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Sachin Dev Duggal, CEO, Builder.ai, April 19, 2023.

Scott Mlyn | CNBC

LONDON — Microsoft invested an undisclosed sum into Builder.ai, a startup that helps companies make applications without any coding experience, doubling down on its artificial intelligence efforts.

Founded in 2017 and headquartered in London, Builder.ai falls into the camp of startups that make so-called “no-code” and “low-code” platforms. Its software allows anyone from tech-shy artists looking to sell their work online to design professionals with limited programming experience to develop and manage apps.

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Through a strategic partnership, Microsoft plans to integrate Builder.ai’s own AI assistant Natasha into its Teams video and chat software to let customers build business apps within the platform. Builder.ai will also enhance Natasha by leveraging Microsoft’s AI algorithms to make it sound more human, the company said.

The collaboration will give Builder.ai and its clients access to Microsoft’s Azure suite of cloud tools, including a set of AI services it offers through a tie-up with U.S. startup OpenAI, Builder.ai said. Developers on the Microsoft Azure platform will also be able to tap into Builder.ai’s network of experts, it added.

“We’re all convinced that the future of software is going to be where the customer doesn’t need to be technical,” Duggal told CNBC in an interview. “What we’re really doing is bringing together a world where customers are able to build software, run software, host software.”

“For Microsoft, it opens up not only a brand new customer that’s become digital native, but somebody that’s coming on to the Azure Cloud, where that building of the software is leveraging core parts of the Microsoft stack, as well as the Builder stack. So I think from that perspective, it’s really quite holistic. And the mission really is to empower the next 100 million software applications.”

Jon Tinter, corporate vice president of business development at Microsoft, said the deal marked “an extension of our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”

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“We see Builder.ai creating an entirely new category that empowers everyone to be a developer and our new, deeper collaboration fuelled by Azure AI will bring the combined power of both companies to businesses around the world,” Tinter said in a statement.

Builder.ai and Microsoft declined to disclose the financial terms of the deal.

Microsoft has massively expanded its investments in AI lately, plowing a reported $13 billion into OpenAI, the company behind popular AI chatbot ChatGPT, and incorporating the firm’s AI language processing software into its Bing search engine and Office productivity apps.

The deal signifies a further bid by Microsoft to ramp up its efforts in AI, which has become a key focus for the company as it looks to become a leader in the technology and compete more aggressively in search with fellow technology giant Google.

The Alphabet-owned company has made investments of its own into AI, seeking to make digital entities more conversational and humanlike with its LaMDA language processing model, and rolling out a rival to ChatGPT called Bard.

Microsoft already offers its own suite of no-code app development tools. With Builder.ai, it is hoping to advance its expertise in this area.

A critical component of the deal for Builder.ai is the endorsement of the world’s second-most valuable tech company, Duggal said.

“If you imagine we’re going to go speak to big enterprise … who’s going to ask us about competency at that point?” Duggal told CNBC. “It gives you a huge leverage from go to market [strategy], which in itself benefits both partners.”

Builder.ai has raised a total of $195 million in funding to date, according to Crunchbase data. It is one of numerous startups that have benefited from renewed investor interest in AI technology lately.

At the same time, advances in the technology have led to concerns from researchers that it is getting too powerful. In March, a group of tech heavyweights including Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak wrote an open letter calling for a six-month moratorium on the development of AI more powerful than GPT-4, OpenAI’s latest large language model.

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Qualcomm says it expects $4 billion in PC chip sales by 2029, as company gets traction beyond smartphones

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Qualcomm says it expects  billion in PC chip sales by 2029, as company gets traction beyond smartphones

Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon speaks at the Computex forum in Taipei, Taiwan, June 3, 2024.

Ann Wang | Reuters

Qualcomm said on Tuesday that it expects its push into new markets to generate an additional $22 billion per year by 2029.

Of that amount, roughly $4 billion will come from PC chips, Qualcomm said at its investor day on Tuesday. The chipmaker just introduced PC processors earlier this year, when it released Snapdragon X for Windows devices.

The latest forecast marks an important milestone for Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon, who took over the company in 2021 with a promise to get past a reliance on smartphones. In fiscal 2024, Qualcomm’s handset business reported $24.86 billion in sales, about 75% of its entire chip business.

Qualcomm also said on Tuesday that automotive revenues would rise about 175% by 2029 to $8 billion, of which 80% is tied to contracts that have already been secured.

We have been on this trajectory realizing that the technologies we have developed over the many years can be very relevant to a number of different industries beyond mobile,” Amon said at the investor event.

Another $4 billion in revenue will come from industrial chips and $2 billion will come from chips for headsets, a category Qualcomm calls XR. About $4 billion of the forecast is a catch-all for other chip sales, like those for wireless headphones and tablets.

Qualcomm shares are up 16% this year, trailing the Nasdaq, which has gained 26%.

Qualcomm grew rapidly over the past decade as its modems and processors became essential parts for high-end smartphones, especially those running Google Android. Qualcomm also sells modems and related parts to Apple for its iPhones.

But the company has warned investors that Apple could choose to stop buying Qualcomm parts as soon as 2027. Qualcomm said on Tuesday that its growing businesses will more than offset any losses from Apple.

A Li Auto L9 electric vehicle (EV) is seen displayed at the Qualcomm booth during the first China International Supply Chain Expo (CISCE) in Beijing, China November 28, 2023. 

Florence Lo | Reuters

Qualcomm’s strategy under Amon has been to use the technology its developed for its handset chips, like modems, processors, and AI accelerators, in new markets, including cars, PCs, and virtual reality. The investor event was the first time in years that the company has given a forecast for those new markets. Qualcomm said its total addressable market is as large as $900 billion.

“We put a strategy in ’21, and we’re not changing our strategy,” Amon said.

Laptop and desktop chips are currently dominated by Intel, which has over 70% percent of the market, according to Mercury Research. Intel reported $29 billion in PC chip sales in its 2023.

“The competitive landscape changed between the Windows and Macs,” Amon said, referring to Apple’s move in 2020 to switch from Intel to its own processors. “We saw that as an opportunity, especially as the ecosystem did not have confidence in the existing players to actually deliver a solution.”

The forecast for XR headsets also hints at the growth potential of the VR market over the next five years. Qualcomm supplies chips to many of the top headset makers, including Meta for its Quest and Ray-Bans products.

When it comes to artificial intelligence, Qualcomm calls itself an “edge AI” company, in contrast to cloud-based AI that’s typically powered by Nvidia processors. Company officials didn’t rule out introducing data center products in an interview with CNBC.

Qualcomm suggested that its mobile chips will be able to run the kind of advanced AI that’s restricted to large server farms today, an indication that that company may benefit from the AI boom down the road as the technology becomes more efficient.

“What you can run on the cloud last year, you can run on the device this year,” Durga Malladi, Qualcomm’s senior vice president in charge of planning, said at the event.

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Bitcoin ETF options begin trading, ushering in a new way for investors to hedge their bitcoin exposure

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Bitcoin ETF options begin trading, ushering in a new way for investors to hedge their bitcoin exposure

Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Options on BlackRock’s popular iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) began trading on the Nasdaq Tuesday, ushering in a new way to trade and speculate on the price of bitcoin.

IBIT traded 73,000 options contracts in the first 60 mins of trading Tuesday, Nasdaq told CNBC, placing the fund in the top 20 of the most active nonindex options.

Options trading allows investors to play bitcoin’s notorious volatility by letting them buy or sell an asset at a predetermined price based on whether they anticipate the price will rise or fall in a given period.

“Bitcoin has a lively derivatives market, but in the U.S. it is still tiny compared to other asset classes, and is largely limited to institutional players,” said Noelle Acheson, economist and author of the “Crypto is Macro Now” newsletter. “A deeper onshore derivatives market will enhance the growing market sophistication. This will reinforce investor confidence in the asset, bringing in new cohorts while enabling a greater variety of investment and trading strategies … [That] should, all else being equal, dampen both volatility and downside.”

The market for options contracts on major ETFs can be extremely active, and are widely used by more sophisticated traders. For example, over the past five business days, Interactive Brokers clients have more options orders on the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ) and the SDPR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) than for the funds themselves, according to data from the brokerage.

The launch of the bitcoin ETF options will likely also lead to new funds that incorporate those options, said Todd Sohn, ETF strategist at Strategas.

“Grayscale already did a filing for a covered call [fund], and I’m sure BlackRock will come out with it too. And then we’re going to get buffers, and then we’re going to get whatever other trend-following-type strategy that folks think of. I think the ecosystem’s really going to start to fly here,” Sohn said.

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Intuit, H&R Block shares fall after report that Trump government efficiency team is considering tax-filing app

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Intuit, H&R Block shares fall after report that Trump government efficiency team is considering tax-filing app

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The stock prices for H&R Block and Intuit fell after a report Tuesday said Trump’s government efficiency team is considering creating a free tax-filing app.

Intuit, which makes the TurboTax tax-filing software, was down 5%, putting it on pace for its worst day since Aug. 23, when the company’s stock price fell nearly 7%. H&R Block was down 8% and on pace for its worst day since 2020.

President-elect Donald Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” has held “highly preliminary” discussions about creating the free tax-filing app, The Washington Post reported. The so-called DOGE will not be an official government department but an outside advisory commission. It will be led by billionaire Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and aims to slash government spending.

A DOGE tax-filing app would be a competitor of both H&R Block and TurboTax.

Intuit spokeswoman Tania Mercado didn’t directly address the prospect of a government tax-filing app, but told CNBC in a statement that, “For decades, Intuit has publicly called for simplifying the U.S. tax code so individuals, families, and small businesses can better understand their finances.”

George Agurkis, H&R Block’s director of government relations, said in an email that the company looks forward “to engaging with the new Administration and the Department of Government Efficiency on their ideas related to sound and efficient tax administration.”

It’s unclear where a new DOGE tax app would bridge with newer policies the Biden administration already implemented. Under the Biden administration, the IRS in March rolled out a pilot Direct File program in 12 states, allowing qualified taxpayers to file directly through a government portal. The IRS also offers free filing services through its Free File program for taxpayers who make an adjusted gross income of $79,000 or less. 

While both Intuit and H&R Block have free filing options, neither have had stellar records when it comes to transparently offering those services. 

The Federal Trade Commission in February filed an administrative complaint against H&R Block for deceptively marketing free filing products and wrongfully deleting users’ in-progress tax data. Intuit, meanwhile, agreed to pay $141 million in restitution “for deceiving millions of low-income Americans into paying for tax services that should have been free,” according to the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James.

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