Connect with us

Published

on

Jensen Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia, at the London Tech Week exposition in London, UK, on Monday, June 9, 2025.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

LONDON — Wherever Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang goes, excitement follows — this time, all the way to London Tech Week.

The Nvidia boss — whom Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives dubs the “godfather of AI” — is more like a rockstar these days, given his wide-spanning effect on the AI industry.

“The amount of infrastructure required for AI wouldn’t be possible without that man,” one attendee at London Tech Week said.

“He’s like Iron Man,” the attendee added, referencing the popular Marvel superhero who is a tech billionaire inventor under the name of Tony Stark.

Floods of people crowded outside the main stage at London Tech Week as they attempted to get in for Nvidia boss Jensen Huang’s talk.

Arjun Kharpal | CNBC

The lines to get into the Olympia auditorium were already building around 40 minutes before Jensen was set to take the stage alongside U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Not everyone managed to get in — but there were helpfully screens around the venue where people could catch a glimpse of Huang’s talk.

People sat at other stages in the venue to watch Nvidia’s CEO speaking with U.K. PM Keir Starmer as there wasn’t enough room in the keynote stage.

Arjun Kharpal | CNBC

The Nvidia CEO gave his continued bullish assessment of artificial intelligence, calling it an “incredible technology” and saying it should be seen as infrastructure, just like electricity. 

UK gets glowing endorsement from Huang 

There weren’t any multi-billion dollar investments touted at London Tech Week. But the biggest win for Starmer and the U.K. by far was Huang’s lavish praise for the country.

Wearing his trademark leather jacket, Huang called the U.K. the “envy of the world” that is in the midst of a “Goldilocks circumstance,” boasting a vibrant venture capital ecosystem, as well as budding AI entrepreneurs from leading firms including Google DeepMind, Synthesia, Wayve and ElevenLabs.

Speaking alongside Huang, Starmer spoke in an animated manner as he touted Nvidia’s investments in the U.K. Earlier in the day, the U.S. chipmaker announced a new “U.K. sovereign AI industry forum,” as well as commitments from cloud vendors Nscale and Nebius to deploy new facilities containing thousands of its Blackwell GPU chips.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaking at London Tech Week 2025.

Ryan Browne | CNBC

Starmer spoke at length about AI’s promise and the ways in which it could ease the burdens faced by the U.K.’s public sector institutions, from hospitals to schools.

Huang added that the U.K. is “such a great place to invest,” noting that Nvidia plans to partner with the country to upskill tech workers and build out domestic AI infrastructure.

“Infrastructure enables more research — more research, more breakthroughs, more companies,” the Nvidia chief said. “That flywheel will start taking off. It’s already quite large, but we’re just going to get that flywheel going.”

Starmer thanked Huang for his point, commenting that “the confidence it gives when you explain it that way is huge.”

“From our point of view, we’re really pleased to be seen that way,” the U.K. leader said.

The pair shook hands at the end.

Altogether, there was a lot of energy in the room. Huang said he was “excited” for London Tech Week, and he was met with a round of applause from the audience.

Europe wants a piece of Huang

Countdown to Apple's WWDC: Here's what to expect

Continue Reading

Technology

No ‘woke AI’ in Washington, Trump says as he launches American AI action plan

Published

on

By

No ‘woke AI’ in Washington, Trump says as he launches American AI action plan

U.S. President Donald Trump holds an executive order related to AI after signing it during the “Winning the AI Race” Summit in Washington D.C., U.S., July 23, 2025.

Kent Nishimura | Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump has vowed to keep “woke AI” models out of Washington and to turn the country into an “AI export powerhouse” through the signing of three artificial intelligence-focused executive orders on Wednesday. 

The phasing out of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives — an umbrella term encompassing various practices, policies, and strategies aimed at fostering a more inclusive and equitable culture — has been a major focus of the second Trump administration. Now, the White House is bringing the battle to AI. 

The “PREVENTING WOKE AI IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT” order states that the federal government “has the obligation not to procure models that sacrifice truthfulness and accuracy to ideological agendas.”

The executive order identifies DEI as one of the “most pervasive and destructive” of these ideologies to be kept out of AI models used by the government. 

“LLMs shall be neutral, nonpartisan tools that do not manipulate responses in favor of ideological dogmas such as DEI,” the order said, adding that developers should not intentionally encode partisan or ideological judgments into an LLM’s outputs unless those judgments are prompted by users. 

As acknowledged by the order, the use of AI is increasingly prevalent across Americans’ daily lives and is expected to play a critical role in the way they learn and consume information — making “reliable outputs” necessary.

In the eyes of the Trump administration, DEI in AI can lead to discriminatory outcomes; distort and manipulate AI model outputs in regard to race and sex; and incorporate concepts like critical race theory, transgenderism, unconscious bias, intersectionality and systemic racism. 

“DEI displaces the commitment to truth in favor of preferred outcomes and, as recent history illustrates, poses an existential threat to reliable AI,” the anti-woke order reads. 

Without giving specifics, the order refers to past examples of this, including a major AI model that changed the race or sex of historical figures such as the pope and Founding Fathers when prompted for images.  

In response to backlash last year, Google had pulled its Gemini AI image generation feature, saying it offered “inaccuracies” in historical pictures. Months later, the company rolled out an improved version. 

Instead of “woke AI”, the government should procure “truth-seeking” AI models that “prioritize historical accuracy, scientific inquiry, and objectivity, and shall acknowledge uncertainty where reliable information is incomplete or contradictory,” the order stated. 

However, it adds that the federal government “should be hesitant” to regulate the functionality of AI models in the private marketplace.

In other AI developments on Wednesday, the Trump administration signed an order to spur innovation in the technology by removing what it called “onerous Federal regulations that hinder AI development and deployment.”

Another order aims to establish and implement an “American AI Exports Program” to support the development and deployment of the U.S. AI technology stack abroad. 

The moves are part of the administration’s “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” which it says identifies 90 federal policy actions across three pillars: the acceleration of innovation, building of AI infrastructure, and leadership in international diplomacy and security.

Continue Reading

Technology

Estonia’s tech elite are getting behind a European challenger to Robinhood

Published

on

By

Estonia's tech elite are getting behind a European challenger to Robinhood

The Lightyear app.

Lightyear

Some of the biggest names of Estonia’s tech scene are backing Lightyear, a startup looking to become Europe’s answer to commission-free trading pioneer Robinhood.

Based in London, Lightyear develops an app that lets users invest in a range of over 5,000 stocks, exchange-traded funds and money market funds. It was founded by two former Wise employees, Martin Sokk and Mihkel Aamer, in 2021.

The company is set to announce later on Thursday that it has raised $23 million in a new round of funding led by NordicNinja, a Japanese-backed venture capital fund based in Europe. Estonian tech entrepreneur Markus Villig, who co-founded ride-hailing unicorn Bolt has also invested.

Lightyear CEO Sokk told CNBC that the firm didn’t necessarily need to raise more cash for the business but chose to do so because of the caliber of investors involved.

“People like Markus have been building massive companies in many, many markets, and this is something that’s really exciting for us because it’s so hard to go into all the markets and understand their local dynamics and what people need,” he said.

Lightyear currently operates in 25 countries. However, with help from angel investors like Bolt’s Villig, the firm will be able to launch in another five markets “pretty quickly,” Sokk said.

Villig told CNBC that it can be “challenging to scale a business across multiple countries in a heavily regulated sector,” adding that Europe’s less developed retail investing market provides ample opportunities for disruption.

Other Estonian angel investors who have previously backed Lightyear also participated in the funding round, including Wise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus, Checkout.com’s former Chief Technology Officer Ott Kaukver and Skype founding engineer Jaan Tallinn.

Estonia is widely considered a prominent tech hub in Europe. The country is home to the highest number of unicorns per capita in Europe, according to the Estonian Investment Agency. Meanwhile, Estonia’s e-residency scheme has also enabled foreigners to become digital residents and launch their companies in the country.

The new round values five-year-old Lightyear at between $200 million and $300 million, significantly higher than its valuation in 2022 when it raised $25 million, according to two people familiar with the matter who preferred to remain anonymous as the information has not been made public.

Pushing into AI, crypto

Alongside the additional funding, Lightyear is also launching new artificial intelligence features. AI has been a hot area of investment for startups following the explosive popularity of generative AI services like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

One of the features, called “Why Did It Move,” allows users to select a point in time on a stock chart and see what happened that day to cause a jump or fall in a company’s share price. The firm is also using AI to provide “bull” and “bear” theses on stocks as well as short updates on assets in their own portfolios.

“In the end, you’re going to have two models” when it comes to investing, according to Sokk: “Self-driving money,” where you ask an AI to achieve certain investment goals, and a “manual gearbox” approach of figuring out different strategies and approaches on your own.

Still, the market for online investment products is heavily competitive. Lightyear faces some hefty competition from both incumbent brokerage services as well as more modern tech players such as Robinhood, Revolut and Trade Republic.

However, Sokk insists Lightyear is building a differentiated enough product to stand out from the crowd. While competitors like Robinhood profit from offering risky products like crypto and margin trading, Lightyear is focused on serving long-term investors, he told CNBC.

To that end, Sokk said Lightyear is planning on rolling out a crypto product of its own in two months’ time — one that’s “more focused on a long-term view.”

Continue Reading

Technology

Google’s $85 billion capital spend spurred by cloud, AI demand

Published

on

By

Google's  billion capital spend spurred by cloud, AI demand

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc., during Stanford’s 2024 Business, Government, and Society forum in Stanford, California, April 3, 2024.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Google is going to spend $10 billion more this year than it previously expected due to the growing demand for cloud services, which has created a backlog, executives said Wednesday.

As part of its second quarter earnings, the company increased its forecast for capital expenditures in 2025 to $85 billion due to “strong and growing demand for our Cloud products and services” as it continues to expand infrastructure to power more AI services that use its cloud technology. That’s up from the $75 billion projection that Google provided in February, which was already above the $58.84 billion that Wall Street expected at the time.

The increased forecast comes as demand for cloud services surges across the tech industry as AI services increase in popularity. As a result, companies are doubling down on infrastructure to keep pace with demand and are planning multi‑year buildouts of data centers.

In its second quarter earnings, Google reported that cloud revenues increased by 32% to $13.6 billion in the period. The demand is so high for Google’s cloud services that it now amounts to a $106 billion backlog, Alphabet finance chief Anat Ashkenazi said during the company’s post-earnings conference call.

“It’s a tight supply environment,” she said.

The vast majority of Alphabet’s capital spend was invested in technical infrastructure during the second quarter, with approximately two-thirds of investments going to servers and one-third in data center and networking equipment, Ashkenazi said.

She added that the updated outlook reflects additional investment in servers, the timing of delivery of servers and “an acceleration in the pace of data center construction, primarily to meet Cloud customer demand.”

Ashkenazi said that despite the company’s “improved” pace of getting servers up and running, investors should expect further increase in capital spend in 2026 “due to the demand as well as growth opportunities across the company.” She didn’t specify what those opportunities are but said the company will provide more details on a future earnings call.

“We’re increasing capacity with every quarter that goes by,” Ashkenazi said. 

Due to the increased spend, Google will have to record more expenses over time, which will make profits look smaller, she said.

“Obviously, we’re working hard to bring more capacity online,” Ashkenazi said.

WATCH: Alphabet shares Q2 shares sink despite revenue and earnings beat

Alphabet shares Q2 shares sink despite revenue and earnings beat

Continue Reading

Trending