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Amazon Fire TV Omni Series
Amazon

Amazon’s first TV sets, which you can talk to and control without a remote, go on sale this week. I’ve been testing the $830 Amazon Fire TV Omni Series for a few days. It’s a good TV for the money, and Alexa can be useful, but the software interface doesn’t look as sharp as it should on a 4K TV.  

Amazon has traditionally sold Fire TV Sticks and Fire TV Cubes that plug into existing sets, or partnered with other device makers who integrate its Fire TV software. Usually, there are buttons on the remotes that let you use Alexa to control the TV. With the Omni Series, however, Amazon brings its Alexa assistant right into the TV.

Amazon’s Jason Parrish, who led the product management of the Omni series TVs, told me the goal of the TV is to make living rooms smarter through what he calls ambient computing, with Alexa at the center of how we watch TV, listen to music and interact with our smart homes. The higher-end Omni Series has generated about two-thirds of all of Amazon’s pre-orders for TVs, Parrish said, showing it’s more popular than the more affordable 4-Series so far and that, seemingly, Amazon fans like the idea of talking to their televisions.

Amazon makes most of its money from its AWS cloud business and is better known as an online retailer. But its hardware, which ranges from tablets to e-readers and smart speakers, helps bring people right to its storefront and its ecosystem of ads and services.

I tested the 65-inch Amazon Fire TV Omni Series television, but there’s also a lower-end cheaper TV known as the 4 Series, which starts at $370.

What’s good

Amazon Fire TV Omni Series
Amazon

The Omni Series has a high-end physical design with an edge-to-edge 4K screen that’s sharp and, with the right adjustments, colorful. I like the slim metal bezel on the bottom, and the fact that I can just ask it to do what I want.

A remote is included, but even without touching it I could ask Alexa to play TV shows or movies, to tell me the weather (which pops up in a small bar at the bottom of the screen) or to tune to a specific channel on YouTube TV. It works even if I’m standing across the room. 

Amazon Fire TV Omni Series
Todd Haselton | CNBC

This is different from Amazon’s Fire TV Cube, which also had Alexa but required the TV screen to be switched on before it could respond.

Parrish said Amazon found when customers walk into the room and say “‘turn on the lights,’ they don’t want their TV to turn on and just stay on.”

“Or if you say ‘what time is it?’ you don’t need a 65-inch screen to tell you that. So that was the type of thing that we wanted to rethink,” he added. Parrish explained customers interact and engage with content more when they use voice instead of a remote.

Amazon Fire TV Omni Series
Todd Haselton | CNBC

There are four microphones along the top of the TV that are always listening for “Hey Alexa.” Parrish said the microphones are as far away from the speakers as possible so that they can still hear you if you’re playing music or watching TV.

“The goal there is to be able to make a request while you’re watching TV and not just kind of halt everything that you’re doing. You should be able to do it while you have that show going on and we also want to make sure that we’re not impacting your TV watching when it comes to responses,” Parrish said.

I liked that I could say “Alexa, pause” instead of trying to find the remote when I wanted to get up off the couch. It’s also useful to give commands like “Alexa, mute” or “Alexa, turn up the volume,” and I started to get used to not using the remote as often.

As with Amazon’s Echos, there’s an easy toggle to switch off the microphones. It’s right under the TV screen.

The microphone switch on the bottom.
Todd Haselton | CNBC

Alexa can do all sorts of other things, too, like switch inputs to your Xbox or cable box (which it can also control with an included cable), help you shop for things (“Alexa, shop for soap,”) or show you the current stock price of a company even while a show is playing. It’s useful. There’s a smart home dashboard, too, so you can see all of your cameras and lights.

Alexa will pop up some responses at the bottom of the screen, which is useful.
Todd Haselton | CNBC

The Omni TV, unlike the 4-Series, supports webcams through a USB port in case you want to video chat with other folks who own the same TV or who have other products with Alexa installed, like phones, Amazon tablets or Amazon’s Echo Show smart screens. It worked with a Logitech webcam Amazon sent me to test. Likewise, you can check in on cameras around your home by giving commands like “show the nursery camera,” for example. And a small video feed will pop up over the show you’re watching if someone rings the doorbell.

Amazon Fire TV Omni Series
Todd Haselton | CNBC

Movies and TV shows looked really good on the LED display, considering the TV’s sub-$1,000 price. The 65-inch model I tested and the larger 75-inch version support the clearest standards, like Dolby Vision, HDR 10, HLG, and Dolby Digital Plus, for good balance in bright scenes and better color and contrast than cheaper sets. I liked the image best after I turned up the color saturation a little bit from the presets. Also, the blacks aren’t as pure black and inky as you might find on much more expensive TVs with nicer miniLED or OLED screens.

Amazon Fire TV Omni Series
Todd Haselton | CNBC

The built-in speakers are better than most TV speakers and get nice and loud, but I still prefer a soundbar for deeper bass and richer sound.

What’s bad

Amazon Fire TV Omni Series
Todd Haselton | CNBC

Alexa understood most of my commands just fine, especially general ones that you’d typically give to an Echo.

However, there are some things that it just doesn’t support on a TV, and I had to learn those limitations by trial and error. For instance, you can adjust the TV color modes, like presets for movies or sports, but you cannot adjust the brightness with Alexa. 

Likewise, it works well if you say “Alexa, play the movie ‘Hackers,'” but didn’t correctly understand “Alexa, play the latest episode of ‘Succession'” — instead, it began playing the very first episode of the show. Amazon explained those inconsistent results can come down to how some apps — in this case, HBO Max — catalog their shows.

Parrish explained how Alexa tries to understand the user’s intent when a voice request is made. Amazon optimized the TV to understand that you probably want to view something instead of listening to it.

“‘Hamilton’ is obviously now on Disney as a movie, but it’s a very popular soundtrack as well,” Parrish said. “So a Fire TV, when you ask to play ‘Hamilton,’ it will get you to Disney Plus. It will bias towards video. Whereas on an Echo it will send you to Prime Music or Spotify or whatever your preferred music player is.”

Alexa is good, but it’s still learning.

I’m not a fan of the ads, like the “Jet-Puffed” food ad on the main screen, or the 1080p UI.
Todd Haselton | CNBC

My biggest gripe with the Omni Series TV is that the home screen and user interface still render in 1080p, a quarter of the 4K resolution. This isn’t a big deal if you sit about nine feet away from the TV, but I sit closer. The icons were blurry when I sat about four to five feet from the screen. You may never notice this unless you walk up close, but I look at nice screens for a living and it bothered me.

Amazon said the software is kept at a lower resolution to make sure the user interface is smooth and optimized. In fact, the TV felt sluggish and temporarily froze when I was moving through menus at first. Amazon advised me to do a factory reset and that fixed my problems. Still, it’s concerning that the experience wasn’t perfect out of the box.

You can avoid the lower resolution user interface by ignoring the Fire TV home screen altogether and using something else, like an Xbox Series X, a PlayStation 5 or an Apple TV through one of the HDMI inputs. An Apple TV 4K user interface looks nice and crisp as expected. But that sort of defeats the main purpose of buying an Amazon TV. 

Then, there were the ads. I don’t mind sponsored ads on Fire TVs and other cheap gadgets that plug into TVs, like the Google Chromecast and Roku devices. But I don’t like when an $820 TV displays ads for sponsored TV shows and movies, and subscription apps and channels I might want to buy. There was even a big ad on the home screen for an Amazon TV Fire stick — something you wouldn’t need if you bought this TV. Most TVs with a smart interface do this, too, and it’s how Amazon makes money, but it’s not a great experience.

“Having content promoted in our UI is kind of core to our experience,” Parrish told me. “We’ll probably have a lot of customers that are familiar with Fire TV and we’ll probably have some that aren’t. We look forward to hearing what they have to say.”

Should you buy it?

Amazon Fire TV Omni Series
Amazon

The Amazon Fire TV Omni Series is a nice TV set for $830. TV shows and movies look great once you adjust the picture to your liking. It’s easy to do in settings.

Alexa is convenient to have and it grows on you once you get used to doing some things by voice and others with the remote. It’s fun to just walk into a room and say “Alexa, tune to CNBC” without knowing where the remote is.

You’ll get the most out of Alexa on the Omni Series if you have lots of Amazon Echos and a smart home that’s tied in with Amazon’s ecosystem. It works well once you get the hang of what it can and can’t do.

I’m just bummed about the lower resolution home screen UI, even though movies and TV shows look good in 4K. I understand most folks may still end up watching full HD content anyway, since so much live TV isn’t even 4K, but the software should still look sharp even up close.

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OpenAI announces new mentorship program for budding tech founders

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OpenAI announces new mentorship program for budding tech founders

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

OpenAI on Friday introduced a new program, dubbed the “OpenAI Grove,” for early tech entrepreneurs looking to build with artificial intelligence, and applications are already open.

Unlike OpenAI’s Pioneer Program, which launched in April, Grove is aimed towards individuals at the very nascent phases of their company development, from the pre-idea to pre-seed stage.

For five weeks, participants will receive mentoring from OpenAI technical leaders, early access to new tools and models, and in-person workshops, located in the company’s San Francisco headquarters.

Roughly 15 members will join Grove’s first cohort, which will run from Oct. 20 to Nov. 21, 2025. Applicants will have until Sept. 24 to submit an entry form.

CNBC has reached out to OpenAI for comment on the program.

Following the program, Grove participants will be able to continue working internally with the ChatGPT maker, which was recent valued $500 billion.

Other industry rivals have also already launched their own AI accelerator programs, including the Google for Startups Cloud AI Accelerator last winter. Earlier this April, Microsoft for Startups partnered with PearlX, a cohort accelerator program for pre-seed companies.

Nurturing these budding AI companies is just a small chip in the recent massive investments into AI firms, which ate up an impressive 71% of U.S. venture funding in 2025, up from 45% last year, according to an analysis from J.P. Morgan.

AI startups raised $104.3 billion in the U.S. in the first half of this year, and currently over 1,300 AI startups have valuations of over $100 million, according to CB Insights.

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Benioff says he’s ‘inspired’ by Palantir, but takes another jab at its prices

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Benioff says he's 'inspired' by Palantir, but takes another jab at its prices

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on what the market is getting wrong about AI

Marc Benioff is keeping an eye on Palantir.

The co-founder and CEO of sales and customer service management software company Salesforce is well aware that investors are betting big on Palantir, which offers data management software to businesses and government agencies.

“Oh my gosh. I am so inspired by that company,” Benioff told CNBC’s Morgan Brennan in a Tuesday interview at Goldman Sachs‘ Communacopia+Technology conference in San Francisco. “I mean, not just because they have 100 times, you know, multiple on their revenue, which I would love to have that too. Maybe it’ll have 1000 times on their revenue soon.”

Salesforce, a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, remains 10 times larger than Palantir by revenue, with over $10 billion in revenue during the latest quarter. But Palantir is growing 48%, compared with 10% for Salesforce.

Benioff added that Palantir’s prices are “the most expensive enterprise software I’ve ever seen.”

“Maybe I’m not charging enough,” he said.

Read more CNBC tech news

It wasn’t Benioff’s first time talking about Palantir. Last week, Benioff referenced Palantir’s “extraordinary” prices in an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, saying Salesforce offers a “very competitive product at a much lower cost.”

The next day, TBPN podcast hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays asked for a response from Alex Karp, Palantir’s co-founder and CEO.

“We are very focused on value creation, and we ask to be modestly compensated for that value,” Karp said.

The companies sometimes compete for government deals, and Benioff touted a recent win over Palantir for a U.S. Army contract.

Palantir started in 2003, four years after Salesforce. But while Salesforce went public in 2004, Palantir arrived on the New York Stock Exchange in 2020.

Palantir’s market capitalization stands at $406 billion, while Salesforce is worth $231 billion. And as one of the most frequently traded stocks on Robinhood, Palantir is popular with retail investors.

Salesforce shares are down 27% this year, the worst performance in large-cap tech.

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Salesforce and Palantir year to date stock chart.

We're seeing an incredible transformation in enterprise, says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

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Gemini, the Winklevoss’ crypto exchange, pops more than 40% in Nasdaq debut

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Gemini, the Winklevoss' crypto exchange, pops more than 40% in Nasdaq debut

Gemini Co-founders Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss attend the company’s IPO at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City, U.S., Sept. 12, 2025.

Jeenah Moon | Reuters

Shares of Gemini Space Station soared more than 40% on Thursday after the exchange operator raised $425 million in an initial public offering.

The stock opened at $37.01 on the Nasdaq after its IPO priced at $28. At one point, shares traded as high as $40.71.

The New York-based company priced its IPO late Thursday above this week’s expected range of $24 to $26, and an initial range of between $17 and $19. That valued the company at some $3.3 billion before trading began.

Gemini, which primarily operates as a cryptocurrency exchange, was founded by the Winklevoss brothers in 2014 and held more than $21 billion of assets on its platform as of the end of July. Per its registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gemini posted a net loss of $159 million in 2024, and in the first half of this year, it lost $283 million.

The company also offers a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, credit cards with a crypto-back rewards program and a custody service for institutions.

Gemini co-founders Tyler & Cameron Winklevoss: Bitcoin is gold 2.0, can easily go 10x from here

The Winklevoss brothers were among the earliest bitcoin investors and first bitcoin billionaires. They have long held that bitcoin is a superior store of value than gold. On Friday morning, they told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” they see its price reaching $1 million a decade from now.

In 2013, they were the first to apply to launch a bitcoin exchange-traded fund, more than 10 years before the first bitcoin ETFs would eventually be approved. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s rejection of the application, which cited risk of fraud and market manipulation, set the stage for the bitcoin ETF debate in the years to come.

Even in the early days, when bitcoin was notorious for its extreme volatility and anti-establishment roots and shunned by Wall Street, the Winklevoss brothers were outspoken about the need for smart regulation that would establish rules for the crypto-led financial revolution.

Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:

(Learn the best 2026 strategies from inside the NYSE with Josh Brown and others at CNBC PRO Live. Tickets and info here.)

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