Plus, Elon Musk’s xAI startup is valued at $50 billion. And the U.S. military selects a little-known Utah supplier for its drone program. Belle Lin hosts.
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[00:00:31] Here's your TNB Tech Minute for Wednesday, November 20. I'm Belle Lin for The Wall Street Journal.
[00:00:38] Chipmaker NVIDIA gave a strong outlook today, pointing to healthy demand for its next-generation chips.
[00:00:45] The company said sales surged to $35.1 billion in its latest quarter, and profits nearly doubled to $19.3 billion, both ahead of analyst and Wall Street forecasts.
[00:01:02] NVIDIA's shares fell in after-hours trading, however. Results fell short of some investors' expectations following several quarters of sky-high revenue and profits.
[00:01:13] And despite a hiccup with its Blackwell chips, which NVIDIA has blamed on engineering issues, the company stuck to an expectation that the chips will bring in several billion dollars of revenue in its current quarter, which ends in January.
[00:01:29] Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup XAI has told investors it raised $5 billion in a new funding round, more than doubling its valuation to $50 billion.
[00:01:42] The funding is expected to come from Qatar's sovereign wealth fund and the investment firm's Valor Equity Partners, Sequoia Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz.
[00:01:53] That's according to people familiar with the matter.
[00:01:56] The new financing brings the total amount XAI has raised to $11 billion this year.
[00:02:02] And the U.S. Army is bypassing some of venture capital's best-funded drone makers to buy technology from Teal Drones, a little-known manufacturer based in Salt Lake City, Utah.
[00:02:15] The company was selected as the winner of a military program to provide thousands of small surveillance drones.
[00:02:23] That's according to a regulatory filing and an Army document viewed by the Wall Street Journal.
[00:02:29] The Army has said it needs nearly 12,000 drones for its short-range reconnaissance program, its biggest effort yet to acquire small surveillance aircraft.
[00:02:40] A purchase of that size could give Teal roughly $260 million in revenue in the coming years.
[00:02:47] For a deeper dive into what's happening in tech, check out Thursday's Tech News Briefing podcast.