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Before Illia Polosukhin left Google in 2017, he had a brainstorming lunch and then returned to his desk to build what may have been the very first transformer, the neural network architecture that makes generative artificial intelligence possible.

Now, Polosukhin is considered one of the founding fathers of modern AI.

Polosukhin co-wrote the now famous 2017 paper, “Attention Is All You Need” along with seven Google colleagues, who have collectively become known as the “Transformer 8.” Seven of them appeared on stage together for the first time at Nvidia‘s annual developer conference in March, where CEO Jensen Huang said, “Everything that we’re enjoying today can be traced back to that moment.”

Seven of the “Transformer 8” joined Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at GTC, Nvidia’s annual developer conference in San Jose on March 20, 2024. From left to right: Lukasz Kaiser, Noam Shazeer, Aidan Gomez, Jensen Huang, Llion Jones, Jakob Uszkoreit, Ashish Vaswani and Illia Polosukhin.

Nvidia

Polosukhin said Google started utilizing transformers in 2018 in Google Translate, which made for a “massive improvement.” But a broadly popular use of the technology didn’t come until OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022.

“OpenAI had very little to lose by opening this up,” Polosukhin told CNBC. “If, for example, any other company, especially public company, opened it up and the first question you ask there, it was like an inappropriate answer, that would be in the news.”

By the time the formative paper was published at the end of 2017, Polosukhin had exited Google to start his own AI company, Near, with fellow software engineer Alexander Skidanov. All eight of the authors have now left Google, although Polosukhin was the first to depart.

“Google research is an amazing environment,” Polosukhin said. “It’s great for learning and kind of this research. But if you want to move really fast and, importantly, put something in front of a user then Google is a big company with a lot of processes and, very rightfully so, security protocols, etc., that are required.”

Ultimately, he said, “for Google it doesn’t make sense to launch something that’s not a $1 billion idea.”

While at Google, Polosukhin was a proponent of open source.

“At the time, opening it up and making it available to everyone to build on top of it was the right decision,” he said.

With Near, Polosukhin is focused on what he calls user-owned AI, “that optimizes for the privacy and sovereignty of users.”

Watch the video to hear the full conversation between CNBC’s Katie tarasov and and Illia Polosukhin.

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Alibaba shares rise over 6% after CEO unveils plans to boost AI spending

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Alibaba shares rise over 6% after CEO unveils plans to boost AI spending

Alibaba‘s Hong Kong-listed shares surged on Wednesday to reach their highest point since 2021 after the company said it will invest more in artificial intelligence and rolled out new AI products and updates. 

Shares of the company jumped over 6%, while its total gains year to date rose above 107%. 

The tech giant plans to increase spending on AI models and infrastructure development, on top of the 380 billion yuan ($53 billion) over three years it announced in February, Chief Executive Officer Eddie Wu said Wednesday at Alibaba Cloud’s annual flagship technology conference.

“We are vigorously advancing a three-year, 380 billion [yuan] AI infrastructure initiative with plans to sustain and further increase our investment according to our strategic vision in anticipation of the [artificial superintelligence] era,” Wu said. 

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Alibaba shares surge after CEO unveils plans to boost AI spending

So-called ‘artificial superintelligence’ refers to AI that would hypothetically surpass the power and intelligence of the human brain, with the hypothetical benchmark becoming a growing focus of major AI companies. 

Alibaba also officially unveiled the latest version of its Qwen large language models — the Qwen3-Max — on Wednesday, along with a series of other updates to its suite of AI product offerings. 

Wu highlighted that Alibaba Cloud is strategically positioned as a “full-stack AI service provider,” delivering the computing power required for training and deploying large AI models on the cloud through its own data centers.

“The cumulative investment in global AI in the next five years will exceed $4 trillion, and this is the largest investment in computing power and research and development in history,” he added.

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Tether reportedly seeks lofty $500 billion valuation in capital raise

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Tether reportedly seeks lofty 0 billion valuation in capital raise

Venezuelan Bolivar and U.S. Dollar banknotes and representations of cryptocurrency Tether are seen in this illustration taken Sept. 8, 2025.

Dado Ruvic | Array

Tether, the issuer of the largest stablecoin, is planning to raise as much as $20 billion in a deal that could put the crypto company’s value on par with OpenAI, according to a report from Bloomberg News.

The crypto company is looking to raise between $15 billion and $20 billion in exchange for a roughly 3% stake through a private placement, the report said, citing two individuals familiar with the matter. The transaction would involve new equity rather than existing investors selling their stakes, the people told the news service.

The report said that one person close to the matter warned that the talks are in an early stage, which means that the eventual details, including the size of the offering, could change.

However, the deal could ultimately value Tether at around $500 billion, according to the report. That would mean the crypto giant’s valuation would rival some of the world’s biggest private companies, including SpaceX and OpenAI. OpenAI’s fundraising round earlier this year valued the tech company at $300 billion.

Tether, which was once accused of being a criminal’s “go-to cryptocurrency,” has been furthering its plans to return to the U.S. in recent months, given President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto stance. The company earlier this month named a CEO for its U.S. business and launched a new token for businesses and institutions in the U.S. called USAT, which will be regulated in the U.S. under the GENIUS Act.

Stablecoin USD Tether (USDT) is pegged to the U.S. dollar with a market cap that recently surpassed $172 billion. In second place is Tether rival Circle’s USDC stablecoin, which is worth about $74 billion.

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Micron beats on earnings as company sales rise 46% on AI boom

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Micron beats on earnings as company sales rise 46% on AI boom

A person walks by a sign for Micron Technology headquarters in San Jose, California, on June 25, 2025.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Micron reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue on Tuesday as well as a robust forecast for the current quarter.

The stock rose in extended trading.

Here’s how the company did in comparison with the LSEG consensus:

  • Earnings per share: $3.03, adjusted, vs. $2.86 expected
  • Revenue: $11.32 billion vs. $11.22 billion expected

Micron said revenue in the current period, its fiscal first quarter, will be about $12.5 billion, versus the $11.94 billion average analyst estimate per LSEG.

The company said it had $3.2 billion, or $2.83 per share in net income, versus $887 million, or 79 cents in the year-ago period.

Micron shares have nearly doubled so far in 2025. The company makes memory and storage, which are important components for computers. Micron has been one of the winners of the artificial intelligence boom. That’s because high-end AI chips like those made by Nvidia require increasing amounts of high-tech memory called high-bandwidth memory, which Micron makes.

“As the only U.S.-based memory manufacturer, Micron is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the AI opportunity ahead,” Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in a statement.

Overall company revenue rose 46% on a year-over-year basis during the quarter.

Micron’s largest unit, which sells memory for cloud providers, reported $4.54 billion in sales during the quarter, more than tripling on a year-over-year basis.

However, the company’s core data center business unit saw sales decline 22% on an annual basis to $1.57 billion in revenue.

WATCH: AI-led bull market set to continue, says Wells Fargo’s Ohsung Kwon

AI-led bull market set to continue, says Wells Fargo's Ohsung Kwon

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