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

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.

The European Union on Friday agreed to landmark rules for artificial intelligence, in what’s likely to become the first major regulation governing the emerging technology in the western world.

Major EU institutions spent the week hashing out proposals in an effort to reach an agreement. Sticking points included how to regulate generative AI models, used to create tools like ChatGPT, and use of biometric identification tools, such as facial recognition and fingerprint scanning.

Germany, France and Italy have opposed directly regulating generative AI models, known as “foundation models,” instead favoring self-regulation from the companies behind them through government-introduced codes of conduct.

Their concern is that excessive regulation could stifle Europe’s ability to compete with Chinese and American tech leaders. Germany and France are home to some of Europe’s most promising AI startups, including DeepL and Mistral AI.

The EU AI Act is the first of its kind specifically targeting AI and follows years of European efforts to regulate the technology. The law traces its origins to 2021, when the European Commission first proposed a common regulatory and legal framework for AI.

The law divides AI into categories of risk from “unacceptable” — meaning technologies that must be banned — to high, medium and low-risk forms of AI.

Generative AI became a mainstream topic late last year following the public release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. That appeared after the initial 2021 EU proposals and pushed lawmakers to rethink their approach.

ChatGPT and other generative AI tools like Stable Diffusion, Google’s Bard and Anthropic’s Claude blindsided AI experts and regulators with their ability to generate sophisticated and humanlike output from simple queries using vast quantities of data. They’ve sparked criticism due to concerns over the potential to displace jobs, generate discriminative language and infringe privacy.

WATCH: Generative AI can help speed up the hiring process for health-care industry

Shares of SenseTime fell as much as 9.7% on Tuesday after U.S. short seller Grizzly Research alleged the Chinese artificial intelligence firm inflated its revenue.

SenseTime shares pared some of those losses in Hong Kong and closed 4.86% lower in the afternoon.

Grizzly Research alleged in a report on Tuesday that SenseTime engaged in a so-called “revenue round-tripping” program.

“SenseTime either directly or through intermediaries provides funds to customers that in turn are used to purchase goods from SenseTime that might never have been delivered,” Grizzly Research alleged. The short seller said it got this information via two court cases in China that described the scheme.

SenseTime said in a Hong Kong Stock Exchange filing that it is “reviewing the allegations and considering the appropriate course of action to take to safeguard the interests of all shareholders.”

The Chinese firm said it believes Grizzly Research’s report is “without merit and contains unfounded allegations and misleading conclusions and interpretations.”

SenseTime added that the report “shows a lack of understanding of the Company’s business model and financial reporting structure, and a lack of thorough reading of the Company’s public filings.”

Grizzly Research did not contact SenseTime to verify the information, SenseTime said in its statement.

SenseTime was once viewed as one of China’s most exciting artificial intelligence companies and is best-known for computer vision technology that can power facial recognition software.

However, the company has been a target of U.S. government sanctions. In 2019, Washington put SenseTime on the so-called Entity List, which restricts American firms from doing business with it. The U.S. alleged that SenseTime is linked to human rights violations in China’s Xinjiang region.

At the time, SenseTime said that it does “not have any business in, nor are we aware of our technology being used in the Xinjiang region.”

SenseTime proposed an initial public offering in Hong Kong in mid-2021 but postponed the listing later that year after the U.S. government added it to a list of “Chinese military-industrial complex companies.”

The company ended up doing its listing at the end of December, pricing shares at 3.85 Hong Kong dollars ($0.49). Shares closed at 1.37 Hong Kong dollars on Tuesday, 64% below their IPO price.

Due to SenseTime’s U.S. government blacklisting, the company “has a severely limited target market and therefore no outlook for any real improvement,” Grizzly Research said in its report.

The short seller also took aim at SenseTime’s technology, claiming it has “no competitive moat in AI.”

“We believe SenseTime is operating a fundamentally dead-ended facial recognition software business, plus some additional AI R&D projects with almost no chance of scalable future profits,” Grizzly Research said.

OpenAI investors are pushing to bring back Sam Altman as CEO one day after he was ousted by the board, according to people familiar with the matter.

Microsoft, Tiger Global and venture firm Thrive Capital are among several of OpenAI’s top backers that are part of an effort to reinstate Altman, said a source, who asked not to be named because discussions are confidential.

Sequoia Capital has also been in contact with Altman, a person familiar with knowledge of the matter told CNBC. Sequoia supports Altman and former OpenAI president Greg Brockman in whatever they choose to do next, whether it’s returning to OpenAI or creating a new startup, the person said. Sequoia also informed Microsoft that it would back efforts to bring back Altman and Brockman, the person said.

The Verge first reported on the talks to bring back Altman. The publication, citing a source, said Altman is “ambivalent” about returning and would demand governance changes. Altman didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. Nor did Thrive. Microsoft declined to comment.

OpenAI’s announcement late Friday that the company was firing Altman and replacing him on an interim basis with technology chief Mira Murati sent shockwaves across Silicon Valley. OpenAI has emerged as the hottest startup on the planet since launching its ChatGPT chatbot last year and spurring a rush of investment generative artificial intelligence market. The company had reportedly been in talks as recently as last month to sell employee shares at a valuation of $86 billion.

Microsoft, which has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI and has a close technology partnership with the company, was surprised by the announcement. In addition to ousting Altman, the company removed Brockman, the chairman, from his board leadership position but said he would remain as president. Brockman said later in the day that he quit.

WATCH: The OpenAI shakeup will not have a major impact on Microsoft, says analyst

After Sega’s blockbuster adaptation of its classic Sonic the Hedgehog gaming franchise on the big screen, the company suggested it wants to replicate that success with other hit video games in its arsenal.

Speaking with CNBC at the Web Summit tech conference in Libson, Portugal, Tuesday, Sega Chief Operating Officer Shuji Utsumi said that the company is thinking of bringing more of its lucrative intellectual property to other platforms, including movies and the gaming platform Roblox.

“Sonic is reviving,” Utsumi told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal, alluding to the success of the Sonic the Hedgehog adaptations in the box office.

Sonic the Hedgehog grossed $306.8 million in the box office, becoming a blockbuster win for the franchise even after initial angry reaction from fans over a poor rendition of the iconic character the first time Sega revealed it to the world.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 did even better, banking $405.4 million at the box office.

Now, Sega is looking to translate that success into other game adaptations. That might not just mean movies, Utsumi cautioned, adding that the company is looking at other ways to bring its IP to more consumers.

That could include bringing a Sonic experience to the Roblox gaming platform, where millions of people gather to build games and connect with each other in massive online communities, as well as mobile, too.

The company recently closed its acquisition of Rovio, the maker of the Angry Birds mobile game, for 706 million euros ($767.9 million).  

“We have other major IPs,” Utsumi said. “We are thinking of reviving other classical IPs too.”

Utsumi highlighted the Yakuza beat ’em up game and Persona role-playing game franchise as examples that could be adapted.

It comes as Sega is set to launch a new Yakuza game, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, next year. The company is also launching two new Persona games in 2024, too.

“As I say, we are trying to be in a lot of different categories, different areas like Roblox, movies,” Utsumi said. “All these IPs can be somewhere else other than games soon.”

Sega recently launched the latest iteration of its Yakuza game. Collectively, the Yakuza game series has sold 21.1 million units since its debut in 2005, according to Sega. Persona 5, the latest game in the franchise, has also seen considerable success selling over 9 million copies worldwide.

Yakuza is currently only available on PlayStation, Xbox and PC. Platforms. Persona is currently only available on Xbox, PlayStation, PC, and Nintendo Switch.

Sega is also on the hunt for more acquisitions as it seeks to expand its ownership of gaming studios, Utsumi said.

Utsumi suggested that the company would look to find more acquisition targets as opportunities in the market arise.

“As an entity of Sega Sammy, we are acquiring some of the companies. We just made an announcement [to buy Rovio]. We are still looking for opportunities for growth.”

Utsumi said that European gaming studios are “struggling” at the moment as they work to recover from the sales slump that followed the Covid-19 pandemic, as gamers emerged from lockdowns around the world and high inflation made people less willing to pay punchy prices for the latest titles.

“Japan studios are doing well. European studios are struggling,” Utsumi said. “I say all European developers are in a difficult time right now. Once, it was a kind of bubble. Now, it’s adjustment time.”

However, he struck an optimistic note for the future: “I think it’s going to be coming back. As long as you have solid development studios and also solid IPs.”

Sega isn’t the first company that’s looked to replicate the success of blockbuster entertainment franchises on other forms of media. Sony, Sega’s main Japanese gaming rival, made a big splash with its Spider-Man movie franchise, which the company adapted into several top video games.

Utsumi also addressed rumors of Microsoft interest to buy the company.

The Redmond, Washington technology giant reportedly considered acquiring Sega as well as Bungie, the studio originally responsible for Halo, the Verge reported earlier this year, citing internal documents from a hearing in the Federal Trade Commission lawsuit seeking to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

Sega’s operations chief dismissed the suggestion that Sega, which is owned by Sega Sammy Corporation, the company formed from the merger of Sega and Sammy Corporation in 2004, had any intention of being sold to another party.

“Many companies are interested. We feel honored,” Utsumi told CNBC.

“We have attractive IPs and potentials. Companies owned by the owner. A strong owner. I don’t think that kind of transaction is going to happen.”

The CEO of blockchain company Ripple has some strong words for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Brad Garlinghouse told CNBC’s Dan Murphy at the company’s Ripple Swell conference in Dubai that he thinks the agency has lost sight of one of its key tasks as a regulator.

“I think the SEC, in my opinion, has lost sight of their mission to protect investors. And the question is, who are they protecting in this journey?” Garlinghouse said Thursday. The SEC was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.

The SEC in 2020 accused Ripple and its executives of conducting a $1.3 billion securities fraud via sales of XRP to retail investors. Ripple, the regulator alleged, failed to register an ongoing offer and sale of billions of XRP tokens to investors, depriving them of adequate disclosures about XRP and Ripple’s business.

In July, Ripple was handed a pivotal victory as a judge ruled that XRP is not in and of itself a security. Following this, the SEC was denied a request for an interlocutory appeal. Then, in October, the SEC dropped its securities law violation charges against Garlinghouse and Ripple executive Chris Larsen.

The next key step in the case is the remedies discovery process. The SEC has 90 days from Nov. 9 to conduct remedies-related discovery, according to a proposed schedule submitted by the SEC.

“I think it is a positive step for the industry, not just for Ripple, not just for Chris and Brad, but for the whole industry, that the SEC has been put in check in the United States. And I’m hopeful this will be a thawing of the permafrost in the United States for really seeing an amazing industry that has immense potential thrive in the largest economy in the world,” Garlinghouse told CNBC.

Garlinghouse hopes that the U.S. will move beyond a situation where crypto regulation is dictated by a constant stream of litigation to a point where federal laws governing digital currencies are introduced by Congress.

“One of the things that people talk about is, one of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and thinking you’ll get a different outcome, the SEC is doing the same thing over and over again. And they think, I guess, they’re gonna get a different outcome at some point,” Garlinghouse continued.

“[Digital asset manager] Grayscale also had, I think, an important victory in the United States about the bitcoin ETF, where the judge had to get, a federal judge talking about a federal agency, the SEC, saying the SEC is being arbitrary and capricious,” he added, referencing an appeals court ruling that said the SEC was wrong to reject an application from Grayscale to create a bitcoin ETF.

“Generally, judges tend to be pretty down the middle and try to not be dramatic — those are damning words. So I think at some point, the SEC has to step back and realize that their approach of regulation through enforcement, let’s just bring lawsuits, that has to break.”

Ripple is a payments company that specializes in cross-border money transfers through the blockchain, a distributed database that records transactions across multiple computers. The company’s RippleNet network is used by financial institutions to send funds from one country to another.

Ripple also leverages XRP, a cryptocurrency, to make cross-border payments. The XRP token, which has become commonly associated with Ripple the company, is meant to act as a kind of “bridge” currency between one fiat currency and another as those transactions flow across countries.

So, say you want to send some money from the U.S. to Mexico. Ripple’s technology lets you do that by converting the U.S. dollars into XRP, transferring the XRP over to Mexico, and then converting it into Mexican pesos on the other side.

By doing so, Ripple says, you don’t need to have pre-funded accounts on the other side of a cross-border transaction in order to get that money.

That’s the business case for XRP from Ripple’s point of view. But XRP in its most common usage is ultimately a token that investors speculate on. And when its price dropped like a stone — like other cryptocurrencies — in the 2018 crypto bear market, regulators got concerned about the impact of these digital currencies on retail investors.

In Ripple’s case, unlike bitcoin, the cryptocurrency is predominantly owned by Ripple, which holds a huge amount of XRP in an escrow account and releases tokens on a quarterly basis to a mix of institutional investors and retail investors via sales on cryptocurrency exchanges. This is a big part of how Ripple makes money.

That has been a big point of contention for the SEC as it pursues its case against Ripple. Ripple, for its part, maintains that XRP shouldn’t be considered a security and is more akin to a currency or commodity. Being designated a security would mean Ripple having to file lots of paperwork and disclosures with regulators, a process that could prove costly.

Sony on Thursday reported a 29% drop in operating profit in the fiscal second quarter as the Japanese electronics giant suffered from weakness in its imaging sensor — or chip — business.

Here’s how Sony did in the September quarter versus LSEG consensus estimates:

Revenue: 2.8 trillion yen ($18.5 billion) versus 2.87 trillion yen expected. That represents an 8% increase year-over-year.Operating profit: 263 billion Japanese yen versus 304.4 billion yen expected. That marks a 29% drop year-over-year.

Sony attributed the significant drop in profit to weakness in its imaging sensor business, as well as declines in profit at its financial services and entertainment, technology and services businesses.

The company said profit in its chip division fell over 28% in the fiscal second quarter.

Sony supplies camera chips to consumer technology manufacturing giants like Apple, which uses its semiconductors in its iPhones.

Despite the slide in profit, the company increased its sales forecast for the full year, saying it now expects total sales of 12.4 trillion yen (up from earlier forecasts of 12.2 trillion yen) as it benefits from positive foreign exchange rates.

The Japanese yen has weakened significantly versus the dollar, and Sony makes most of its income outside of the U.S.

Sony also attributed to improvement to its revenue forecast to anticipated bumper performance in its video game, music and imaging and sensing solutions businesses.

Sony is expecting its game and network services business, which is responsible for its popular PlayStation console, games studios and gaming networks, to receive higher-than-expected sales in the full year, boosting performance.

The company has seen a strong start to its newly released Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 game, which is exclusive to PS5. The game sold more than 2.5 million copies in its first 24 hours, making it the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game in history for a 24-hour period.

Sony said it sold 4.9 million PlayStation 5 units in the fiscal second quarter, up from 3.3 million units sold in the fiscal first quarter.

The company said that it expects its PlayStation 5 console to hit its target of 25 million units shipped in 2023. That’s an important milestone as analysts and investors were watching for signs of Sony’s PS5 performance closely.

Sony’s results come after Nintendo earlier this week reported better-than-expected sales and profit for its fiscal second quarter on Tuesday, as it got a boost from the “Super Mario Bros. Movie” and highly anticipated May release of the “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” game.

In a interview, Sony’s Eric Lempel said this would mark the first year that PS5 is “fully stocked” after shortages that plagued the company in 2020 and 2021 due to supply chain constraints.

“We launched [PS5] back in 2020,” Lempel told CNBC. “We suffered from the same supply chain issues that everybody was dealing with. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to deliver PS5 to ever consumer that wanted one.”

Thursday’s results follow a fiscal first quarter which saw Sony report a 33% rise in revenue year-over-year to 3 trillion Japanese yen but a 31% year-on-year drop in profit to 253 billion yen.

The company at the time cited weakness in its financial services and pictures division, which saw a small slump on the back of strikes carried out by the Writers Guild of America and other unions, in protest against using artificial intelligence to generate movie scripts.

Sony said that it expects the strike to have an impact on its next financial year, but the firm is engaging in cost control measures to minimize it.