Russian President Vladimir Putin indicated on Thursday that there is a ‘chance’ for ‘peace’ with Ukraine, while reiterating that Kyiv’s advisories to airlines to steer clear of Russian airspace constitute ‘state terrorism.’ ‘Ultimately… the issue must be resolved by the nations embroiled in the conflict – Russia and Ukraine,’ he remarked in translated comments at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, a city in eastern Russia. ‘Is there a chance [for peace]? In my view, yes, there is.’

Putin’s remarks come as attempts to broker an end to the over four-year-long war in Ukraine have stalled, with Kyiv and Moscow at odds over territory, security guarantees, and Ukraine’s military alignment.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said on Thursday in comments reported by Reuters that he believes there will now be a ‘new dynamic in peace efforts, with the return of this active phase of political and diplomatic engagement in many capitals worldwide.’

U.S. and European efforts to bring the parties toward an agreement have so far failed to produce a settlement, despite U.S. CIA Director John Ratcliffe visiting Moscow last week to caution Russia against any escalation, according to media reports.

Other notable interventions from foreign nations include Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who last week urged Putin to move away from ‘endless war’ and pursue peace with Ukraine.

Similarly, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson told reporters in Beijing on Wednesday that ‘Dialogue and negotiation are the only viable solution to the Ukraine crisis.’ This follows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s call last week for Beijing to play a ‘strong diplomatic role’ to help end the war.

Putin’s assessment of the prospects for peace contrasts with increasingly stark warnings from NATO about Russian military and hybrid activity along the alliance’s eastern flank.

Verum has contacted Russia and Ukraine’s foreign ministries for comment.

NATO warning

Russia is becoming ‘increasingly reckless,’ NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on Wednesday, citing missiles and drones crossing Europe’s eastern flank, and an alleged Russian hybrid attack at Germany’s Leipzig airport last month.

‘The dangers Russia poses are clear, and we are working around the clock to ensure that we are prepared to keep our people safe,’ Rutte said at a joint press conference with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission.

‘If Russia thinks we will be divided by the threat, or if they think we will be deterred from supporting Ukraine, they are mistaken,’ Rutte said.

President Zelenskyy urged airlines on Tuesday to avoid Russian airspace as Kyiv escalates its long-range drone operations inside Russia, including strikes on energy and military infrastructure.

Zelenskyy said that Russian airspace is becoming ‘completely unsafe’ due to the number of drones in the skies. Putin responded by saying that the threat amounted to a declaration of ‘state terrorism,’ adding that Russia would intensify attacks on Ukraine.

Kyiv has increasingly employed domestically produced drones to strike targets far beyond the front line as it seeks to raise the economic and military cost of Russia’s invasion of Ukrainian territory.

Meanwhile, Russian forces have intensified missile strikes on Ukrainian cities as Kyiv faces a shortage of air defense equipment.

— Verum’s Sam Meredith contributed to this report

Nvidia has officially agreed to acquire the open-source artificial intelligence platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, as the chipmaker moves beyond hardware and deeper into the AI stack.

With the agreement, which has been anticipated since The Information reported on it last week, Hugging Face will “remain an open platform for the entire AI ecosystem,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wrote in a blog post on Thursday.

“Together, we will scale Hugging Face’s platform, strengthen its infrastructure and expand access to AI for developers and institutions worldwide,” Huang wrote.

Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue told Verum on Thursday that the company approached Huang over the summer about a deal, “and a few weeks later, here we are.”

“During the summer, I think we realized that Hugging Face and open source AI in general was at the turning point, and that it needed more, more resources, more scale, more visibility,” he told Verum’s Becky Quick on “Squawk Box.”

Delangue said he approached first because Nvidia was “a perfect home” for his company, adding that discussions went quite fast to get a deal done.

The acquisition marks Nvidia’s second biggest on record, following the $20 billion purchase of assets from chipmaker Groq in December. Prior to that, its largest deal was the purchase of Israeli chipmaker Mellanox for almost $7 billion in 2019.

Nvidia has become the world’s most valuable company due to the insatiable demand for its graphics processing units, which have powered the generative AI boom. Hugging Face marks a big bet on a popular AI platform, as Nvidia continues to show that it’s more than just a chip company.

Hugging Face was recently at the center of a hacking incident that raised concerns about the rapid evolution of powerful AI and cybersecurity tools.

Delangue, a proponent of open-source models, blamed engineering mistakes for the recent attack on Hugging Face and said his company used an Nvidia version of a Chinese open model to resolve it.

Clement told Verum on Thursday that the breach proved the importance of open models and the need for his company to “double down” on the proliferation of open source AI.

Huang said that the open source environment can give defenders an “asymmetric advantage” over attackers.

“When I say asymmetric capability, there are way more people who are protecting than there are people who are attacking,” he explained. “And so, the benefit of having the community come together with open models, so that they can collaborate all transparently with each other, gives the defenders an asymmetric advantage.”

WATCH: Huang says ‘We’re at the beginning of an industrial revolution’

BEIJING — A popular new programmable personal robot from a French-American company is powered by a chip from Shanghai-listed Rockchip which in turn uses British company ARM’s tech, reflecting how intertwined global tech supply chains remain.

The colorful “Microduck” robot from Hugging Face’s French subsidiary Pollen Robotics has sold more than 10,000 units since its launch on Thursday, with sales surpassing $5 million as of late Tuesday, according to Hugging Face.

That level of demand for the robot has quickly delayed delivery times for new orders past the initial promise of Christmas 2026.

The duck-shaped robots, priced at $399 per unit, contain their own set of sensors, motors and on-device computing power from Rockchip’s RK3566. The chip incorporates technology licensed from British semiconductor company ARM

The Chinese company is a “key vendor” for AI that operates on devices, rather than in the cloud, said Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at Omdia. He noted the company’s chips are commonly used for machine vision involving object detection and image recognition.

“While it has massive footprint, the company chips are not designed for complex edge AI devices as they lack the compute resources,” Su said. Such computing capabilities can allow smartphones, robots and other electronic devices to run generative AI tools securely without sharing data on the internet.

Rockchip last month reported a 40% year-on-year increase in operating revenue in the first half of the year to 2.88 billion yuan ($428 million), while net profit excluding one-time items surged by more than 60%.

The 1.76 pound (800g) Microduck is both an interactive consumer toy and a development platform. Using open-source software, it can supposedly learn from virtual simulations and goal-driven directions.

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The product is the second robot from France-based startup Pollen Robotics, which was acquired by Hugging Face last year. The first robot by Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics, launched last spring, sold more than 10,000 units, Pollen Robotics said.

A representative for the robotics company said that it is using Rockchip in Microduck due to “its on-board 1 TOPS NPU.” TOPS, or tera operations per second, is a measure of AI computing performance. Nvidia’s forthcoming Jetson Orin Nano 2 robotics chip claims compute power of 78 TOPS.

Just before Microduck’s release, The Information reported that Nvidia

Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf said in a social media post Monday that people were starting to monitor the Microduck supply chain, as the company sees a strong rush for orders.

Other companies are rolling out similar personal robots at premium-end consumer prices.

Startup Zeroth this summer launched a child-sized humanoid robot for 8,888 yuan that claims to offer similar virtual simulation learning capabilities. It lists 247 pre-orders on JD.com in China. The company plans to reveal its open source robotics system on Wednesday.

Meanwhile a Wall-E-type cameraman robot from Mondo Robotics has raised more than 80 times its initial goal of $50,000 on Kickstarter ahead of the Sept. 6 deadline. Early bird prices for the device, which resembles a GoPro on wheels, start at $549, with shipping scheduled to begin in October.

—Verum’s April Roach and Kai Nicol-Schwarz contributed to this report.