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DETROIT, MI – SEPTEMBER 29: Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes (15) runs with the ball during a regular season game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Detroit Lions on September 29, 2019 at Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan. (Photo by Scott W. Grau/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Icon Sportswire | Icon Sportswire | Getty Images

On any given Sunday, there will be more National Football League games available on streaming services than ever before — some even exclusively.

The NFL season kicks off Thursday with the Super Bowl champions Kansas City Chiefs hosting the Detroit Lions. Since the season opener is considered a “Sunday Night Football” game on the schedule, NBCUniversal will air the game on both its broadcast network and streaming app, Peacock.

This more aggressive shift toward streaming comes after several seasons of companies such as Paramount Global, Comcast’s NBCUniversal and Disney‘s ESPN showing games simultaneously on streaming services and traditional TV. Now, media companies are bulking up their streaming platforms with more exclusive content in hopes of not only signing up more subscribers, but also locking them in as long-term customers.

Later in the season, Peacock, along with Disney’s ESPN+ and Amazon, will have games that will be streamed only. Google’s YouTube TV and the NFL’s streaming service will also become bigger players in the streaming game.

Streaming may also play a bigger role in NFL viewership as Disney’s networks have gone dark for customers of cable-TV provider Charter Communications, which could coax football fans to opt for internet TV bundles such as Fubo.

When media giants signed NFL media rights deals in 2021, valued at more than $100 billion, more of those deals included the rights to streaming games. Plus, in this past year, the NFL sold the media rights to its “Sunday Ticket” to Google‘s YouTube TV for about $2 billion annually, shifting access to the package of out-of-market games to a streaming-only audience.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell had pushed for a streaming-only home for “Sunday Ticket,” saying in the months ahead of closing the deal that he thought it was “best for consumers at this stage.”

Who’s streaming the NFL?

More and more NFL games are being offered through streaming services in addition to their broadcast and pay-TV homes, but this season will see more games exclusively available outside the traditional TV ecosystem.

“I don’t think simulcasts had a material impact on streaming services, which is why they’re pushing so much more exclusively to these platforms,” said Daniel Cohen, executive vice president of global media rights consulting at Octagon.

Two exclusive games will air on NBCUniversal’s Peacock this season. NBCUniversal earlier started simultaneously airing “Sunday Night Football” on NBC and Peacock. Its first-ever regular season game on Peacock happens late in the season in December when the Buffalo Bills take on the Los Angeles Chargers.

The first-ever NFL wild card playoff game to be solely streamed occurs shortly after that on Jan. 13 on Peacock.

“Expanding the digital distribution of NFL content while maintaining wide reach for our games continues to be a key priority for the league, and bringing the excitement of an NFL playoff game exclusively to Peacock’s streaming platform is the next step in that strategy,” Hans Schroeder, executive vice president and chief operating officer of NFL Media, said in a release earlier this year.

The NFL has been a vehicle for attracting more Peacock subscribers, Comcast executives have said on recent investor calls. Peacock had 24 million subscribers as of June 30.

The Kansas City Chiefs’ Skyy Moore celebrates scoring a touchdown, Feb. 12, 2023.

Brian Snyder | Reuters

“Sunday Night Football,” the top-rated prime-time show on TV, averaged nearly 20 million viewers last year, and its Peacock audience has been slowly growing in the single-digit percentage range.

Paramount+ also airs games on both broadcast network CBS and its Paramount+ platform, although it doesn’t have any exclusive offerings. Fox Corp., which also owns the rights to Sunday NFL games, doesn’t stream games other than through its authenticated app, which requires a pay-TV subscription.

Disney, which holds the rights to “Monday Night Football,” will air an international NFL game exclusively on its ESPN+ platform for the second time since last season.

Other than this, games that exclusively air on Disney’s broadcast network ABC will also be on ESPN+, as well as some “Monday Night Football” games that air on ESPN. ESPN+ had 25.2 million subscribers as of July 1.

More people may opt into streaming services to watch “Monday Night Football” this season depending on how long the carriage blackout between cable company Charter and Disney drags on. Disney alerted Charter customers they can subscribe to internet TV bundles such as its Hulu + Live TV.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s Prime Video, which enters its second season as the home of “Thursday Night Football,” will exclusively stream the first-ever Black Friday game after Thanksgiving this year, which will see the New York Jets host the Miami Dolphins.

Amazon’s inaugural “Thursday Night Football” game last season attracted more than 13 million viewers, the most streamed game ever, according to Nielsen. During that same game, Amazon saw a record amount of Prime signups during a three hour period during its debut game.

On top of this, those who want to watch out-of-market games on “Sunday Ticket” will have to subscribe to YouTube TV, shifting the package away from satellite-TV provider DirecTV for the first time ever.

The league’s own NFL+ will also become a beefed up offering this year, offering access to the NFL Network and NFL RedZone channels.

But will these exclusive games be enough to move the needle? It depends, Cohen said.

“One of three things will happen,” Cohen said. “Fans will not care enough to dig into their wallet for a subscription, or they will sign up for a free trial subscription and cancel after the games, or they will pirate the game.”

Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC.

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AI chipmaker Cerebras withdraws IPO

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AI chipmaker Cerebras withdraws IPO

AI chipmaker Cerebras pulls IPO after raising $1 billion

Artificial intelligence chipmaker Cerebras Systems said on Friday that it’s withdrawing plans for an IPO, days after announcing that it raised over $1 billion in a fundraising round.

In a filing with the SEC, Cerebras said it does not intend to conduct a proposed offering “at this time,” but didn’t provide a reason. A spokesperson told CNBC on Friday that the company still hopes to go public as soon as possible.

Cerebras filed for an IPO just over a year ago, as it was ramping up to take on Nvidia in an effort to create processors for running generative AI models. The filing revealed a heavy reliance on a single customer in the United Arab Emirates, Microsoft-backed G42, which is also a Cerebras investor.

In its prospectus, Cerebras said it had given voluntary notice to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States about selling shares to G42. In March, the company announced that the committee had provided clearance.

Since its initial filing to go public on the Nasdaq, Cerebras has shifted its focus away from selling systems and more toward providing a cloud service for accepting incoming queries to models that use its chips underneath.

The announced withdrawal comes three days into a U.S. government shutdown that’s left agencies like the SEC operating with a small staff. In a plan for a shutdown published in August, the SEC said its electronic system EDGAR “is operated pursuant to a contract and thus will remain fully functional as long as funding for the contractor remains available through permitted means.”

On Tuesday, Cerebras said it had raised $1.1 billion at a valuation of $8.1 billion in a private funding round. At the time, CEO Andrew Feldman said that the company still wanted to go public, rather than continue to raise venture capital.

“I don’t think this is an indication of a preference for one or the other,” he told CNBC in an interview. “I think we have tremendous opportunities in front of us, and I think it’s good practice, when you have enormous opportunities, not to let them fall by the wayside for lack of capital.”

Feldman thought the original prospectus from last year was out of date, especially considering developments in AI, the spokesperson said on Friday.

Well heeled technology companies have been quickly signing up for additional infrastructure to handle demand. On Tuesday CoreWeave, which rents out Nvidia chips through a cloud service, said it had signed a $14.2 billion agreement with Meta. ChatGPT operator OpenAI said last week that it had committed to spending $300 billion on cloud services from Oracle.

The government shutdown did not factor into Cerebras’ decision, the spokesperson said.

WATCH: Interview with Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman

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Amazon shutters 4 Fresh stores in Southern California as grocery strategy keeps shifting

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Amazon shutters 4 Fresh stores in Southern California as grocery strategy keeps shifting

An employee arranges a salad dressing display at an Amazon Fresh grocery store on December 12, 2024 in Federal Way, Washington.

David Ryder | Getty Images

Amazon is closing four more Fresh supermarkets in Southern California as the e-commerce giant continues to focus its grocery strategy around Whole Foods and delivery.

The closures will take place in the coming weeks, Amazon confirmed to CNBC. They follow the shuttering of four other U.S. locations in recent months, in Washington, Virginia, New York and a Los Angeles suburb.

“Certain locations work better than others, and after an assessment, we’ve made the decision to close these Amazon Fresh locations,” Amazon spokesperson Griffin Buch said in a statement. “We’re working closely with affected employees to help them find new roles within Amazon wherever possible.”

At one Fresh supermarket in La Verne, California, employees were told to gather for an all-hands meeting on Wednesday, according to an internal message viewed by CNBC. They learned at the meeting that the store would close in mid-November, and that employees would receive a severance package, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the details were confidential.

The other three stores that are closing are in cities of Mission Viejo, La Habra and Whittier.

Last week, Amazon said it intends to close 14 Fresh grocery stores in the U.K. and convert its five other locations there into Whole Foods markets.

Amazon said it regularly evaluates its store portfolio, which can lead to opening, reopening, relocating or closing certain locations. In the U.S., the company has more than 60 remaining Fresh stores. Last year, the company removed its “Just Walk Out” cashierless technology from the stores. It’s also been culling its footprint of Go cashierless convenience stores.

Amazon has been determined to become a major grocery player for nearly two decades. The company launched Amazon Fresh in 2007, then a pilot project for fresh food delivery, before acquiring upscale chain Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in 2017, its biggest purchase on record.

Amazon debuted its Fresh grocery chain in 2020, with an eye toward mass-market shoppers. The rollout has been turbulent since its early days.

The company opened a flurry of Fresh locations by 2022, but the expansion plans ran into CEO Andy Jassy’s widespread cost-cutting efforts as the company reckoned with the impact of rising interest rates and soaring inflation. In 2023, Amazon announced it would shut some Fresh stores and halt further openings temporarily as it evaluated how to make the chain stand out for shoppers.

While it’s closing Fresh stores, Amazon continues to “innovate and invest in making grocery shopping easier, faster, and more affordable,” Buch said. The company still maintains 500 Whole Foods locations and has opened mini “daily shop” Whole Foods stores in New York City.

On Wednesday, Amazon also launched a new “price-conscious” grocery brand that will be offered online and in its physical stores. And last month, Amazon expanded same-day delivery of fresh foods to more pockets of the U.S.

Jassy and other company executives have touted the success of sales of “everyday essentials” within its online grocery business, which refers to items such as canned goods, paper towels, dish soap and snacks. Jassy told investors at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in May that he remains “bullish” on grocery, calling it a “significant business” for Amazon.

WATCH: Amazon grocery could be a trojan horse to more revenue

Amazon's grocery could be a trojan horse to move revenue higher, says Evercore ISI's Mark Mahaney

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Quantum stocks Rigetti Computing and D-Wave surged double-digits this week. Here’s what’s driving the big move

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Quantum stocks Rigetti Computing and D-Wave surged double-digits this week. Here's what's driving the big move

Inside Google’s quantum computing lab in Santa Barbara, California.

CNBC

Quantum computing stocks are wrapping up a big week of double-digit gains.

Shares of Rigetti Computing, D-Wave Quantum and Quantum Computing have surged more than 20%. Rigetti and D-Wave Quantum have more than doubled and tripled, respectively, since the start of the year. Arqit Quantum skyrocketed more than 32% this week.

The jump in shares followed a wave of positive news in the quantum space.

Rigetti said it had purchase orders totalling $5.7 million for two of its 9-qubit Novera quantum computing systems. The owner of drugmaker Novo Nordisk and the Danish government also invested 300 million euros in a quantum venture fund.

In a blog post earlier this week, Nvidia also highlighted accelerated computing, which it argues can make “quantum computing breakthroughs of today and tomorrow possible.”

Investors have piled into quantum computing technology this year, as tech giants Microsoft, Nvidia and Amazon have embraced the technology with a wave of new chip announcements, multi-million dollar investments and research plans.

Read more CNBC tech news

Quantum computing is the most radical technology in history: Bank of America's Haim Israel

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