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The Okta Inc. website on a laptop computer arranged in Dobbs Ferry, New York, U.S., on Sunday, Feb. 28, 2021.

Tiffany Hagler-Geard | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Okta has shed more than $2 billion from its market valuation since the company disclosed a hack of its support systems on Friday. The high-profile incident is the latest in a string of incidents that have been tied to Okta or its products, including a spate of intrusions at casinos that crippled Las Vegas hotel rooms for days.

Okta shares slumped more than 11% on Friday after the company said that an unidentified hacking group was able to access client files through a support system. The company did not provide more details beyond a set of technical identifiers.

The company’s stock continued to fall in Monday trading, ultimately closing down 8.1%.

Okta is a lesser-known name but forms a critical part of cybersecurity systems at major corporations. The identity-management company boasts more than 18,000 customers who use its products to provide a single login point for many different platforms that a given company uses. Zoom, for example, uses Okta to give “seamless” access through a single login to the company’s Google Workspace, ServiceNow, VMWare and Workday platforms.

Okta said it had communicated with all affected clients in Friday’s announcement. At least one of those clients said it had alerted Okta about a potential breach weeks earlier.

In a separate post Friday, privately held identity management firm BeyondTrust, said that it had told Okta’s security teams about suspicious activity in BeyondTrust’s own Okta systems on October 2. Okta didn’t initially acknowledge the incident as a breach after BeyondTrust alerted the company, despite what BeyondTrust described as concerns that “there was a high likelihood of compromise within Okta support and that we were likely not the only customer impacted.”

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Okta shares since the day it first acknowledged a support system breach.

Okta's support system breached using stolen credentials

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Govini, a defense tech startup taking on Palantir, hits $100 million in annual recurring revenue

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Govini, a defense tech startup taking on Palantir, hits 0 million in annual recurring revenue

Govini, a defense tech software startup taking on the likes of Palantir, has blown past $100 million in annual recurring revenue, the company announced Friday.

“We’re growing faster than 100% in a three-year CAGR, and I expect that next year we’ll continue to do the same,” CEO Tara Murphy Dougherty told CNBC’s Morgan Brennan in an interview. With how “big this market is, we can keep growing for a long, long time, and that’s really exciting.”

CAGR stands for compound annual growth rate, a measurement of the rate of return.

The Arlington, Virginia-based company also announced a $150 million growth investment from Bain Capital. It plans to use the money to expand its team and product offering to satisfy growing security demands.

In recent years, venture capitalists have poured more money into defense tech startups like Govini to satisfy heightened national security concerns and modernize the military as global conflict ensues.

The group, which includes unicorns like Palmer Luckey’s Anduril, Shield AI and artificial intelligence beneficiary Palantir, is taking on legacy giants such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, that have long leaned on contracts from the Pentagon.

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Dougherty, who previously worked at Palantir, said she hopes the company can seize a “vertical slice” of the defense technology space.

The 14-year-old Govini has already secured a string of big wins in recent years, including an over $900-million U.S. government contract and deals with the Department of War.

Govini is known for its flagship AI software Ark, which it says can help modernize the military’s defense tech supply chain by better managing product lifecycles as military needs grow more sophisticated.

“If the United States can get this acquisition system right, it can actually be a decisive advantage for us,” Dougherty said.

Looking ahead, Dougherty told CNBC that she anticipates some setbacks from the government shutdown.

Navy customers could be particularly hard hit, and that could put the U.S. at a major disadvantage.

While the U.S. is maintaining its AI dominance, China is outpacing its shipbuilding capacity and that needs to be taken “very seriously,” she added.

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We tested OpenAI’s Sora 2 video generator to find out why Hollywood is freaking out

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We tested OpenAI’s Sora 2 video generator to find out why Hollywood is freaking out

The launch of OpenAI’s updated Sora 2 AI video service kicked off another round of anxiety among musicians, actors and other content creators.

Sora allows users to generate short videos for free by typing in a prompt. The app is only available on iOS devices and is limited to invitees, meaning people need a code to access it. Still, Sora has climbed to the No. 1 spot in Apple’s App Store, and OpenAI said this week it hit 1 million downloads in less than five days after launch.

Major Hollywood groups like the Motion Picture Association have objected to OpenAI’s copyright policies, and top Hollywood agencies are calling it “exploitation.” That’s led to changes in how the model handles prompts for certain sensitive categories of generated content.

CNBC’s Julia Boorstin got access to Sora 2 and tried prompts like “show me a video of a fat orange cartoon cat eating lasagna” and “create a superhero that wears a black cape and is saving a woman from a burning building.” Some of the prompts failed due to copyright infringement, while others worked. Watch the video to see what happens when we put Sora 2 to the test.

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Applied Digital stock climbs 16% as AI demand fuels data center growth

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Applied Digital stock climbs 16% as AI demand fuels data center growth

Cheng Xin | Getty Images

Applied Digital shares jumped 16% on Friday after the company posted strong first-quarter revenue that was boosted by artificial intelligence data center demand, putting the stock up more than 350% for the year.

Here’s how the company did compared to LSEG estimates:

  • Loss per share: Loss of 7 cents vs. a loss of 13 cents expected
  • Revenue: $64.2 million vs. $50 million expected

First quarter revenue of $64.2 million was up 84% from a year ago, when it reported $34.85 million in revenue.

The data center company reported earnings after the bell on Thursday.

During the quarter, Applied Digital built on its $7 billion lease agreement with CoreWeave that was announced in June for another 150 megawatts at the firm’s Polaris Forge 1 campus in North Dakota. The additional capacity brings the anticipated contracted lease revenue for the project up to $11 billion.

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“With hyperscalers expected to invest approximately $350 billion into AI deployment this year, we believe we are in a prime position to serve as the modern-day picks and shovels of the intelligence era,” CEO Wes Cummins said in a release.

The new 150 MW building will join two other data cell blocks, each hosting 100 MW and 150 MW. The company noted that one building is nearly complete and construction will begin on the other.

Applied Digital also secured funding from Macquarie Equipment Capital for a second campus in North Dakota, dubbed Polaris Forge 2. The estimated $3 billion factory will hold two 150 MW buildings, bringing the total leased capacity to 600 MW across both campuses.

An initial 200 MW of power is expected to come online in 2026 and reach full capacity in 2027, the company said.

The company had a net loss of $18.5 million in the first quarter, a loss of 7 cents per share. A year ago, the company posted a net loss of $4.29 million, a loss of 3 cents per share.

Analysts polled by LSEG expect a loss of 15 cents per share for the second quarter on revenue of $76 million.

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Applied Digital 5-year stock chart.

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