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Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, at a press conference at the IMF Headquarters on April 14, 2023.

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SINGAPORE — Central bank digital currencies have the potential to replace cash, but adoption could take time, said Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund on Wednesday.

“CBDCs can replace cash which is costly to distribute in island economies,” she said Wednesday at the Singapore FinTech Festival. “They can offer resilience in more advanced economies. And they can improve financial inclusion where few hold bank accounts.”

CBDCs are the digital form of a country’s fiat currency, which are regulated by the country’s central bank. They are powered by blockchain technology, allowing central banks to channel government payments directly to households.

“CBDCs would offer a safe and low-cost alternative [to cash]. They would also offer a bridge to go between private monies and a yardstick to measure their value, just like cash today which we can withdraw from our banks,” the IMF chief said.

The IMF has said that more than 100 countries are exploring CBDCs – or approximately 60% of countries in the world.

“The level of global interest in CBDCs is unprecedented. Several central banks have already launched pilots or even issued a CBDC,” the IMF said in a September report.

According to a 2022 survey conducted by the Bank for International Settlements, of the 86 central banks surveyed, 93% said they were exploring CBDCs, while 58% said they were likely to or may possibly issue a retail CBDC in either the short or medium term.

But as of June, only 11 countries have adopted CBDCs, with an additional 53 in advanced planning stages and 46 researching the topic, according to data from the Atlantic Council.

… this is not the time to turn back. The public sector should keep preparing to deploy CBDCs and related payment platforms in the future.

Kristalina Georgieva

Managing director, IMF

Referring to a 2018 speech by her predecessor Christine Lagarde, when the former IMF chief encouraged policymakers to follow the “winds of change” and explore the use of CBDCs, Georgieva said: “Five years on, I’m here to provide an update on that voyage.”

“First, countries did set sail. Many are investigating CBDCs and are developing regulation to guide digital money developments,” said Georgieva referring to the speech.

On Wednesday, the fund launched a CBDC handbook as a reference guide for policymakers around the world. Georgieva said many countries are investigating CBDCs and developing regulation to guide digital money developments.

“Second, we have not yet reached land. There is so much more space for innovation and so much uncertainty over use-cases,” Georgieva told an audience which included industry experts, investors and journalists.

“In some countries the case seems dim today, but even they should remain open to potentially deploy CBDCs tomorrow. Why?” said Georgieva. “This is not the time to turn back.”

“The public sector should keep preparing to deploy CBDCs and related payment platforms in the future. Fourth, these platforms should be designed from the start to facilitate cross-border payments, including with CBDCs,” the managing director said.

Potential of CBDCs

Countries that have issued retail CBDC include the Bahamas, Jamaica and Nigeria.

Singapore’s Monetary Authority of Singapore has said that cash is “generally incompatible” with the digital economy. In a 2021 report, the country’s central bank said the demand for cash as a means of payment is set to decline further.

According to the BIS, using CBDCs for cross-border payments could lower the costs of obtaining, storing and spending foreign currency, depending on design and regulations.

Georgieva also said that artificial intelligence “could amplify some of the benefits of CBDCs” by providing accurate credit scoring and personalized support.

Demand for generative AI has boomed following the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in November last year, which was estimated to have reached 100 million monthly active users within two months after launch.

“It could improve financial inclusion by providing rapid, accurate credit scoring based on various data. It could provide personalized support to people with low financial literacy,” said Georgieva.

“To be sure, we need to protect personal privacy and data security, and avoid embedded biases so we don’t perpetuate inequality but aim to reduce it. Managed prudently, AI could help,” she added.

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AI voice startup ElevenLabs pushes global expansion as it gears up for an IPO

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AI voice startup ElevenLabs pushes global expansion as it gears up for an IPO

Founded in 2022, ElevenLabs is an AI voice generation startup based in London. It competes with the likes of Speechmatics and Hume AI.

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LONDON — ElevenLabs, a London-based startup that specializes in generating synthetic voices through artificial intelligence, has revealed plans to be IPO-ready within five years.

The company told CNBC it is targeting major global expansion as it prepares for an initial public offering.

“We expect to build more hubs in Europe, Asia and South America, and just keep scaling,” Mati Staniszewski, ElevenLabs’ CEO and co-founder, told CNBC in an interview at the firm’s London office.

He identified Paris, Singapore, Brazil and Mexico as potential new locations. London is currently ElevenLabs’ biggest office, followed by New York, Warsaw, San Francisco, Japan, India and Bangalore.

Staniszewski said the eventual aim is to get the company ready for an IPO in the next five years.

“From a commercial standpoint, we would like to be ready for an IPO in that time,” he said. “If the market is right, we would like to create a public company … that’s going to be here for the next generation.”

Undecided on location

Fundraising plans

ElevenLabs was valued at $3.3 billion following a recent $180 million funding round. The company is backed by the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and ICONIQ Growth, as well as corporate names like Salesforce and Deutsche Telekom.

Staniszewski said his startup was open to raising more money from VCs, but it would depend on whether it sees a valid business need, like scaling further in other markets. “The way we try to raise is very much like, if there’s a bet we want to take, to accelerate that bet [we will] take the money,” he said.

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U.S. lifts chip software curbs on China amid trade truce, Synopsys says

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U.S. lifts chip software curbs on China amid trade truce, Synopsys says

Synopsys logo is seen displayed on a smartphone with the flag of China in the background.

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The U.S. government has rescinded its export restrictions on chip design software to China, U.S.-based Synopsys announced Thursday. 

“Synopsys is working to restore access to the recently restricted products in China,” it said in a statement

The U.S. had reportedly told several chip design software companies, including Synopsys, in May that they were required to obtain licenses before exporting goods, such as software and chemicals for semiconductors, to China. 

The U.S. Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.

The news comes after China signaled last week that they are making progress on a trade truce with the U.S. and confirmed conditional agreements to resume some exchanges of rare earths and advanced technology.

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Datadog stock jumps 10% on tech company’s inclusion in S&P 500 index

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Datadog stock jumps 10% on tech company’s inclusion in S&P 500 index

The Datadog stand is being displayed on day one of the AWS Summit Seoul 2024 at the COEX Convention and Exhibition Center in Seoul, South Korea, on May 16, 2024.

Chris Jung | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Datadog shares were up 10% in extended trading on Wednesday after S&P Global said the monitoring software provider will replace Juniper Networks in the S&P 500 U.S. stock index.

S&P Global is making the change effective before the beginning of trading on July 9, according to a statement.

Computer server maker Hewlett Packard Enterprise, also a constituent of the index, said earlier on Wednesday that it had completed its acquisition of Juniper, which makes data center networking hardware. HPE disclosed in a filing that it paid $13.4 billion to Juniper shareholders.

Over the weekend, the two companies reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, which had sued in opposition to the deal. As part of the settlement, HPE agreed to divest its global Instant On campus and branch business.

While tech already makes up an outsized portion of the S&P 500, the index has has been continuously lifting its exposure as the industry expands into more areas of society.

DoorDash was the latest tech company to join during the last rebalancing in March. Cloud software vendor Workday was added in December, and that was preceded earlier in 2024 with the additions of Palantir, Dell, CrowdStrike, GoDaddy and Super Micro Computer.

Stocks often rally when they’re added to a major index, as fund managers need to rebalance their portfolios to reflect the changes.

New York-based Datadog went public in 2019. The company generated $24.6 million in net income on $761.6 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2025, according to a statement. Competitors include Cisco, which bought Splunk last year, as well as Elastic and cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon and Microsoft.

Datadog has underperformed the broader tech sector so far this year. The stock was down 5.5% as of Wednesday’s close, while the Nasdaq was up 5.6%. Still, with a market cap of $46.6 billion, Datadog’s valuation is significantly higher than the median for that index.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

CNBC: Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel on the cloud computing outlook

Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel on the cloud computing outlook

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