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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, pictured, speaks with SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son at an event in Tokyo on Feb. 3, 2025.

Tomohiro Ohsumi | Getty Images News | Getty Images

OpenAI on Thursday announced GPT-5, its latest and most advanced large-scale artificial intelligence model.

The company is making GPT-5 available to everyone, including its free users. OpenAI said the model is smarter, faster and “a lot more useful,” particularly across domains like writing, coding and health care.

“I tried going back to GPT-4, and it was quite miserable,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a briefing with reporters.

Since launching its AI chatbot ChatGPT in 2022, OpenAI has rocketed into the mainstream. The company said it expects to hit 700 million weekly active users on ChatGPT this week, and it is in talks with investors about a potential stock sale at a valuation of roughly $500 billion, as CNBC previously reported.

OpenAI said GPT-5’s hallucination rate is lower, which means the model fabricates answers less frequently. The company said it also carried out extensive safety evaluations while developing GPT-5, including 5,000 hours of testing. 

Instead of outright refusing to answer users’ questions if they are potentially risky, GPT-5 will use “safe completions,” OpenAI said. This means the model will give high-level responses within safety constraints that can’t be used to cause harm. 

“GPT-5 has been trained to recognize when a task can’t be finished, avoid speculation and can explain limitations more clearly, which reduces unsupported claims compared to prior models,” said Michelle Pokrass, a post-training lead at OpenAI.

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During the briefing, OpenAI demonstrated how GPT-5 can be used for “vibe coding,” which is a term for when users generate software with AI based on a simple written prompt. 

The company asked GPT-5 to create a web app that could help an English speaker learn French. The app had to have an engaging theme and include activities like flash cards and quizzes as well as a way to track daily progress. OpenAI submitted the same prompt into two GPT-5 windows, and it generated two different apps within seconds. 

The apps had “some rough edges,” an OpenAI lead said, but users can make additional tweaks to the AI-generated software, like changing the background or adding additional tabs, as they see fit.

GPT-5 is rolling out to OpenAI’s Free, Plus, Pro and Team users on Thursday. This launch will be the first time that Free users have access to a reasoning model, which is a type of model that “thinks,” or carries out an internal chain of thought, before responding. If Free users hit their usage cap, they’ll have access to GPT-5 mini.

OpenAI’s Plus users have higher usage limits, and Pro users have unlimited access to GPT-5 as well as access to GPT-5 Pro. ChatGPT Edu and ChatGPT Enterprise users will get access to GPT-5 roughly a week from Thursday.

“It’s hard to believe it’s only been two and a half years since @sama joined us in Redmond to show the world GPT-4 for the first time in Bing, and it’s incredible to see how far we’ve come since that moment,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote in a Thursday X post, referring to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s appearance at Microsoft headquarters in Washington in February 2023.

The new model is coming to Microsoft products Thursday, according to a company blog post. Microsoft 365 Copilot is getting GPT-5, as well as the Copilot for consumers and the Azure AI Foundry that developers can use to incorporate AI models into third-party applications.

Box, a company that helps enterprises manage their computer files, has been testing GPT-5 across a wide variety of data sets in recent weeks.  

Aaron Levie, the CEO of Box, said previous AI models have failed many of the company’s most advanced tests because they struggle to make sense of complex math or logic within long documents. But Levie said GPT-5 is a “complete breakthrough.” 

“The model is able to retain way more of the information that it’s looking at, and then use a much higher level of reasoning and logic capabilities to be able to make decisions,” Levie told CNBC in an interview. 

OpenAI is releasing three different versions of the model for developers through its application programming interface, or API. Those versions, gpt-5, gpt-5-mini and gpt-5-nano, are designed for different cost and latency needs. 

Earlier this week, OpenAI released two open-weight language models for the first time since it rolled out GPT-2 in 2019. Those models were built to serve as lower-cost options that developers, researchers and companies can easily run and customize.

But with GPT-5, OpenAI also has a broader consumer audience in mind. The company said interacting with the model feels natural and “more human.” 

Altman said GPT-5 is like having a team of Ph.D.-level experts on hand at any time. 

“People are limited by ideas, but not really the ability to execute, in many new ways,” he said. 

–CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed to this post

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Nvidia, Broadcom, TSMC, other AI names rally on Oracle’s massive growth projections

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Nvidia, Broadcom, TSMC, other AI names rally on Oracle's massive growth projections

Oracle Corp Chief Executive Larry Ellison during a launch event at the company’s headquarters in Redwood Shores, California June 10, 2014.

Noah Berger | Reuters

Oracle‘s massive growth trajectory for cloud infrastructure is lifting all boats.

The cloud giant forecasted skyrocketing sales to $114 billion in the company’s fiscal 2029, signalling demand for artificial intelligence processing will remain high over the next few years, and will require Oracle to build out new data centers.

“The guide for a 14x of Oracle’s cloud infra segment in 5 years, mostly from GPU cloud demand, and the guide for capex of $35b in FY26 is bullish Nvidia, other AI hardware suppliers and the eco-system of partners building and financing Oracle’s GPU data centers,” wrote UBS analyst Karl Keirstead in a note on Wednesday.

As Oracle shares roared 40% higher on Wednesday, companies that provide the chips and systems for its buildout — or even compete with it — are seeing their stocks boom.

Nvidia, which says its computers and chips comprise about 70% of the total budget for an AI data center, climbed 4%.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which makes chips for Nvidia and others in AI, rose over 4% during trading on Wednesday after it said sales increased by 34% in August.

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Broadcom, which makes networking gear to tie Nvidia chips together and plays a key role in custom AI chips for companies like Google, climbed 9%.

AMD is the main Nvidia competitor for graphics processors used for AI, although its chips currently only have a small fraction of the market. Its shares rose 3%.

Micron, which makes memory used in Nvidia’s most advanced chips, rose 4%.

Super Micro and Dell, which both make complete server systems around Nvidia’s chips, each rose 4%.

“The vast majority of our CapEx investments are for revenue-generating equipment that is going into the data centers,” Oracle’s Safra Catz said on Tuesday.

The biggest gainer was one of Oracle’s so-called neo-cloud competitors, CoreWeave, which rose 20% on continued exuberance around insatiable demand for AI compute. Neo-clouds compete against Google, Amazon, and Microsoft for cloud customers by focusing on offering better access and tools for artificial intelligence.

T. Rowe Price's Tony Wang: Oracle's quarter proves it's competitively well-positioned

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Klarna opens at $52 per share in NYSE debut after pricing IPO above range

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Klarna opens at  per share in NYSE debut after pricing IPO above range

Sebastian Siemiatkowski, chief executive officer and co-founder of Klarna Holding AB, center, and Michael Moritz, chairman of Klarna Bank AB, center right, during the company’s initial public offering (IPO) at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025.

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Klarna shares popped 30% in their New York Stock Exchange debut Wednesday, opening at $52, after the Swedish online lender priced its IPO above its expected range.

The company, known for its popular buy now, pay later products, priced shares at $40 on Tuesday, raising $1.37 billion for the company and existing shareholders. The offering valued Klarna at about $15 billion.

The IPO marks the latest in a growing list of high-profile tech IPOs this year, suggesting increased demand from Wall Street for new offerings. Companies like stablecoin issuer Circle and design software platform Figma soared in their respective debuts. Meanwhile, crypto exchange Gemini is expected to go public later this week.

“To me, it really just is a milestone,” Klarna’s co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told CNBC in an interview on Wednesday. “It’s a little bit like a wedding. You prepare so much and you plan for it and it’s a big party. But in the end — marriage goes on.”

Klarna’s entry into the public markets will test Wall Street’s excitement about the direction of its business. The company has in recent months talked up its move into banking, rolling out a debit card and personal deposit accounts in the U.S.

Klarna has signed 700,000 card customers in the U.S. so far and has 5 million people on a waiting list seeking access to the product, Siemiatkowski told CNBC. He added that Klarna Card represents a different proposition to rival fintech Affirm’s card offering, which has attracted 2 million users since its launch in 2021.

“We’re attracting a slightly different audience maybe than the Affirm card,” Siemiatkowski said. “I get the impression that is more a card where people use it simply to be able to have financing with interest on slightly higher tickets.”

In addition to Affirm, Klarna also competes with Afterpay, which was acquired for $29 billion in 2021 by Square, now a unit of Block.

Klarna faces some potential regulatory headwinds. In the U.K., the government has proposed new rules to bring BNPL loans under formal oversight to address affordability concerns regarding the market.

A banner for Swedish fintech Klarna, hangs on the front of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to celebrate the company’s IPO in New York City, U.S., September 10, 2025.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

The IPO is poised to generate billions of dollars in returns for some of Klarna’s long-time investors. Existing shareholders are offering the bulk of Klarna shares— 28.8 million — on the public market. At its IPO price of $40, that translates to over $1.2 billion. Meanwhile, Klarna raised $222 million from the IPO.

Sequoia, which first backed in Klarna in 2010, has invested $500 million in total. The venture firm sold 2 million of its 79 million shares in the IPO, meaning it’s generated an overall return of about $2.65 billion, based on the offer price.

Andrew Reed, a partner at Sequoia, told CNBC that he was still in college when Sequoia made its first investment in an “alternative payments company in Stockholm.” The early work, he said, was around expanding in Europe.

“Being here in New York 15 years later with over 100 million consumers and over $100 billion of GMV [gross merchandise value] and close to a million merchants, it is staggering what one year after another of execution and growth and Sebastian’s long-term vision can do,” Reed said.

Another Klarna investor hasn’t been so lucky. Japan’s SoftBank led a 2021 funding round in Klarna at a $46 billion valuation and has since seen the value of its stake plunge significantly.

WATCH: CNBC’s interview with Klarna CEO Sebastian Siematkowski

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Larry Ellison is $110 billion richer after blowout Oracle earnings report

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Larry Ellison is 0 billion richer after blowout Oracle earnings report

Oracle co-founder, CTO and Executive Chairman Larry Ellison (C), U.S. President Donald Trump, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (R), and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son (2nd-R), share a laugh as Ellison uses a stool to stand on as he speaks during a news conference in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on January 21, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump announced an investment in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure and took questions on a range of topics including his presidential pardons of Jan. 6 defendants, the war in Ukraine, cryptocurrencies and other topics.

Andrew Harnik | Getty Images

Larry Ellison became more than $110 billion richer on Wednesday, a day after Oracle, the software company he helped to start in 1977, issued dramatic cloud growth projections for the next five fiscal years.

Those projections sent Oracle’s stock price flying, up more than 40% on Wednesday, lifting Ellison‘s net worth to about $391 billion. The total puts Ellison closer to dethroning Elon Musk as the world’s wealthiest individual. Forbes says Musk, 54, CEO of automaker Tesla, is worth just over $436 billion.

Ellison, 81, remains active in Oracle as chief technology officer and chairman. Rather than gradually sell off his position in the database software maker, he has maintained it, holding more than 1.1 million shares for over 25 years. His disciple Marc Benioff, who runs sales management software company Salesforce, has done the opposite, and now Benioff, 60, is worth about $10 billion. Musk’s share of Tesla has gone up thanks to generous pay packages, and the value of his SpaceX holding has multiplied in the past decade.

In 2022, Ellison stepped down from the Tesla board after almost four years, but he’s been keeping busy ever since.

He has sharpened his focus on the health-care industry with Oracle’s $28 billion acquisition of Cerner in 2022, he ramped up his philanthropy with the launch of the Ellison Institute of Technology at the University of Oxford in December and he helped complete the $8 billion Paramount Global-Skydance merger last month. Ellison has also become an arms dealer for artificial intelligence infrastructure, most significantly allying Oracle with ChatGPT provider OpenAI.

On Tuesday, Oracle said that its remaining performance obligation, a measure of contracted revenue that has not yet been recognized, now stood at $455 billion, up 359% from last year. Oracle also said its cloud infrastructure revenue stands to jump from $10 billion in the most recent fiscal year to $144 billion in fiscal 2030.

“Clearly, we had an amazing start to the year because Oracle has become the go-to place for AI workloads,” Ellison said at the beginning of Oracle’s earnings call on Tuesday, during which analysts competed to toss the highest compliments at him and CEO Safra Catz. “We have signed significant cloud contracts with the who’s who of AI, including OpenAI, xAI, Meta, Nvidia, AMD and many others.”

Meanwhile, Oracle has continued to grow in the sales of standard software.

“And by the way, we’re much bigger than Workday or ServiceNow. And we’re solving a larger portion of the problem,” Ellison told the analysts. ServiceNow and Workday were worth a combined $256 billion on Wednesday morning. Oracle’s market capitalization exceeded $950 billion. Only nine companies on the S&P 500 index are worth more.

Ellison has long been a supporter of President Donald Trump, donating to his campaigns and helping him raise outside money. The relationship offers a potential business benefit to the Oracle co-founder.

Trump has been delaying the sale of TikTok’s U.S. business, and said in January that he’d be open to ByteDance selling that business to Musk, who previously worked for the administration, or to Ellison.

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