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Early tech adopters are investing in a new toy: solar-powered electric yachts.

Across the globe superyachts are already a must-have for today’s rich and famous. There are some 5,555 of them navigating the world’s oceans and seas, according to SuperYacht Times’ State of Yachting Report.

New buyers are overwhelmingly American, with the report finding that 30% come from North America.

While glamorous, the boating industry takes a huge toll on the environment, releasing carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides into our air and waterways. 

To mitigate the environmental impact, some vessels have started adopting electric power sources. In Sweden, ForSea Ferries converted two 364-foot ferries from diesel engines to battery-powered versions. However, each ferry has 640 batteries that weigh nearly 200 pounds each, significantly increasing the weight of the vessels. 

In contrast, some companies have implemented solar-powered systems, which could potentially reduce that excessive weight. The market for solar-powered boats is projected by Allied Market Research to grow 14% by 2031 to $2.4 billion. 

Mike Horn, a professional explorer and adventurer who has traveled to the North Pole on a trimaran sailing vessel, is a proponent of this type of modern shipbuilding. 

“Electric yachts are the new generation of yachting,” he said. “I believe electric yachts and electric motors will be the main propulsion of pleasure yachts and even cargo vessels in the near future.”

Silent Yachts, based in Austria, and Poland’s Sunreef Yachts are two companies leading the development of this new technology.

Both companies use a similar technology, in which the solar panels harvest energy from the sun to recharge the battery. The lithium batteries also power onboard necessities like air conditioning and lighting. In the event that the sun isn’t strong enough, each vessel has a backup diesel generator that automatically recharges the battery.

“When we started building these yachts, many other boat builders told us there is no need for such a yacht,” said Silent Yachts CEO and co-founder Michael Köhler. “Everybody knows that it’s not a niche anymore. It is the new mass market.”

Silent Yachts builds yachts from the ground up and often refers to itself as the “Tesla of the seas.” Köhler, alongside his wife Heiki, founded the company in 2009. Since then, it’s delivered nearly 20 fully electric yachts and currently has over 30 in production in its shipyards in Italy and Turkey. 

The company says it has an order book of 160 million euros ($168 million), with prices ranging from 3.2 million euros for its 60-foot yacht to 30 million euros for the fully equipped version of its 120-foot vessel.

“We have the next generation of solar panels coming to the market, the next generation of electric batteries coming to the market, and the next generation of electric motors,” said Stephan Kress, chief innovation officer at Silent Yachts. “The advantage, which is already there, of electric yachting will become bigger and bigger.” 

Sunreef has been building yachts for over 20 years and its clients include celebrities like tennis star Rafael Nadal and Formula One driver Fernando Alonso. The company incorporates integrated solar panels into its yachts, which it calls a “unique” feature. 

“The goal of the solar panel was to be able to integrate them into the whole structure of the boat,” said Nicola Lapp, Sunreef co-founder and chief technology officer. “The solar panel on our boat can be located anywhere, even on curved surfaces on the hull side.”

Sunreef has two shipyards in Gdansk, Poland, and a third in the Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah, where it says it has around 60 yachts in production. It does the majority of its production in-house, including making its own solar panels.

“The price range really depends on the customization of the yacht,” said Lapp. “The smallest boat is around 1.5 million euros and on the upper range there really is no limit. The most expensive boat that we have sold is around 60 million euros.”

To date, the company says it has built over 300 yachts, with 30 being fully electric, and half of current production is either electric or a hybrid eco model. 

An important feature of the new technology, according to both Silent Yachts and Sunreef, is the relative simplicity of its day-to-day maintenance.  

“They don’t have any moving parts,” said Kress. “The electric motors, they are maintenance free. The only things that you would need to maintain on the boat are heat exchangers and the backup generator, which is very limited.”

Nevertheless, the technology does pose challenges for companies looking to adopt it for large commercial vessels like cargo or cruise ships.

“We think there is a sweet spot for solar electric boats between 50 and 120 feet,” said Kress. “Once you make the boats a lot bigger, the advantage of solar diminishes because you have a limited amount of power.”

Horn, the explorer, added that electric yachts “do have their place” in the market.

“But that alternative energy sources, like hydrogen, would be able to allow our vessel to go further,” he said.

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OpenAI to acquire Neptune, a startup that helps with AI model training

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OpenAI to acquire Neptune, a startup that helps with AI model training

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attends an event to pitch AI for businesses in Tokyo, Japan February 3, 2025.

Kim Kyung-hoon | Reuters

OpenAI has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Neptune, a startup that builds monitoring and de-bugging tools that artificial intelligence companies use as they train models.

Neptune and OpenAI have collaborated on a metrics dashboard to help teams that are building foundation models. The companies will work “even more closely together” because of the acquisition, Neptune CEO Piotr Niedźwiedź said in a blog.

The startup will wind down its external services in the coming months, Niedźwiedź said. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

“Neptune has built a fast, precise system that allows researchers to analyze complex training workflows,” OpenAI’s Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki said in a statement. “We plan to iterate with them to integrate their tools deep into our training stack to expand our visibility into how models learn.”

OpenAI has acquired several companies this year.

It purchased a small interface startup called Software Applications Incorporated for an undisclosed sum in October, product development startup Statsig for $1.1 billion in September and Jony Ive’s AI devices startup io for more than $6 billion in May.

Neptune had raised more than $18 million in funding from investors including Almaz Capital and TDJ Pitango Ventures, according to its website. Neptune’s deal with OpenAI is still subject to customary closing conditions.

“I am truly grateful to our customers, investors, co-founders, and colleagues who have made this journey possible,” Niedźwiedź said. “It was the ride of a lifetime already, yet still I believe this is only the beginning.”

WATCH: Sam Altman hits reset at OpenAI, pausing side bets to defend ChatGPT’s AI lead

Sam Altman hits reset at OpenAI, pausing side bets to defend ChatGPT’s AI lead

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Micron stops selling memory to consumers as demand spikes from AI chips

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Micron stops selling memory to consumers as demand spikes from AI chips

A person walks by a sign for Micron Technology headquarters in San Jose, California, on June 25, 2025.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Micron said on Wednesday that it plans to stop selling memory to consumers to focus on meeting demand for high-powered artificial intelligence chips.

“The AI-driven growth in the data center has led to a surge in demand for memory and storage,” Sumit Sadana, Micron business chief, said in a statement. “Micron has made the difficult decision to exit the Crucial consumer business in order to improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments.”

Micron’s announcement is the latest sign that the AI infrastructure boom is creating shortages for inputs like memory as a handful of companies commit to spend hundreds of billions in the next few years to build massive data centers. Memory, which is used by computers to store data for short periods of time, is facing a global shortage.

Micron shares are up about 175% this year, though they slipped 3% on Wednesday to $232.25.

AI chips, like the GPUs made by Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, use large amounts of the most advanced memory. For example, the current-generation Nvidia GB200 chip has 192GB of memory per graphics processor. Google’s latest AI chip, the Ironwood TPU, needs 192GB of high-bandwidth memory.

Memory is also used in phones and computers, but with lower specs, and much lower quantities — many laptops only come with 16GB of memory. Micron’s Crucial brand sold memory on sticks that tinkerers could use to build their own PCs or upgrade their laptops. Crucial also sold solid-state hard drives.

Micron competes against SK Hynix and Samsung in the market for high-bandwidth memory, but it’s the only U.S.-based memory supplier. Analysts have said that SK Hynix is Nvidia’s primary memory supplier.

Micron supplies AMD, which says its AI chips use more memory than others, providing them a performance advantage for running AI. AMD’s current AI chip, the MI350, comes with 288GB of high-bandwidth memory.

Micron’s Crucial business was not broken out in company earnings. However, its cloud memory business unit showed 213% year-over-year growth in the most recent quarter.

Analysts at Goldman on Tuesday raised their price target on Micron’s stock to $205 from $180, though they maintained their hold recommendation. The analysts wrote in a note to clients that due to “continued pricing momentum” in memory, they “expect healthy upside to Street estimates” when Micron reports quarterly results in two weeks.

A Micron spokesperson declined to comment on whether the move would result in layoffs.

“Micron intends to reduce impact on team members due to this business decision through redeployment opportunities into existing open positions within the company,” the company said in its release.

WATCH: Winners and losers from surge in prices for memory chips

The winners and losers from the surge in memory chip prices

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Microsoft stock sinks on report AI product sales are missing growth goals

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Microsoft stock sinks on report AI product sales are missing growth goals

Microsoft: Have not lowered sales quotas or targets for salespeople

Microsoft pushed back on a report Wednesday that the company lowered growth targets for artificial intelligence software sales after many of its salespeople missed those goals in the last fiscal year.

The company’s stock sank more than 2% on The Information report.

A Microsoft spokesperson said the company has not lowered sales quotas or targets for its salespeople.

The sales lag occurred for Microsoft’s Foundry product, an Azure enterprise platform where companies can build and manage AI agents, according to The Information, which cited two salespeople in Azure’s cloud unit.

AI agents can carry out a series of actions for a user or organization autonomously.

Less than a fifth of salespeople in one U.S. Azure unit met the Foundry sales growth target of 50%, according to The Information.

In another unit, the quota was set to double Foundry sales, The Information reported. The quota was dropped to 50% after most salespeople didn’t meet it.

In a statement, the company said the news outlet inaccurately combined the concepts of growth and quotas.

Read more CNBC tech news

“Aggregate sales quotas for AI products have not been lowered, as we informed them prior to publication,” a Microsoft Spokesperson said.

The AI boom has presented opportunities for businesses to add efficiencies and streamline tasks, with the companies that build these agents touting the power of the tools to take on work and allow workers to do more.

OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Salesforce, Amazon and others all have their own tools to create and manage these AI assistants.

But the adoption of these tools by traditional businesses hasn’t seen the same surge as other parts of the AI ecosystem.

The Information noted AI adoption struggles at private equity firm Carlyle last year, in which the tools wouldn’t reliably connect data from other places. The company later reduced how much it spent on the tools.

Read the full story from The Information here.

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