware maker EMC. He later led server virtualization company VMware.

In 2021, with Intel struggling from delays in releasing new generations of processors, he rejoined the company as CEO.

Intel shares fall after CEO leaves

Under Gelsinger, Intel focused on semiconductor fabrication, pouring money into an effort to develop chips for other companies. In 2024, the Biden administration awarded Intel up to $8.5 billion in CHIPS and Science Act funding as part of a plan to bring chip manufacturing back to the U.S.

But Intel lost market share and got trounced by Nvidia in AI, prompting a massive selloff in its stock price. Intel’s market cap plummeted by 60% in 2024, its worst performance in over five decades as a public company.

In December, Intel announced Gelsinger’s retirement. Earlier this month, the company said Lip-Bu Tan, a former CEO of Cadence Design Systems, will take over as CEO.

Gelsinger isn’t the first ex-Intel CEO to find his way to venture. His predecessor, Bob Swan, became a growth operating partner at venture firm Andreessen Horowitz in 2021, a few months after leaving the chipmaker.

AI and quantum

Gelsinger said he’s looking forward to seeing this week’s stock market debut of CoreWeave, which rents out Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) to Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI.

“Obviously they’ve been able to ride the wave of at-scale data centers for AI computing,” Gelsinger said. “There are multiple participants who are trying to do it. They did the best in that. The question is, what’s their sustainable differentiation?”

Another technology of interest, Gelsinger said, is quantum computing. Unlike classical computers that store data in bits that are either on or off, quantum computers operate with quantum qubits, or qubits, that can be in both states at the same time. The hope among quantum bulls is that the technology might be able to perform certain calculations that have stymied today’s machines.

Amazon and Microsoft have both had their latest claims published in the journal Nature. Gelsinger said he looks forward to working on quantum computing with PsiQuantum, a Playground portfolio company.

PsiQuantum is raising $750 million or more in fresh capital at a $6 billion valuation, with BlackRock planning to lead the round, CNBC confirmed. Reuters reported about the fundraising efforts on Monday.

Quantum computers will be “materially impacting computing structures before the end of this decade,” Gelsinger said.

In February, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) said it will evaluate whether quantum systems from PsiQuantum and Microsoft will be more valuable than they cost by 2033. The release didn’t mention Intel, which announced its inaugural quantum chip, codenamed Tunnel Falls, in 2023.

Gelsinger said he wishes the best to his former employer and Tan, its new leader.

“I certainly believe that Intel is critical for the semiconductor industry,” he said. “You need to design and manufacture leading-edge technology.”

— CNBC’s Kate Rooney contributed to this report.

WATCH: Intel shares fall after CEO leaves

Intel shares fall after CEO leaves

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Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

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Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

Chief executive officer of Google Sundar Pichai.

Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.

As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.

“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”

The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup. 

Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.

“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.

Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.

This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.

Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.

The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.

WATCH: Google pushes “AI Mode” on homepage

Google pushes "AI Mode" on homepage

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Nvidia’s Jensen Huang sells more than $36 million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

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Nvidia's Jensen Huang sells more than  million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.

Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unloaded roughly $36.4 million worth of stock in the leading artificial intelligence chipmaker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.

Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.

Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.

The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.

Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.

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The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.

On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.

Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.

Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.

WATCH: Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports

Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports

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Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

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Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

Elon Musk meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington DC, USA on February 13, 2025.

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Tesla will open a showroom in Mumbai, India next week, marking the U.S. electric carmakers first official foray into the country.

The one and a half hour launch event for the Tesla “Experience Center” will take place on July 15 at the Maker Maxity Mall in Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai, according to an event invitation seen by CNBC.

Along with the showroom display, which will feature the company’s cars, Tesla is also likely to officially launch direct sales to Indian customers.

The automaker has had its eye on India for a while and now appears to have stepped up efforts to launch locally.

In April, Tesla boss Elon Musk spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss collaboration in areas including technology and innovation. That same month, the EV-maker’s finance chief said the company has been “very careful” in trying to figure out when to enter the market.

Tesla has no manufacturing operations in India, even though the country’s government is likely keen for the company to establish a factory. Instead the cars sold in India will need to be imported from Tesla’s other manufacturing locations in places like Shanghai, China, and Berlin, Germany.

As Tesla begins sales in India, it will come up against challenges from long-time Chinese rival BYD, as well as local player Tata Motors.

One potential challenge for Tesla comes by way of India’s import duties on electric vehicles, which stand at around 70%. India has tried to entice investment in the country by offering companies a reduced duty of 15% if they commit to invest $500 million and set up manufacturing locally.

HD Kumaraswamy, India’s minister for heavy industries, told reporters in June that Tesla is “not interested” in manufacturing in the country, according to a Reuters report.

Tesla is looking to recruit roles in Mumbai, job listings posted on LinkedIn . These include advisors working in showrooms, security, vehicle operators to collect data for its Autopilot feature and service technicians.

There are also roles being advertised in the Indian capital of New Delhi, including for store managers. It’s unclear if Tesla is planning to launch a showroom in the city.

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