OpenAI is disbanding its “AGI Readiness” team, which advised the company on OpenAI’s own capacity to handle increasingly powerful AI and the world’s readiness to manage that technology, according to the head of the team.
On Wednesday, Miles Brundage, senior advisor for AGI Readiness, announced his departure from the company via a Substack post. He wrote that his primary reasons were that the opportunity cost had become too high and he thought his research would be more impactful externally, that he wanted to be less biased and that he had accomplished what he set out to at OpenAI.
Brundage also wrote that, as far as how OpenAI and the world is doing on AGI readiness, “Neither OpenAI nor any other frontier lab is ready, and the world is also not ready.” Brundage plans to start his own nonprofit, or join an existing one, to focus on AI policy research and advocacy. He added that “AI is unlikely to be as safe and beneficial as possible without a concerted effort to make it so.”
Former AGI Readiness team members will be reassigned to other teams, according to the post.
“We fully support Miles’ decision to pursue his policy research outside industry and are deeply grateful for his contributions,” an OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC. “His plan to go all-in on independent research on AI policy gives him the opportunity to have an impact on a wider scale, and we are excited to learn from his work and follow its impact. We’re confident that in his new role, Miles will continue to raise the bar for the quality of policymaking in industry and government.”
In May, OpenAI decided to disband its Superalignment team, which focused on the long-term risks of AI, just one year after it announced the group, a person familiar with the situation confirmed to CNBC at the time.
News of the AGI Readiness team’s disbandment follows the OpenAI board’s potential plans to restructure the firm to a for-profit business, and after three executives — CTO Mira Murati, research chief Bob McGrew and research VP Barret Zoph — announced their departure on the same day last month.
Earlier in October, OpenAI closed its buzzy funding round at a valuation of $157 billion, including the $6.6 billion the company raised from an extensive roster of investment firms and big tech companies. It also received a $4 billion revolving line of credit, bringing its total liquidity to more than $10 billion. The company expects about $5 billion in losses on $3.7 billion in revenue this year, CNBC confirmed with a source familiar last month.
And in September, OpenAI announced that its Safety and Security Committee, which the company introduced in May as it dealt with controversy over security processes, would become an independent board oversight committee. It recently wrapped up its 90-day review evaluating OpenAI’s processes and safeguards and then made recommendations to the board, with the findings also released in a public blog post.
News of the executive departures and board changes also follows a summer of mounting safety concerns and controversies surrounding OpenAI, which along with Google, Microsoft, Meta and other companies is at the helm of a generative AI arms race — a market that is predicted to top $1 trillion in revenue within a decade — as companies in seemingly every industry rush to add AI-powered chatbots and agents to avoid being left behind by competitors.
In July, OpenAI reassigned Aleksander Madry, one of OpenAI’s top safety executives, to a job focused on AI reasoning instead, sources familiar with the situation confirmed to CNBC at the time.
Madry was OpenAI’s head of preparedness, a team that was “tasked with tracking, evaluating, forecasting, and helping protect against catastrophic risks related to frontier AI models,” according to a bio for Madry on a Princeton University AI initiative website. Madry will still work on core AI safety work in his new role, OpenAI told CNBC at the time.
The decision to reassign Madry came around the same time that Democratic senators sent a letter to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman concerning “questions about how OpenAI is addressing emerging safety concerns.”
The letter, which was viewed by CNBC, also stated, “We seek additional information from OpenAI about the steps that the company is taking to meet its public commitments on safety, how the company is internally evaluating its progress on those commitments, and on the company’s identification and mitigation of cybersecurity threats.”
Microsoft gave up its observer seat on OpenAI’s board in July, stating in a letter viewed by CNBC that it can now step aside because it’s satisfied with the construction of the startup’s board, which had been revamped since the uprising that led to the brief ouster of Altman and threatened Microsoft’s massive investment in the company.
But in June, a group of current and former OpenAI employees published an open letter describing concerns about the artificial intelligence industry’s rapid advancement despite a lack of oversight and an absence of whistleblower protections for those who wish to speak up.
“AI companies have strong financial incentives to avoid effective oversight, and we do not believe bespoke structures of corporate governance are sufficient to change this,” the employees wrote at the time.
Days after the letter was published, a source familiar to the mater confirmed to CNBC that the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice were set to open antitrust investigations into OpenAI, Microsoft and Nvidia, focusing on the companies’ conduct.
FTC Chair Lina Khan has described her agency’s action as a “market inquiry into the investments and partnerships being formed between AI developers and major cloud service providers.”
The current and former employees wrote in the June letter that AI companies have “substantial non-public information” about what their technology can do, the extent of the safety measures they’ve put in place and the risk levels that technology has for different types of harm.
“We also understand the serious risks posed by these technologies,” they wrote, adding the companies “currently have only weak obligations to share some of this information with governments, and none with civil society. We do not think they can all be relied upon to share it voluntarily.”
OpenAI’s Superalignment team, announced last year and disbanded in May, had focused on “scientific and technical breakthroughs to steer and control AI systems much smarter than us.” At the time, OpenAI said it would commit 20% of its computing power to the initiative over four years.
The team was disbanded after its leaders, OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike, announced their departures from the startup in May. Leike wrote in a post on X that OpenAI’s “safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products.”
Altman said at the time on X he was sad to see Leike leave and that OpenAI had more work to do. Soon afterward, co-founder Greg Brockman posted a statement attributed to Brockman and the CEO on X, asserting the company has “raised awareness of the risks and opportunities of AGI so that the world can better prepare for it.”
“I joined because I thought OpenAI would be the best place in the world to do this research,” Leike wrote on X at the time. “However, I have been disagreeing with OpenAI leadership about the company’s core priorities for quite some time, until we finally reached a breaking point.”
Leike wrote that he believes much more of the company’s bandwidth should be focused on security, monitoring, preparedness, safety and societal impact.
“These problems are quite hard to get right, and I am concerned we aren’t on a trajectory to get there,” he wrote at the time. “Over the past few months my team has been sailing against the wind. Sometimes we were struggling for [computing resources] and it was getting harder and harder to get this crucial research done.”
Leike added that OpenAI must become a “safety-first AGI company.”
“Building smarter-than-human machines is an inherently dangerous endeavor,” he wrote on X. “OpenAI is shouldering an enormous responsibility on behalf of all of humanity. But over the past years, safety culture and processes have taken a backseat to shiny products.”
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon speaks at the Computex forum in Taipei, Taiwan, June 3, 2024.
Ann Wang | Reuters
Qualcomm reported fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday that beat Wall Street expectations for earnings and revenue, and the company guided to a strong December quarter.
The shares rose 10% in extended trading at one point before falling to a gain of about 4%.
Here’s how the company did versus Refinitiv consensus expectations for the quarter ending Sept. 29:
Earnings per share: $2.69, adjusted $2.56 expected
Revenue: $10.24 billion versus $9.90 billion expected
Qualcomm said it expects revenue in the current quarter of between $10.5 billion and $11.3 billion, with the midpoint of that range beating LSEG consensus expectations of $10.59 billion.
The company reported $2.92 billion in net income, or $2.59 per share, a sharp jump from last year’s $1.49 billion, or $1.23 per share. Qualcomm reported $33.19 billion in total revenue in its fiscal 2024, a 9% increase from 2023.
Qualcomm’s fortunes have historically been tied to the smartphone industry, where the company provides a range of chips to handset makers, including system-on-a-chip processors, modems, and antennas. The company makes the chip at the heart of most high-end Android devices, and many lower-end phones as well. Qualcomm also sells modems and related chips to Apple for its iPhones, and last year said its contract for 5G chips ran through 2026.
Qualcomm reported a 12% increase in handset chip sales to $6.1 billion, in line with FactSet estimates. Qualcomm introduced its high-end chip for 2025, called Snapdragon 8 Elite, in October.
“In handsets we delivered greater than 20% year-over-year growth in Android revenues,” said Qualcomm CFO Akash Palkhiwala on a call with analysts.
Under CEO Cristiano Amon, the company has diversified away from being a smartphone supplier and has introduced and invested heavily in producing chips for PCs, cars, and industrial machines.
“We will continue to transform Qualcomm from a wireless communications company into a connected computing company for the age of AI,” Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said on the earnings call with analysts.
Qualcomm has also made efforts to brand itself as a leader in AI, having developed smartphone chips with specialized parts for machine learning since 2017. But unlike Nvidia, the company doesn’t produce the kind of graphics processors for data centers that are used for big AI programs like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The automotive business grew 86% on an annual basis to $899 million in sales. Qualcomm says it has billions of dollars in business with automakers currently in its development pipeline, and highlighted it was the fifth consecutive quarter of growth. Qualcomm said that it expected automotive sales in the current quarter to rise 50% on an annual basis.
The company’s “internet of things” business includes both chips for industrial purposes as well as the chips Meta uses in its Quest handsets and Ray-Ban Smart Glasses. It also includes the new business selling chips for laptops running Microsoft Windows. The division reported $1.68 billion in revenue, a 22% increase from a year earlier.
Qualcomm’s chip business, including its handset, automotive, and other chips, which together is reported as QCT, saw sales rise 18% during the quarter to $7.37 billion in total.
The company’s profitable technology licensing business, QTL, reported $1.52 billion in revenue, a 21% increase over the same period last year.
Qualcomm said its board had approved $15 billion in additional buybacks. During the fourth quarter, it repurchased $1.3 billion worth of shares and paid out $947 million in dividends.
Brian Armstrong, co-founder and chief executive officer of Coinbase Inc., speaks during the Singapore Fintech Festival, in Singapore, on Friday, Nov. 4, 2022.
Bryan van der Beek | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Election Day proved hugely successful for the crypto industry. Nobody was a bigger winner than Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.
Coinbase shares soared 31% on Wednesday, their best day on record, as investors celebrated the company’s victorious efforts to get pro-crypto candidates into office. Fairshake, the Coinbase-backed PAC, says that of the 58 candidates it supported, 46 won, with the remaining contests 12 still undecided.
Armstrong, who co-founded Coinbase in 2012 and took it public in 2021, remains the crypto exchange’s biggest investor, with ownership of well over 10% of the company’s outstanding shares. As of the latest proxy filing, he owned 34.8 million Class A and Class B shares, a stake that jumped by about $2.1 billion in value on Wednesday to almost $9 billion.
“Being anti-crypto is simply bad politics,” Armstrong wrote in a post on X, after Ohio Republican Bernie Moreno was declared the winner in his state’s Senate race over incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown.
In a lengthier follow-up post on Wednesday, Armstrong said “no matter how you slice it, this election was huge win for crypto.”
Bitcoin jumped over 9.5%, reaching a record of over $76,400.
A Coinbase spokesperson declined to comment further.
Some $40 million of crypto money was directed at defeating Brown, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. One PAC paid for five ads designed to boost awareness of Moreno, a blockchain entrepreneur with very little name recognition entering the race.
The Stand With Crypto Alliance, which Coinbase launched last year, gave Brown an “F” grade, while it issued Moreno an “A.”
Moreno flipped the seat, winning 50.3% of votes cast to 46.3% for Moreno, according to NBC News. His win helped ensure a majority for the Republicans in Senate, alongside Republican nominee Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential contest.
“I am so grateful to Ohioans for their resounding support in this race,” Moreno said in a statement Tuesday night. “I look forward to working with the new Republican Senate majority to fix our economy, secure our border, and return to American strength at home and abroad.”
Moreno’s statement made no mention of crypto, despite the fact that the industry bankrolled his campaign.
Politics pays off
For Armstrong, politics has become a big part of the job as his company fights for a friendlier Washington and more amenable regulatory environment.
Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler sued Coinbase last year over claims that it sells unregistered securities. A judge has since ruled that the case should be heard by a jury. Coinbase has fought back vociferously, and has also said that it wants to work with regulators to come up with a proper set of laws governing the nascent industry.
Republican nominee for U.S. Senate Bernie Moreno addresses supporters at Brecksville Community Center on November 4, 2024 in Brecksville, Ohio.
Stephen Maturen | Getty Images
Armstrong told CNBC in September that his visits to the nation’s capital used to take place once or twice a year. Then it got to be at least a quarterly occasion. And the pace has only increased.
“In the beginning, a lot of people didn’t know what crypto was,” Armstrong said of his earlier trips. Now, “the discussion has advanced, really, to, how do we pass clear rules, create legislation in the United States?”
In the 2024 election cycle, Coinbase was one of the top corporate donors, giving more than $75 million to Fairshake and its affiliate PACs, including a fresh pledge of $25 million to support the pro-crypto super PAC in the 2026 midterms. Armstrong personally contributed more than $1.3 million to a mix of candidates up and down the ballot.
Coinbase stayed out of the presidential contest and focused its finances exclusively on congressional races, in an effort to assemble a group of lawmakers with favorable views of the industry.
Coinbase’s big post-election pop more than makes up for the 15% drop in the stock last week after the company reported disappointing quarterly results due to lower transaction revenue and a drop in subscriptions services revenue.
Paul Grewal, Coinbase’s chief legal officer, attended multiple fundraisers for Trump in the months before the election. As the results were rolling in Tuesday, Grewal said in a post on X that he hopes the SEC “understands what has happened tonight.”
“Stop suing crypto,” Grewal wrote. “Start talking to crypto. Initiate rulemaking now. There’s no reason to wait.”
Armstrong reposted the Grewal’s comments, adding one word of his own: “True.”
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, attends the 54th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, January 18, 2024 (L), and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos speaks during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, November 2, 2021.
Reuters
Leaders of major technology companies congratulated President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance on their victory in the U.S. presidential election Wednesday.
The messages were similar, with CEOs remarking that they wish Trump success when he returns to the Oval Office, and look forward to working with his administration.
Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos celebrated Trump’s win in a post on X, calling it an “extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory.”
Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post and founded space company Blue Origin, has had a rocky relationship with Trump and was a frequent target of the former president during his first term. Trump repeatedly took aim at Bezos’ ownership of the Post, Amazon’s tax record and its relationship with the Postal Service. Bezos also took swings at Trump, remarking in a 2015 social media post, “#sendDonaldtospace.” Bezos recently struck a more conciliatory tone and in July praised Trump for his “courage under literal fire” following the attempted assassination of Trump at a Pennsylvania rally that month. Bezos has posted twice on X this year, with both posts mentioning Trump.
Andy Jassy, who took the helm from Bezos when he stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021, also extended his congratulations to Trump.
“Congratulations to President-elect @realDonaldTrump on a hard-fought victory,” Jassy wrote in a post on X. “We look forward to working with you and your administration on issues important to our customers, employees, communities, and country.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a post on X that he hopes Trump will see “huge success in the job.” In a follow up post, he wrote, “it is critically important that the US maintains its lead in developing AI with democratic values.”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Trump’s election win a “decisive victory” and said he looked forward to forward to working with the Trump administration. “We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post on Threads, Meta’s rival to Elon Musk’s X app. The two men have also had a rocky relationship at times. In 2021, Facebook banned Trump for two years shortly after the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Musk, who also runs electric vehicle maker Tesla, space exploration company SpaceX, and brain tech startup Neuralink, also unsurprisingly cheered Trump’s win.
Musk has been a key ally for Trump in his campaign for the White House, with the former president promising prior to his election to appoint Musk as the head of a government efficiency commission. Musk also contributed nearly $75 million to America PAC, a pro-Trump super political action committee that he established earlier in the year. Tesla shares rallied more than 13% on Wednesday afternoon as investors were optimistic that a Trump win would benefit the vehicle maker.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google parent Alphabet, also congratulated Trump on his victory and said he’s committed to working with the president-elect’s administration.
Microsoft CEO Sundar Pichai said: “Congratulations President Trump, we’re looking forward to engaging with you and your administration to drive innovation forward that creates new growth and opportunity for the United States and the world.”
Cisco founder and CEO Chuck Robbins wrote in a post on X that the company looks forward to working with Trump and Congress on policies around “connectivity, innovation, cybersecurity, and more.”
Box CEO Aaron Levie also sent his good wishes to Trump. He wrote in a post on X, “Wild ride. Congrats to @realDonaldTrump on becoming President again. What’s great about America is that we’re on a rocket ship right now and can keep accelerating with the right policies and execution.”
Michael Dell, CEO and chairman of Dell Technologies, added his own congratulations in a post on X.