Jeffrey Katzenberg, film producer, at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 06, 2022 in Sun Valley, Idaho.
David A. Grogan | CNBC
Media mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg is bullish on technology as he pulls in more money for startup investing. But he’s keeping his venture portfolio clear of digital media.
Katzenberg, who three years ago had to contend with the the high-profile failure of short-form entertainment company Quibi, has just raised $460 million for investment firm WndrCo, which he started with former Dropbox finance chief Sujay Jaswa.
WndrCo started as a holding company in 2016 with capital from private investors. Since then, the firm has grown to manage $1.5 billion, investing in companies across technology, including Dapper, Databricks, Gemini, and Robinhood. The firm has also built out businesses like digital protection companies Aura and Twingate.
Quibi, which Katzenberg founded in 2018, shut down in 2020, just over six months after launching, despite having raised $1.75 billion from investors including Disney, Comcast’s NBCUniversal and AT&T’s WarnerMedia. The service counted only 500,000 subscribers six months after debuting following a projection it would have more than 7 million subscribers within a year.
Katzenberg previously was co-founder of DreamWorks and served as chair of Walt Disney Studios.
Now at WndrCo, Katzenberg is steering clear of the media market, telling CNBC that the big platforms are the winners. Rather, the firm is seeking opportunities in cybersecurity, the future of work and consumer technology.
Jaswa said the goal is to find up to seven venture investments and to build one or two companies each year. Katzenberg joked about his own imaginings for the portfolio: “the moon, the stars,” he said. Longer term, he said he hopes the companies the firm backs turn into “not just a great investment but actually made the world a better place.”
At Twingate, WndrCo is betting on a virtual private network (VPN) replacement. The company was founded by a WndrCo partner and is also backed by Joe Lonsdale’s 8VC. Identity theft protection company Pango is another cybersecurity business backed and built by WndrCo. Jaswa, who serves as chair of Pango, said the reason for those investments is that so much of tech innovation has come without guardrails.
“All sorts of amazing things happened,” Jaswa said. “And yet the other half of it, which is protecting people online, nobody did anything in that dimension.”
Katzenberg and Jaswa are waiting for guardrails in artificial intelligence, as well. Katzenberg said there’s a price for technological advancements like the internet and now AI.
“People are anxious about” what the price will be with AI, Katzenberg said. “We don’t know. So caution seems appropriate.”
Still, Jaswa is optimistic.
“Major advances in technology are often catalyzed by humans not wanting to do something that we have to do,” he said.
Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.
An Amazon worker moves boxes on Amazon Prime Day in the East Village of New York City, July 11, 2023.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
Amazon is extending its Prime Day discount bonanza, announcing that the annual sale will run four days this year.
The 96-hour event will start at 12:01 a.m. PT on July 8, and continue through July 11, Amazon said in a release.
For the first time, the company will roll out themed “deal drops” that change daily and are available “while supplies last.” Amazon has in recent years toyed with adding more limited-run and invite-only deals during Prime Day events to create a feeling of urgency or scarcity.
Amazon launched Prime Day in 2015 as a way to secure new members for its $139-a-year loyalty program, and to promote its own products and services while providing a sales boost in the middle of the year. In 2019, the company made Prime Day a 48-hour event, and it’s since added a second Prime Day-like event in the fall.
Prime Day is also a significant revenue driver for other retailers, which often host competing discount events.
Illustration of the SK Hynix company logo seen displayed on a smartphone screen.
Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Shares in South Korea’s SK Hynix extended gains to hit a more than 2-decade high on Tuesday, following reports over the weekend that SK Group plans to build the country’s largest AI data center.
SK Hynix shares, which have surged almost 50% so far this year on the back of an AI boom, were up nearly 3%, following gains on Monday.
The company’s parent, SK Group, plans to build the AI data center in partnership with Amazon Web Services in Ulsan, according to domestic media. SK Telecom and SK Broadband are reportedly leading the initiative, with support from other affiliates, including SK Hynix.
SK Hynix is a leading supplier of dynamic random access memory or DRAM — a type of semiconductor memory found in PCs, workstations and servers that is used to store data and program code.
The company’s DRAM rival, Samsung, was also trading up 4% on Tuesday. However, it’s growth has fallen behind that of SK Hynix.
On Friday, Samsung Electronics’ market cap reportedly slid to a 9-year low of 345.1 trillion won ($252 billion) as the chipmaker struggles to capitalize on AI-led demand.
SK Hynix, on the other hand, has become a leader in high bandwidth memory — a type of DRAM used in artificial intelligence servers — supplying to clients such as AI behemoth Nvidia.
A report from Counterpoint Research in April said that SK Hynix had captured 70% of the HBM market by revenue share in the first quarter.
This HBM strength helped it overtake Samsung in the overall DRAM market for the first time ever, with a 36% global market share as compared to Samsung’s 34%.
OpenAI has been awarded a $200 million contract to provide the U.S. Defense Department with artificial intelligence tools.
The department announced the one-year contract on Monday, months after OpenAI said it would collaborate with defense technology startup Anduril to deploy advanced AI systems for “national security missions.”
“Under this award, the performer will develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains,” the Defense Department said. It’s the first contract with OpenAI listed on the Department of Defense’s website.
Anduril received a $100 million defense contract in December. Weeks earlier, OpenAI rival Anthropic said it would work with Palantir and Amazon to supply its AI models to U.S. defense and intelligence agencies.
Sam Altman, OpenAI’s co-founder and CEO, said in a discussion with OpenAI board member and former National Security Agency leader Paul Nakasone at a Vanderbilt University event in April that “we have to and are proud to and really want to engage in national security areas.”
OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Defense Department specified that the contract is with OpenAI Public Sector LLC, and that the work will mostly occur in the National Capital Region, which encompasses Washington, D.C., and several nearby counties in Maryland and Virginia.
Meanwhile, OpenAI is working to build additional computing power in the U.S. In January, Altman appeared alongside President Donald Trump at the White House to announce the $500 billion Stargate project to build AI infrastructure in the U.S.
The new contract will represent a small portion of revenue at OpenAI, which is generating over $10 billion in annualized sales. In March, the company announced a $40 billion financing round at a $300 billion valuation.
In April, Microsoft, which supplies cloud infrastructure to OpenAI, said the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency has authorized the use of the Azure OpenAI service with secret classified information.