Bill Gates softens ‘Climate Disaster’ approach, says strategy needs to shift

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13 hours ago

October 28, 2025

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Bill Gates on his new climate message: There's enough innovation to avoid 'super bad' outcomes

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who wrote a book in 2021 titled, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,” now says leaders need to shift their approach to climate change.

In a letter published Tuesday ahead of next week’s COP30 U.N. climate summit, Gates argued that too many resources are focused on emissions and the environment, and that more money should go toward “improving lives” and curbing disease and poverty.

“… Climate is super important but has to be considered in terms of overall human welfare,” Gates told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin in an exclusive interview. “I didn’t pick that position because everybody agrees with it – it’s I think intellectually the right answer.”

In the letter, Gates called out the “doomsday view” of climate change and said leaders need to make a “strategic pivot” to focus on issues that have the “greatest impact on human welfare.”

“It’s the best way to ensure that everyone gets a chance to live a healthy and productive life no matter where they’re born, and no matter what kind of climate they’re born into,” he wrote.

Breakthrough Energy, Gates’ climate-focused investment fund, reportedly cut dozens of staffers earlier this year. The New York Times reported in March that the “change shows how Mr. Gates is retooling his empire for the Trump era.”

This year’s climate summit in Brazil comes nearly a decade after world leaders adopted the Paris Climate Agreement aimed at limiting temperature warming to 1.5 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Gates called that original goal unrealistic.

We’re raising our Corning price target after a shortsighted post-earnings decline

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4 hours ago

October 28, 2025

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We're raising our Corning price target after a shortsighted post-earnings decline

Technology

Can AI create next ‘Grand Theft Auto’? Take-Two Interactive CEO says no

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4 hours ago

October 28, 2025

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Can AI create next 'Grand Theft Auto'? Take-Two Interactive CEO says no

Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of video game publisher Take-Two Interactive, said he is not a “naysayer” when it comes to the promise of artificial intelligence. But at the same time, Zelnick, who leads the company that publishes the “Grand Theft Auto,” “NBA 2K,” “Red Dead” and “Borderlands” video game series, said the signs that the technology is having an impact on game development and production are “still limited.”

That’s for two reasons, Zelnick told a room of technology executives at CNBC’s Technology Executive Council Summit in New York on Tuesday.

The first reason — which is increasingly placing AI companies at odds with Hollywood, musicians and other creative industries — is intellectual property.

“We have to protect our intellectual property, but more than that, we have to be mindful of others,” Strauss told CNBC’s Steve Kovach in an interview at the CNBC event. “If you create intellectual property with AI, it’s not protectable.”

The data-rights clash between content owners and the AI industry has resulted in a string of licensing deals, lawsuits and ongoing criticism as AI companies continue to seek out more data sets to train their large language models.

However, the debate took another twist upon the release of OpenAI’s video creation app Sora last month, which allows users to generate near-realistic, short-form AI videos through prompts. That has opened the door for a new set of concerns around deepfakes and the usage of the voice and likenesses of not only famous actors, musicians and animated characters, but also any person.

Strauss said that when it comes to AI usage at game publishers like Take-Two, it’s not only important that the created content stands up to copyright laws but also protects people’s rights. “There are constraints,” he said.

But perhaps the bigger hurdle when it comes to utilizing more AI in game production is one at the center of what he believes is why the company continues to be successful.

“Let’s say there were no constraints [on AI]. Could we push a button tomorrow and create an equivalent to the ‘Grand Theft Auto’ marketing plan?” he said. “The answer is no. A, you can’t do that yet, and B, I am of the view that you wouldn’t end up with anything very good. You end up with something pretty derivative.”

Strauss said that is due to AI inherently being “backward looking” because its computation is tied to big data sets of old information.

Often, he said, what AI produces can feel new because it’s using predictive models, “and there are many, many, many things in life that are predictable based on data,” and there are plenty of things that data can solve for.

While that may help with solving something as complex as a cure for a disease or as simple as biology homework, Strauss said that when it comes to creating the sorts of multi-layered universes that Take-Two’s video games have become known for, it’s another story.

“Anything that involves backward-looking data compute, it’s really good for that and that applies to lots of things,” he said. “What we do at Take-Two, anything that isn’t attached to that, it’s going to be really, really bad at.”

Maintaining that creative edge has been critical for Take-Two, one of the last standing public video game developers after Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard for $69 billion in 2023 and Electronic Arts announced last month that it will be acquired by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, Silver Lake and Affinity Partners in an all-cash deal worth $55 billion.

“We aim to create franchises that are permanent,” Strauss said, noting that Take-Two has 11 franchises that have sold at least five million games upon release, in addition to more than 20 popular mobile games.

The company’s biggest franchise, “Grand Theft Auto,” is set to launch its next iteration in May 2026 and will likely set new sales records. Strauss said that the previous game in the series, “Grand Theft Auto V,” had $1 billion in sales in the first three days of its launch in 2013.

“The team’s creativity is extraordinary, and what [Take-Two subsidiary] Rockstar Games tries to do, and so far has done over and over again, is create something that approaches perfection,” he said. “There is no creativity that can exist by definition in any AI model, because it is data-driven,” Strauss added.

Technology

Jensen Huang says Nvidia’s AI chips are now being manufactured in Arizona

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6 hours ago

October 28, 2025

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Jensen Huang says Nvidia's AI chips are now being manufactured in Arizona

Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., speaks to members of the media prior to the keynote address at the Nvidia AI summit in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025.

Kent Nishimura | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said at the company’s GTC conference on Tuesday that its Blackwell graphics processing units — the company’s fastest AI chips — are now in full production in Arizona.

Previously, Nvidia’s fastest GPUs were solely manufactured in Taiwan.

Huang said that President Donald Trump had asked him nine months ago to bring manufacturing back to U.S. shores.

“The first thing that President Trump asked me for is bring manufacturing back,” Huang said. “Bring manufacturing back because it’s necessary for national security. Bring manufacturing back because we want the jobs. We want that part of the economy.”

Earlier this month, Nvidia and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company announced that the first Blackwell wafers had been produced in a facility in Phoenix, Arizona. Wafers are the base material on which semiconductors are etched onto.

Nvidia said in a video that Blackwell-based systems will now be assembled in the U.S., too.

Much of what the company announced on Tuesday at its conference in Washington was for an audience of policymakers to convince them of the essential role that Nvidia plays, and that it would hurt U.S. interests to restrict its exports.

Huang said on Tuesday on a panel before his speech that Nvidia was holding its conference in Washington to allow Trump to attend, according to CNBC’s Kristina Partsinevelos, but the president is currently on a trip in Asia.

Trump said on Tuesday that he planned to meet with Huang on Wednesday, according to a Reuters report.

Demand for the company’s GPUs remains high, with 6 million Blackwell GPUs shipped in the last four quarters, Huang said Tuesday. Nvidia expects $500 billion in GPU sales between the Blackwell generation and next year’s Rubin chips combined, he added.

Cell networks ‘built on foreign technologies’

Additionally, Huang Tuesday said Nvidia would partner with Finland-based Nokia to build gear for telecommunications, an industry that he said was worth $3 trillion. As part of the partnership, Nvidia will take a $1 billion stake in Nokia.

Huang said that Nvidia is building chips for 5G and 6G base stations because it’s important to have wireless networks based on American technology.

“Thank you for helping the United States bring telecommunication technology back to America,” Huang said to Nokia CEO Justin Hotard during his speech.

The deal is an appeal to Western policymakers who have long had concerns about the amount of technology from China’s Huawei that is used for cellular networks around the world.

“Our fundamental communication fabric is built on foreign technologies,” Huang said. “That has to stop, and we have an opportunity to do that, especially during this fundamental platform shift.”

Nokia will use Nvidia chips in its future base stations, which are the pricey computers that distribute cellular signals. Huawei gear, the market leader, was effectively banned in the U.S. in 2018, leaving Nokia and Ericcson as the primary equipment vendors for U.S. networks.

Huang said that Nokia would be using a new product called Nvidia ARC that combines its Grace GPU, a Blackwell GPU and the company’s networking parts. Huang said that AI delivered over next-generation 6G networks could help operate robots and deliver more accurate weather forecasts.

Stakes are high

The location of the conference carries significance as Nvidia makes the case that it is a core part of the “U.S technology stack.”

Huang has argued that it would be better for American interests if Chinese AI developers got used to U.S. technology like Nvidia’s chips, rather than forcing the Chinese to develop their own AI chips.

“Nvidia is a proud American company building the U.S. AI infrastructure that will ensure our country leads the world in shaping the future of innovation,” Kari Briski, Nvidia’s vice president of generative AI software for enterprise, told reporters on a Monday call.

The stakes are high for Nvidia. U.S. export restrictions have already cost Nvidia billions of dollars in lost sales.

In April, the U.S. government informed Nvidia that its H20 chip, which was specially designed to comply with U.S. export controls, would require a license to ship to China. In May, Nvidia said it would have recorded about $10.5 billion in H20 sales over two quarters if the government hadn’t made the license requirement.

Then, in July, Huang visited Trump in Washington and again tried to persuade him and other administration officials that it is in U.S. interests to ship Nvidia chips to China. The Trump administration said it would approve license requests for the H20, but that Nvidia would have to pay the U.S. government 15% of China sales.

Still, Nvidia’s China business isn’t yet back on track.

Earlier this month, Huang said at a financial conference that Nvidia is currently “100% out of China” and has no market share there. While Nvidia said it would receive licenses for the H20 chip, the company hasn’t revealed a newer chip for China based on the company’s current generation of Blackwell GPUs.

Quantum computing

Many of Nvidia’s announcements on Tuesday were partnerships intended to signal that the company works with a variety of U.S. companies.

Among those announcements was NVQLink, a new way to connect quantum chips to Nvidia’s GPUs.

The U.S. having a lead in quantum computing is important to policymakers because military officials are worried that a foreign adversary may be able to spy on military communications if it gets a working quantum computer first.

Nvidia officials said in a Monday call that its chips can be used to correct errors that pop up during quantum computing and advance the technology. Nvidia said that 17 different quantum computing startups would produce hardware compatible with NVQLink.

“Researchers will be able to do more than just error correction,” Huang said Tuesday. “They will also be able to orchestrate quantum devices and AI supercomputers to run quantum GPU applications.”