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OpenAI CFO on acquisition of Jony Ive's startup: Hardware is a part of next value-add for OpenAI

OpenAI is betting a new “era” of computing will justify the company’s decision to spend billions of dollars on bespoke hardware to go with it, Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar said.

The artificial intelligence startup, best known for the ChatGPT chatbot, announced plans on Wednesday to buy iPhone designer Jony Ive’s devices startup io for about $6.4 billion. Ive’s company was founded roughly a year ago and doesn’t have a product on the market.

Friar told CNBC on Thursday that any startup as young as io was “hard to value.” But she sees an eventual return on that investment.

“You’re really betting on great people and beyond,” Friar said. “It’s not just about imagining what a new platform could look like — you’ve got to be able to craft it. You’ve got to be able to build it. You’ve got to be able to understand supply chains.”

Friar, who took the CFO job at OpenAI last summer and was formerly CEO of Nextdoor, said new devices will eventually get OpenAI’s technology in the hands of more users, and drive subscription growth and attach rates. ChatGPT last reported 500 million weekly active users, but monthly actives are higher, Friar said.

“When you start thinking about it beyond just a phone, it starts to grab the imagination,” she said. “If we can get people around the world excited to use AI, we have many ways to begin to think of a business model around that. So it could be an ongoing, bigger subscription for ChatGPT.”

Friar’s comments echo others in the tech industry who have said AI hardware could change the face of computing, and threaten the iPhone. Eddy Cue, Apple’s chief of services, said earlier this month that he believes AI devices could replace the iPhone within ten years.

While OpenAI works with Apple on an iPhone and Siri integration, Friar said the company still saw a need to have its own proprietary devices.

“We want to work with many partners. When we single-thread ourselves, we don’t think that drives max innovation,” Friar said. “We continue to work closely with Apple on their device, and we’d love to see more being done with AI — but we also want to keep sparking innovation broadly in the ecosystem.”

Friar hinted at new devices without touchscreens. She declined to give details around what exactly they might look like, pointing to the former Apple team’s secretive culture and “mystique” around products.

“As you birth this new era of AI, there’s going to be new platforms and new substrate,” she said. “We think of tech today as a little bit more around touch. We as humans, we see things, we hear things, we talk. And our models are great at that.”

WATCH: CNBC’s full interview with OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar

Watch CNBC's full interview with OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar

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Trump says a 25% tariff ‘must be paid by Apple’ on iPhones not made in the U.S.

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Trump says a 25% tariff 'must be paid by Apple' on iPhones not made in the U.S.

US President Donald Trump (r) and Apple CEO Tim Cook speak to the press during a tour of the Flextronics computer manufacturing facility where Apple’s Mac Pros are assembled in Austin, Texas, on November 20, 2019.

Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images

President Donald Trump said in a social media post Friday morning that Apple will have to pay a tariff of 25% or more for iPhones made outside the United States.

“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else. If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.,” Trump said on Truth Social.

Shares of Apple fell more than 2% in premarket trading.

Production of Apple’s flagship phone happens primarily in China, but the country has been shifting manufacturing to India in part because that country has a friendlier trade relationship with the U.S..

Some Wall Street analysts have estimated that moving iPhone production to the U.S. would raise the price of the Apple smartphone by at least 25%. Wedbush’s Dan Ives put the estimated cost of a U.S. iPhone $3,500. The iPhone 16 Pro currently retails for about $1,000.

This is the latest jab at Apple from Trump, who over the past couple weeks has ramped up pressure on the company and Cook to increase domestic manufacturing. Politico previously reported that Trump and Cook met at the White House on Tuesday.

Cook gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund and attended the inauguration in January. Apple has announced a $500 billion spend on U.S. development, including AI server production in Houston.

Apple declined to comment for this story.

Trump has made public criticisms of other major U.S. companies, including Walmart, during his trade war push, but the levies on a specific consumer product is a new step. The exact legal mechanism for the tariff is unclear.

As Apple is caught in the U.S. president’s crosshairs, the company is also seeing weak demand in China. On Friday the company hiked trade-in incentives for iPhones in China.

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Apple raises trade-in prices for iPhones in China to spur demand in key market

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Apple raises trade-in prices for iPhones in China to spur demand in key market

People stand in front of an Apple store in Beijing, China, on April 9, 2025.

Tingshu Wang | Reuters

Apple on Friday raised the amount of money people can get off their next iPhone in China by trading in their old device, rolling out further incentives to spur demand in a crucial market.

The iPhone 15 Pro Max now has a trade-in value of up to 5,700 Chinese yuan ($791), an increase from 5,625 yuan previously. For reference, a brand new iPhone 15 Pro Max starts at 7,999 yuan in China. The iPhone 15 Pro model can now be traded in for up to 4,750 yuan, up from 4,725 prior.

There are also trade-in value increases across other models too.

Apple has looked to offer discounts over the last year, especially around holiday periods in China. While the latest hikes are not huge, they signal Apple’s ongoing desire to galvanize sales in the world’s second largest economy, where it has faced falling market share and declining sales amid tougher competition from local rivals.

In the first quarter of the year, Apple’s China shipments fell 8% year-on-year, while the company’s share of the smartphone market in the country declined from 15% to 13%, according to data from Canalys. Apple also reported this month that sales in its Greater China region, which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan, fell slightly on an annual basis.

But Apple’s China headache goes beyond sales to questions over its supply chain and products. While U.S. President Donald Trump has paused most tariffs on China for now, there is still an ongoing discussion about whether chips and other electronics may receive a special duty.

Apple, which makes around 90% of its iPhones in China via its manufacturing partner Foxconn, has been looking to move more production to India — though Trump has also voiced displeasure with that. The White House leader said this month that he told Apple CEO Tim Cook he doesn’t want the company building products in India and would rather them make devices in the U.S.

Apple’s biggest challengers number Xiaomi and Huawei, with the latter seeing a stunning revival in its home market over the last 17 months thanks to breakthroughs in chips and aggressive launches of new devices.

Xiaomi, which was the biggest player by market share in China in the first quarter, has meanwhile been ramping up its presence in the high-end device space to directly compete with Apple. On Thursday, the company launched the Xiaomi 15S Pro smartphone that contains an in-house developed chip — something very few companies in the world have managed to do successfully.

Xiaomi has also committed nearly $7 billion to develop more chips over the next 10 years, signaling its ambition to compete with Apple and Huawei.

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BYD beats Tesla in European EV sales despite EU tariffs in ‘watershed moment,’ report says

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BYD beats Tesla in European EV sales despite EU tariffs in 'watershed moment,' report says

Though the difference between the two brands’ monthly sales totals is relatively small, the implications of BYD beating out Tesla “are enormous,” says Felipe Munoz, global automotive analyst at JATO Dynamics.

Jaap Arriens | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Despite incurring a higher tariff rate than Tesla, Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD sold more pure battery electric vehicles in Europe for the first time ever last month — a “watershed moment” for the region’s car market, according to a report from JATO Dynamics.

New car registrations data from the automotive intelligence firm shows that BYD’s Europe volumes rose 359% in April from last year as the company continues its global expansion efforts.

Over the same period, Tesla reported yet another monthly drop, with total volumes down 49%, JATO said. That follows protests against CEO Elon Musk and the company in the region. JATO’s data comes from 28 European nations.

BYD’s success in the EU comes despite the economic bloc’s imposition of punitive tariffs on battery EVs made in China last October. The EU attributed the move to unfair trade practices.

The punitive tariffs appeared to be favorable to Tesla, assigning its made-in-China vehicles a 7.8% duty compared with BYD’s 17%. Other Chinese EV makers were given tariffs as high as about 35%. The EU also has a standard 10% car import duty.

Emerging battleground

Felipe Munoz, global automotive analyst at JATO, said the difference between the two EV makers’ April sales was relatively small, but that the implications of BYD beating out Tesla “are enormous.”

JATO added that BYD is also beating well-established European car brands across the region, outselling Fiat and Seat in France, for example.

“This is a watershed moment for Europe’s car market, particularly when you consider that Tesla has led the European BEV market for years, while BYD only officially began operations beyond Norway and the Netherlands in late 2022,” Munoz said.

BYD’s growth comes even before production begins at its new plant in Hungary, which is expected to become the center of European production operations.

“Europe is emerging as a central battleground between BYD and Tesla,” Liz Lee, associate director at technology market research firm Counterpoint Research, told CNBC. She added that the region is expected to experience higher electric vehicle market growth this year than China, which already has high EV penetration.

The tariffs have provided more impetus for Chinese EV makers like BYD to localize manufacturing in the region, according to Lee. Tesla is also reportedly working on plans to expand its manufacturing base in Germany.

JATO’s report said that while tariffs had an initial impact on the sales of Chinese automakers, the companies have mitigated it by expanding and diversifying their European line-ups with the introduction of plug-in hybrids.

“China is not only the world leader in BEVs; its automakers are global leaders in plug-in hybrid vehicles too,” Munoz said. 

Battery EVs run entirely on electricity, while hybrid vehicles combine an electric battery with an internal combustion engine. Hybrid vehicles have not yet been targeted by EU tariffs.

Meanwhile, there has been growing demand in the region’s EV segment, with JATO data showing that registrations of battery EVs and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles are up by 28% and 31%, respectively, despite declines among internal combustion engine vehicles. 

Registrations of all electric vehicles made by Chinese automakers in April rose by 59% year on year, reaching almost 15,300 units in April, the report added.

Ahead of the EU’s tariff decision last year, Rhodium had predicted that tariffs would need to be as high as 55% for the European market to be unattractive for Chinese EV exporters.

In March, it was revealed that Tesla, which only sells pure battery vehicles, fell behind BYD in total annual sales. 

Tesla’s shares have fallen over 10% over the same period amid blowback from Musk’s involvement with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. The CEO recently committed to leading Tesla for the next five years. 

BYD shares were up 3.9% in Hong Kong trading on Friday and have surged about 78% year to date.

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