The progress of Chinese tech companies across the entire stack is “remarkable,” OpenAI’s Sam Altman told CNBC, pointing to “many fields” including AI.

Altman’s comments come as China races against the U.S. to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) — where AI matches human capabilities — and roll out the technology across society.

Chinese progress is “amazingly fast,” he said. In some areas Chinese tech companies are near the frontier, while in others they lag behind, Altman added.

This is a breaking news story. Please refresh for updates.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Wednesday court testimony that he reached out to Apple CEO Tim Cook to discuss the “wellbeing of teens and kids.”

The comments came after the defense lawyer Paul Schmidt pointed to an email exchange between Zuckerberg and Cook from February 2018. “I thought there were opportunities that our company and Apple could be doing and I wanted to talk to Tim about that,” Zuckerberg said.

The email exchange was part of a broader portrayal by the defense attorney to show jury members that Zuckerberg was more proactive about the safety of young Instagram users than what was previously presented to court by the opposing counsel, going so far as to reach out to a corporate rival.

“I care about the wellbeing of teens and kids who are using our services,” Zuckerberg said when characterizing some of the content of the email.

Zuckerberg testified during a landmark trial in Los Angeles Superior Court over the question of social media and safety, which is being likened to the industry’s “Big Tobacco” moment.

Part of the trial focused on the alleged harms of certain digital filters promoting the cosmetic surgery, which Instagram chief Adam Mosseri previously testified about earlier in the trial.

Zuckerberg said that the company consulted with various stakeholders about the use of beauty filters on Instagram, but he did not specifically name them. The plaintiff’s lawyer questioned Zuckerberg about messages showing he lifted the ban because it was “paternalistic.”

“It sounds like something I would say and something I feel,” Zuckerberg replied. “It feels a little overbearing.”

Zuckerberg was pressed about the decision to allow the feature when the company had guidance from experts that the beauty filters had negative effects, particularly on young girls.

He was specifically asked about one study by the University of Chicago in which 18 experts said that beauty filters as a feature cause harm to teenage girls.

Zuckerberg, who noted that he believed this was referring to so-called cosmetic surgery filters, said he saw that feedback and discussed with the team, and it came down to free expression. “I genuinely want to err on the side of giving people the ability to express themselves,” Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg echoed Mosseri’s previous sentiments shared in court that Meta ultimately decided to lift a temporary ban on the plastic surgery digital filters without promoting them to other users.

Defense attorney Mark Lanier noted that Facebook vice president of product design and responsible innovation Margaret Stewart said in an email that while she would support Zuckerberg’s ultimate decision, she said she didn’t believe it was the “right call given the risks.” She mentioned in her message that she dealt with a personal family situation that she acknowledged made her biased, but gives her “first-hand knowledge” of the alleged harms.

Zuckerberg said that many Meta employees disagree with the company’s decisions, which is something the company encourages, and while he understood Stewart’s perspective, there was ultimately not enough causal evidence to support the assertion of harms by the outside experts.

When Lanier asked if Zuckerberg has a college degree that would indicate expertise in causation, the Meta chief said, “I don’t have a college degree in anything.”

“I agree i do not know the legal understanding of causation, but I think I have a pretty good idea of how statistics work,” Zuckerberg said.

The trial, which began in late January, centers on a young woman who alleged that she became addicted to social media and video streaming apps like Instagram and YouTube.

The Facebook founder pushed back against the notion that the social media company made increasing time spent on Instagram a company goal.

Zuckerberg was addressing a 2015 email thread in which he appeared to highlight improving engagement metrics as an urgent matter for the company.

While the email chain may have contained the words “company goals,” Zuckerberg said the comments could have been an aspiration, and asserted that Meta doesn’t have those objectives.

Lawyers later brought up evidence from Mosseri, which included goals to actively up user daily engagement time on the platform to 40 minutes in 2023 and to 46 minutes in 2026.

Zuckerberg said the company uses milestones internally to measure against competitors and “deliver the results we want to see.” He asserted that the company is building services to help people connect.

Lawyers also raised questions over whether the company has taken adequate steps to remove underage users from its platform.

Zuckerberg said during his testimony that some users lie about their age when signing up for Instagram, which requires users to be 13 or older. Lawyers also shared a document which stated that 4 million kids under 13 used the platform in the U.S.

The Facebook founder said that the company removes all underage users it identifies and includes terms about age usage during the sign-up process.

“You expect a 9-year-old to read all of the fine print,” a lawyer for the plaintiff questioned. “That’s your basis for swearing under oath that children under 13 are not allowed?”

Instagram did not begin requiring birthdays at sign-up until late 2019. At several times, Zuckerberg brought up his belief that age-verification is better suited for companies like Apple and Google, which maintain mobile operating systems and app stores.

Zuckerberg later responded to questions about documents in which the company reported a higher retention rate on its platform for users who join as tweens. He said lawyers were “mischaracterizing” his words and that Meta doesn’t always launch products in development such as an Instagram app for users under 13.

During Wednesday’s session, Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl threatened to hold anyone using AI smart glasses during Zuckerberg’s testimony in contempt of court.

“If you have done that, you must delete that, or you will be held in contempt of the court,” the judge said. “This is very serious.”

Members of the team escorting Zuckerberg into the building just before noon ET were pictured wearing the Meta Ray-Ban artificial intelligence glasses.

Recording is not allowed in the courtroom.

Lawyers also questioned whether Zuckerberg previously lied about the board’s inability to fire him.

If the board wants to fire me, I could elect a new board and reinstate myself,” he said, in response to remarks he previously made on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

During his interview with the podcaster last year, Zuckerberg had said he wasn’t worried about losing his job because he holds voting power.

Zuckerberg told the courtroom he is “very bad” at media.

Lawyers representing the plaintiff contend that Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap misled the public about the safety of their services and knew that the design of their apps and certain features caused mental health harms to young users.

Snap and TikTok settled with the plaintiff involved in the case before the trial began.

Meta has denied the allegations and a spokesperson told CNBC in a statement that “the question for the jury in Los Angeles is whether Instagram was a substantial factor in the plaintiff’s mental health struggles.”

Last week, Instagram’s Mosseri testified that while he thinks there can be problematic usage of social media, he doesn’t believe that’s the same as clinical addiction.

“So it’s a personal thing, but yeah, I do think it’s possible to use Instagram more than you feel good about,” Mosseri said. “Too much is relative, it’s personal.”

The Los Angeles trial is one of several major court cases taking place this year that experts have described as the social media industry’s “Big Tobacco” moment because of the alleged harm caused by their products and the related company efforts to deceive the public.

Meta is also involved in a major trial in New Mexico, in which the state’s attorney general, Raúl Torrez, alleges that the social media giant failed to ensure that children and young users are safe from online predators.

“What we are really alleging is that Meta has created a dangerous product, a product that enables not only the targeting of children, but the exploitation of children in virtual spaces and in the real world,” Torrez told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” last week when opening arguments for the trial began.

This summer, another social media trial is expected to begin in the Northern District of California. That trial also involves companies like Meta and YouTube and allegations that their respective apps contain flaws that foster detrimental mental health issues in young users.

CNBC’s Jennifer Elias contributed reporting.

WATCH: New Mexico AG Raul Torrez talks about his case against Meta

Figma shares jumped as much as 20% in extended trading on Wednesday after the design software maker reported robust results and quarterly guidance than Wall Street had predicted.

Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:

• Earnings per share: 8 cents adjusted vs. 7 cents expected
• Revenue: $303.8 million vs. $293.15 million expected

Figma’s revenue grew 40% year over year in the fourth quarter, according to a statement. The company had a net loss of $226.6 million, or 44 cents per share, compared with net income of $33.1 million, or 15 cents per share, in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Management called for $315 million to $317 million in first-quarter revenue, which implies 38% growth. Analysts polled by LSEG were expecting $292 million.

For 2026, Figma sees $100 million to $110 million in adjusted operating income on $1.366 billion to $1.374 billion in revenue, which would suggest 30% revenue growth. The LSEG revenue consensus was $1.29 billion.

Lately, investors have become more concerned that generative artificial intelligence products could weaken the growth prospects of software companies. As of Wednesday’s close, Figma shares were down about 35% year to date, while the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector Exchange-Traded Fund has slipped 22%. The S&P 500 index has gained almost 1% in the same period.

“If you look at software, not only is it not going away. There’s going to be way more of it than ever before,” Figma’s co-founder and CEO, Dylan Field, said in a Wednesday interview. But he said the market is “potentially increasingly competitive.”

The company, which went public in July, wants to ensure it can benefit as people turn to AI products for design. The Figma Make tool allows people to type in a few words and have AI models from Anthropic and Google interpret the information to craft app prototypes. More than half of customers spending over $100,000 in annualized revenue had people using Figma Make every week during the quarter, according to the statement.

Figma managed to lower the cost of running the Make service for end users by optimizing its computing infrastructure, Praveer Melwani, the company’s finance chief, said on a conference call with analysts. The company’s adjusted gross margin stayed put at 86%, despite that Figma Make weekly active users increased 70% from the third quarter.

Soon Figma will be bringing in more revenue from AI adoption. In March, it will start enforcing monthly AI credit limits for different types of account holders. Clients will pay based on monthly usage or sign up for AI credit subscriptions, according to a blog post from December.

“What we’ve observed is it tends to be a power law distribution, where a subset of users within an organization are receiving outsized value, and as such, are going over the projected limits that we intend to enforce,” Melwani said. “Now, our expectation is that that will continue to evolve.”

Also during the quarter, Figma announced a collaboration with ServiceNow to convert designs into applications for large companies to adopt.

“We were pleased to see positive commentary around both Figma Make and Figma Design, indicating increased adoption of AI workflows across Figma’s platform,” RBC analyst Rishi Jaluria, with the equivalent of a hold rating on the stock, wrote in a note to clients.

This is developing news. Please check back for updates.

WATCH: How the AI sell-off ripped through software

Digital sovereignty is a “matter of national survival,” a European minister has told CNBC, as the continent scrambles to undo the dominance of U.S. digital services in its infrastructure amid geopolitical tensions.

The region’s dependence on U.S. tech and military protection has come into sharp focus, as its relationship with President Donald Trump’s administration has deteriorated amid challenges from China and Russia.

Trump alarmed Europe by imposing tariffs last year after returning to the White House. This year, he caused further alarm with his provocative refusal to rule out military action to acquire Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory, before eventually ruling it out.

U.S. cloud providers dominate the European market with an 85% share, according to data from Synergy Research Group.

Critics warn that this dependency on non-sovereign providers is a risk amid reports of increasing cyberattacks by Russia and growing geopolitical tensions with the U.S. administration. Under the 2018 Cloud Act, the country’s law enforcement can request user data from American companies, regardless of where the data is stored.

The same month, the EU said it faced a “significant problem of dependence on non-EU countries in the digital sphere…potentially creating vulnerabilities, including in critical sectors.”

The Belgian federal administration is “reassessing its dependencies in the digital domain, starting with the most critical areas,” a spokesperson for the minister for digitalization told CNBC.

“In this context, a Belgian cloud computing strategy for the federal administration is being examined, alongside an analysis of the federal data center landscape,” they added. “This approach aims to address issues related to data sovereignty, resilience, and security, including the storage of the most sensitive data.”

Numerous European nations have said they have been subjected to Russian state-sponsored cyber attacks in recent years. The EU said it had observed a “deliberate and systematic pattern of malicious behaviour attributed to Russia,” in a statement in July.

Estonia’s Pakosta said: “While we value our technological partnerships, relying solely on closed, proprietary ‘black box’ solutions creates a strategic vulnerability.”

“Open source ensures that even if global connections are severed or external vendor policies change, we retain full control over the code and can keep the Estonian digital state running locally,” she added.

The country is increasing investments in strengthening sovereign digital capabilities in its 2026 state budget, Pakosta added.

Open-source alternatives to U.S. tech systems are increasingly being explored by European governments.

Denmark said it would launch a pilot of an open-source alternative to Microsoft Office for some government employees in June. “Too much public digital infrastructure is currently tied up with very few foreign suppliers,” Minister for Digital Affairs Caroline Stage Olsen said in a translated LinkedIn post at the time. “This makes us vulnerable.”

But a spokesperson for the department played down the move when approached by CNBC. Describing the pilot as “minor”, they added it was intended to “increase our understanding of alternative technologies” and that no decision to move away from Microsoft and Windows had been made.

India’s Adani on Tuesday announced plans to invest $100 billion to develop renewable energy-powered AI-ready data centers by 2035, seeking to establish the world’s largest integrated data center platform.

The blockbuster investment, which comes as India pushes to gain a stronger foothold in the global AI race, is expected to create a $250 billion AI infrastructure ecosystem in India over the next decade, Adani said.

The initiative is also poised to incentivize an additional $150 billion in spending across server manufacturing, sovereign cloud platforms, and supporting industries, the company said.

“The world is entering an Intelligence Revolution more profound than any previous Industrial Revolution,” Gautam Adani, chairman of Adani Group, said in a statement.

“India will not be a mere consumer in the AI age. We will be the creators, the builders and the exporters of intelligence and we are proud to be able to participate in that future,” he added.

The announcement coincides with India’s AI Impact Summit, a five-day event which got underway on Monday.

Global leaders and technology executives such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai are expected to take part in the summit, which has been billed as the first major international AI meeting hosted in the Global South.

Shares of Adani Enterprises, the flagship company of Adani Group, rose 2.3% on the news, making it one of the top gainers on the benchmark Nifty 50 stock index. Shares of Adani Green Energy were last seen up 1.8%.

Adani’s AI push is designed to build on AdaniConnex’s existing 2 gigawatt (GW) national data center, with plans to expand toward a 5 GW target. It is this deployment that the company says will create the world’s largest integrated data center platform.

AdaniConnex is a joint venture between Adani Group and EdgeConnex, a global data center provider.

Adani said its vision is supported by its strategic partnerships with Google. The multinational conglomerate added that it was also in talks with other major players to establish large-scale campuses across India, without providing further details.

Google’s parent company Alphabet said in October that it would invest $15 billion over the next five years to build an AI data center hub in southern India.

Shares of Adani Group companies have been volatile in recent weeks.

Indeed, the firm’s stocks fell sharply after court filings late last month showed that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is looking to send a summons to Indian billionaire and Adani Group chair Gautam Adani and nephew Sagar Adani on charges of bribery and fraud.

Adani’s chariman was indicted with seven other men in New York federal court in November 2024 on charges related to a massive bribery and fraud scheme. CNBC reached out to Adani Group and the U.S. SEC following the news.

India’s Ministry of Law and Justice twice refused last year to deliver the summons to Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani under the Hague Convention, the SEC told the court.

— CNBC’s Priyanka Salve contributed to this report.

The UK government is closing a “loophole” in new online safety legislation that will make AI chatbots subject to its requirement to combat illegal material or face fines or even being blocked.

After the country’s government staunchly criticized Elon Musk’s X over sexually explicit content created by its chatbot Grok, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced new measures that mean chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot will be included in his government’s Online Safety Act.

The platforms will be expected to comply with “illegal content duties” or “face the consequences of breaking the law,” the announcement said.

This comes after the European Commission investigated Musk’s X in January for spreading sexually explicit images of children and other individuals. Starmer led calls for Musk to put a stop to it.

Earlier, Ofcom, the UK’s media watchdog, began an investigation into X reportedly spreading sexually explicit images of children and other individuals.

“The action we took on Grok sent a clear message that no platform gets a free pass,” Starmer said, announcing the latest measures. “We are closing loopholes that put children at risk, and laying the groundwork for further action.”

Starmer gave a speech on Monday on the new powers, which extend to setting minimum age limits for social media platforms, restricting harmful features such as infinite scrolling, and limiting children’s use of AI chatbots and access to VPNs.

One measure announced would force social media companies to retain data after a child’s death, unless the online activity is clearly unrelated to the death.

“We are acting to protect children’s wellbeing and help parents to navigate the minefield of social media,” Starmer said.

Alex Brown, head of TMT at law firm Simmons & Simmons, said the announcement shows how the government is taking a different approach to regulating rapidly developing technology.

“Historically, our lawmakers have been reluctant to regulate the technology and have rather sought to regulate its use cases and for good reason,” Brown said in a statement to CNBC.

He said that regulations focused on specific technology can age quickly and risk missing aspects of its use. Generative AI is exposing the limits of the Online Safety Act, which focuses on “regulating services rather than technology,” Brown said.

He said Starmer’s latest announcement showed the UK government wanted to address the dangers “that arise from the design and behaviour of technologies themselves, not just from user‑generated content or platform features,” he added.

There’s been heightened scrutiny around children and teenagers’ access to social media in recent months, with lawmakers citing mental health and wellbeing harms. In December, Australia became the first country to implement a law banning teens under 16 from social media.

Australia’s ban forced apps like Alphabet’s YouTube, Meta’s Instagram, and ByteDance’s TikTok to have age-verification methods such as uploading IDs or bank details to prevent under-16s from making accounts.

Spain became the first European country to enforce a ban earlier this month, with France, Greece, Italy, Denmark, and Finland also considering similar proposals.

The UK government launched a consultation in January on banning social media for under-16s.

Additionally, the country’s House of Lords, an unelected upper legislative chamber, voted last month to amend the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to include a social media ban for under-16s.

The next phase will see the bill reviewed by parliament’s the House of Commons. Both houses have to agree on any changes before they pass into law.