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Creator Kai Cenat broke the record for the highest subscriber count on Amazon‘s Twitch during a nonstop live stream for the entire month of November.

Cenat is a 22-year-old streamer who rose to popularity over the past two years with livestreams focused on comedy, gaming and pranks. He completed a so-called subathon on Saturday, streaming 24 hours a day for 30 days. A subathon is a streaming event where each new subscription or donation extends the stream’s duration, often leading to marathon sessions. 

During the stream, called Mafiathon 2, Cenat surpassed the previous subscriber record on Twitch, reaching nearly 727,700 subscribers by the end of November, a Twitch spokesperson said. Cenat also had 50 million unique viewers during this time.

Twitch subscribers usually pay $4.99 per month for perks such as ad-free viewing, exclusive emotes and access to subscriber-only chats with their favorite streamers. Twitch typically takes a 50% cut of subscriber revenue but reduces its share to between 30% and 40% for its top creators. Cenat’s team did not disclose how much he earned from the subathon, but based on his Tier 1 subscriptions, he may have earned about $3.6 million in revenue, with Twitch taking a cut of that amount.

“I love y’all so much,” Cenat said in the final moments of his 30-day stream at his mansion in Los Angeles. “Without y’all, I am nothing.”

Cenat’s stream doubled the previous Twitch subscriber record set by virtual streamer Ironmouse during a subathon in September, reaching more than 326,250 subscribers. Cenat and Ironmouse’s subathons highlight a trend among streamers to use multiday live streaming events to captivate audiences and significantly boost subscriber numbers and earnings.

During the livestream, many celebrity guests joined Cenat on his stream, including rapper Snoop Dogg, scientist Bill Nye and comedian Kevin Hart. With these guests, Cenat managed to continue his stream overnight uninterrupted while sleeping, eating and using the bathroom. During times he was off-screen, he would have other members from his team take over to entertain the thousands of viewers.

Cenat is now the biggest streamer on the internet, with mass followings across most social media platforms. He has 15.4 million followers on Twitch, 6.7 million on YouTube, 12 million on Instagram and 2.6 million on X.

Cenat said he will be donating 20% of the proceeds made from subscriptions during the stream toward a school he is helping build in Nigeria after visiting a settlement in Makoko.

“I visited Nigeria not too long ago & absolutely loved it,” Cenat said in a post on his Instagram story. “We will be going out of pocket funding this entire project with full staff, classrooms, uniforms etc.” 

The popular live streamer has faced controversy in the past. In 2023, he was charged with inciting a riot after a New York City giveaway turned into chaos. However, the Manhattan District Attorney decided not to prosecute

Twitch has become increasingly popular, attracting more than 105 million active monthly visitors with streaming playing a larger role in the creator economy.

Despite this growth, Amazon, which acquired Twitch for nearly $1 billion in 2014, has yet to see the platform turn a profit, according to The Wall Street Journal.

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Nvidia says U.S. government will allow it to resume H20 AI chip sales to China

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Nvidia says U.S. government will allow it to resume H20 AI chip sales to China

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang attends a roundtable discussion at the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 11, 2025.

Sarah Meyssonnier | Reuters

Nvidia announced Tuesday that it hopes to resume sales of its H20 general processing units to clients in China, saying that the U.S. government had assured the company would be granted licenses.

Nvidia’s sales of the H20 chips, which had been designed specifically to keep them out of export controls on China, were halted in April.

“The U.S. government has assured NVIDIA that licenses will be granted, and NVIDIA hopes to start deliveries soon,” the company said in a statement.

This comes against the backdrop of a preliminary trade deal between Washington and Beijing last month that sought China to resume rare earth exports and the U.S. to relax tech export controls.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in recent months has ramped up his lobbying against export controls, arguing that they inhibited American tech leadership. In May, Huang said chip restrictions had already cut Nvidia’s China market share nearly in half.

Huang also announced a new “fully compliant” GPU, NVIDIA RTX PRO, saying it was ideal for smart factories and logistics.

The potential change in U.S. stance follows a meeting between Huang and U.S. President Donald Trump last week.

In his meeting with Trump and U.S. policymakers, Huang had reaffirmed Nvidia’s support for the administration’s job creation and onshoring efforts, as well as the aim for America to lead in global AI, the company said.

Meanwhile, in Beijing, it was confirmed that Huang has met with government and industry officials to discuss the benefits of AI and ways for researchers to advance safe and secure AI for the benefit of all. 

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Cognition to buy AI startup Windsurf days after Google poached CEO in $2.4 billion licensing deal

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Cognition to buy AI startup Windsurf days after Google poached CEO in .4 billion licensing deal

In this photo illustration, a man seen holding a smartphone with the logo of US artificial intelligence company Cognition AI Inc. in front of website.

Timon Schneider | SOPA Images | Sipa USA | AP

Artificial intelligence startup Cognition announced it’s acquiring Windsurf, the AI coding company that lost its CEO and several other senior employees to Google just days earlier.

Cognition said on Monday that it will purchase Windsurf’s intellectual property, product, trademark, brand and talent, but didn’t disclose terms of the deal. It’s the latest development in an AI talent war, as companies like Meta, Google and OpenAI fiercely compete for top engineers and researchers.

OpenAI had been in talks to acquire Windsurf for about $3 billion in April, but the deal fell apart, and Google said on Friday that it hired Windsurf’s co-founder and CEO Varun Mohan. Google is paying $2.4 billion in licensing fees and for compensation, as CNBC previously reported.

“Every new employee of Cognition will be treated the same way as existing employees: with transparency, fairness, and deep respect for their abilities and value,” Cognition CEO Scott Wu wrote in a memo to employees on Monday. “After today, our efforts will be as a united and aligned team. There’s only one boat and we’re all in it together.”

Cognition didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. Windsurf directed CNBC to Cognition.

Cognition is best known for its AI coding agent named Devin, which is designed to help engineers build software faster. As of March, the startup had raised hundreds of millions of dollars at a valuation of close to $4 billion, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Both companies are backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. Other investors in Windsurf include Greenoaks, Kleiner Perkins and General Catalyst.

“I’m overwhelmed with excitement and optimism, but most of all, gratitude,” Jeff Wang, the interim CEO of Windsurf, wrote in a post on X on Monday. “Trying times reveal character, and I couldn’t be prouder of how every single person at Windsurf showed up these last three days for each other and for our users.”

Wu said that the acquisition ensures all Windsurf employees are “treated with respect and well taken care of in this transaction.” All employees will participate financially in the deal, have vesting cliffs waived for their work to date and receive fully accelerated vesting for their, according to the memo.

“There’s never been a more exciting time to build,” Wu wrote.

WATCH: Google snatches Windsurf CEO after OpenAI deal dissolves

Google snatches Windsurf CEO after OpenAI deal dissolves

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Musk’s xAI faces European scrutiny over Grok’s ‘horrific’ antisemitic posts

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Musk's xAI faces European scrutiny over Grok's 'horrific' antisemitic posts

The Grok logo is being displayed on a smartphone with Xai visible in the background in this photo illustration on April 1, 2024. 

Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images

The European Union on Monday called in representatives from Elon Musk‘s xAI after the company’s social network X, and chatbot Grok, generated and spread anti-semitic hate speech, including praise for Adolf Hitler, last week.

A spokesperson for the European Commission told CNBC via e-mail that a technical meeting will take place on Tuesday.

xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sandro Gozi, a member of Italy’s parliament and member of the Renew Europe group, last week urged the Commission to hold a formal inquiry.

“The case raises serious concerns about compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA) as well as the governance of generative AI in the Union’s digital space,” Gozi wrote.

X was already under a Commission probe for possible violations of the DSA.

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Grok also generated and spread offensive posts about political leaders in Poland and Turkey, including Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Turkish President Recep Erdogan.

Over the weekend, xAI posted a statement apologizing for the hateful content.

“First off, we deeply apologize for the horrific behavior that many experienced. … After careful investigation, we discovered the root cause was an update to a code path upstream of the @grok bot,” the company said in the statement.

Musk and his xAI team launched a new version of Grok Wednesday night amid the backlash. Musk called it “the smartest AI in the world.”

xAI works with other businesses run and largely owned by Musk, including Tesla, the publicly traded automaker, and SpaceX, the U.S. aerospace and defense contractor.

Despite Grok’s recent outburst of hate speech, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded xAI a $200 million contract to develop AI. Anthropic, Google and OpenAI also received AI contracts.

CNBC’s April Roach contributed to this article.

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