Every tech company is talking up its AI opportunity. Oracle is no exception. But during an earnings call in March, Oracle’s Larry Ellison laid out a future market opportunity focused on a major customer that investors may think about less often that Fortune 500 companies.

The Oracle founder, former CEO and current chairman and chief technology officer, sees national and state government applications being run on platforms like Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to a much greater degree than today, and indicated that it’s starting to happen in a variety of ways.

“We talk about, you know, winning business with companies. For the first time, we’re beginning to win business for countries,” Ellison said. “We have a number of countries where we’re negotiating sovereign regions with the national government.”

Major tech companies vying for massive government contracts in the cloud are nothing new. Microsoft and Amazon had a lengthy battle over a cloud deal with the Department of Defense, and both those AI players as well as Oracle and Google ended up all in on a $9 billion DoD contract in 2022.

But Ellison went further in his prediction when speaking with analysts on the recent earnings call, saying “Every government, pretty much every government, is going to want a sovereign cloud and a dedicated region for that government.”

Oracle, which works with Nvidia and Microsoft on generative AI capabilities, has already helped use cloud tech to cut red tape for countries. One example Ellison gave was Albania. It is trying to ascend to the European Union with the help of chatGPT, with the generative AI helping to decipher and summarize its laws and aid the country in what it needs to change in order to be compliant with E.U. regulations.

“It took Serbia eight years to harmonize their laws to be able to join the E.U.,” Ellison said. “Albania is facing the same thing, but with generative AI, we can read the entire corpus of the Albanian laws and actually harmonize their laws with the EU in probably more like 18 months to two years.”

Some analysts are skeptical of Ellison’s talk as being anything more than typical C-suite rallying for a key business unit. Oracle shares are up about 21% YTD, but Barclays analyst Raimo Lenschow expressed concern about lower OCI growth during its latest earnings, which could “worry investors, as this is the main investment story.”

A version of future featuring cloud services and artificial intelligence-powered solutions can make government more efficient. Ellison said for starters, redundancy is a focus for government, in the case of disaster and disaster recovery. But it’s also moving into health care information and internet access projects.

Countries including Serbia are standardizing on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and using generative AI for processes like automating health care. Deals related to delivery of internet services in partnership with Elon Musk’s Starlink to remote areas are taking place in Kenya and Rwanda, where OCI and Starlink are mapping rural farms to see which crops are growing in what area, and if they are getting enough nutrients like nitrogen and water.

“These maps are AI-assisted, help them plan their agricultural output and predict their agricultural output, predict markets, the logistics of the agricultural output, doing all of all of those things as next-generation national applications,” Ellison said.

Food security, rural school and rural hospital internet access, are other examples of what Ellison said are among the “all sorts of interesting new AI applications out there that you’ve probably never heard of before, at least I hadn’t heard of before until these last 12 months now that we’ve worked on and we’re now in the process of delivering.”

He also mentioned automation of vaccination programs, and other healthcare program “across the board.”

“We’re living in a world where like data and information is the gold of the future,” said Dan Gardner, CEO of digital strategy agency Code and Theory. “If the government can get access and action on that their data faster, why would we want to slow that down? We want that to be as efficient as possible. A lot of that is like mundane human resources, that maybe those people could be doing something else that is way more valuable.”

Cloud and generative AI applications allowing countries to give rural areas internet access could increase educational opportunities and create more economic value. It could also allow citizens to have more insight into government processes, said Tapan Parikh, Cornell University associate professor. “One thing technology’s always been good at is potentially making bureaucracies more efficient, or at least more transparent internally,” he said.

‘Black Mirror’ governments

But the push to move more government processes to the cloud is also opening the door to new risks, especially as countries trust newly developed generative AI systems. While they may make processes faster than ever, there are bound to be mistakes as the technology develops and could make citizen data accessible to cyber criminals.

“We shouldn’t use these technologies as an excuse to not maintain oversight and control over political processes,” Parikh said. “Certainly, I think that’s a very important thing, particularly when you’re dealing with countries that may not have the same kind of governance capacity.”

Oracle did not respond to a request for additional comment on Ellison’s earnings call discussion.

“There’s the ‘Black Mirror’ bad side of it: Big Brother, data wars, AI warfare and all that stuff,” Garder said. “As far as like removing red tape and being more efficient and getting better use out of crops across the country, that’s incredible. That’s the multiplier of humanity that could really improve because of AI.”

AI raises a host of concerns.

Gardner pointed to the proliferation of more generative content in an election year around the world and all the issues related to tech-enabled interference. “Maybe it’s not like chips on the ground. But it’s data security, authentication of who you are, who governments are, what content you’re viewing, all the connection points between financial systems, and AI governance. Using AI as a tool of destruction is quite scary.” 

“No big government in the world can afford to move all of their services and especially critical ones like defense, taxes, health care, completely into the cloud and into the hands of gen AI,” said Simone Bohnenberger, chief product officer at cloud company Phrase. “It’s just not in the realm of, I think it’s not responsible to do that. The potential risks outweigh the benefits of doing that.”

OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, is mostly trained on existing content on the internet. That could pose a problem, especially when text from lesser known languages like Albanian need to be analyzed, Bohnenberger said.

“If you look at the World Wide Web or the internet, the vast majority of content there’s English, I think a quarter of the content is English, followed by Chinese,” she said. “Albanian is a minority. It’s very questionable for me how well that actually works for a small country like Albania and like an outlier language, because there’s just not much data you can train a model on. And if you don’t have much data, then the outputs will be very messy.”

Then there’s security and data risks with allowing foreign companies access to citizen data, Parikh said. Even the U.S., with all its resources, has been vulnerable to data hacks, including a recent February incident with contractor CGI Federal which exposed personally identifiable information on employees. The recent battle between the U.S. and China over TikTok is an example of how control of sensitive consumer data can be interjected into geopolitics. “I think certainly that’s a concern going forward for countries who are working with vendors from different countries,” Parikh said.

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority on Friday said Vodafone’s proposed merger with rival CK Hutchison will face an in-depth probe, unless the two mobile operators provide “meaningful solutions” to the regulator’s concerns.

Vodafone and CK Hutchison‘s British brand Three have five working days to supply their answers.

The CMA opened a probe into the proposed tie-up back in January. In its latest update Friday, the CMA said it was concerned the deal would lead to a substantial lessening of competition, result in higher prices for consumers and create an unfavorable environment for mobile virtual network operators.

Mobile virtual network operators, or MVNOs, are a spate of new network operators that have cropped up over the years that use underlying infrastructure from existing telcos, rather than being created from scratch.

Announced last year, Vodafone and CK Hutchison’s transaction would merge the two brands’ U.K. businesses, giving Vodafone a 51% controlling stake and leaving CK Hutchison with the minority interest. Vodafone UK CEO Ahmed Essam was set to helm the new enterprise, with Three UK Chief Financial Officer Darren Purkis slated for the CFO position.

The CMA on Friday said that the deal proposed by Vodafone and CK Hutchison could lead to higher prices and reduced quality for U.K. mobile customers. Vodafone and Three are two of the four biggest network providers in Britain and offer important alternatives for consumers, the CMA said.

Three is generally the cheapest of the U.K.’s big four mobile networks, the CMA noted, and combining it with Vodafone could “reduce rivalry between mobile operators to win new customers.”

The CMA also flagged it was worried the deal could make it more difficult for MVNOs such as Sky Mobile, Lebara and Lyca Mobile to negotiate good deals for their customers. Both Vodafone and Three are used by notable MVNOs.

Lebara and Asda Mobile use Vodafone, while Superdrug Mobile is among the MVNOs that uses Three.

Vodafone and Three said that the CMA’s announcement that it intends to refer the firm’s deal with Three for an in-depth Phase 2 review was an “expected next step in the process and in line with the timeframe for completion that we set out from the outset.”

In a joint statement, the two companies said they remain confident that the transaction will deliver benefits for competition, customers and the U.K.

They noted that the quality of mobile network services in the U.K. lags significantly behind other European countries, and that their networks are “sub-scale, unable to cover their cost of capital, and constrained in their ability to invest and compete effectively” against market leaders EE and Virgin Media O2 (VMO2).

Vodafone’s Essam on Friday said that the deal would “create an operator with the scale required to take on BTEE — referencing BT and its mobile brand EE — and VMO2, give MVNOs greater choice in the wholesale market and is in the wider interests of customers, competition and the country.”

Robert Finnegan, CEO of Three U.K., said that the current market structure is “holding the U.K. back, which is not good for customers or competition.”

“By creating a third player with the necessary scale to invest, the combination of our two companies will deliver one of Europe’s most advanced networks and move the U.K. into the digital fast lane, benefiting customers from day one,” Finnegan said.

Elon Musk on Wednesday visited the Tesla Gigafactory near Berlin, which was forced to halt production last week after losing power during a suspected arson attack.

Pictures show Musk waving to workers as he arrived at the factory in German state Brandenburg and addressing them on stage in a tent where employees gathered to meet him.

Local media also reported that Musk told the crowd “I love you” in German, but that his further comments were drowned out by a factory vehicle parking in front of journalists and blasting music.

Musk is expected to meet regional politicians during his visit to Germany, local media said, citing state government sources. CNBC could not independently verify the reports.

Last week, the Gigafactory was left without power and had to temporarily stop production after a suspected arson on an electric substation close by. Tesla said that the incident was aimed at the company, in a statement on social media platform X.

Left-wing extremist group ‘Vulkangruppe’ claimed responsibility for the attack in a letter posted online, criticizing Tesla’s environmental competencies. Regional authorities are still investigating the case.

The Brandenburg factory is slated for expansion, but the project has met significant resistance from locals and environmental groups, as it would mean the destruction of forests in the area. Activists have set up camp near the factory in protest.

The plant was able to rejoin the power grid earlier this week. Production resumed at the Gigafactory on Wednesday, Michaela Schmitz, chair of the works council at the plant, told local radio channel rbb24, according to a CNBC translation.

Employees received their full salaries during the production outage, she added.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Monday raised concerns about efforts to ban Chinese-owned social media app TikTok in the U.S., saying it would only serve to empower Meta’s Facebook platform.

“Without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger, and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people,” Trump, who was formerly U.S. president between 2017 and 2021, said in a CNBC TV interview on Monday.

Acknowledging his concerns around national security and data privacy over TikTok, Trump said “there’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad” with the platform.

“There are a lot of people on TikTok that love it. There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it,” Trump said.

CNBC has reached out to Meta for comment.

TikTok, which is owned by Chinese internet giant ByteDance, has exploded in popularity over the last few years, becoming an international sensation with its short videos.

It has also led regulators to fear that the software’s Chinese ownership would mean that it could share private user data at the request of the Beijing government.

ByteDance, like other Chinese companies, would be forced to disclose such information if asked to do so, experts say. China’s National Intelligence Law of 2017 requires organizations and citizens to “support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work.”

In 2020, the Trump administration unsuccessfully tried to have TikTok removed from app stores in the U.S. due to these concerns. Trump subsequently ordered ByteDance to divest TikTok within 90 days. This effort, which at one point saw Microsoft put a bid in for TikTok’s U.S. business, also never came to fruition.

Now, U.S. lawmakers are once again stepping up efforts to tackle concerns surrounding TikTok, with separate pieces of legislation proposing either a divestiture of TikTok by ByteDance, or a full ban. Incumbent President Joe Biden, who has expressed national security concerns over TikTok, has also said he would sign a bill to ban the app, if Congress passes it.

Trump has recently softened his tone, saying he fears a TikTok ban would only serve to make Facebook more powerful.

In Monday’s interview, Trump said that he feels TikTok remains a national security risk, given its Chinese ownership — but he also deflected attention to Facebook, noting that the platform has similar issues concerning privacy and security.

“If China wants anything from [TikTo], they will give it, so that’s a national security risk [that] goes up,” Trump acknowledged. “But when I look at it, I’m not looking to make Facebook double the size. And if you if you ban TikTok, Facebook and others — but mostly Facebook — will be a big beneficiary, and I think Facebook has been very busy.”

“I think Facebook has been very bad for our country, especially when it comes to elections,” Trump added.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin, in a rare public appearance over the weekend, told a group of artificial intelligence enthusiasts that he came out of retirement “because the trajectory of AI is so exciting.”

Brin, 50, spoke to entrepreneurs on Saturday at the “AGI House” in Hillsborough, California, just south of San Francisco, where developers and founders were testing Google’s Gemini model. AGI stands for artificial general intelligence and refers to a form of AI that can complete tasks to the same level, or a step above, humans.

In taking questions from the crowd, Brin discussed AI’s impact on search and how Google can maintain its leadership position in its core market as AI continues to grow. He also commented on the flawed launch last month of Google’s image generator, which the company pulled after users discovered historical inaccuracies and questionable responses.

“We definitely messed up on the image generation,” Brin said Saturday. “I think it was mostly due to just not thorough testing. It definitely, for good reasons, upset a lot of people.”

Google said last week that it plans to relaunch the image generation feature soon.

Brin co-founded Google with Larry Page in 1998, but stepped down as president of Alphabet in 2019. He remains a board member and a principal shareholder, with a stake in the company worth about $100 billion. He’s returned to work at the company as part of an effort to help ramp up Google’s position in the hypercompetitive AI market.

In some cases on Saturday, Brin said he was giving “personal” answers, as opposed to representing the company.

“Seeing what these models can do year after year is astonishing,” he said at the event, a recording of which was viewed by CNBC.

Regarding the recent challenges with Gemini that led to flawed image results, Brin said the company isn’t quite sure why responses have a leftward tilt, in the political sense.

“We haven’t fully understood why it leans left in many cases” but “that’s not our intention,” he said. The company has recently made accuracy improvements by as much as 80% on certain internal tests, Brin added.

Brin’s comments represent the first time a company executive has spoken on the Gemini matter in a live setting. The company previously sent prepared statements from Prabhakar Raghavan, Google’s head of search, and CEO Sundar Pichai in response to the controversial rollout.

Here’s what Raghavan said in a blog post on Feb. 23:

“So what went wrong? In short, two things. First, our tuning to ensure that Gemini showed a range of people failed to account for cases that should clearly not show a range. And second, over time, the model became way more cautious than we intended and refused to answer certain prompts entirely — wrongly interpreting some very anodyne prompts as sensitive. These two things led the model to overcompensate in some cases, and be over-conservative in others, leading to images that were embarrassing and wrong.”

Google declined to comment for this story. Brin didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Brin said Google is far from alone in its struggles to produce accurate results with AI. He cited OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Elon Musk’s Grok services as AI tools that, “say some pretty weird things that are out there that definitely feel far left, for example.”

Hallucinations, or false responses to a user’s prompt, are still “a big problem right now,” he said. “No question about it.”

“We have made them hallucinate less and less over time, but I’d definitely be excited to see a breakthrough that’s near-zero,” Brin said. “But you can’t just like — count on breakthroughs so I think we’re just going to keep doing the incremental things we do to bring it down, down, down over time.”

When asked by an attendee if he wants to build AGI, Brin answered in the affirmative, citing the ability for AI to help with “reasoning.”

Brin was also asked how online advertising will be disrupted considering ad revenue is core to Google’s business. The company has reported slowing ad growth in the last few years.

“I of all people am not too terribly concerned about business model shifts,” Brin said. “I think it’s wonderful that we’ve been now for 25 years, or whatever, able to give just world-class information search for free to everyone and that’s supported by advertising, which in my mind is great for the world.”

He did acknowledge that the business is likely to change.

“I expect business models are going to evolve over time,” he said. “And maybe it will still be advertising because advertising could work better, the AI is able to better tailor it.”

Brin is confident in Google’s position.

“I personally feel as long as there’s huge value being generated, we’ll figure out the business models,” he said.

Beyond AI, Brin was asked about Google’s difficulties in hardware given recent advancements in virtual reality. Google was notoriously early to the augmented reality market with the now-defunct Google Glass.

“I feel like I made some bad decisions,” he said, referring to Google Glass. If he were doing it differently, Brin said, he would have the treated Google Glass as a prototype instead of a product. “But, I’m still a fan of the lightweight” form, he said.

In regard to the Apple Vision Pro and Meta’s Quest headsets, Brin said, “They’re very impressive.”

When asked about how he sees Gemini impacting spatial computing or products like Google Maps or Street view, Brin responded with as much curiosity as anything.

“To be honest, I haven’t thought about it, but now that you say it, yeah there’s no reason we couldn’t put in more 3D data,” Brin said, to laughs from the crowd. “Maybe somebody’s doing it at Gemini — I don’t know.”

WATCH: Google vs. Google

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OpenAI executives disputed claims Elon Musk laid out in a lawsuit on Thursday, and said the Tesla CEO is upset that he’s no longer part of the artificial intelligence startup.

“We believe the claims in this suit may stem from Elon’s regrets about not being involved with the company today,” wrote OpenAI Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon in an internal memo on Friday that was viewed by CNBC. “It is deeply disappointing to see Elon take this action against a company he helped start, especially given his close collaboration with some of you who are still here working towards the mission.”

Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and stepped down from its board in 2018, four years after saying that AI is “potentially more dangerous than nukes.”

Musk is now suing Microsoft-backed OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, among others, alleging they abandoned the company’s founding mission to develop artificial intelligence “for the benefit of humanity broadly.”

Since releasing the ChatGPT chatbot to the public in late 2022, OpenAI has become one of the hottest startups on the planet, with a valuation reportedly over $80 billion. The company’s convoluted “capped-profit” structure resulted in Altman being briefly ousted by the board late last year, before an uproar among investors and employees led to his quick reinstatement.

Musk has long wanted recognition for his central role in the creation of OpenAI, and he spent large chunks of the lawsuit telling his version of events. His lawyers said in the suit that Musk was approached in 2015 by Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and agreed to form a nonprofit lab that would develop artificial general intelligence, or AGI, outside of the corporate sphere.

Musk’s attorneys said their client contributed over $15 million to OpenAI in 2016, which was “more than any other donor” and helped the startup build a team of “top talent.” The next year, Musk gave nearly $20 million to OpenAI, which the attorneys reiterated was more than other backers. In total, Musk invested over $44 million into OpenAI from 2016 through September 2020, according to the suit.

Additionally, Musk leased OpenAI’s initial office space “and paid the monthly rental expenses,” the suit said. He was also “present for important company milestones.”

Kwon didn’t dispute Musk’s central role in the early days of OpenAI, but he added some other details. For example, Kwon wrote that Musk at one point indicated he needed “full initial control and majority equity” and later suggested that OpenAI merge with Tesla.

“We did not think either approach was right for the mission,” Kwon wrote.

In the memo, Altman called Musk a hero of his and said the he misses the old version of his co-founder. But he said the company’s mission continues.

While it’s the first time the dispute between the two sides has resulted in a fiery lawsuit, they’ve been at odds for a while.

Before he split with OpenAI, Tesla hired co-founder Andrej Karpathy as senior director of AI. Karpathy returned to OpenAI in 2023. And Musk has been notably vocal in his opposition to OpenAI and its Microsoft partnership in recent years, stating publicly in November that OpenAI had deviated from its original mission.

“OpenAI should be renamed ‘super closed source for maximum profit AI,’ because this is what it actually is,” Musk said onstage at The New York Times’ DealBook conference. Regarding OpenAI’s transformation from an “open source foundation” to a multibillion-dollar for-profit company, Musk said, “I don’t know, is this legal?”

Kwon insisted on Friday that OpenAI is independent and continues to work “to ensure AGI benefits all of humanity.”

Musk’s lawyers didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny and Hayden Field contributed to this report

WATCH: Elon Musk lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman began a year ago

Elon Musk is suing Microsoft-backed OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, among others, alleging they abandoned the company’s founding mission to develop artificial intelligence “for the benefit of humanity broadly.”

In a lawsuit filed Thursday with a San Francisco court, Musk’s lawyers said the tech billionaire was approached in 2015 by Altman and OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and agreed to form a nonprofit lab that would develop artificial general intelligence for the “benefit of humanity.”

A co-founder of OpenAI in 2015, Musk stepped down from the firm’s board in 2018, four years after saying that AI is “potentially more dangerous than nukes.”

“To this day, OpenAI, Inc.’s website continues to profess that its charter is to ensure that AGI benefits all of humanity.’ In reality, however, OpenAI, Inc. has been transformed into a closed-source de facto subsidiary of the largest technology company in the world: Microsoft,” the lawsuit filing said.

Musk’s lawyers said in the lawsuit that OpenAI’s focus on maximizing profits for Microsoft breaks that agreement.

“Under its new Board, it is not just developing but is actually refining an AGI to maximize profits for Microsoft, rather than for the benefit of humanity,” the filing said.

OpenAI and Microsoft were not immediately available for comment.

Musk’s lawyers said the suit was submitted “to compel OpenAI to adhere to the Founding Agreement and return to its mission to develop AGI for the benefit of humanity, not to personally benefit the individual Defendants and the largest technology company in the world.”

Microsoft, which is facing scrutiny from EU antitrust regulators over its reported $13 billion investment in OpenAI, recently announced a new partnership with French start-up Mistral AI.

The U.S. tech giant said on Monday that it was investing in the company, which is regarded as Europe’s answer to OpenAI, to help it unlock “new commercial opportunities” and expand to global markets.

The legal action pits two of the world’s most prominent tech leaders against each other at a time of extraordinary hype over the future of AI.

Since debuting in November 2022, OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, has taken the world by storm. The AI tool quickly became the fastest-growing consumer application in history and kick-started the launch of rival chatbots from companies such as Google parent Alphabet and Microsoft.

Both Musk and Altman have been making headlines. Musk, considered the world’s richest person, runs electrical vehicle maker Tesla, rocket and satellite maker SpaceX, and bought X for $44 billion in October 2022. He recently reported the advances of the brain chip technology implants produced by his startup Neuralink.

Altman has meanwhile had a rocky relationship with OpenAI. He was suddenly fired from the company in November of last year, in a move that sent shock waves across the tech industry. The American entrepreneur — one of the leading figures in the AI boom — returned to the firm a few days later.

Shares of Intuitive Machines jumped 16% in trading Friday after the company’s successful first moon landing.

Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C cargo moon lander known as “Odysseus” on Thursday became the first privately developed spacecraft to land on the lunar surface — as well as the first U.S. spacecraft to soft-land on the moon in more than 50 years.

The company, based in Houston, Texas, confirmed that the IM-1 mission lander was standing upright and sending data back to Earth.

“Odysseus has found his new home,” Tim Crain, Intuitive Machines’ CTO and IM-1 mission director, said Thursday evening from the company’s mission control.

Intuitive Machines stock initially ripped 40% higher before paring gains with heavy trading volume to close at $9.59 a share. The company has a market valuation of about $1 billion.

The company’s stock has been rallying over the past month as excitement built in the lead-up to and progress of the IM-1 mission. Intuitive Machines went public via a SPAC a year ago and shares had steadily slid to all-time lows near $2 in January.

Wall Street analysts emphasized to CNBC ahead of the landing that the unprecedented nature of the event could lead to volatile momentum trading.

“We’ve never witnessed a publicly traded company go through [a moon landing attempt]. So this is new, not just for investors, but for us analysts as well,” Cantor Fitzgerald’s Andres Sheppard said before the landing.

In a note to investors after the landing, Cantor Fitzgerald increased its price target on Intuitive Machines’ stock to $13 a share from $4 a share.

“In our view, this validates the company’s technology and adds significant credibility to the business. As such, we believe Intuitive Machines is now very well positioned to continue to capitalize on the growing commercial space economy, and on subsequent launches,” Sheppard wrote in the note.

Intuitive Machines, in a statement Friday morning, said that “Odysseus is alive and well,” noting that the lander is charging its solar panels.

“Flight controllers are communicating and commanding the vehicle to download science data,” the company said.

The company and NASA plan to hold a press conference at 5 p.m. ET on Friday.

The Odysseus lander carried 12 government and commercial payloads — six of which are for NASA under a $118 million contract through the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, initiative.

Intuitive Machines has already won two more CLPS contracts for future lander missions, with IM-2 expected to launch as early as the second half of this year.

Additionally, the company has part of a five-year $719 million contract to provide engineering services to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Analysts expect the Goddard contract is worth about $11 million per month in revenue for Intuitive Machines, with Cantor Fitzgerald estimating the company will bring in about $338 million in fiscal year 2024 revenue.

Nvidia shares jumped more than 14% in premarket trade on Thursday after the chip giant posted bumper earnings that beat Wall Street estimates.

The U.S. tech giant posted revenue of $22.10 billion for its fiscal fourth quarter, a rise of 265% year-on-year, while net income surged by 769%, as the company continues to see a boost from excitement over artificial intelligence.

Nvidia chips are used to train the huge AI models such as those developed by Microsoft and Meta.

Nvidia sees no signs of slowing. The company forecast its revenue in the current quarter will hit $24 billion, way ahead of estimates.

“Fundamentally, the conditions are excellent for continued growth” in 2025 and beyond, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told analysts on Wednesday, adding to the bullish sentiment around the stock.

Nvidia’s Data Center business, which includes the company’s H100 graphics cards that are used for AI training, posted sales of $18.4 billion in the fourth quarter, representing 409% year-on-year growth.

The positive outlook from Nvidia prompted a round of broker upgrades on Thursday. JPMorgan raised its price target on Nvidia’s stock from $650 to $850, while Bank of America Global Research hiked its target from $800 to $925.

Nvidia’s stock closed at $674.72 on Thursday. Shares were under pressure ahead of the earnings report as traders took profit and investors were concerned that Nvidia might not be able to hit lofty expectations.

But its market-beating numbers dispelled those fears and also pulled other global chip stocks higher.

Shares of cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks plunged 19% in extended trading Tuesday, after the company reported a beat on the top and bottom lines but lowered its full-year guidance for revenue and billings.

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

Earnings per share: $1.46, adjusted, vs. $1.30 expectedRevenue: $1.98 billion vs. $1.97 billion expected

Net income was $1.7 billion for the quarter, or $4.89 per share, compared to $84 million, or $0.25 share, for the fiscal second quarter 2023.

The company is now guiding to full-year total billings between $10.1 and $10.2 billion, compared to its previous guidance of $10.7 and $10.8 billion. Palo Alto Networks also expects full-year revenue to range between $7.95 to $8 billion, compared to its prior guidance of $8.15 to $8.2 billion.

In a conference call with analysts, CEO Nikesh Arora said the lowered guidance was due to a “shift” in strategy, “wanting to accelerate growth, our platform migration and consolidation and activating AI leadership,” adding that the company expected “a difficult customer” as the company shifted stance.

Guidance for the upcoming quarter also fell short of consensus estimates. Analysts surveyed by LSEG expected the company to guide to fiscal third-quarter revenue of $2.04 billion, but Palo Alto Networks now expects revenue to range between $1.95 billion and $1.98 billion.

The new billings guidance represents full-year growth of between 10% and 11% versus previous guidance showing 16% to 17% billings growth. Similarly, Palo Alto Networks now expects full-year revenue growth between 15% and 16%, down from initial guidance showing 18% to 19% growth.

The lowered estimates come even as the AI frenzy sweeps up cybersecurity stocks and the broader technology sector. Arora said that the company would look to activate its “AI leadership strategy” in the earnings release.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.