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Ali Ghodsi, CEO of Databricks speaks on CNBC.

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Databricks has just entered an exclusive club.

The data analytics software vendor said Tuesday that it’s raising a funding round that values the company at over $100 billion. That would make Databricks just the fourth private company to eclipse the $100 billion mark, following SpaceX, ByteDance and OpenAI, according to data from CB Insights.

Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi told CNBC’s Brian Sullivan that the total round will exceed $1 billion. The company was last valued by private investors at $62 billion in a $10 billion financing round late last year.

In June, Databricks executives told investors the company was forecasting $3.7 billion in annualized revenue by July, with 50% year-over-year growth.

Snowflake, one of Databricks’ top rivals, is expected to generate $4.5 billion in revenue for the fiscal year that ends in January, representing annual growth of 25%, according to LSEG. Snowflake currently has a market cap of about $65 billion. Other competitors include cloud providers such as Amazon and Microsoft, which are also Databricks partners.

Ghodsi said he heard from a lot of interested investors following Figma’s IPO late last month. Shares of the design software company more than tripled in their New York Stock Exchange debut, a sign that public investors are seeking out tech offerings after in extended lull in the IPO market.

“My phone was blowing up,” Ghodsi said on Tuesday. “So yes, there’s definitely been a big push from outside.”

Figma shares have since retreated from their initial $115.50 closing price. The stock is trading at about $70, still more than double the $33 IPO price.

Ghodsi said the round will help Databricks invest in products that clients can tap when using artificial intelligence models.

Founded in 2013 and based in San Francisco, Databricks ranked third on CNBC’s 2025 Disruptor 50 list. As of June, the company employed 8,000 people. Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners Thrive Capital and WCM Investment Management are buying shares, a spokesperson said.

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Meta removes Facebook page allegedly used to target ICE agents after pressure from DOJ

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Meta removes Facebook page allegedly used to target ICE agents after pressure from DOJ

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks during a roundtable on “Antifa,” an anti-fascist movement he designated a domestic “terrorist organization” via executive order on September 22, at the White House in Washington, D.C., Oct. 8, 2025.

Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

Meta removed a Facebook group page on Tuesday that was allegedly used to “dox and target” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Chicago after being contacted by the Department of Justice.

Attorney General Pam Bondi revealed the Facebook takedown in an X post, and said that the DOJ “will continue engaging tech companies to eliminate platforms where radicals can incite imminent violence against federal law enforcement.”

A Meta spokesperson confirmed that the tech giant removed the Facebook group page, but declined to comment about its size and the specific details that warranted its removal.

“This Group was removed for violating our policies against coordinated harm,” the Meta spokesperson said in a statement that also referred to the company’s policies pertaining to “Coordinating Harm and Promoting Crime.”

Meta’s removal of the Facebook group page follows similar moves from rivals like Apple and Google, which have recently removed apps that could be used to anonymously report sightings of ICE agents and other law enforcement.

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Apple took down the ICEBlock app nearly two weeks ago following pressure from Bondi, who said at the time that the app was “designed to put ICE agents at risk just for doing their jobs.”

Apple said at the time in a statement that it removed the ICEBlock app based on information provided by law enforcement about alleged “safety risks.”

Google, which did not maintain the ICEBlock app on its app store, said in October that while the DOJ never contacted the search giant, the company removed “similar apps for violations of our policies.”

ICEBlock creator Joshua Aaron criticized both Apple and the White House in an interview with CNBC, and compared his app to others like Waze, which let drivers report when they see law enforcement officers in order to avoid getting ticketed for speeding.

“This is about our fundamental constitutional rights in this country being stripped away by this administration, and the powers that be who are capitulating to their requests,” Aaron said.

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OpenAI forms expert council to bolster safety measures after FTC inquiry

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OpenAI forms expert council to bolster safety measures after FTC inquiry

OpenAI’s EMEA startups head Laura Modiano spoke at the Sifted Summit on Wednesday, 8 October.

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

OpenAI on Tuesday announced a council of eight experts who will advise the company and provide insight into how artificial intelligence could affect users’ mental health, emotions and motivation. 

The group, which is called the Expert Council on Well-Being and AI, will initially guide OpenAI’s work on its chatbot ChatGPT and its short-form video app Sora, the company said. Through check-ins and recurring meetings, OpenAI said the council will help it define what healthy AI interactions look like.

OpenAI has been expanding its safety controls in recent months as the company has faced mounting scrutiny over how it protects users, particularly minors.

In September, the Federal Trade Commission launched an inquiry into several tech companies, including OpenAI, over how chatbots like ChatGPT could negatively affect children and teenagers. OpenAI is also embroiled in a wrongful death lawsuit from a family who blames ChatGPT for their teenage son’s death by suicide.

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The company is building an age prediction system that will automatically apply teen-appropriate settings for users under 18, and it launched a series of parental controls late last month. Parents can now get notified if their child is showing signs of acute distress, for instance.

OpenAI said it began informally consulting with members of its new expert council as it was building its parental controls. The company brought on additional experts in psychiatry. psychology and human-computer interaction as it formalized the council, which officially launched with an in-person session last week.

In addition to its expert council, OpenAI said it is also working with researchers and mental health clinicians within the Global Physician Network who will help test ChatGPT and establish company policies. 

Here are the members of OpenAI’s Expert Council on Well-Being and AI:

  • Andrew Przybylski, a professor of human behavior and technology at the University of Oxford. 
  • David Bickham, a research scientist in the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital. 
  • David Mohr, the director of Northwestern University’s Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies.
  • Mathilde Cerioli, the chief scientist at Everyone.AI, a nonprofit that explores the risks and benefits of AI for children.
  • Munmun De Choudhury, a professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing. 
  • Dr. Robert Ross, a pediatrician by training and the former CEO of The California Endowment, a nonprofit that aims to expand access to affordable health care. 
  • Dr. Sara Johansen, a clinical assistant professor at Stanford University who founded its Digital Mental Health Clinic.
  • Tracy Dennis-Tiwary, a professor of psychology at Hunter College.

If you are having suicidal thoughts or are in distress, contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 for support and assistance from a trained counselor

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Oracle Cloud to deploy 50,000 AMD AI chips, signaling new Nvidia competition

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Oracle Cloud to deploy 50,000 AMD AI chips, signaling new Nvidia competition

We're still early in the AI cycle, says Bernstein's Stacy Rasgon

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure on Tuesday announced it will deploy 50,000 Advanced Micro Devices graphics processors starting in the second half of 2026.

AMD shares climbed about 2%. Oracle shares sank 4% while Nvidia was more than 3% lower.

The move is the latest sign that cloud companies are increasingly offering AMD’s graphics processing units as an alternative to Nvidia’s market-leading GPUs for artificial intelligence.

“We feel like customers are going to take up AMD very, very well — especially in the inferencing space,” said Karan Batta, senior vice president of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Oracle will use AMD’s Instinct MI450 chips, which were announced earlier this year.

They are AMD’s first AI chips that can be assembled into a larger rack-sized system that enables 72 of the chips to work as one, which is needed to create and deploy the most advanced AI algorithms.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared with AMD CEO Lisa Su at a company event in June to announce the product.

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Earlier this month, OpenAI announced a deal with AMD for processors requiring 6 gigawatts of power over multiple years, with a 1-gigawatt rollout starting in 2026. As part of the deal, and if the deployment goes well, OpenAI may end up owning as many as 160 million shares of AMD, or about 10% of the company.

In September, OpenAI entered into a five-year cloud deal with Oracle that could be worth as much as $300 billion.

OpenAI has historically been closely linked with Nvidia, whose chips were used to develop ChatGPT. Nvidia’s chips dominate the market for data center GPUs with more than 90% market share. Nvidia also invested in OpenAI in September.

But OpenAI leaders say the company needs as much computing power as possible, which means it needs AI chips from multiple suppliers. OpenAI also has plans to design its own AI chips with Broadcom.

“I think AMD has done a really fantastic job, just like Nvidia, and I think both of them have their place,” Batta said.

Tuesday at Oracle AI World, founder and Chairman Larry Ellison is set to take the stage and share his views on the latest OpenAI deal and what his company is doing to stay ahead of its main cloud competitors – Microsoft, Amazon and Google

“Oracle has already shown it is willing to place big bets and go all in to meet the AI moment. The company must now prove that beyond capacity, it can capitalize on its massive underlying data and enterprise capabilities … to add meaningful value to the enterprise AI wave,” said Daniel Newman, CEO of The Futurum Group, on the sidelines of Oracle’s conference.

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