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Bitcoin jumped above $50,000 Monday, at one point reaching its highest level in more than two years.

The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by 4% at $50,168.36, according to Coin Metrics. Earlier, it rose to $50,334.00, its highest level since December 2021. Ether was higher by more than 5.5% at $2,643.80, after rising to $2,638.62 for the first time since Jan. 12.

“$50,000 is a significant milestone for bitcoin after the launch of spot ETFs last month not only failed to elicit a move above this key psychological level but led to a selloff and some deep soul searching about these new bitcoin products,” said Antoni Trenchev, co-founder of crypto services firm Nexo.

Bitcoin is coming off its best week since Dec. 8, ending up 10.76% as of Friday.

Positive sentiment has returned to crypto after big outflows from the Grayscale Bitcoin ETF suppressed sentiment over the past month. Not only are those outflows waning, but inflows are increasing. Additionally, bitcoin caught a bid last week from the stock market, where the S&P 500 passed 5,000 last week. On Monday, both the broad market S&P and the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average hit fresh intraday highs.

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Bitcoin breaks through $50,000

“Several factors are influencing market dynamics, including China’s adoption of a more relaxed monetary policy, which has led to increased asset purchases, notably in bitcoin and equities,” said James Butterfill, head of research at crypto-focused asset manager CoinShares.

“Demand for spot-bitcoin ETFs remains robust, with net inflows of $1.1 billion over the past week and $2.8 billion since their launch,” he added. “On Friday alone, ETFs acquired 12,000 bitcoin, significantly outpacing the daily creation rate of approximately 900 new bitcoins.”

Investors have been eyeing roughly $48,600 as a key resistance level. If bitcoin can hold above that level, the door could be open for it to reach new highs past $50,000 and perhaps even a new all-time high, chart analysts say. The coin hit its record of $68,982.20 on Nov. 10, 2021.

Monday’s climb pulled crypto equities higher. Crypto exchange Coinbase gained more than 3% while bitcoin proxy MicroStrategy advanced 11%. Several mining stocks were up double digits. CleanSpark rose about 14% and Iris Energy surged 16%. Marathon Digital gained 14%.

Correction: Earlier, bitcoin broke through the $49,000 level for the first time since Jan. 11. An earlier story misstated the record.

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CoreWeave inks $6.5 billion deal with OpenAI

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CoreWeave inks .5 billion deal with OpenAI

Michael Intrator, co-founder and chief executive officer of CoreWeave Inc., during an interview on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, US, on Monday, Sept. 22, 2025.

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CoreWeave on Thursday announced a $6.5 billion deal with OpenAI, expanding its current agreement with the artificial intelligence startup behind ChatGPT.

The new agreement brings the AI cloud infrastructure provider’s total contracts with OpenAI to $22.5 billion.

“This milestone affirms the trust that world-leading innovators have in CoreWeave’s ability to power the most demanding inference and training workloads at an unmatched pace,” CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator said in a statement.

In March, CoreWeave announced an $11.9-billion agreement with OpenAI to provide AI datacenters and technology over five years. Intrator told CNBC in May that the companies expanded the agreement by $4 billion.

CoreWeave, which went public in March, makes money by renting out data centers packed with numerous Nvidia graphics processing units. The company is backed by Nvidia and makes a significant chunk of its revenue from Microsoft, which is a key investor in OpenAI.

At the time of its prospectus, CoreWeave said it operated 32 datacenters powered over 250,000 Nvidia GPUs.

Earlier this month, CoreWeave’s share price popped after the company disclosed a $6.3 billion order from Nvidia.

WATCH: CoreWeave CEO: Building AI infrastructure will require trillions in public-private investment

CoreWeave CEO: Building AI infrastructure will require trillions in public-private investment

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Databricks commits to $100 million in OpenAI spending as high-valued startups team up in AI

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Databricks commits to 0 million in OpenAI spending as high-valued startups team up in AI

Databricks co-founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi.

Databricks

OpenAI and Databricks are two of the most highly valued tech startups on the planet. Now they’re working together.

Databricks, a data analytics software vendor, said Thursday that it has committed to spending $100 million over multiple years with OpenAI. Databricks is making it easier for customers to connect their data stored in its cloud service with GPT-5, announced in August, and other OpenAI models.

OpenAI, which was recently valued by private investors at $500 billion, has become a household name in the years since the launch of its ChatGPT in late 2022. In partnering with Databricks, valued at more than $100 billion in its latest funding round, OpenAI has landed its first formal integration with a business-focused product vendor, said Brad Lightcap, OpenAI’s operating chief, in a news conference Wednesday.

Lightcap said the company’s “aspiration is a multiple” of the $100 million spending commitment in terms of revenue the agreement will generate.

Databricks has formed similar partnerships with Google and with Anthropic. But OpenAI is leading the way with more than 700 million people using its ChatGPT assistant, powered by GPT-5, every week.

The company was making enterprise more of a focus even before the Databricks deal. Microsoft has been bringing OpenAI models into businesses, governments and schools. And OpenAI has been building up its own sales function.

Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi said the partnership will simplify the process for its customers when it comes to accessing OpenAI’s models, which they’ve already been using in large numbers.

Until now, if a Databricks customer wanted to tap a proprietary OpenAI model to help analyze internal data, it would have required extensive configuration, as well as legal and security sign-off.

“The key difference here is that any database customer automatically now, just by clicking in the UI, can start using this product,” Ghodsi said, referring to the user interface. Ghodsi said the price is similar to what it would cost if the user went directly to OpenAI.

Greg Ulrich, Mastercard‘s chief AI and data officer, said he’s optimistic about the integration.

“It enables opportunity for research and targeted experimentation, using AI to solve new problems, bringing value to customers, enhancing employee productivity, in an environment that we trust, that we know,” Ulrich said.

It’s an increasingly competitive space.

Databricks rival Snowflake, which has a market cap of $75 billion, announced an expansion of its Microsoft partnership in February, enabling the use of OpenAI models. Oracle, which has a $300 billion cloud contract from OpenAI, said two weeks ago that in October it will launch a service for running Google, OpenAI and xAI models on data stored in its database software.

Databricks said earlier this month that it now generates more than $4 billion in annualized revenue, growing over 50% year over year, with $1 billion coming from AI products. The company’s $100 billion valuation was announced alongside a $1 billion funding round.

OpenAI and Databricks ranked No. 2 and No. 3, respectively, on CNBC’s 2025 Disruptor 50 list.

WATCH: Databricks CEO: ‘Agentic’ AI era will disrupt the whole database industry

Databricks CEO: 'Agentic' AI era will disrupt the whole database industry

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European Commission launches antitrust probe into software giant SAP

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European Commission launches antitrust probe into software giant SAP

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The European Commission launched an antitrust probe into German software behemoth SAP on Thursday, citing concerns about the company’s practices in software support services.

According to the Commission, the investigation will assess “whether SAP may have distorted competition in the aftermarket for maintenance and support services related to an on-premises type of software, licensed by SAP, used for the management of companies’ business operations.”

SAP, in a statement on Thursday, said it believed its policies and actions were fully compliant with EU competition rules.

“However, we take the issues raised seriously and we are working closely with the EU Commission to resolve them,” a spokesperson said. “We do not anticipate the engagement with the European Commission to result in material impacts on our financial performance.”

SAP is one of Europe’s most valuable companies, with a market cap of almost 282 billion euros ($331 billion). Shares of the firm moved lower on Thursday, losing 2% by 12:45 p.m. in London (7:45 a.m. ET).

The EU probe relates to a piece of SAP software called Enterprise Resource Planning, or ERP.

ERP is widely used by large corporations to manage their everyday finance and accounting needs. SAP is a major player in the space — but it isn’t alone. The company competes with the likes of Microsoft and Oracle, which offer their own ERP products.

Specifically, the European Commission said it was addressing the so-called “on-prem” version of SAP ERP. On-prem refers to software that is hosted on a company’s own servers, as opposed the cloud where it can be remotely accessed via SAP data centers.

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Much of SAP’s business still comes from its on-prem IT services. However, the company has for years been attempting to shift more of its focus to the cloud — particularly as it faces competition from technology giants like Microsoft and Amazon, which dominate the market for public cloud services.

The latest EU antitrust probe is noteworthy as it doesn’t involve Big Tech.

Much of the bloc’s work on competition policy has focused on the market power of U.S. technology giants. This has led to criticisms from both the tech sector and politicians in the U.S., who say American tech firms are being unfairly targeted. On Wednesday, Apple urged a repeal of the Digital Markets Act, the EU’s landmark digital competition law, saying it was “leading to a worse experience for Apple users in the EU.”

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