OpenAI CEO Sam Altman during a fireside chat organized by Softbank Ventures Asia in Seoul, South Korea, on Friday, June 9, 2023.
SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Google and several American power and utility companies met Thursday at the White House to discuss the future of artificial intelligence energy infrastructure in the U.S., sources familiar with the meeting told CNBC.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Google President Ruth Porat all attended the meeting, which focused on bringing the public and private sectors together to talk about artificial intelligence‘s energy usage, data center capacity, semiconductor manufacturing, and grid capacity, sources familiar with the meeting confirmed.
An OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC that the company believes building additional infrastructure in the U.S. is critical to the country’s industrial policy and economic future. “We appreciate the White House convening this meeting as it is a recognition of the priority of infrastructure to create jobs, help guarantee that the benefits of AI are widely distributed, and ensure America will continue to be at the forefront of AI innovation,” the OpenAI spokesperson said.
OpenAI shared its economic impact analysis with Biden-Harris administration officials, including the estimated impacts on jobs and gross domestic product of building a large-scale data center in sample states across the U.S. such as Wisconsin, California, Texas and Pennsylvania, a source familiar told CNBC.
“President [Joe] Biden and Vice President [Kamala] Harris are committed to deepening U.S. leadership in A.I. by ensuring data-centers are built in the United States while ensuring the technology is developed responsibly,” White House spokesperson Robyn Patterson told CNBC.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm also attended Thursday, according to a source familiar.
The meeting included U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan; Ali Zaidi, national climate advisor; Kristine Lucius, domestic policy advisor to the vice president; and John Podesta, senior advisor to the president for international climate policy. White House chief of staff Jeff Zients and White House deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed also attended, according to a source.
The news follows an announcement in August that OpenAI and Anthropic will let the U.S. AI Safety Institute test their new models before releasing them to the public, following increased concerns in the industry about safety and ethics in AI.
The institute, housed within the Department of Commerce at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, said in a press release at the time that it would get “access to major new models from each company prior to and following their public release.”
The group was established after the Biden-Harris administration issued the U.S. government’s first-ever executive order on artificial intelligence in October 2023, requiring new safety assessments, equity and civil rights guidance and research on AI’s impact on the labor market.
OpenAI is reportedly in talks to raise a funding round that would value the company at more than $150 billion. Anthropic, founded by ex-OpenAI research executives and employees, was most recently valued at $18.4 billion. Anthropic counts Amazon as a leading investor, while OpenAI is heavily backed by Microsoft.
The StubHub logo is seen at its headquarters in San Francisco.
Andrej Sokolow | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
StubHub is aiming to raise as much as $851 million in its initial public offering, giving it a valuation of up to $9.2 billion, the company revealed in a new filing on Monday.
The ticket reselling marketplace plans to sell more than 34 million shares priced between $22 and $25 per share, according to the filing.
The long-awaited IPO comes after StubHub hit pause on the process in April as the stock market was reeling from President Donald Trump‘s sweeping tariffs. The company also eyed an IPO last year, but it postponed its efforts in July 2024 amid a slowdown in the IPO market.
StubHub plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “STUB.”
Klarna, a Swedish provider of buy now, pay later loans, and Gemini, the crypto firm founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, are gearing up for public debuts this week.
StubHub filed an updated IPO prospectus last month, showing that first-quarter revenue grew 10% from a year earlier to $397.6 million. Operating income came in at $26.8 million for the period.
The company’s net loss widened to $35.9 million from $29.7 million a year ago.
The company has been a longtime player in the ticketing industry since its launch in 2000. It was purchased by eBay for $310 million in 2007, but was reacquired by co-founder Eric Baker in 2020 for $4 billion through his new company Viagogo.
StubHub had sought a $16.5 billion valuation before it began the IPO process, CNBC previously reported.
Xpeng CEO He Xiaopeng speaks to reporters at the electric carmaker’s stand at the IAA auto show in Munich, Germany on September 8, 2025.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
Xpeng plans to launch its mass-market Mona brand in overseas markets next year in a move that will boost competition with its Chinese rivals and established automakers in the electric vehicle arena.
In a wide-ranging interview with CNBC on Tuesday, Xpeng CEO He Xiaopeng said the company’s international expansion is moving faster than he expected and signaled, for the first time, that the company is open to acquiring other electric carmakers.
Xpeng launched the Mona brand in China last year with the debut of the Mona M03 electric coupe. The car was launched with an aggressive starting price of 119,000 Chinese yuan, which is just under $17,000.
Xpeng will launch Mona-branded cars in Europe next year, He told CNBC. This is the first time the launch has been reported.
“In 2026 you can expect a variety of Mona products launched into the Chinese and European markets, as well as in rest of the world,” He said, in comments translated by CNBC.
“I believe by then, what we launch will be very proven and very excellent vehicles.”
These cars will likely be cheaper than some of Xpeng’s higher-end models such as the P7 and G6.
It comes as Chinese automakers are aggressively launching cars outside of China and finding success in Europe where companies like BYD have continued to grow.
Adding even more competitively priced cars into the mix overseas will ramp up competition in markets like Europe where traditional automakers such as Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen have launched their own electric vehicles to fend off Chinese rivals.
The Guangzhou-headquartered auto firm began its global expansion in 2020 with Norway and has since launched in other markets including Germany and France.
Xpeng had previously stated a goal of establishing a presence in 60 countries and regions by the end of 2025. He said this goal had been met already, due to faster-than-expected global growth. For reference, the CEO said Xpeng was only present in three to five markets two years ago.
Xpeng displayed its humanoid robot called “Iron” at the IAA auto show in Munich, Germany on September 8, 2025.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
At the IAA Mobility auto show in Munich, Germany, Xpeng brought an upgraded version of the flagship P7 car — the Next P7 — to showcase in Europe for the first time.
Even as Xpeng continues to push overseas, especially in Europe, it faces challenges including dealing with the European Union’s tariffs on China-made electric vehicles.
This has led Chinese automakers to explore manufacturing their cars in Europe. Xpeng would like to manufacture in Europe but has not not yet made a decision on the timeline for this, He said.
Xpeng open to acquisitions
At home in China, the price war continues as EV makers battle it out for market share. Competition is ramping up between domestic automakers and Tesla.
This has prompted Chinese regulators to call a halt to excessive competition, known colloquially as “neijuan” or involution.
The Xpeng CEO himself has previously warned that only a handful of Chinese carmakers will survive in the coming years as many go out of business.
He said the collapse is already happening.
In this environment, He said he is open to acquisitions, something that the company hasn’t done in large quantities to date. In 2023, Xpeng acquired the electric car development business of Chinese ride-hailing firm Didi.
He said Xpeng would be open to acquiring companies, including other electric carmakers.
“I think if we have the opportunity then we want to acquire some companies,” He said. “For us it’s a good thing to do. Manufacturing companies, EV companies are always possible.”
Eightco Holdings, a tiny company that currently trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker “OCTO,” announced Monday that Ives, Wedbush’s global head of technology research, is now chairman of the board of directors. It also announced a $250 million private placement to implement a buying strategy around Worldcoin as its main treasury asset.
“As someone that’s so passionate about the AI revolution and the future of tech, I view World as really the de facto standard for authentication and identification in the future world of AI,” Ives told CNBC. “I would not be doing this initiative if it was just a cookie cutter token strategy.”
The offering is expected to close on or around Sept. 11, at which point it plans to change its ticker to “ORBS.”
Ives’ move is similar to one made by another widely-followed Wall Street forecaster, Tom Lee of Fundstrat, who in June joined the ether accumulatorBitMine Immersion Technologies as chairman. BitMine shares have rocked more than 800% since Lee announced his involvement.
That company also made a $20 million strategic investment in Eightco, it announced Monday, marking the start of its “Moonshot” strategy to back bold ideas that strengthen Ethereum’s ecosystem.
Given the more crypto-friendly regulatory environment this year, more public companies have adopted the MicroStrategy playbook of using debt financing and equity sales to buy crypto to hold on their balance sheet to try to increase shareholder returns. Companies with high-profile backers like Fundstrat’s Lee and tech billionaire Peter Thiel (who has a stake in both ether-focused companies BitMine and Ethzilla) have been holding up better in the recent crypto pullback.
Increasingly, companies pursuing crypto treasury strategies are looking further out on the risk spectrum of crypto, beyond bitcoin, hoping for even bigger gains. For example, DeFi Development Corplaunched in April with a focus on accumulating Solana’s SOL token, and a little-known Canadian vape company called CEA Industriesannounced a Binance Coin (BNB) accumulation plan in July.
Altman’s World venture aims to authenticate actual humans on its network given the acceleration of the number of threats from artificial intelligence, such as deepfakes. The project provides users with a “World ID” for anonymous sign-ins and rewards them with its Worldcoin cryptocurrency.
“As the AI infrastructure and [large language models] are built out without true identification and proof of human, it’s a limiting factor in the growth of AI for the coming years,” Ives said. “I view the whole crypto world going more and more toward a focus on blockchain, and how are you going to identify humans … in a future where robots are going to play a major role in physical AI?”
His comments on the need for a digital identity verification system echo those made by BlackRock CEO Larry Fink who has said in his annual letter this year that one day “tokenized funds,” or funds represented on a blockchain network like Ethereum, “will become as familiar to investors as ETFs — provided we crack one critical problem: identity verification.”
Worldcoin launched in 2023 and has a market cap of about $1 billion, compared to bitcoin’s roughly $2 trillion and ether’s $518 billion, according to CoinGecko.
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