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President of Microsoft North America Judson Althoff speaks on stage during We Day at KeyArena on April 23, 2015 in Seattle, Washington.

Mat Hayward | Getty Images

Microsoft‘s top-ranking sales leader, Judson Althoff, has been promoted to a bigger role as CEO of the company’s commercial business.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, wrote in a memo on Wednesday that marketing and operations will move under Althoff’s organization. Most of Microsoft’s revenue comes from commercial offerings such as productivity software subscriptions and cloud-based Nvidia chips for running artificial intelligence models.

“Our success depends on enabling commercial and public sector customers and partners to combine their human capital with new AI capabilities to change the frontier of how they operate,” Nadella wrote in the email. “To accelerate this, we will increasingly need to bring together sales, marketing, operations, and engineering to drive growth and strengthen our position as the partner of choice for AI transformation.”

Althoff, who joined from Oracle as president of Microsoft’s North America business in 2013, was already among Microsoft’s highest-paid executives, receiving over $23 million in total pay in the 2024 fiscal year. His most recent title was executive vice president and chief commercial officer.

Under Nadella, who replaced Steve Ballmer as CEO in 2014, Microsoft has more frequently used the CEO title for select executives.

LinkedIn has had a CEO since Microsoft acquired the company in 2016. Last year Microsoft hired Mustafa Suleyman, a co-founder of the DeepMind AI lab now owned by Google, and made him CEO of a group called Microsoft AI that includes Bing. And GitHub, which Microsoft bought in 2018, had a CEO until last month, when Thomas Dohmke left the company.

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Cramer's Mad Dash: Microsoft

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Amazon faces FAA, NTSB probe after two delivery drones crashed into crane in Arizona

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Amazon faces FAA, NTSB probe after two delivery drones crashed into crane in Arizona

Two Amazon Prime Air MK30 drones collided with a crane on Oct. 2, 2025 in Tolleson, Arizona.

Courtesy: 12News

Amazon is facing federal probes after two of its Prime Air delivery drones collided with a crane in Arizona, prompting the company to temporarily pause drone service in the area.

The incident occurred on Wednesday around 1 p.m. EST in Tolleson, Arizona, a city west of Phoenix. Two MK30 drones crashed into the boom of a stationary construction crane that was in a commercial area just a few miles away from an Amazon warehouse.

One person was evaluated on the scene for possible smoke inhalation, said Sergeant Erik Mendez of the Tolleson Police Department.

“We’re aware of an incident involving two Prime Air drones in Tolleson, Arizona,” Amazon spokesperson Terrence Clark said in a statement. “We’re currently working with the relevant authorities to investigate.”

Both drones sustained “substantial” damage from the collision on Wednesday, which occurred when the aircraft were mid-route, according to preliminary FAA crash reports.

The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the incident. The NTSB didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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The drones were believed to be flying northeast back-to-back when they collided with the crane that was being used for roof work on a distribution facility, Tolleson police said in a release. The drones landed in the backyard of a nearby building, according to the release.

The probes come just a few months after Amazon, in January, paused drone deliveries in Tolleson and College Station, Texas, temporarily following two crashes at its Pendleton, Oregon, test site. Those crashes also prompted investigations by the FAA and NTSB. The company resumed deliveries in March after it said it had resolved issues with the drone’s software, CNBC previously reported.

Amazon says its delivery drones are equipped with a sense-and-avoid system that enables them to “detect and stay away from obstacles in the air and on the ground.” The system also allows the aircraft to operate without visual observers over greater distances, the company said.

For over a decade, Amazon has been working to bring to life founder Jeff Bezos’ vision of drones whizzing toothpaste, books and batteries to customers’ doorsteps in 30 minutes or less. But progress has been slow, as Prime Air has only been made available in a handful of U.S. cities.

Amazon has set a goal to deliver 500 million packages by drone per year by the end of the decade.

Google and Amazon race to upgrade voice assistants with AI as OpenAI raises the stakes

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Intel stock is up 50% over the last month, putting U.S. stake at $16 billion

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Intel stock is up 50% over the last month, putting U.S. stake at  billion

Signage outside the Intel headquarters in San Jose, California, US, on Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Shares of U.S. chipmaker Intel climbed 3% Thursday, putting the monthly gain over 50%.

The surge pushed the stock past $37, hiking the value of the U.S. government’s 10% stake in Intel to roughly $16 billion.

The Trump administration negotiated an $8.9 billion investment in Intel common stock in August, purchasing 433.3 million shares at $20.47 per share.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt celebrated the surge with a post on X from the Association of Mature American Citizens, a conservative organization.

Intel shares jumped 7% on Wednesday after news that the company is in early talks with AMD to add the hardware-maker as a customer.

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Perplexity AI rolls out Comet browser for free worldwide

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Perplexity AI rolls out Comet browser for free worldwide

Aravind Srinivas, chief executive officer Perplexity AI, during a news conference at the SK Telecom Co. headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, on Wednesday, Sept.4, 2024.

SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Perplexity AI on Thursday announced that its artificial-intelligence-powered web browser Comet is available worldwide, and will be free to users.

The Comet browser is designed to serve as a personal assistant that can search the web, organize tabs, draft emails, shop and more, according to Perplexity. The startup initially launched Comet in July to Perplexity Max subscribers for $200 a month, and the waitlist has ballooned to “millions” of people, the company said.

Tune in at 8:10 a.m. ET Friday as Perplexity co-founder and CEO Aravind Srinivas joins CNBC TV to discuss the release of its AI browser Comet to users for free. Watch in real time on CNBC+ or the CNBC Pro stream.

Perplexity’s decision to provide Comet for free could help it attract more users as it works to fend off rivals like Google, OpenAI and Anthropic that have their own AI browser offerings.

In September, Google rolled out Gemini in its Chrome browser, Anthropic announced a browser-based AI agent in August and OpenAI announced Operator, an agent that uses a browser to complete tasks, in January. Perplexity made an unsolicited $34.5 billion bid for Google’s Chrome browser in August.

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Perplexity is best known for its AI-powered search engine that gives users simple answers to questions and links out to the original source material on the web. After the company was accused of plagiarizing content from media outlets, it launched a revenue-sharing model with publishers last year.

The company also introduced Comet Plus in August, which is a subscription that gives users access to content from “trusted publishers and journalists,” according to a blog post. Perplexity said Tuesday that CNN, Condé Nast, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Fortune, Le Monde, and Le Figaro are its inaugural publishing partners.

Perplexity said additional features are also on the way. The company teased a mobile version of Comet and a feature called Background Assistant, which can work on multiple tasks simultaneously and asynchronously.

WATCH: AI startup Perplexity valued at $20B

AI startup Perplexity valued at $20B

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