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Russell Westbrook, #4 of the Denver Nuggets, dribbles the ball during the game against the Oklahoma City Thunder during Round 2, Game 1 of the 2025 NBA Playoffs at Paycom Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on May 5, 2025.

Zach Beeker | National Basketball Association | Getty Images

National Basketball Association superstar Russell Westbrook is taking a shot off the court at simplifying funeral planning with artificial intelligence.

The famed Denver Nuggets point guard on Wednesday announced the launch of Eazewell, a startup that uses AI technology to streamline the process for coordinating funerals. Westbrook founded the venture with former Charlotte Hornets star Kemba Walker and childhood friend Donnell Beverly Jr., who serves as president of Russell Westbrook Enterprises and CEO and co-founder of Eazewell.

“My whole career, on and off the court, has been about stepping up decisively in the moments that matter most,” Westbrook wrote in a statement to CNBC. Westbrook and the Nuggets are currently facing the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA Western Conference semifinals. “Eazewell is exactly that — a decisive solution to a very real problem.”

The Los Angeles-based company uses AI to curate funeral options catered to each user’s budgets and preferences. The platform assists with paperwork, budget planning, invitations and overlooked tasks such as canceling a deceased loved one’s utility bills and social media accounts. Eazewell currently has 11 employees and has already tested its beta platform with more than 1,000 families. 

Eazewell has not disclosed funding but has revenue agreements with partner services. The startup is also working on partnerships with finance and life insurance companies in the space. The service is free to use and does not have an ads component “at this stage,” a company spokesperson said.

“We’re trying to take the weight off people’s shoulders as much as we can, and make this process so much easier for people,” Walker told CNBC in a phone interview. Walker played college basketball with Beverly at the University of Connecticut.

From left to right: Donnell Beverly Jr., Kemba Walker, Donnell Beverly (Donnell’s dad, now deceased) and Russell Westbrook at Donnell’s mom’s funeral.

Donnell Beverly Jr.

Learning from an early loss

Eazewell traces its origins to Westbrook and Beverly’s high school days, when their friend and basketball teammate Khelcey Barrs III passed away unexpectedly from an enlarged heart. Westbrook commemorates Barrs to this day by wearing a bracelet with the initials “KB3” in every NBA game he plays and on his signature Jordan Why Not Zer0.6 “Khelcey Barrs” shoe.

“It’s a reminder that life can change in an instant,” Westbrook said. “You don’t get to choose the moment, but you do get to choose how you respond.”

The experience left a lasting effect on the two friends, Beverly said, but it wasn’t until the death of Beverly’s parents that he experienced funeral planning hurdles firsthand. Beverly said the experience was “messy” and “grueling.”

Disillusioned and frustrated by the process after the death of his mother and father in 2016 and 2023, respectively, Beverly turned to his close friends to come up with the solution that became Eazewell.

“It just seems like the perfect time to really turn our shared pain into purpose,” Beverly said.

Kemba Walker, then #15 of the Charlotte Hornets, in action against the Miami Heat at American Airlines Arena in Miami, Florida, on March 17, 2019.

Mark Brown | Getty Images

One of Eazewell’s most innovative features is its voice-activated AI agent that can gather cost quotes and call funeral homes on a user’s behalf.

Recent advancements in AI have only recently made it possible to automate tasks and create agents that can manage these jobs in an empathetic and compassionate manner, said Viviane Ghaderi, Eazewell’s tech chief and a former Amazon executive.

Stephen Stokols, an Eazewell investor and CEO of Tru Skye Ventures, an early-stage sports technology and wellness venture firm, said these “transformational” AI advancements helping bring the funeral industry out of the “dark ages” initially drew him to the project.

Walker said he hopes Eazewell can offer users the tools to navigate a topic that is not taught in school or early life.

“We know how important it is to have someone by your side to help with the details that come after a loss,” Westbrook said.

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Brad Gerstner on OpenAI’s dealmaking with AMD, Nvidia: ‘The best chips will win’

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Brad Gerstner on OpenAI's dealmaking with AMD, Nvidia: 'The best chips will win'

Brad Gerstner, Altimeter Founder and CEO, speaks at the Delivering Alpha conference in New York City on Sept. 28, 2023.

Adam Jeffery | CNBC

Investor Brad Gerstner cautioned Monday that OpenAI‘s deals with Nvidia and AMD are purely announcements, not deployments.

“Now we will see what gets delivered,” the Altimeter Capital founder told CNBC. “Ultimately, the best chips will win.”

OpenAI’s megadeal with AMD and its relentless push to expand artificial intelligence capabilities underscores the intensifying competitive landscape.

Gerstner said the deals provide “more evidence that the world will remain compute-constrained despite best efforts to bring massive supply online.”

Read more CNBC tech news

Experts say it’s also another validation of the AI arms race heating up, with AI a key element in the geopolitical race between the U.S. and China.

OpenAI’s Chinese rival DeepSeek sent shockwaves last year when it claimed to have a lower-cost AI model than its U.S. peer. And Deepseek has continued to innovate, delivering new open-sourced models using domestically made AI chips.

Last week, the U.S. government issued a report warning of DeepSeek’s national security concerns, Axios reported.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation said DeepSeek provides Chinese Communist Party views more frequently than U.S. models, according to Axios.

OpenAI’s partnership with AMD is raising hopes that it is taking the right steps to increase production and build more complex AI models.

“What we’re really seeing is a world where there’s going to be absolute compute scarcity, because there’s going to be so much demand for AI services, and not just from OpenAI, really from the whole ecosystem,” OpenAI President told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” Monday. “And so that’s why it’s just so important for this whole industry to come together.”

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AppLovin stock tanks on report SEC is investigating company over data-collection practices

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AppLovin stock tanks on report SEC is investigating company over data-collection practices

The AppLovin logo arranged on a smartphone in New York, US, on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025.

Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images

AppLovin shares plummeted on Monday after Bloomberg reported that the SEC has been probing the mobile advertising company over its data-collection practices.

The agency has been looking into whether the company violated agreements on pushing targeted ads to consumers, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The report said that the SEC is responding to a whistleblower complained filed this year along with multiple short-seller reports, and added that neither the company nor its officials have been accused of wrongdoing.

An AppLovin spokesperson said the company doesn’t typically comment on the “existence or non-existence” of regulatory matters.

“That said, as a global public company, we regularly engage with regulators and if we get inquiries we address them in the ordinary course,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Material developments, if any, would be disclosed through the appropriate public channels.”

The stock dropped 14% in regular trading after the report, which landed shortly before market close. It fell another 5% in extended trading.

AppLovin’s stock has been on a tear, jumping about 80% this year after soaring more than 700% in 2024. The surge has been driven by the company’s artificial intelligence technology that’s allowed it to provide better ad targeting capabilities to brands.

Last month, AppLovin was added to the S&P 500, replacing MarketAxess Holdings, at the same time that Robinhood joined the index in place of Caesars Entertainment.

AppLovin made the move into the benchmark despite a short-seller’s effort to keep it out.

In March, Fuzzy Panda Research advised the committee for the large-cap U.S. index to keep AppLovin from becoming a constituent. AppLovin shares dropped 15% in December, when the committee picked Workday to join the S&P 500.

Three notable short-seller firms, including Fuzzy Panda, have slammed AppLovin of late. The latest was Muddy Waters Research, which in March said the company’s ad tactics “systematically” violate app stores’ terms of service by “impermissibly extracting proprietary IDs from MetaSnap, TikTok, Reddit, Google, and others.” In so doing, AppLovin is funneling targeted ads to users without their consent, Muddy Waters said.

Fuzzy Panda and Culper Research put out reports the prior month, taking aim at AppLovin’s AXON software, which drove its earnings growth and stock surge. The shares dropped 12% on Feb. 26, the day of the short reports.

After those reports were published, AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi wrote a blog post, defending his company’s technology and practices, and taking aim at the short sellers trying to profit from AppLovin’s decline.

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Figma’s stock pops 7% after OpenAI CEO Altman touts ChatGPT integration

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Figma's stock pops 7% after OpenAI CEO Altman touts ChatGPT integration

Figma signage appears at the New York Stock Exchange in New York as the company prepares for its shares to begin trading on July 31, 2025.

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Figma shares jumped 7% on Monday after the design software vendor’s technology was promoted by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in an onstage demo at his company’s annual DevDay conference in San Francisco.

Altman discussed Figma’s integration into ChatGPT, which has more than 800 million monthly users. He showed how third-party applications could plug in with OpenAI’s Apps SDK, or software development framework.

“When someone’s using ChatGPT, you’ll be able to find an app by asking for it by name,” Altman said. “For example, you could sketch out a product flow for ChatGPT and then say, Figma, turn this sketch into a workable diagram. The Figma app will take over respond and complete the action.”

In addition to asking for Figma’s help by name in ChatGPT, the assistant can also suggest Figma when it’s relevant, Figma product manager Luke Zhang said in a blog post.

The rally for Figma, at its high point, was the steepest since the day of the company’s public market debut on the New York Stock Exchange in July.

Figma has been ramping up its own tools for working on app and website designs using generative AI models from OpenAI and other providers.

Subscribers to products that connect to the Apps SDK will be able to log in without leaving their ChatGPT conversations, Altman said. He said people working on products in Figma can also launch the FigJam tool to keep working on development ideas. Apps SDK is based on the Model Context Protocol, an open standard that OpenAI rival Anthropic introduced last year.

Software developers will be able to submit apps for review later in 2025, Altman said.

Over time, OpenAI will offer many ways to generate revenue through third-party integrations, Altman said. Last week, OpenAI announced a feature allowing people to buy products listed on Etsy through ChatGPT.

WATCH: Figma shares slide on revenue growth rate outlook

Figma shares slide on revenue growth rate outlook

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