This photo illustration shows the ChatGPT logo at an office in Washington, DC, on March 15, 2023.
Stefani Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images
We are still some way off reaching human-level artificial intelligence despite rapid advances in the technology, according to an early investor in research laboratory DeepMind.
“In terms of artificial general intelligence, OpenAI, ChatGPT stuff: it’s like saying we’re going to jump to the moon,” Humayun Sheikh, a founding investor in AI startup DeepMind, which is now owned by Google, told CNBC in an interview.
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“We took a big jump, but we’re not at the moon yet.”
Sheikh, who held around 1.3% of DeepMind’s shares in 2011, said that large language models (LLM) like those developed by Microsoft-backed firm OpenAI, though impressive, are lightyears away from so-called artificial general intelligence, or AGI.
AGI is often referred to as the holy grail of AI. It is a hypothetical system capable of completing any task to the same level as a human.
This is very much: Google is not born yet, but Yahoo is.
Humayun Sheikh
CEO, Fetch.ai
“That’s really how I compare AGI with all the large language model companies which are popping up,” Humayun, who is now co-founder of AI and blockchain startup Fetch.ai, said.
“They are very limited. How you actually get them to do certain things is still in its infancy.”
“This is very much: Google is not born yet, but Yahoo is,” he added.
His comments come as Google-parent Alphabet merges DeepMind with Google Brain, part of the U.S. internet giant’s research division.
Google is racing to compete with Microsoft and other tech companies in the field of AI. Microsoft is making huge strides with its investment into OpenAI and the inclusion of the firm’s LLM technology into its Bing browser and other products.
Earlier this week, Demis Hassabis, the founder of DeepMind, told the Wall Street Journal that some form of AGI might be possible “in the next few years.”
Sheikh said he had a “lot of respect” for Hassabis and that the entrepreneur is “very aware of the ethics of AI.”
“One of the first things he has been always bringing out was, how do we control it? How do we put that boundary around it and make sure AI doesn’t go out of control?,” Sheikh said.
Google acquired DeepMind for $500 million in 2014 and is attempting to bolster its business by doubling down on AI in a bid to fend off the threat to its core search unit from OpenAI. Google launched its own chatbot alternative to ChatGPT, Bard, in March.
AI’s huge potential is seen in its ability to generate entirely new content from user prompts. People have used the technology to create everything from poems to quirky images and movie trailers, while kids are using it to help with their homework.
Experts have raised concern over the risks of sophisticated AI, however, with a group of tech leaders including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak calling for a six-month ban on the development of AI more advanced than GPT-4, the latest version of OpenAI’s massive language processing software.
The replica of the ARM is an electronic chip board during a collaborative ceremony launching a partnership between Malaysia and ARM Holdings in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on March 5, 2025.
Hari Anggara | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Arm Holdings shares dipped as much as 9% in after-hours trading on the company’s first-quarter earnings results Wednesday.
Here’s how the company did, compared with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG:
Earnings per share: 35 cents vs. 35 cents expected.
Revenue: $1.05 billion vs. $1.06 billion expected.
The company said it expects second-quarter revenue in the range of $1.01 billion to $1.11 billion, which was in line with $1.05 billion expected by analysts tracked by LSEG.
ARM is a chip technology firm that sells architecture for making chips that power billions of devices, including Apple and Qualcomm‘s chips.
During the quarter, Samsung launched the Galaxy Flip 7 based on the Exynos 2500, built on Arm’s compute subsystem platform.
CEO Rene Haas said in an interview with Reuters that the company was “consciously deciding to invest more heavily,” suggesting the company is considering designing its own processors.
Cristiano Amon, CEO & President, Qualcomm, on Centre Stage during day one of Web Summit 2024 at the MEO Arena in Lisbon, Portugal.
Shauna Clinton | Sportsfile | Getty Images
Qualcomm reported fiscal third-quarter earnings on Wednesday that beat Wall Street expectations and provided a stronger-than-expected guide for the current quarter. Qualcomm shares slid in extended trading.
Here’s how the chipmaker did for the quarter ending June 29 compared to LSEG consensus expectations:
Earnings per share: $2.77 adjusted versus $2.71 expected
Revenue: $10.37 billion versus $10.35 billion expected
In the current quarter, Qualcomm said it expected $2.85 per share at the midpoint of adjusted earnings on $10.7 billion in revenue at the midpoint. Analysts polled by LSEG were expecting $2.83 in adjusted earnings per share on $10.35 billion in revenue.
Net income during the quarter ending in June was $2.66 billion, or $2.43 per share, versus $2.13 billion, or $1.88 per share a year ago.
Qualcomm’s most important business is selling chips for smartphones under its Snapdragon brand, including the central processor and modem for high-end devices made by Samsung. It also provides modems to Apple. Its handset chip business reported $6.33 billion in revenue during the quarter, just shy of Wall Street expectations of $6.44 billion.
Qualcomm expects to lose Apple as a customer for its modem business in the coming years. But the company has been working to diversify its business by making chips for other devices, including Windows PCs and Meta‘s Quest virtual-reality headsets and Meta Ray-Bans smart glasses.
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Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon highlighted the company’s work with Meta in a short interview on Wednesday.
He said that making chips for devices like Meta’s Ray-Bans smart glasses was a good example of the chipmaker’s AI strategy, which was to embrace “personal AI,” or AI applications that run on devices, not the cloud.
Qualcomm reports its Meta revenues under its “Internet of Things” division, which had $1.68 billion in revenue during the quarter.
Amon referenced Mark Zuckerberg‘s AI vision statement Wednesday that focused on “personal superintelligence,” saying “the upside we had in the quarter within IoT is what we do in with smart glasses.”
CFO Akash Palkhiwala said that Meta had stronger-than-expected chip consumption during the quarter.
On Monday, Ray-Ban parent EssilorLuxottica said that sales of the smart glasses more than tripled on an annual basis.
“Mark put out a video today, just with a very clear vision of how they see personal AI and super intelligence evolving, and we are a key part of making that division happen,” Palkhiwala said.
Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are powered by a Qualcomm chip. Qualcomm, Samsung and Google are working on smart glasses, according to Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Amon also said Qualcomm would start to provide data about how much its chip business is growing without Apple — about 15% this year, he said.
Qualcomm is also looking to expand into data centers and sell versions of its chips that can be used for deploying artificial intelligence, Amon said on a call with an analysts. He said that Qualcomm was already in discussions with a major cloud company — called a hyperscaler — to supply AI chips. He said that Qualcomm could start to see revenues in its fiscal 2028.
“While we are in the early stages of this expansion, we are engaged with multiple potential customers,” Among said. “We are currently in advanced discussions with a leading hyperscaler.”
The company’s automotive business has been highlighted by Amon as one of the biggest growth opportunities for the company, but in the third quarter, it grew 21% to $984 million, below the 24% growth rate of the company’s IoT business.
Qualcomm’s other major division is QTL, which includes licensing fees for technology that Qualcomm developed and patented, including parts of the 5G standard. Overall, QTL revenues rose 11% to $1.32 billion.
Qualcomm said it spent just under $1 billion on cash dividends and $2.8 billion repurchasing 19 million shares of its stock during the quarter.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg presents Orion AR Glasses as he makes a keynote speech during the Meta Connect annual event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.
Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters
Meta’s Reality Labs, the unit tasked with building the futuristic metaverse, continues bleeding money.
The social media company reported its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday and revealed that Reality Labs logged an operating loss of $4.53 billion while recording $370 million in sales during the period. Analysts were projecting that unit to post a second-quarter operating loss of $4.99 billion while generating $381 million in sales.
The Reality Labs division oversees the Quest line of virtual reality headsets in addition to the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which are jointly developed with the French-Italian eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica. Meta wants Reality Labs to create cutting-edge products similar to the prototype Orion augmented reality glasses that could underpin a new, immersive computing platform.
But developing VR, AR and other new devices is an expensive endeavor, with the Reality Labs division logging nearly $70 billion in cumulative losses since late 2020. Meta in April said Reality Labs recorded an operating loss of $4.2 billion during the first quarter while bringing in $412 million in sales.
Although the Quest VR headsets haven’t become breakout hits, the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are showing signs of success.
EssilorLuxottica on Monday said Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses sales more than tripled year over year for the first half of 2025. The eyewear giant and Meta debuted in June the new Oakley Meta smart glasses, which is the latest product spawned from their partnership.
Meta said in April that an undisclosed number of Reality Labs employees who were part of its Oculus Studios VR and AR software unit were laid off.