After a recent infusion of government money into technology that sucks carbon out of the air, big business is getting in as well.
Amazon announced Tuesday that it will help fund the world’s largest deployment of direct air capture (DAC) technology by purchasing a quarter of a million metric tons of carbon removal over the next decade from STRATOS, the first DAC plant from 1PointFive, a carbon removal technology company. Amazon did not disclose the dollar value of the investment.
The carbon that is removed through the air capture systems will then be stored underground in saline aquifers, which are large rock formations saturated in salt water.
A quarter of a million metric tons of carbon dioxide is equivalent to the emissions in one year from 55,633 gasoline-powered cars, according to the EPA.
Amazon, through its Climate Pledge Fund, is also investing in CarbonCapture Inc., a climate tech firm that is helping to accelerate commercial deployment of new DAC materials to absorb carbon.
“With these two new investments in direct air capture, we aim to target emissions we can’t otherwise eliminate at their source,” Kara Hurst, Amazon’s VP of worldwide sustainability, said in a release. “We’re also helping launch technologies we know the world will need to avoid the worst effects of global climate change — supporting those technologies’ growth so they’ll also be available to other companies and organizations.”
Amazon is attempting to decarbonize its global operations through wind and solar renewable energy projects, delivery fleet electrification and reduction in the weight packing per shipment.
Amazon’s announcement comes on the heels of Microsoft‘s news that it has agreed to buy carbon credits from California-based startup Heirloom Carbon, which uses limestone to remove carbon from the atmosphere. The credits will remove up to 315,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide over the next decade. That would amount to at least $200 million based on market prices. The carbon offsets are equivalent of the annual emissions of roughly 70,000 gas-powered cars.
Heirloom’s DAC Hub was recently selected by the U.S. Department of Energy for up to $600 million in matching funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
“As an investor in and customer of Heirloom, we believe that Heirloom’s technical approach and plan are designed for rapid iteration to help drive down the cost of large-scale Direct Air Capture at the urgent pace needed to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement,” Brian Marrs, Microsoft’s senior director of energy and carbon, said in a release.
While these are some of the largest financial commitments to DAC, scientists say that worldwide, it’s necessary to remove about 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in this century in order to keep global warming below the 1.5 degrees Celsius-limit set by the Paris Agreement, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
“Solving big problems requires innovation and invention of new technologies that don’t exist yet, and it’s important that we use all the tools available to us to make the greatest impact,” Hurst said.
Chinese tech company Baidu announced Wednesday its Apollo Go robotaxi arm has entered a strategic partnership with PostBus in Switzerland.
Baidu
BEIJING — Chinese tech giant Baidu announced Wednesday that its robotaxi unit will start test drives in Switzerland in December, as firms race to get their vehicles on European roads.
The company’s Apollo Go unit will work with Swiss public transit operator PostBus through a strategic partnership, Baidu said.
By the first quarter of 2027, the companies aim to begin operating a public-facing fully driverless taxi service called “AmiGo” that uses Apollo Go’s RT6 electric vehicles, the press release said. Baidu added that once the robotaxis are up and running, the operators plan to remove the cars’ steering wheels.
Plans to start tests in December are the most concrete steps Baidu has announced so far in getting its robotaxis on public roads in Europe.
The Chinese tech company said in August that it would partner with U.S. ride-hailing company Lyft to deploy robotaxis in the U.K. and Germany starting in 2026. A month earlier, Baidu announced a partnership with Uber to deploy Apollo Go robotaxis on the ride-hailing platform outside the U.S. and mainland China later in the year.
Other robotaxi companies are also racing to expand into Europe and the Middle East, after building up operations in the U.S. and China.
On Friday, Chinese robotaxi operator Pony.ai announced it will work with Stellantis to begin tests in Luxembourg in the coming months, before expanding to other European cities next year.
U.S. rival Waymo, owned by Google parent Alphabet, last week also announced plans to start tests in London before launching the self-driving taxi service there next year. Uber in June said it would start trials in spring 2026 of fully autonomous rides in the U.K. with SoftBank-backed self-driving tech startup Wayve.
— CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.
Cast and filmmakers hop on the KPop Demon Hunters-Sing Along Experience at Paris Theater on August 23, 2025 in New York City, U.S.
Roy Rochlin | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
Netflix’s business leaders and investors probably aren’t enjoying a soda pop after the release of its third-quarter results. While the company’s revenue met expectations — though not beating them as it did the first and second quarters — earnings were taken down by a tax dispute with Brazilian authorities. Shares of Netflix fell around 6% in extended trading Tuesday stateside.
But it doesn’t look like any other media company will dethrone Netflix as the king of streaming in the near term. Warner Bros. Discovery said Tuesday it’s open to a sale — and Netflix is reportedly an interested buyer — even as Warner Bros. is going ahead with its split into two companies in the meantime. Elsewhere, Comcast’s NBCUniversal is currently spinning off its cable networks, which includes CNBC. Those moves suggest that legacy media is still finding its footing amid the era of streaming inaugurated by Netflix.
While there are many factors contributing to Netflix’s golden status, its shows are likely the main protagonists. “KPop Demon Hunters,” released in June, was a smash hit. It’s now the company’s most-watched film, hitting 325 million views and surely played a huge role in Netflix’s best ad sales quarter ever in the third quarter. Even as the streaming giant’s earnings stumbled during that period, Netflix is still showing other media companies how it’s done.
— CNBC’s Sarah Whitten contributed to this report.
What you need to know today
India is close to a trade deal with U.S., local media reports. As part of the agreement, the White House could slash tariffs on New Delhi to 15%-16% from the current 50%, according to Indian media outlet Mint on Wednesday. India could also reduce oil purchases from Russia.
Japan’s exports return to growth in September. However, the 4.2% year-on-year increase, which snapped four months of declines, was below the 4.6% rise expected by a Reuters poll of economists. Shipments to Asia climbed 9.2% from a year earlier, while those to the U.S. fell 13.3%.
[PRO] ‘Buyback aristocrats’ are outperforming the market. The term refers to companies that have reduced their share counts across a certain period of time — a portfolio of them has outperformed the equal-weight S&P 500 since 2012, according to Goldman Sachs.
And finally…
A large computerised display of the British FTSE 100 index.
Unlike in the United States, conglomerates — giant companies owning numerous businesses across different sectors — have more or less died out in Britain. This was reinforced when last Friday Smiths Group, the FTSE-100 engineering company, announced a major disposal as it sheds its conglomerate status.
The Smiths break-up marks the end of an era in which conglomerates dominated the ranks of Britain’s biggest companies. Yet traces of the old U.K. conglomerates are everywhere.
— Ian King
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which owns CNBC. Versant would become the new parent company of CNBC upon Comcast’s planned spinoff of Versant.
A group of prominent figures, including artificial intelligence and technology experts, has called for an end to efforts to create ‘superintelligence’ — a form of AI that would surpass human intellect.
More than 800 people, including Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak and former U.S. National Security Advisor Susan Rice, signed a statement published Wednesday calling for a pause on the development of superintelligence.
In a statement published Wednesday, with over 800 signatories, including prominent AI figures and the biggest names in AI, ranging from Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak to former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, called for a pause on the development of superintelligence.
The list of signatories notably includes prominent AI leaders, including scientists like Yoshua Bengio and Geoff Hinton, who are widely considered “godfathers” of modern AI. Leading AI safety researchers like UC Berkeley’s Stuart Russell also signed on.
Superintelligence has become a buzzword in the AI world, as companies from xAI to OpenAI compete to release more advanced large language models. Meta notably has gone so far as to name its LLM division the ‘Meta Superintelligence Labs.’
But signatories of the recent statement warn that the prospect of superintelligence has “raised concerns, ranging from human economic obsolescence and disempowerment, losses of freedom, civil liberties, dignity, and control, to national security risks and even potential human extinction.”
The statement calls for a prohibition on superintelligence development until strong public buy-in and a broad scientific consensus that it can be done safely and controllably is reached.
In addition to the AI figures, the names behind the statement come from a broad coalition of academics, media personalities, religious leaders and ex-politicians.
Other prominent names include Virgin’s Richard Branson, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen, and British royal family member Meghan Markle. Prominent media allies to the U.S. President Donald Trump, including Steve Bannon and Glen Beck also signed on.
As of Wednesday, the list of signatories was still growing.
