Shares of Applied Digital rose more than 40% after the company said it signed two long-term lease agreements with CoreWeave for artificial intelligence data centers.

Nvidia-backed CoreWeave climbed more than 7% following the announcement.

Financial terms of the two agreements were not provided, but Applied Digital said it expects $7 billion in total revenue during the approximately 15-year period.

“Through these newly signed long-term leases with CoreWeave, we are taking a step forward in our strategic expansion into advanced compute infrastructure,” said Applied Digital CEO Wes Cummins in a release announcing the news.

CoreWeave will provide AI and high-performance computing infrastructure for the Applied Digital data center campus in Ellendale, North Dakota, according to the release.

Applied Digital will provide 250 megawatts of critical IT load for CoreWeave. The campus is designed to host 400 MW of load.

CoreWeave shares have been on a tear over the past couple of weeks, setting a record high of $130.76 on May 29. The company, which rents AI servers powered by Nvidia chips, started trading at $39 on March 28.

German antitrust regulators warned Amazon on Monday that the company’s pricing mechanisms for third-party sellers could run afoul of competition laws.

The Federal Cartel Office said in its preliminary assessment that Amazon’s pricing controls limit the visibility of merchants’ products and, “based on non-transparent marketplace rules,” interfere with their freedom to set prices.

Amazon uses algorithms and statistical models to calculate certain price caps for products, the Cartel Office said. Products that are flagged as having “prices that are too high” or “prices that are not competitive” can then be demoted in search results, excluded from advertising or removed from the buy box, they added.

The buy box is the listing that pops up first when a visitor clicks on a particular product, and the one that gets purchased when a shopper taps “Add to Cart.”

“Competition in online retail in Germany is largely determined by Amazon’s rules for the trading platform,” Federal Cartel Office President Andreas Mundt said in a statement. “Since Amazon competes directly with other marketplace retailers on its platform, influencing competitors’ pricing, even in the form of price caps, is fundamentally questionable from a competition perspective.”

Amazon’s pricing practices not only threaten sellers’ businesses, but could also harm other retailers by deterring them from offering lower prices, the Cartel Office said.

An Amazon spokesperson said the company strongly disagrees with the Cartel Office’s preliminary findings. They added that any changes to Amazon’s pricing mechanisms would be “bad for customers and selling partners.”

“If Amazon is prevented from helping people find competitively priced offers, it will lead to a bad shopping experience for them, as we’d need to promote uncompetitive or even abusive pricing in our store,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “This would mislead customers into thinking they’re getting good value when, in reality, they’re not.”

Amazon can provide feedback to the Cartel Office on its preliminary assessment before it reaches a final decision.

Amazon in 2022 reached a deal with European Union antitrust regulators who were investigating its use of seller data and buy box practices. As part of the settlement, Amazon agreed to display a second buy box on products sold in Europe when there is a second competing offer that’s different on price or delivery.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is also probing Amazon’s use of pricing algorithms on its sprawling third-party marketplace as part of a wide-ranging antitrust lawsuit filed in 2023. Amazon has said the FTC’s complaint is “wrong on the facts and the law.”

The case is set to go to trial in October 2026.

WATCH: Pershing Square adds new position in Amazon

Neurotech startup Paradromics on Monday announced it has implanted its brain-computer interface in a human for the first time. 

The procedure took place May 14 at the University of Michigan with a patient who was already undergoing neurosurgery to treat epilepsy. The company’s technology was implanted and removed from the patient’s brain in about 20 minutes during that surgery.

Paradromics said the procedure demonstrated that its system can be safely implanted and record neural activity. It’s a major milestone for the nearly 10-year-old startup, as it marks the beginning of its next chapter as a clinical-stage company. 

Once regulators give it the green light, Paradromics plans to kick off a clinical trial later this year that will study the long-term safety and use of its technology in humans. 

“We’ve shown in sheep that our device is best in class from a data and longevity standpoint, and now we’ve also shown that it’s compatible with humans,” Paradromics founder and CEO Matt Angle told CNBC in an interview. “That’s really exciting and raises a lot of excitement for our upcoming clinical trial.”

A brain-computer interface, or BCI, is a system that deciphers brain signals and translates them into commands for external technologies. Paradromics’ system is called the Connexus Brain-Computer Interface, and the company says it will initially help patients with severe motor impairments such as paralysis speak through a computer. 

Paradromics’ BCI has not been cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and it still has a long road ahead before it reaches commercialization. 

But for Angle, who founded the company in 2015, the procedure in May was a success, and one that was years in the making.

“You do all of these steps, you validate the hardware, you have this really high degree of rational certainty that things are going to work,” he said, “but still emotionally when it works and when it happens the way you expected it to, it’s still very, very gratifying.” 

Though Paradromics’ BCI has not been officially cleared for use by regulators, organizations like the University of Michigan can use new devices for research as long as they can demonstrate that there is not a significant risk to patients. 

Dr. Oren Sagher, professor of neurosurgery at the University of Michigan, oversaw the traditional clinical component of the procedure in May. Dr. Matthew Willsey, assistant professor of neurosurgery and biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan, led the research component, including the placement of Paradromics’ device.

BCIs have been studied in academia for decades, and several other startups, including Elon Musk‘s Neuralink, are developing their own systems.

“It’s absolutely thrilling,” Willsey said in an interview. “It’s motivating, and this is the kind of thing that helps me get up in the morning and go to work.”

Each company’s BCI is slightly different, but Paradromics is designing a BCI that can record brain activity at the level of individual neurons.

Angle compared this approach to placing microphones inside vs. outside a stadium. Inside a stadium, microphones would capture more detail, such as individual conversations. Outside a stadium, microphones would only capture the roar of the crowd, he said. 

Other prominent BCI companies include Synchron, which is backed by Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, and Precision Neuroscience. Both have implanted their systems in humans.

Paradromics has raised nearly $100 million as of February, according to PitchBook. The company announced a strategic partnership with Saudi Arabia’s Neom in February, but declined to disclose the investment amount. 

“The last demonstration stuff has been shown, and we’re really excited about the clinical trial that’s coming up,” Angle said.

WATCH: Inside Paradromics, the Neuralink competitor hoping to commercialize brain implants before the end of the decade