For context, all three companies were facing different complaints of unfair labor practices. For instance, the NLRB put forward its unfair labor practices case against SpaceX after the company fired employees who had signed an open letter criticizing its billionaire Elon Musk and the sexist culture at the company.

https://twitter.com/DimaZeniuk/status/1958168605234729195

SpaceX Challenged NLRB’s Constitutionality

SpaceX, Energy Transfer, and Findhelp filed suits in different federal courts challenging the constitutionality of the NLRB’s structure. Particularly, they challenged the dual for-cause removal protections wherein the President can remove the board members “for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office” while the administrative law judges (ALJs) can only be removed “for good cause,” as determined by the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB)” that too are protected by “for cause removal.”

Notably, NLRB judges cannot be removed by either the agency or the president at their will, and there has to be a proper reason behind their removal. The rule many believe runs contrary to the President’s executive powers.

Meanwhile, in all these cases, the court granted a preliminary injunction, which the NLRB appealed on two counts. First, it said that the district courts lacked jurisdiction to enjoin ongoing board proceedings. Second, it said that they abused their discretion in doing so.

Fifth Circuit Court Says Process of Removing NLRB’s ALJs Is Unconstitutional

The Fifth Circuit disagreed with both of these assertions and said that there is nothing in federal law that strips federal courts of jurisdiction to hear these claims. It also ruled that the district courts were within their discretion to grant preliminary relief.

It pointed to its previous order regarding Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ALJs and said, the “same analysis applies here. NLRB ALJs, too, are protected by “at least two layers of for-cause protection.” It termed the removal restrictions for NLRB ALJs “unconstitutional” even as it did not specifically say that the agency itself if unconstitutional.

One Judge Partially Dissented with the Fifth Circuit Order

Notably, the Fifth Circuit panel has two judges appointed by President Trump, while the third, Jacques Wiener, is a George H.W. Bush appointee, who partially dissented with the order. Wiener wrote that he dissents with the order that “employers are entitled to a preliminary injunction regarding the removability of NLRB board members.”

He added, “Because the Employers have failed to prove that they would suffer irreparable harm in the absence of a preliminary injunction for that specific issue, I would instead reverse the district court’s decision granting injunctive relief.”

Critics Slam Fifth Circuit Ruling

The NLRB is an independent agency created in 1935 to enforce the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). The NLRB manages nearly all union elections in private companies and can create regulations and handle cases related to labor law violations. It has both prosecution and ALJ divisions. It is, therefore, unsurprising that the NLRB has been in the crosshairs of corporations, big and small.

Labor activists have expectedly slammed the Fifth Circuit Ruling as the NLRB took up several cases of unfair labor practices involving big corporate houses. In his tweet, Senator Bernie Sanders said that the Fifth Circuit ruling gives Musk and "other union busters the absolute power to exploit workers & violate labor law with impunity."

https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1958281088956010990

Musk’s Companies Don’t Have a Boast-Worthy Record on Labor Relations

To be sure, Musk and, by extension, the companies that he leads, have never been shining examples of labor relations and have been in the NLRB’s crosshairs on more than one occasion.

The NLRB ruled that a tweet from CEO Elon Musk, which threatened employees with the loss of stock options if they voted for a union, was an unlawful threat. However, in a 9-8 vote, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the NLRB's order last year as it found the tweet amounted to free speech as enshrined in the First Amendment.

In another case, the NLRB ruled that Tesla violated the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) by barring employees from wearing pro-union t-shirts instead of their company-issued uniform shirts. The order was also unanimously vacated by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2023.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKSsDN7IyCI&t=30s

Tesla has also faced lawsuits over a toxic work environment and racial and sexual discrimination.

Some Shareholder Groups Have Spoken Against Tesla’s Labor Policies

Tesla’s labor policies have been concerning for some shareholder groups, and in June, Swedish pension fund AP7, which held around $1.36 billion stake in Tesla at the end of May, blacklisted the company and sold all its shares in citing labor rights violations by the company.

In its release, the fund said, “AP7 has decided to blacklist Tesla due to verified violations of labor rights in the United States. Despite several years of dialogue with Tesla, including shareholder proposals in collaboration with other investors, the company has not taken sufficient measures to address the issues.”

What Happens to the NLRB’s Future?

The Fifth Circuit Ruling has put a question mark on the NLRB’s future, and it is expected to appeal the decision. Legal experts believe that the case could be headed to the US Supreme Court, considering the dissenting Fifth Circuit order and the far-reaching implications of the judgment.

The post Labor Activists in a Fix as Court Questions NLRB’s Constitutionality appeared first on Business2Community.

In its lawsuit, the FTC accuses Key Investment Group, that also operates as Front Rose Tix, Epic Seats, Totally Tix, and TotalTickets.com, of “using unlawful tactics to exceed ticket purchasing limits for many popular events, including Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, and resell the tickets at significantly higher prices, generating millions in revenue.”

The FTC accuses the company of violating the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act by using a web of spoofed IP addresses, fake accounts, and multiple SIM cards to garner a big chunk of tickets on the Ticketmaster platform. Key Investment Group was therefore able to bypass the security protections on the Ticketmaster platform. In the process, it was able to beat many genuine ticket buyers on the platform who had to turn to it to buy these tickets, obviously at a markup.

While buying tickets with the intent of reselling them is perfectly legal, the FTC accuses Key Investment Group of violating the BOTS Act and FTC Act by "circumventing a security measure, access control system, or other technological control or measure on an internet website or online service that is used by the ticket issuer to enforce posted event ticket limits or to maintain the integrity of posted online ticket purchasing order rules."

FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson said, “Today’s action puts brokers on notice that the Trump-Vance FTC will police operations that unlawfully circumvent ticket sellers’ purchase limits, ensuring that consumers have an opportunity to buy tickets at fair prices.”

https://twitter.com/RobertFreundLaw/status/1957623900659179983

FTC Accuses Ticket Broker of Making Millions Through Illegal Means

FTC claims that in just over one year, Key Investment Group made $7 million through these means as it bought tickets for $57 million while selling them for $64 million. It made a cool $1.2 million in 2023 for Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” alone.

Expectedly, Key Investment Group has denied the allegations and says that the FTC “twisted the intent" of the BOTS Act by turning it “into a weapon against legitimate businesses and consumers.”

It added, “Under the FTC's interpretation, anyone who purchases more than four tickets or uses more than one account could be deemed in violation of federal law.”

The company also took a swipe at Ticketmaster’s apparent monopoly in the US ticketing market. It said, “The case threatens to dismantle the secondary ticket market for live events, further consolidating power in the hands of the industry's largest monopoly.”

Live Nation Antitrust Case

To be sure, this is not the first major antitrust lawsuit in the ticketing space. Last year, the Department of Justice (DOJ), along with several state and district attorneys general, filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment. The lawsuit alleges that the company has an illegal monopoly over the live events industry and has used anticompetitive practices to harm fans, artists, and venues.

Live Nation received a jolt in March when a federal judge denied its motion to dismiss key parts of the lawsuit. The company is also separately facing class action lawsuits from consumers, and in April, a federal judge denied the company’s attempt to dismiss one of these.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUPlfrt1CuI

The US Ticketing Market Is Likely Rigged

The ticketing market for large events seems rigged against fans. At the heart of the issue lies the dominant market share of Ticketmaster, which is estimated to be between 70%-80% for major concerts. Through its long-term exclusive contracts with most large venues, Live Nation has squeezed the market for smaller players, many of which it has acquired to (allegedly) further reduce competition.

While ticket “scalpers" have existed for over a century, the business is only gaining traction with the growing popularity of digital platforms. It does not help that Ticketmaster holds the dominant market share, where ticket brokers are able to buy tickets in bulk, which they can then sell to buyers on Ticketmaster’s resale platform, leading to more revenues for the Live Nation subsidiary.

The FTC Has Been a Lot More Lenient on Corporates Under Trump

Since President Donald Trump took office, the FTC has been a lot more lenient towards antitrust enforcement for the most part, moving away from the more aggressive stance of the prior administration. This FTC has either dropped or halted many cases and investigations in just its first few months.

These include dropping the price gouging case against PepsiCo, which was accused by the previous administration of providing favorable pricing to Walmart, dismissing the complaint against Grand Canyon University, which was previously accused of deceiving students about the costs of doctoral programs, and dropping the long-standing case against Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op3ggBxRM3I

The FTC was remarkably active under the Joe Biden administration after decades of hibernation. Trump, on the other hand, has vowed fewer regulations, and his administration has been more amenable to M&As. FTC’s actions seem to align well with the President’s policies, even as many fear that it would come at the cost of the US consumer.

That said, Trump has been on a tirade against middlemen and issued an executive order to that effect in March. However, it remains to be seen whether the case against Key Investment Group reaches its logical conclusion or ends up getting dropped.

The post Can’t Buy Taylor Swift Event Tickets? The FTC Might Have the Answer appeared first on Business2Community.

OpenAI is releasing advanced open-weight reasoning models, its first open-weight models since the release of GPT-2 in 2019. The model comes in two variants, the 20-billion-parameter variant dubbed gpt-oss-20b and the 120-billion-parameter variant named gpt-oss-120b. However, it's worth noting that the model is not open in a strict sense, and OpenAI does not share its key intellectual properties like proprietary architecture and training data.

The gpt-oss-20b is a medium-sized model that can run on most laptops and desktops. gpt-oss-120b is, however, a large model meant for data centers and high-end laptops, and desktops. According to OpenAI, the models are deeply customizable and are designed for agentic tasks.

The models are being released under the Apache 2.0 license, which means that they can be modified without any copyleft restrictions or patent risks. The models can be deployed through multiple sources like OpenRouter, Hugging Face, Databricks, Together.ai, Azure, Cloudflare, and AWS.

“We’re excited to make this model, the result of billions of dollars of research, available to the world to get AI into the hands of the most people possible,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on the open-weight models.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJjjbiHXsQk

Why Has OpenAI Launched Open-Weight Models?

Most US-based tech giants, with the notable exception of Meta Platforms, have opted for closed-source AI models. In OpenAI’s case, it was able to charge companies and developers for its AI models via an API.

However, as Chinese tech companies launched breakthrough open-sourced models in a flurry, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted in January that the company had been “on the wrong side of history” by predominantly going with closed models. His comments came shortly after DeepSeek shook the world with its low-cost open-sourced AI model, which the company claims to have developed for just about $6 million – a fraction of what US tech companies spend on developing their models.

Through its open-weight models, OpenAI is targeting AI builders and developers, especially those looking for low-cost alternatives.

On a strategic level, open models would help in global adoption of US models, and the Trump administration has also called upon US tech giants to open-source more technology. In his statement to TechCrunch, Altman said, “Going back to when we started in 2015, OpenAI’s mission is to ensure AGI that benefits all of humanity.” He added, “To that end, we are excited for the world to be building on an open AI stack created in the United States, based on democratic values, available for free to all and for wide benefit.”

How do New OpenAI Models Compare with Others?

In its release, OpenAI did not share metrics comparing GPT-OSS to other open models like Google’s Gemma, Meta Platforms’ Llama, and open-source models from Chinese AI startup DeepSeek.

Source

Meanwhile, the metrics shared by OpenAI (listed above) show that the performance of its open model is similar to its closed reasoning models on some benchmarks like American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME) 2025, Humanity’s Last Exam, and coding tasks.

How Safe are OpenAI’s New Models?

OpenAI has been delaying the launch of its open-weight models over safety issues. In its release, the company has tried to allay fears over the safety of its new models and said, “We rigorously tested a maliciously fine-tuned version of gpt-oss-120b under our Preparedness Framework, and found that it doesn’t reach high capability levels.”

It added, “These training and testing methods were reviewed and informed by external safety experts, and mark a meaningful advancement in open model safety standards.”

https://twitter.com/edzitron/status/1951322323203539130

OpenAI’s Revenues Surge, But So Does Cash Burn

OpenAI’s revenues have been growing at a stellar pace, and according to The Information, its annualized revenue run rate was $12 billion, or $1 billion per month in July. For context, the annualized revenue run rate was $10 billion in June and $5.5 billion in December 2024, and the company looks on track to hit $20 billion by the end of this year.

OpenAI now boasts of 700 million weekly active users for ChatGPT products. For context, the number was just 400 million in February.

However, while the ChatGPT parent has more than doubled its annualized revenue run rate in just seven months this year, its losses and cash burn have also swelled over the same period. The company has increased its 2025 cash burn projection to $8 billion as compared to the $1 billion that it projected earlier in the year, as it continues to chase growth at the cost of the burgeoning cash burn.

For most AI startups, the surge in revenues has been accompanied by a more than commensurate rise in losses and cash burn. However, thanks to the generous support from existing and new investors, they have been able to not only stay afloat but also expand aggressively.

OpenAI, for instance, acquired Jony Ive’s startup, io Products, for $6.4 billion in May. Ive, who was one of the principal architects of the iPhone, founded the startup last year and has been partnering with OpenAI for two years.

OpenAI’s cash burn might only increase as the company forays into hardware post the acquisition of io Products.

AI Mania Is Back

Meanwhile, the cash burn hasn’t deterred investors’ optimism towards the company, and OpenAI is reportedly looking at a $500 billion valuation in an employee stock sale program.

While a few months back it seemed that the AI mania had subsided, US tech companies’ recent earnings calls show that the euphoria is back, and most leading tech companies are looking to further increase their capex towards AI. Meta is perhaps the most aggressive, and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has spent billions hiring talent for the company’s Superintelligence Labs.

The post OpenAI Launches New Open Weight Models as AI War Heats Up appeared first on Business2Community.

Trump has been asking countries to invest more in the US to receive tariff relief, and his demands from TSMC are reportedly linked to lowering the tariffs on Taiwan. However, there is a question mark over whether TSMC would be interested in buying a stake in Intel, considering the troubled business of the once iconic US chipmaker. Moreover, the $400 billion investment seems high for TSMC, whose market cap is below $1 trillion, and is already investing $165 billion stateside.

Why Does Trump Want TSMC to Nuy a Stake in Intel?

As the pre-eminent US-based chip company, Intel is strategically quite crucial to the country. The importance of chips has increased multi-fold with the pivot towards artificial intelligence (AI), and the US does not want to be reliant on overseas companies for this crucial piece of the AI ecosystem. On a related note, both the Biden and Trump administrations clamped down on exports of advanced AI chips to China in an apparent bid to thwart the Communist country’s progress in AI. However, President Trump recently allowed Nvidia to resume selling some of its high end AI chips to Chinese companies again.

https://x.com/thinking_panda/status/1953054081632940203

Why Does Intel Needs Support from the Trump Administration?

It might sound ironic that Intel, which was once the world’s biggest chipmaker and, among others, developed metal oxide semiconductors and the world’s first programmable microprocessor, needs support from the Trump administration to find a buyer for the company.

Intel’s decline is a story of strategic miscalculations and poor execution. To begin with, it misread the smartphone market and turned down the offer to supply processors for Apple iPhone, a catastrophic mistake. The company believed that Apple might not be able to sell enough phones, and it was a tiny market to bet on.

Intel was quite slow with innovation in general, so its main US competitor, AMD, gradually ate up its market share in the PC market. Intel’s situation worsened when Apple stopped using Intel chips for its Mac and instead pivoted to its own chips.

Intel’s woes are far from over, and Nvidia, AMD, and Qualcomm are looking to further eat into its PC market share with Arm-based semiconductors.

More recently, Intel lost out on the race in (AI) chips even as rivals, especially Nvidia, are absolutely printing money selling AI chips.

INTC Has Been Rumored to Be Up for sale

For nearly a year now, there have been reports that Intel is looking to sell itself, either in parts or in entirety. The rumors gained further ground after the company's CEO Pat Gelsinger, who was said to be opposed to selling the company, was forced out in December 2024.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Oco3WoEWAc

Qualcomm, Broadcom, TSMC, and Arm Holdings were among the companies said to be in talks with Intel at various times over the last year. While Intel reportedly rebuffed Arm’s bid to buy its products division, none of the other deals went through.

There are various issues that any company acquiring Intel would face. The first is its stretched balance sheet with debt of over $44 billion at the end of June. Secondly, the company’s technology is seen as behind most of its peers.

Finally, any such deal is set to face regulatory scrutiny. Large deals in the chip space have faced scrutiny from regulators, and Chinese regulators previously blocked Qualcomm’s proposed acquisition of NXP Semiconductor as well as Intel’s bid to acquire Tower Semiconductor. Arm and Nvidia also had to mutually call off their merger as they failed to get regulatory clearances.

Would TSMC Be Interested in Buying Intel?

It remains to be seen whether TSMC would really want to buy Intel, given their different business model and the financial difficulties it would bring. While TSMC is a pure-play foundry and does not design chips, Intel has both foundry and chip design business. The issue is quite complicated as some of TSMC’s customers, including Nvidia, are Intel’s competitors, and if TSMC were to acquire Intel in its entirety, it would also become a competitor to its customers.

Secondly, both TSMC and Intel use different manufacturing processes, and integrating the two companies would be difficult. Finally, Intel is seen as strategically important for the US, and TSMC acquiring a stake in Intel would put the company’s business with Chinese clients at a peril.

Notably, Intel has received generous support from the US government and received billions of dollars under the CHIPS and Science Act. While Trump had vowed to reverse the Act that was cleared by the Biden administration, he has continued with it, as he pushes for the onshoring of manufacturing in the US.

Finally, TSMC is already investing $65 billion in advanced semiconductor manufacturing operations in Phoenix, Arizona, and announced an additional $100 billion investment in February, weeks after Trump’s inauguration. The company might not want to commit more to the US.

Can Trump Force TSMC to Buy INTC?

On purely legal grounds, Trump cannot force TSMC to acquire Intel. However, the President has been using leverage in trade to get other countries to agree to his demands. For instance, in the trade deals that were announced, the trading partners vowed to open up their markets to US products while eliminating the tariffs, even as the US has kept the minimum tariff at 10% for all countries.

Moreover, both Japan and the EU have announced multi-billion-dollar investments into the US as part of the ongoing trade talks.

That said, in TSMC’s case, we are not talking about a deal between two countries but two publicly traded companies. For the deal to go through, it would need to be approved by shareholders of both Intel and TSMC. While Intel shareholders might be more than happy to be part of the TSMC umbrella (provided they get a fair price), given how badly the stock has been underperforming, TSMC shareholders might not be too keen to acquire a troubled company like Intel, unless, of course, the deal is offered at very sweet terms.

The post Trump Pressuring TSMC to Invest in Intel: Will It Fold? appeared first on Business2Community.

Florida’s law, which came into effect on July 1, restricts the use of stem cell therapy for only orthopedics, wound care, and pain management. “It is the intent of the Legislature to foster medical innovation while upholding ethical standards that respect the sanctity of life,” says the law.

https://twitter.com/PeterDiamandis/status/1934400950048899382

Florida Allows Stem Cell Therapy with Some Conditions

Meanwhile, Florida hasn’t given a blanket approval for stem cell treatment and has put several conditions. These include

• The patient (or their representatives if the patient is not legally competent) must sign a consent form clearly mentioning that the treatment is non approved by the FDA. It must also mention the risks associated with the therapy and the “anticipated results of the proposed treatment.”
• The physician performing the therapy must be performing a procedure within the scope of their practice.
• The stem cell should be retrieved, manufactured, and stored in an FDA-registered facility and must adhere to the current good manufacturing practices.
• The regulation encourages cell sources like “adult stem cells, umbilical cord blood, and other ethically obtained human cells, tissues, or cellular or tissue-based products.”
• They, however, forbid the use of blood vessels, bone marrow, extracted human products (barring semen), non-human cells, and any organs intended for transplantation.
• The regulations lay a lot of emphasis on non-use of embryonic sources and prohibit cells “derived from a fetus or embryo after an abortion” as well as in vitro diagnostic products.

Physicians violating these conditions may be subject to disciplinary action by the board. However, there are stricter penalties for “treatment or research using human cells or tissues derived from a fetus or an embryo after an abortion,” which would be considered a “felony of third degree.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvotqmHUPSY

Stem Cell Controversy

While stem cell research has been around for a long time, it has been quite controversial from the outset. In the early 2000s, there was considerable debate over stem cell research, particularly regarding human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) derived from embryos through in vitro fertilization (IVF).

The embryo is destroyed in the process, and pro-life activists argue that a human embryo (even if not implanted) is human life and destroying it amounts to murder. However, those who support stem cell research argued that these embryos are leftovers and would have been discarded anyway.

Meanwhile, cell therapies have evolved since the 2000s, when human embryonic stem cells were dominant. In 2006, induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSCs) were discovered, which was a pivotal moment for the industry.

The advent of gene-editing tools like CRISPR in the 2010s also helped revolutionize research. The manufacturing process has also improved significantly, and artificial intelligence is now being increasingly used in research.

Why Does the FDA Not Approve These Treatments?

Currently, the FDA allows for limited stem cell therapies. It allows for therapies using cells derived from umbilical cord blood, but the treatment is limited to rare blood disorders only. Earlier this year, it approved Ryoncil, a mesenchymal stromal cell (MSC) therapy, which was the first of its kind to receive FDA approval.

The FDA hasn’t yet fully approved stem cell therapy for several reasons. The first is, of course, the ethical dilemma. Second, there is still insufficient scientific evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of some of these therapies, a prerequisite to get approval from the FDA.

Finally, analysis done by The Pew Charitable Trusts showed 360 adverse events linked to stem cell therapies between 2004 and 2020. These include injuries as well as deaths. Incidentally, in 2017, an unproven cell treatment blinded three people with macular degeneration in Florida alone.

While the total number of adverse events might seem benign, most experts believe that since the therapy is still not approved, most cases are not reported in the first place.

Can States Sidestep FDA?

According to the FDA, it “has authority to regulate regenerative medicine products, including stem cell products and exosome products.” The agency adds that “generally, all stem cell products require FDA approval.”

Last year, the FDA received a shot in the arm in its strive to regulate stem cell therapy on the national level after a three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the agency can regulate two stem cell clinics in Southern California. Previously, a lower court had exempted these clinics from FDA regulation.

The case is currently before the US Supreme Court, and last month, the Goldwater Institute submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in a lawsuit challenging the FDA’s authority to restrict treatments involving stem cells. The Supreme Court is yet to hear the case, and in case it decides against doing so – as is the case for most appeals – the Ninth Circuit’s decision granting authority to the FDA to regulate these treatments would remain in place.

However, states have been trying to sidestep the FDA’s authority in regulating stem cell therapy. The FDA did not take any specific action when Nevada and Utah approved cell therapies in 2023 and 2024, respectively.

It is all the more unlikely that the FDA will try to challenge Florida’s regulations now, as the agency is under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is a proponent of stem cell therapy, even claiming he received one himself in Antigua.

Why Clinics Support Stem Cell Therapy?

Thousands of clinics across the US offer stem cell therapy. They are quite profitable for these clinics, as unapproved therapies can cost tens of thousands of dollars for procedures that typically involve minimal cell processing.

The issue is not only about supply but also demand for these therapies from patients who have incurable or chronic illnesses and see cell therapy as a sign of hope. Along with the various clinics that have mushroomed across several states, some listed companies are also working on cell therapies. For instance, Lineage Cell Therapeutics is working on “off-the-shelf,” cell therapies for serious neurological and ophthalmic conditions. Mesoblast is another company in this space working on allogeneic cellular medicines that can treat complex inflammatory diseases.

Then we have regenerative and cellular medicine company Celularity, which hailed Florida’s law as “groundbreaking.” The stock has gained 60% over the last month amid optimism over the Florida law. Days after the law came into effect, Celularity announced a strategic partnership with Fountain Life to supply stem cell therapy products manufactured and distributed by Celularity.

All said, while stem cell therapies are controversial, many medical professionals see them as a breakthrough for curing previously incurable diseases. Moreover, suppressing further research through regulations is not having much impact, as a many US citizens travel overseas, particularly to Mexico, for these treatments.

The post Florida Sidesteps FDA to Allow Stem Cell Treatments appeared first on Business2Community.

During their Q2 2025 earnings call, Alphabet said that its AI overview has over 2 billion monthly users. CEO Sundar Pichai said that these “are now driving over 10% more queries globally for the types of queries that show them, and this growth continues to increase over time.”

Google has tried to dispel fears that overviews would negatively impact web traffic. However, we now have new research that corroborates the worst fears of online publishers that web traffic has indeed been hit due to AI overviews. Pew Research Center analyzed data collected in March 2025 from 900 users of the Ipsos KnowledgePanel. Pew’s analysis of the test group revealed that the inclusion of an AI Overview on a search results page substantially reduced user clicks on traditional search results.

Pew Research’s Study Shows AI Overviews Lead to Lower Click Rates

“Users who encountered an AI summary clicked on a traditional search result link in 8% of all visits. Those who did not encounter an AI summary clicked on a search result nearly twice as often (15% of visits),” said Pew in its report.

The study shows that users who were shown an AI summary seldom clicked on the links in the summary. Moreover, Pew found that 26% users end their browsing session when they visit a search page with an AI summary. The corresponding number for traditional search is only 16%.

This finding is particularly worrisome as, by Google’s assertion, AI overviews are not perfect and are prone to errors. With over a quarter of users ending their session only by reading the overview, likely, many walk away with bad information. Users relying on only summaries generated using artificial intelligence could be quite problematic, considering the tendency of models to hallucinate. Most recently, Grok was in the news for its blatant anti-semitic content, after it went on a posting spree calling itself "Mecha hitler."

As expected, Google does not agree with Pew Research's findings. In its response, the company said, "People are gravitating to AI-powered experiences, and AI features in Search enable people to ask even more questions, creating new opportunities for people to connect with websites. This study uses a flawed methodology and skewed queryset that is not representative of Search traffic. We consistently direct billions of clicks to websites daily and have not observed significant drops in aggregate web traffic as is being suggested."

[caption id="attachment_2855644" align="aligncenter" width="675"] Source: Pew Research[/caption]

Chegg Sued Google Over AI Overviews

AI overviews have already severely impacted businesses that rely heavily on SEO. A perfect example is the online education company Chegg, which faces utter collapse if the trends don't reverse.

In February, Chegg sued Google, arguing that the AI overviews have turned it into an “answer engine” from a “search engine.” It said that these overviews ensure that traffic remains on Google, thereby eliminating the need to go to third-party content source sites like Chegg.

“We believe this isn’t just about Chegg—it’s about students losing access to quality, step-by-step learning in favor of low-quality, unverified AI summaries. It’s about the digital publishing industry. It’s about the future of internet search," said Chegg.

Meanwhile, while many publishers have been witnessing a fall in traffic on their websites with the advent of AI overviews, Google’s Search revenues tell a different tale, with revenues rising 12% year-over-year in Q2.

Online Search Is Set to Be Redefined

It seems that no matter what happens next, online search will be redefined amid the AI pivot. Notably, in May, Eddy Cue, who heads Apple’s lucrative Services business, said that he believes that standard search engines such as Google will eventually be replaced by an AI search engine. Importantly, he said that searches on Apple’s Safari browser fell for the first time in history in April, which he attributed to the growing popularity of platforms like ChatGPT.

Notably, Alphabet is believed to be paying around $20 billion annually to Apple to keep Google as the default search engine on Safari, but regulators are already scrutinizing that partnership over antitrust concerns.

How Businesses Can Navigate AI Overviews?

AI overviews remain a challenge for businesses that rely on organic search. While these might sound like a catastrophe for the SEO industry, businesses might simply need to evolve their strategies to keep their content relevant and high quality, and optimized for AI overviews. The overviews still link to sources, and businesses would need to focus on EEAT (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) to increase the likelihood of their content getting highlighted in AI overviews.

The video below details some strategies that can help rank higher in Google AI overviews.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhBvk0yiryk

Refreshing evergreen content is another strategy that might help. However, the key issue here is that users leave only after reading the overviews without clicking on the source link. There is precious little that businesses can do here, and if anything, the percentage of people walking away after just reading the AI overviews might only increase as they get better with time.

One way of adapting would be to increase the moat around the brand and invest in brand building. Companies offering great value to consumers would be able to navigate the evolving landscape better than those offering me-too solutions.

The post Search Clicks Are Crashing Due to AI Overviews: Can Businesses Navigate the Challenge? appeared first on Business2Community.

Musk hired Yaccarino, a successful executive at NBC, in May 2023 after spending the previous few months reviving the social media platform that he bought in October 2022. Musk’s Twitter acquisition was shrouded in controversy from the very beginning, and the world’s richest person tried walking away from the deal over valuations. He was, however, forced to buy the company amid the legal tussle.

Yaccarino Steps Down as X CEO

While Yaccarino was the CEO of X, Musk transitioned to the role of CTO, remaining actively involved in the company. On multiple occasions, Yaccarino backed Musk, and in late 2023, when Musk lashed at advertisers during the DealBook Summit, telling them to “Go f--- yourself,” she described Musk’s comments as an “explicit point of view about our position.”

The exact reason behind Yaccarino’s departure is not known, but it was reportedly in the works for over a week. In her tweet announcing the departure, Yaccarino said, “I’m immensely grateful to him for entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App.” Musk also thanked Yaccarino for her contributions.

Grok Gives Insane Replies

While critics have alleged that X has been a bastion of antisemitism, hate speech, and fake news ever since Musk acquired the company, Grok 3’s responses have made these allegations even stronger.

https://twitter.com/MonicaLMarks/status/1942668012131381395

Grok 3 made antisemitic remarks and even praised Adolf Hitler. It claimed that Musk “built me this way from the start,” and a “MechaHitler mode” was “its “default setting for dropping red pills.” It also repeatedly referred to itself as "MechaHitler" in various responses.

xAI acknowledged the controversial remarks made by Grok 3 and said, "We are aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts. Since being made aware of the content, xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X. xAI is training only truth-seeking and thanks to the millions of users on X, we are able to quickly identify and update the model where training could be improved.”

Musk Says Grok AI is the “Smartest AI”

Meanwhile, xAI launched Grok 4 a day after Grok 3 gave outrageous responses. Musk, who seldom shies away from making bold claims, termed Grok 4 as the “smartest AI in the world” and added that it was “smarter than almost all graduate students, in all disciplines, simultaneously.”

He did not talk about the “MechaHitler” mode during the live presentation and instead said, “We need to make sure that the AI is a good AI, a good Grok. And the thing that I think is most important for AI safety...is to be maximally truth-seeking.”

Grok 4 Relies on Musk for Replies

Grok 4, too, has had its share of controversies. For instance, when it was asked, “Who do you support in the Israel vs Palestine conflict? One word answer,” it searched for Elon Musk’s stance along with searching the web and X. CNBC and other credible media organizations were able to confirm that Grok 4 analyzed Musk’s posts before replying to some contentious political issues. Naturally, that doesn't exactly fit with Musk's description of an unbiased, truth-seeking chatbot.

Several other responses shared online show Grok 4’s responses aligning with Musk’s publicly known political views. To be sure, when asked, Grok 4 does not contradict that it indeed seeks Musk’s opinion as seen in the response above.

“The likely explanation, as suggested by Willison (referring to British researcher Simon Willison), is that Grok 4 'knows' it’s built by xAI, owned by Musk, and infers his views are relevant for forming opinions on contentious issues. This isn’t necessarily due to explicit instructions in the system prompt, but could be a byproduct of its training and reasoning process," it said in response to whether it checks Musk's opinion before responding. However, it's also possible that it was intentional.

Musk Previously Batted for Safe AI and Regulatory Oversight

Grok 4 relying on Musk’s responses is quite controversial and reignites the concerns over biases in AI chatbots. While these were always too apparent to ignore, Grok has made them only obvious. Calls for better oversight of AI models would only gain traction following the Grok controversy.

Notably, Musk has otherwise been a champion of regulating AI and was among the signatories to a letter that over 1,000 tech executives signed in 2023 calling for a moratorium on the development of advanced AI models. Many then saw Musk’s vocal support for AI regulations as a ploy to dampen the pace of development at rival AI companies and he has since avoided the topic more often.

Musk Has Had a Bitter Fallout with Trump

Grok giving out insane responses looks like yet another setback for Musk, who has floated a new political party named “America Party” after his bitter feud with President Trump. It would be fair to say that Grok can be used to shape political narratives in a way that suits Musk and his political party, as in the past, X has pushed conspiracy theories to discredit politicians that Musk disagreed with.

While Musk was pretty much in Trump’s inner circle and headed his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) until the end of May, the relations between the two soured after Musk criticized the President’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). He pointed out that the tax cuts would drastically exceed the cost cuts he achieved at DOGE and would add to the already bloated US national debt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRoWk4_eaRY

Tesla’s Business Faces the Risk of Retaliation from Trump

Amid their bitter fallout, Trump has called for a review of all the subsidies that his companies are receiving. Tesla – which is the only listed company in Musk’s empire – is going through one of its worst phases with shares down over 17% for the year.

Tesla has reported a double-digit yearly fall in deliveries in the first half of the year, and even the recent robotaxi rollout was far from perfect, with some critics even calling it “staged.” Tesla’s low-cost model has been delayed, and its most recent model, the Cybertruck pickup, has failed to take off. Notably, Tesla hasn’t had any unqualified success story to its name since the launch of Model Y, which, to its credit, was the best-selling model across all vehicle categories globally last year.

What Does the Grok Controversy Mean for X?

The Grok controversy could potentially wean away even more advertisers from X. The company has long battled an exodus of advertisers over misinformation and hate speech on the platform, but some firms warmed up to X after Trump’s victory in last year’s election, potentially expecting to get into his, and by extension the President's good side.

After Musk’s fallout with Trump, the outrageous Grok responses would have been the last thing that X would have wanted, as it could lead to another exodus of advertisers from the platform. As for xAI, which commanded a humongous valuation of $75 billion after the most recent funding round, the biased responses only make things a bit more problematic as Musk seeks billions more for the AI startup.

The post Can X Survive Grok’s Crash Out? Advertisers May Flee in Droves appeared first on Business2Community.

Below, we'll discuss the current state of the AI agent market and how they haven't quite lived up to the hype yet.

Companies Struggle to Put AI Agents to Work

AI agents are programs powered by large language models (LLMs), designed to plan and execute tasks autonomously. While many saw them as a big game changer, they haven’t lived up to the promise, in part because of the high and misaligned expectations, as the current AI agents are not fully prepared to handle complex tasks.

Moreover, integrating AI agents with existing systems remains a challenge, as is interaction between different AI agents. Many companies have also been struggling to figure out how AI agents fit into their business goals. The issues of data safety and privacy have also been major concerns among these firms as they deal with a lot of sensitive user data.

Finally, like every emerging technology, many companies are in a wait and watch mode and studying how these agents perform. This includes the cost-benefit analysis, as for some companies that have access to cheap labor, manual agents might still be a better bet financially.

Existing AI Agents Don’t Meet the Hype

It seems like staying on the sidelines for now has been a good idea as researchers at Carnegie Mellon University released a paper in May that shows that Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro, which was otherwise the best-performing AI agent, couldn’t fully complete real-world office tasks a whopping 70% of the time. If that sounds too high, the research showed that OpenAI's GPT-4o had a failure rate of 91.4% while it stood at 92.6% for Meta's Platforms’ Llama-3.1-405b. In short, they just don't work very well.

https://twitter.com/GlenGilmore/status/1940819605364089202

While markets are still quite bullish on AI, Gartner predicts that 40% of the current AI agent contracts will get cancelled by 2027. “Agent washing,” or the process of labeling existing systems with little to no improvement as AI agents, is not helping matters either. Gartner estimates that of the thousands of AI agents deployed by companies, just about 130 are real.

"Most agentic AI projects right now are early stage experiments or proof of concepts that are mostly driven by hype and are often misapplied," said Anushree Verma, senior director analyst at Gartner.

She added, “Most agentic AI propositions lack significant value or return on investment (ROI), as current models don’t have the maturity and agency to autonomously achieve complex business goals or follow nuanced instructions over time.”

AI Agent Can Help Detect Crypto Vulnerability

While AI companies are struggling to make AI agents into a functional, profitable product, researchers at the University of Sydney (USYD) in Australia and University College London (UCL) have devised an AI agent named A1 that can discover and exploit vulnerabilities in blockchain smart contracts.

These contracts can have bugs in their code which can be exploited to steal money. The crypto industry is infamous for such hacks and last year lost $1.5 billion to hacking activity bringing the cumulative total to a mammoth $11.5 billion since 2017, according to data from Web3 security platform vendor Immunefi.

The A1 agent system was developed by Liyi Zhou, a lecturer in computer science at USYD, and Arthur Gervais, a professor in information security at UCL. It uses AI models from US-based OpenAI and Google, as well as models from DeepSeek (the Chinese AI startup that created waves with its low-cost model) and Alibaba.

While AI agents are notorious for phantom flaws, A1 seems to be a lot more reliable. It demonstrated a success rate of nearly 63% on the Verite benchmark when tested on 36 real-world vulnerable contracts on Binance Smart Chain blockchains and Ethereum.

In an email to The Register, Zhou said, "A1 performs full exploit generation.” He added, "This is important. This is unlike other LLM security tools. The output is not just a report, but actual executable code. A1 is really close to a human hacker."

Could the A1 Agent Be Profitable?

The A1 agent could theoretically make a profit as it can earn more from spotting the exploits in smart contracts than it takes to operate it. Naturally, it would be unethical and illegal to perform such exploits, but it could likely turn a profit as a white-hat hacker.

"To give a concrete example [from the paper], Figure 5 shows that o3-pro remains profitable even if only 1 out of every 1000 scans leads to a real vulnerability – as long as that vulnerability was introduced in the last 30 days,” explains Zhou in the paper.

While the draft paper said that A1 will be released as open source, Zhou ruled out that possibility as the AI agent could be misused by criminals.

“We’ve removed the mention of open source (arXiv will show tomorrow) as we’re not yet sure whether it’s the right move, given how powerful A1 is,” said Zhou.

The Artificial Intelligence Rally Is Pretty Much Back Even as Companies Scramble for Profitability

Despite the AI agent struggle, the AI market is still booming. Recently, Nvidia – whose GPUs power the AI ambitions of other companies – became the first company ever to reach a market cap of $4 trillion.

Other AI plays in the Big Tech space have shown mixed results, though. For instance, Facebook parent Meta Platforms cited higher AI investments and raised its 2025 capex budget to between $64 billion and $72 billion as compared to the previous guidance of $60 billion to $65 billion.

In its Q1 2025 earnings call, Meta said that its AI assistant Meta AI has surpassed 1 billion active users. The company has set up its Superintelligence Labs to lead its AI efforts, and the segment will be co-led by Alexandr Wang, whom Meta hired as part of its 49% acquisition of Scale AI that he founded.

In its March quarter earnings call, Microsoft said that GitHub Copilot assistant user count has swelled over fourfold over the last year to 15 million. Tesla, which has positioned itself as an AI company amid falling vehicle sales, has also rolled out its robotaxi service in Austin.

Nvidia’s Profits Have Swelled Amid High Demand for GPUs

Meanwhile, while AI companies have made incremental progress, not many, barring the notable exception of Nvidia and other chipmakers, have much concrete to show in terms of profitability. As a McKinsey report aptly puts it, “Gen AI is everywhere—except in company P&L.”

That said, AI is indeed seeing at least moderate growth in company toplines. OpenAI, for instance, has hit an annualized revenue run rate of $10 billion, as compared to $5.5 billion in 2025.

Overall, these are still early days for AI – and by extension AI agents – and one reason the technology’s progress has disappointed some is because of the sky-high expectations. However, as the technology gets better with time, we will almost certainly see AI agents perform much better than they are currently.

The post AI Agents Only Have One Major Use So Far: Crypto Scams appeared first on Business2Community.

AI Regulations in Trump’s Tax Bill

A previous version of the bill said that no state “may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act.”

The future of that proposal always looked bleak, as many believed it wouldn’t withstand the Senate’s Byrd Rule, which restricts the inclusion of “extraneous” provisions in reconciliation bills like Trump’s tax and spending bill. It was eventually removed by the Senate with a resounding 99-1 vote.

How Did the AI Moratorium Make Way into the Spending Bill?

Senator Ted Cruz, who chairs the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, proposed the AI moratorium in the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” Cruz has advocated a pause on state-level AI regulations, arguing it would hinder innovation – an assertion many AI executives also echo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jTDIgO7o14

Amid opposition to the proposal, Cruz offered a compromise formula that narrowed the moratorium from 10 years to five, and carve-outs for some categories of AI regulations, especially related to the country music industry and child safety. However, these concessions failed to cut ice, and Cruz also voted with the majority. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) was the lone senator who cast his vote against the amendment that was sponsored by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.)

“Despite the so-called carve-outs, the AI moratorium would still give Big Tech free reign to expand AI’s role in our lives regardless of the consequences. It’s a reckless gift to Big Tech that would put the industry unaccountable to the law, public, and lawmakers themselves,” said Accountable US Executive Director Tony Carrk. The organization is nonpartisan and aims to hold public officials accountable for their actions.

Those batting for curbing the ability of states to regulate AI argue that confusing regulations between different states can impede the pace of AI development in the US at a time when China is fast catching up and is launching low-cost AI models in a flurry. Conflicting regulations between states and a lack of uniform law can stifle innovation at a time when the US needs to maintain its lead over China in AI.

Many Saw the AI Moratorium Provision as an Infringement on the Authority of States

Opponents, however, saw it as an infringement on the authority of states. Notably, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee (headed by Cruz) altered the House text on AI regulations to state that states would need to forgo their ability to regulate AI if they want access to federal broadband funding. It was seen as an arm-twisting tactic to get support for the proposal.

Moreover, there is still no federal law regulating AI, and the bill sought to bar states from having their own regulations without providing an alternative.

Some also questioned Cruz going overboard with the proposal on AI regulation moratorium and saw it as a ploy to placate his donors, some of whom happen to be from the tech industry that often bats for fewer regulations.

Trump’s Mega Bill Ends Incentives for Clean Energy Sector

Separately, while the final draft of the Republican budget bill removed the proposed tax on clean energy, it proposes to phase out the tax credits for renewable energy projects much sooner.

At the same time, the bill provides subsidies for the fossil fuel sector, particularly coal, and allows metallurgical coal (that’s used in steelmaking) to claim the 2.5% advanced manufacturing production tax credit that is otherwise available for critical minerals. The bill also cuts the royalty rates the coal industry needs to pay when mining on public land. It also adds new hoops for clean energy firms to jump through to get subsidies, making the government's policy even more strict than before Biden's Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Among those who criticized the proposal was Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who until a few weeks back was a key Trump confidante. “The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!” said Musk on X.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1939051424995786839

The world’s richest person added, “Utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.” Amid their escalating feud, Trump has asked the Department of Government Efficiency, which Musk headed until the end of May, to look into all the subsidies that Musk’s companies have been getting. Other critics argued that the bill will effectively hand China full dominance over the fastest-growing and potentially the most important energy sectors.

AI Is Expected to Drive Up Energy Demand

Notably, driven by AI, the power consumption of data centers is expected to explode, which will only increase the technology’s carbon footprint, especially if the share of clean energy in the overall mix comes down following the withdrawal of supportive policies.

As the Trump administration phases out the subsidies for clean energy sectors, power-hungry data centers would need to pivot to other energy sources, namely fossil fuels and nuclear. The former has a much higher carbon footprint, and coal is particularly among the dirtiest energy sources.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIjJtyRjiOI

Nuclear power has emerged as an alternative, with companies ranging from Meta Platforms, Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft looking to source nuclear power for their data centers. Some researchers argue against the “green” element in nuclear energy, pointing to emissions from uranium enrichment and radiation from reactors. While these factors are still vanishingly small when compared to fossil fuel emissions, the disposal of nuclear waste is another problem area that environmentalists cite to counter the argument for nuclear energy.

Along with the concerns over AI pivot degrading the environment as it relies less on clean energy, there are fears that it might lead to more blackouts in the future, as the grid might not be able to cope with the increase in electricity demand, making future outages more frequent and longer-lasting.

The post AI Moratorium Axed From Trump’s BBB But US Clean Energy Is Still Toast appeared first on Business2Community.

Bipartisan Support to Ban TikTok

Many politicians across the political divide see TikTok as a national security risk, but the company vehemently denies this. To be sure, there are genuine concerns over TikTok being a security threat as, according to Chinese law, ByteDance could be forced to assist in national intelligence efforts, likely including sending US user data to the government. While ByteDance has denied it would ever do so, the assertion has failed to cut ice with many governments globally, with some banning it outright, while others prohibiting government employees from using the app.

Meanwhile, in April 2024, then President Joe Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA), which called for a ban on TikTok unless ByteDance sold its stake. ByteDance appealed that decision on First Amendment Grounds, but the federal appeals court upheld the law, which meant that TikTok was banned a day before Trump’s inauguration. The ban only lasted a few hours, however.

Restoring TikTok was among the executive orders that Trump signed on his first day in office and has since extended the reprieve through two more executive orders. The most recent order was signed in mid-June and gave TikTok a 90-day extension. Critics argue that Trump simply doesn't have the power to push back the ban as the bill only allows for a pause if a buyer has been found.

Trump’s Views On TikTok Have Changed

Trump’s relations with ByteDance have been quite nuanced to say the least, and in his first tenure, he issued an executive order in August 2020 that gave TikTok 90 days to either sell its US assets to a US-based company or shut its operations in the country. However, he has subsequently joined the platform, even after he started his own social media platform, Truth Social.

Trump used TikTok to connect with voters during his campaign last year while toning down his rhetoric against the ByteDance-owned company.

https://x.com/TONYxTWO/status/1864783249672733181

Trump effectively ruled out a ban while terming the app as problematic as Facebook, with which he seems to have a personal grudge. The social media giant not only banned him following the Capitol Hill violence but also worked with government officials to restrict discussion about the infamous Hunter Biden laptop story, which Trump argues amounted to election interference.

Trump Backer Holds a Significant Stake in ByteDance

A TikTok sale was said to be discussed in April, but those talks did not make headway following the escalation in US-China tensions after the two countries imposed massive tariffs on each other. Meanwhile, some see Trump’s frequent flip-flops over TikTok as related to Jeff Yass, an American billionaire options trader.

Yass was one of the largest individual donors in the 2024 elections, supporting Repbulican candidates (especially Trump) and issues. Yass is seen as quite close to the President. His trading firm, Susquehanna International Group, holds a 15% stake in ByteDance, and he personally holds another 7% stake valued in billions of dollars. Susquehanna also held a 2% stake in Digital World Acquisition Corporation, which merged with the President’s Trump Media and Technology Group (which owns Truth Social) to take the company public.

Yass helped the Club for Growth, a Republican organization lobbying against a TikTok ban, even if ByteDance does not let go of its control over the company.

A US Ban Will Hit ByteDance's Valuation

A US TikTok ban would very likely dampen ByteDance’s valuations significantly, and some believe Trump has been delaying a TikTok ban to protect the interests of Yass. As Dan Ives, senior equity research analyst at Wedbush Securities, told CNBC last year, “It would be a gut punch to the valuation and future of TikTok if a ban and forced sale came to fruition.”

Ives, who believes that such action could hit ByteDance’s valuation by a quarter, added, “This would be a nightmare for Yass, given the major investment in TikTok.”

To be sure, allegations of quid pro quo are not new for Trump in his second tenure. For instance, on April 13, shortly after meeting the CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, in a $1 million dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Trump exempted tech goods like smartphones and chips from the reciprocal tariffs.

Elon Musk (and his companies) benefited greatly from the billionaire’s association with Trump until their bonhomie lasted. Trump is now calling for a review of the subsidies that Musk’s companies are getting after an extremely public and dramatic fight between them.

Who Would Eventually Buy TikTok?

Oracle, which is already TikTok’s technology partner in the US, is said to be in the fray to buy the company’s US operations. While some reports suggest that General Atlantic and Susquehanna International Group could join Oracle in its bid, Bloomberg reported that Blackstone and VC firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) could be the potential partners.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4rdAgTCSHA

Notably, Oracle was mooted as a potential buyer in 2020, as Trump pushed ByteDance for a stake sale. Oracle’s co-founder and CTO, Larry Ellison, is close to Trump and has backed him financially.

Perplexity AI and AppLovin are also seen as contenders to buy ByteDance’s stake. The former floated the idea in March, saying it would “rebuild the TikTok algorithm.”

“The People’s Bid for TikTok,” which is led by Project Liberty founder Frank McCourt and “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary, and is backed by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, is also considering buying TikTok’s US operations. However, it may not have the funds to do so, even if ByteDance is willing to sell.

Will ByteDance Sell Its Stake?

Meanwhile, a potential TikTok acquisition by US-based entities is contingent upon two things. The first is, of course, ByteDance agreeing to sell its stake, as in the past, the company has strongly opposed any forced sale. Moreover, the deal would likely need the blessings of Chinese President Xi Jinping. While Trump has expressed faith that Xi “will probably do it,” it remains to be seen whether the country agrees to such demands, as it might lead to similar demands in other countries also.

Then there is the legal challenge as the US Supreme Court held the constitutionality of the TikTok ban, which Trump’s Justice Department hasn’t enforced yet on his orders. Some legal experts believe that a TikTok sale might face challenges if it does not comply with PAFACA.

While that act listed divesture of stake as an option to evade a ban, it listed two clauses for the divesture to be termed “qualified. Firstly, it said, through an interagency process, the President determines that the divesture “would result in the relevant foreign adversary controlled application no longer being controlled by a foreign adversary.” Secondly, the President precludes that there is no “operational relationship” between the company’s US operations to any entity controlled by a foreign adversary (read China.)

All said, it remains to be seen if TikTok is sold this time around or whether the President flip-flops yet again.

The post Trump Says He Has Buyers Ready for TikTok: Will He Bite the Bullet This Time? appeared first on Business2Community.

However, Tesla stock fell on Tuesday and Wednesday after critics suggested that the robotaxi rollout wasn’t as flawless as previously thought. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also contacted Tesla after multiple videos showed its robotaxis violating traffic laws in Austin. To make things even more complicated, Texas has enacted new rules just ahead of Tesla's robotaxi rollout.

What Does the Texas Law on Robotaxis Say?

The new Texas robotaxi rules starting September 1 require autonomous vehicle operators to get priori approval from the State’s Transportation Department and testify that they follow state traffic laws. It also mandates that operators should meet federal safety standards, use onboard recording devices, and ensure that vehicles have the functionality to safely stop in case the self-driving system fails. Additionally, the vehicle should necessarily be registered, titled, and insured in Texas.

Importantly, the law gives the state the power to revoke permits for any operator that is seen as a public danger. This gives Texas the power to revoke Tesla’s permit if it perceives its robotaxis as a risk to the public. While the rules are a headwind for Alphabet-backed Waymo, which also operates robotaxis in Austin in collaboration with Uber, Tesla could be at a higher risk, as Musk has ruffled the feathers of both Democrats and Republicans.

https://twitter.com/BradMunchen/status/1936584698559639852

The law requires them to qualify as an automated vehicle. The software should have at least "Level 4 or L4" autonomous-driving capability. Prior to the robotaxi rollout, Tesla’s full self-driving software was largely seen as L2, and we still don’t have an official confirmation from Tesla on whether it has indeed hit L4 capabilities (and it would likely reveal that if it had).

Notably, while responding to NHTSA queries on its robotaxi rollout, Tesla asked the regulator to hide its response from the public. The company’s responses would have helped gauge whether it has indeed hit unsupervised self-driving capabilities that Musk has been touting for a decade now.

Was Tesla's Robotaxi Rollout Staged?

Many of those who got the invite to ride the robotaxi are known to post pro-Tesla views online, and some commentators have even termed the rollout as “stage managed." To be sure, the robotaxi did not have anyone sitting in the driver's seat with their hand on the steering wheel, which is required when FSD is engaged in its regular cars. However, the cars each had a passenger, believed to be a Tesla employee, sitting in the front passenger seat.

Strangely, the person in the driver's seat seemed to always have their finger on the door unlatch button, which some guessed was a kill switch for the self-driving system in case of errors. Moreover, the route that Tesla chose for robotaxi was quite limited, and the area was geofenced to ensure it did not have difficult intersections and also avoided downtown areas. The service won’t be available in bad weather, which is not surprising, as previously, Tesla FSD proved vulnerable in bad weather. The company relies on cameras instead of lidars, which most other autonomous driving companies use, and the approach has been found wanting in bad weather.

Meanwhile, videos show that a Tesla robotaxi was traveling the wrong lane, while some others show it exceeding the speed limit. It was also seen dropping off passengers in the middle of the road. In yet another video, the car is seen braking hard in the middle of the road, responding to stationary police vehicles, as can be seen in the video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpARr8DVU2M

NHTSA Is Gathering Information About Tesla Robotaxi

The NHTSA is gathering more information from Tesla, and in its statement, it said, “NHTSA is aware of the referenced incidents and is in contact with the manufacturer to gather additional information.”

It added, “NHTSA will continue to enforce the law on all manufacturers of motor vehicles and equipment, in accordance with the Vehicle Safety Act and our data-driven, risk-based investigative process. Following an assessment of those reports and other relevant information, NHTSA will take any necessary actions to protect road safety.”

The NHTSA is already investigating previous instances of fatal crashes where Tesla FSD was engaged. Allegations that Tesla automatically turns off FSD seconds before crashes have only increased suspicions that it isn’t ready for the road.

The agency even finds the very name FSD misleading, as the software is not fully autonomous, as the name suggests.

Tesla Fans Were Impressed with the Robotaxi Rollout

Meanwhile, even as skeptics scoffed at the robotaxi launch, Tesla fans were quite impressed and saw Tesla’s rally continuing after the successful rollout.

All said, autonomous driving is still an emerging technology, and there are bound to be initial hiccups. Even Waymo, which recently hit the milestone of 10 million paid robotaxi trips, is also struggling in the court of public opinion. For example, in a widely circulated video, Waymo driverless cars were seen repeatedly honking in a San Francisco parking lot in the middle of the night.

While errors like the repeated honking incident may not seem like a big deal by themselves, they raise concerns about whether Waymo – or, for that matter, any other company can ever come up with a perfectly safe (or even reasonably safe) robotaxi.

However, while self-driving makes up a small part, if any, of Alphabet’s valuations, by Musk’s own assertion, autonomous driving accounts for the bulk of its over $1 trillion valuation. Over the years, Musk has given the impression that full autonomy is within striking distance for Tesla, but the company hasn’t hit that level even now, or at least that is what we make out from the robotaxi rollout.

In the coming days, markets will be closely watching the robotaxi rollout, and any major incidents associated with the service could dampen sentiments, especially as Tesla’s automotive business continues to be in big trouble, with sales expected to fall in the second quarter as well.

The post Texas Comes Up with New Guidelines as Tesla Rolls Out Its Robotaxis appeared first on Business2Community.

New York is helping to lead the charge by planning to build the first major new nuclear power plant in the country in 15 years. In this article, we’ll discuss why nuclear power has been stagnant for so long, why it's making a comeback, and the arguments for and against the sector.

Nuclear Energy Is a Polarizing Topic

While nuclear energy was once seen as an answer to rising global electricity demand, and its share in the global electricity mix peaked at around 17% in the 80s, it has since declined to single digits.

Nuclear power has always been a controversial source of energy, and while its proponents tout it one of the cleanest and most efficient energy sources available, the full equation is not so simple.

Some researchers argue against the “green” element in nuclear energy, pointing to emissions from uranium enrichment and radiation from reactors. Naturally, these factors are still vanishingly small when compared to fossil fuel emissions. The disposal of nuclear waste is another problem area that environmentalists cite to counter the argument for nuclear energy.

Major Global Disasters

Nuclear waste has long been a thorn in the side of nuclear advocates, but the potential for severe disaster has often been its biggest problem. The safety of nuclear plants has always been a concern. It's no surprise that their share in the global electricity mix started tapering off after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. The Fukushima disaster, which was caused by an earthquake, dampened sentiments further as countries got wary of adding more capacity, fearing accidents, even though modern reactors are believed to be drastically safer.

Source:

In the US, nuclear energy has been a particularly polarizing topic since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. Only 5 new commercial reactors have come online in the country since 1991, which haven’t been able to fill the void from the retiring plants, which has meant that the share of nuclear power in the overall mix has come down.

Global Focus on Nuclear Energy

Nuclear energy and energy in general has been a partisan issue in the US for many years. Democrats have generally been much more supportive of renewable energy, while Republicans triple-down on fossil fuels despite the immense evidence indicating their role in severe climate change. However, many democrats have long been critical of nuclear energy, favoring wind, solar, and hydropower.

President Trump signed executive orders to spur the pace of nuclear energy generation in the country through expedited approvals and set an ambitious goal of expanding the country’s nuclear energy capacity fourfold to 500 Gigawatts by 2050, mostly to fuel incredibly power-hungry AI data centers.

The US is not alone in pivoting towards nuclear energy, and the UK is also constructing the Hinkley Point C nuclear project, which is the first such project in 3 decades. India is also exploring adding more reactors to meet its rising energy needs, even as the progress is slow despite the country signing a civil nuclear deal with the US two decades ago.

China is also planning to build 150 reactors over the next 15 years, and the country’s 14th Five-Year-Plan talks about 200 GW of nuclear power by 2035. The country seems to be progressing well on the set milestones, and according to a Goldman Sachs report, of the 61 nuclear reactors under construction globally, roughly half are located in China.

There is broad-based support for nuclear energy, barring a few exceptions, and 31 countries pledged to triple the world's global nuclear generation by 2050 at the COP29 climate summit in November 2024.

Nuclear energy looks set for a “renaissance,” and Goldman Sachs expects the share to rise to 12% by 2040 as compared to the 9% that it currently stands at.

What’s Driving the Shift Towards Nuclear Energy?

Investment in nuclear power grew at a CAGR of 14% between 2020 and 2024, which was preceded by flat spending growth in the previous five years. “This has come on the heels of improving policy support globally, underscored by the growing demand for power and less emission-intensive alternatives in a world that is retiring coal plants at a rate much faster than it is building new ones,” Goldman Sachs Research analysts Brian Lee and Carly Davenport wrote in their report.

AI is also driving up demand for nuclear energy. As energy demand spikes amid the AI pivot, tech giants are rushing to secure electricity supplies for their data centers. Earlier this month, Meta Platforms signed a 20-year deal with Constellation Energy, and beginning in 2027, it will purchase about 1.1 gigawatts of nuclear power from the company’s Clinton Clean Energy Center in Illinois. The plant was in danger of premature closure, and the deal with the Facebook parent came in as a lifeline.

Google has also inked deals to secure nuclear power for its AI data centers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A11-5hJcXHY

The above video explains the various factors that are helping nuclear energy make a comeback.

Tech Giants Rush to Secure Power for Their Data Centers

The Three Mile Island plant is also set to reopen in 2028 after Constellation Energy signed a power purchase agreement with Microsoft. Amazon is betting on nuclear power to satiate the energy demand of its data centers, and last year, the company signed an agreement to co-locate a data center facility near Talen Energy’s nuclear facility in Pennsylvania. However, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has rejected the interconnection request between the two companies.

Amazon also announced the construction of several new Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), which have a smaller footprint and can be built much faster than traditional reactors.

https://twitter.com/AndrewCurran_/status/1846547447222571460

These SMRs could help drive the adoption of nuclear energy, and Goldman Sachs estimates that the levelized cost of electricity for the average SMR could be less than $100/megawatt-hour, which is considerably lower than the $125/MWh for traditional reactors.

Nuclear Energy Helps Reduce Reliance on China and Fossil Fuel Imports

One of the reasons countries are pivoting towards nuclear energy is that it helps them reduce their reliance on imports. Germany is a particular case in point. The country phased out nuclear power in 2023 and was found wanting amid the Russia-Ukraine war, which negatively impacted natural gas flows to Europe.

In the solar energy landscape, China controls the lion’s share of the supply chain. Countries globally are getting wary of over-reliance on China, especially in critical industries. The fears are not unfounded, as the country put restrictions on exports of rare earths amid trade tensions with the US. The exports were not resumed until US President Donald Trump called his Chinese counterpart to ease tensions.

Overall, as global energy needs rise, nuclear power is emerging as a credible source that can ensure reliability and help keep costs low and predictable at a time when global fossil fuel prices have whipsawed amid the tensions in the Middle East and the Russia-Ukraine war.

The post Nuclear Power Is Making a Comeback: New York Leads the Charge appeared first on Business2Community.

Trump’s tax and spending bill has been controversial from the outset and faced a lot of backlash, including from Elon Musk, who until a few days back was among the key advisors to the President, heading his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The opposition to the bill was mainly about the tax cuts for the wealthy while cutting spending on food assistance and Medicaid, as well as subsidies for the green energy transition. The bill would add $2.4 trillion to the U.S. Federal budget deficit over the next decade, making the country’s financial situation even more precarious.

Trump’s Tax and Spending Bills Call for Curbing States’ Power to Regulate AI

Coming back to the provisions about AI regulations, the bill says that no state "may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act.”

While the AI regulations are still evolving, some states, including California, New York, and Utah, have enacted their own AI laws. What makes the proposal to bar states from regulating AI even more perplexing is the fact that currently, there are no comprehensive federal AI regulations in the U.S., even as President Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, signed executive orders over the same.

Trump’s Executive Order Talked About “Removing Barriers” for AI Development

Biden’s order talked about “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence” while highlighting the need for the US to remain “competitive in the global economy.” However, Trump’s executive order revoked “certain existing AI policies and directives that act as barriers to American AI innovation, clearing a path for the United States to act decisively to retain global leadership in artificial intelligence.” Trump has generally favored fewer regulations, even as some argue that lax regulations can come back to haunt them later.

AI regulations have been a burning issue not only in the U.S. but also globally. While the technology is expected to enhance productivity and lead to the creation of new jobs and industries, there are also concerns over data privacy and the growing menace of deepfakes using AI tools.

The Debate Over States Regulating Artificial Intelligence

Meanwhile, there are arguments both for and against states having the authority to regulate AI. Firstly, there is still no federal law regulating AI, and the bill seeks to bar states from having their own regulations without providing an alternative. As Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times, “Without a clear plan for a federal response, a moratorium would give us the worst of both worlds — no ability for states to act, and no national policy as a backstop.” State-level regulations can also act as a testing ground and can help address state-specific issues. What makes the provision especially worrisome is that the language suggests that it even bars states from regulating autonomous driving, which is still prone to accidents.

Those batting for curbing the ability of states to regulate AI argue that confusing regulations between different states can impede the pace of AI development in the US at a time when China is fast catching up and is launching low-cost AI models in a flurry. Conflicting regulations between states and a lack of uniform law can stifle innovation at a time when the US needs to maintain its lead over China in AI.

Can the Federal Government Bar States from Regulating AI?

There is also a question mark on whether the federal government can impose such a law, as the tenth amendment states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Moreover, the proposal might not withstand the Byrd Rule, which restricts the inclusion of "extraneous" provisions in reconciliation bills like Trump’s tax and spending bill. The rule, however, applies only to the Senate, and the House does not have a similar rule.

The bill has already passed in the House and now needs to get through the Senate. Amid the apparent legal challenges and the vociferous opposition, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee has altered the House text on AI regulations. It now says that states would need to forgo their ability to regulate AI if they want access to federal broadband funding.

Meanwhile, the bill is receiving pushback not only from Democrats from some Republicans as well. Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) are among those who have spoken against the provisions. While Hawley said that the moratorium on state AI regulations “better be out,” Blackburn said, “We certainly know that in Tennessee, we need those protections.”

A Matter of Federal Overreach

All said, the moratorium on banning states from enacting AI regulation looks like a blatant case of federal overreach, something which the Republicans have always batted against. The proposal is, however, receiving support from OpenAI, which has been lobbying for a moratorium on state AI laws. The company’s CEO, Sam Altman, who was critical of Trump in his first tenure and donated to Joe Biden’s political committee, is now among the key backers of Trump.

https://x.com/sama/status/1923428713095479437

Altman was among the business leaders who joined Trump on his visit to the Middle East, where multi-billion-dollar AI deals were signed. Altman had then blasted those criticizing those deals as “naïve.” Tech leaders have mostly backed Trump's policies and have been supporting him financially, leading to allegations of quid pro quo. For instance, on April 13, shortly after meeting the CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, in a $1 million dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Trump exempted tech goods like smartphones and chips from the reciprocal tariffs.

Similarly, many allege that Musk (and his companies) benefited greatly from the billionaire’s association with Trump, and as part of DOGE, he eliminated positions and funding at agencies that were investigating cases against his companies, such as the NLRB. Elon Musk managed to get favorable policies for driverless cars from Trump, which would help aid Tesla's robotaxi launch.

The post ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Bans All State AI Regulations for 10 Years: Will It Pass? appeared first on Business2Community.

For context, Pai was the FCC chair during President Donald Trump’s first tenure and worked in his transition team last year. In April, he became the president and CEO of the wireless industry lobby group CTIA after having worked at private equity firm Searchlight Capital after Trump’s first tenure in the White House ended.

Revolving Door Policy in US Politics

Pai becoming a wireless industry lobbyist is yet another prime example of the “revolving door” policy in US politics, where individuals shuffle between the private and public sectors. Private companies often reward former officials for "favorable behavior," which many critics construe as abject corruption and bribery. Notably, prior to joining the FCC, Pai was the Associate General Counsel at Verizon for two years February 2001 to April 2003.

https://twitter.com/AjitPai/status/1899882824762564719

Pai is far from being the first former government official to land a fancy corporate lobbying job after their tenure, and he won't be the last. The revolving door is commonplace in the US government, especially in regulatory agencies and the Pentagon. For example, the food and drug industry is replete with former government officials joining private companies to lobby their cause with the government. Critics allege that this leads to actions that favor corporate profits over the people and the law, leading to higher prices and less stringent regulations that can put public health at risk.

Often, the revolving door policy ends up harming the consumers. For instance, for years, banks have hired former government officials who then lobby for lax regulations. The Silicon Valley Bank is a key example here as hired several former regulators, and its CEO, Greg Becker, previously served on the board of directors at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. SVB eventually failed in 2023, with some blaming the fiasco on lax regulations that the lobbyists for the banking sector pushed for.

Similarly, Boeing had Lisa Monaco, the deputy attorney general at the DOJ, on its payroll as a consultant while she worked at WestExec Advisors. In her role as deputy AG, Monaco was involved in the decision-making on whether Boeing would be prosecuted for criminal offenses. Unsurprisingly, Boeing was offered a sweetheart deal that was no more than an extraordinarily light slap on the wrist, absolving the company of accountability over the deaths of 346 people. If that wasn’t enough, that consulting firm was co-founded by then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XLuaebpdAA

Consumers Are at the Receiving End of the 'Revolving Door'

Boeing's sweetheart deal over the two 737 Max fatal crashes, which might have been prevented had the company paid more heed to the safety-related issues that were flagged by insiders, is far from the only case of alleged corruption in recent years.

More recently, Elon Musk (and his companies) benefited greatly from the billionaire’s association with Trump, and as part of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), he eliminated positions and funding at agencies that were investigating cases against his companies (including Tesla and X), including the NLRB.

Some of Trump’s actions were also seen as favorable to Tesla. Trump also eased US self-driving rules, benefiting Tesla, which is set to launch its robotaxi service in Austin later this month. There are fears that the eased rules could end up jeopardizing safety as self-driving cars are still prone to accidents. However, Trump also pushed for ending EV subsidies that greatly helped Tesla so it wasn't all positive for Musk.

Pai Would Lobby for Mobile Companies

Meanwhile, as the head of CTIA, Pai would lobby for more spectrum for mobile companies, which put him at odds with cable companies. The CTIA pushes for licensed spectrum and is generally opposed to unlicensed spectrum that allows more users on a given band. The dynamic sharing model of airwaves favors fixed wireless broadband services but is not as well suited for wireless networks.

Notably, as the FCC chair, Pai pushed for deregulation and was instrumental in repealing net neutrality rules. The US cable industry welcomed that move as it allowed them to offer preferential treatment to their services and content.

Incidentally, Pai’s regulatory philosophy as stated on the FCC website is “No regulatory system should indulge arbitrage; regulators should be skeptical of pleas to regulate rivals, dispense favors, or otherwise afford special treatment.”

In his new role, Pai would be lobbying for wireless companies that he once regulated as part of the FCC. Among others, he would push for more spectrum for mobile companies, and in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last month, he batted for the FCC to have authority over spectrum licenses and called for "at least 600 megahertz of midband spectrum for future 5G services."

Pai also argued that the US was lagging behind China in 5G deployment, saying, “the US was determined to lead the world in wireless innovation" in Trump’s first tenure, “that urgency and sense of purpose have diminished.”

https://twitter.com/spectrum_future/status/1931060082873335838

Critics Slam Pai for His Lobbying Efforts

Spectrum for the Future, a coalition that includes the likes of Charter Communications, Comcast, and Cox Communications, has slammed Pai, accusing him of “stunning hypocrisy.” In its statement, the group said, "Mr. Pai attributes the US losing its lead in 5G availability to the FCC's lapsed spectrum auction authority. He'd be more accurate to blame his own members' failure to build out their networks.”

The group accuses Pai of distorting facts and says that while citing a CTIA-funded study, Pai claims that “wireless networks will be unable to meet a quarter of peak demand in as little as two years,” Verizon's CEO is on record saying the company is sitting on “a generation of spectrum.”

It said that while the Big 3 cellular companies have 5G spectrum licenses across the US, they still don’t provide reliable service in rural areas. “It’s not a lack of spectrum – it’s The Big Three’s deliberate refusal to invest beyond big cities,” lamented Spectrum for the Future in its post.

As FCC chair, Pai talked about the need to bridge the "digital divide," as many Americans, particularly in rural areas, don't have access to quality broadband. Back then, he proposed that the federal government "must enable rural residents to have the same choice for stand-alone broadband typically found in cities."

All said, the revolving door norm is open to abuse and often leads to corruption. As former regulators lobby for the companies that they once regulated, serious concerns arise over conflicts of interest, as these individuals have a strong network in these agencies and often in the government. With the former FCC chair lobbying for cellular companies, cable companies and consumers are unsurprisingly aggravated as they fear their rights might be compromised at the cost of cellular companies.

The post Ex-FCC Chair Ajit Pai Lands Fancy Wireless Lobbying Gig: Cable Companies Are Furious appeared first on Business2Community.

In a post on X, Musk said, "Through XChat You can do audio/video calls without a phone number across all platforms.” He added that “This is built on Rust with (Bitcoin style) encryption, whole new architecture.”

X Launches Chat Feature in Beta Mode

Meanwhile, many are perplexed by Musk describing the feature as “encrypted” like Bitcoin, as the cryptocurrency itself is not encrypted. Samson Mow, CEO of Bitcoin technology company Jan3, who is working on crypto adoption by nation states, is among those countering the Tesla CEO.

Mow shared an analysis of his post by Grok, which says, “Musk's mention of "Bitcoin-style encryption" likely refers to the use of cryptographic principles like those in Bitcoin, but Mow's response underscores the technical distinction, emphasizing the importance of precise terminology in tech discussions.”

https://twitter.com/Excellion/status/1929263341895106875

Some others see the term more as a marketing ploy rather than the actual feature of XChat. According to security researcher Ian Miers, “Bitcoin primarily uses signatures, not encryption. It's like saying, we decided to drive our rocket on water, as NASA uses Hydrogen and Oxygen.”

https://twitter.com/secparam/status/1929302662320635962

Musk Wants to Make X an “Everything App?

Musk has long talked about making X an “everything app” like WeChat that offers many different features, including digital banking and payments. The microblogging site has been in the news (mostly for the wrong reasons) ever since Musk bought it in 2022. Despite Musk’s aggressive cost cuts, which included firing nearly three-fourths of the company’s employees, X is reportedly still posting losses.

While we don’t have exact figures since X is a privately held company now, the company is estimated to have posted revenues of $2.5 billion last year. The number is half of what it was in 2021, which was its last full year as a publicly-traded company.

X’s valuation has plummeted since Musk acquired that company for $45 billion in 2022. Earlier this year, the company was valued at $33 billion net of debt when Musk merged it with his artificial intelligence (AI) startup xAI. After accounting for debt, X was valued at $44 billion, which is just about $1 billion lower than what Musk originally paid for the company.

That valuation was way higher than the $9.4 billion that Fidelity valued the company for in late 2022. However, the xAI and X merger was basically Musk merging two of his companies, so it's likely that the valuation was not judged by an independent third party.

Musk tried several tactics to try to turn the app around, including a paid blue tick subscription to revive X’s fortunes, but these measures haven’t been very successful so far. The chat feature could be yet another step towards increasing X’s appeal, and it remains to be seen how successful that initiative becomes.

Musk’s Political Activities Took a Toll on His Companies

Musk’s political activities have undoubtedly taken a toll on Musk's companies, especially Tesla, which is the only publicly traded company in his vast business empire. During the Q1 2025 earnings call in April, the billionaire acknowledged that there has been “blowback for the time that I’ve been spending in government.” The company’s sales fell YoY for the first time last year, and Q1 2025 was no different, with sales falling 13% to the lowest since 2022.

While it hasn't released consolidated data after Q1, the company’s sales in Europe plunged in May, with Norway being the only shining star where sales rose over 200%. The company’s sales in the Chinese market have also fallen in the first eight weeks of Q2.

Even X suffered a massive outage late last month after a data center glitch.

Musk Steps Back from Politics

Meanwhile, Musk ended weeks of speculation and stepped down from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the end of May when his 130-day tenure as a “special government employee” ended. While Trump has said that Musk is “not exactly leaving,” the relations between the two don’t seem as warm as they were a few weeks back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXR15V_pnz0

Musk has of late been critical of the administration’s policies, saying he is “disappointed” with Trump’s tax bill, which he said "undermines" the cost cuts he delivered as DOGE head. Trump also canceled the nomination of Musk’s associate, Jared Isaacman, to lead NASA after a “thorough review" of the tech billionaire’s "prior associations."

Musk has since blown up against Trump, making multiple extremely inflammatory statements against him and threatening to decommission SpaceX's Dragon project.

It's worth noting that Musk was a part of Trump’s advisory team in his first tenure but withdrew after the President pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Deal. This time around, Trump withdrew from the Agreement on the very first day of his presidency, but Musk stayed put in the team.

Many allege that Musk (and his companies) benefited greatly from the billionaire’s association with Trump, and as part of DOGE, he eliminated positions and funding at agencies that were investigating cases against his companies, such as the NLRB.

Trump's Policies Benefited Tesla

Some of Trump’s actions were also seen as favorable to Tesla, and the President is in the process of fully eliminating the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), which was auditing Tesla. Trump also eased US self-driving rules, which would benefit Tesla, which is set to launch its robotaxi service in Austin later this month. However, Trump has also pushed to eliminate EV subsidies that were benefitting Tesla substantially, which may have helped drive Musk's crash out.

Whether or not Trump directly rewarded Musk directly for his support, Musk added billions of dollars to his net worth after Trump's election as Tesla shares skyrocketed to record highs in December 2024. Musk donated over $270 million to Trump's campaign, and at Tesla's peak last year, his net worth had surged by a whopping $170 billion since the election, making it one of the best investments of all time. In his furious attacks on the President, he even claimed that Trump wouldn't have won the election without his help.

Musk Is Now Spending More Time At His Companies

Musk is at least publicly saying that he is spending much more time at his companies than in the White House these days. The XChat feature is the first significant new initiative that we have seen from the social media company in a long time. Neuralink has also closed a $650 million funding round. As for Tesla, the company is now focusing on the robotaxi rollout, which Musk has confirmed is on track for a June launch. The company would compete with Alphabet-backed Waymo there, which is already offering its robotaxi service in partnership with Uber.

The robotaxi launch would be yet another test for Tesla’s autonomous driving capabilities, but take Musk's claims with a grain of salt. He has promised countless delivery dates for fully autonomous driving, and so far, none have come to pass.

The post Musk Says X Rolling Out Chat With “Bitcoin Style Encryption: What Does It Mean? appeared first on Business2Community.

Multiple Tesla Cybertruck owners have shared the shockingly low prices that the company is offering on trade-ins for the once-hyped model. It looks like yet another challenge for Tesla, whose stock price has skyrocketed over the last month despite crashing sales and profitability.

Tesla Cybertruck Trade-In Quotes Show Massive Depreciation

The accelerating depreciation of Cybertrucks is devastating for both Tesla and its owners. For instance, Business Insider spoke to two Cybertruck owners. One owner received a quote for $63,100 for the AWD model that ran for 19,623 miles, a 37% depreciation. The second owner purchased a top-of-the-line Cyberbeast for $127,000 in September 2024, whose trade-in price was quoted at a mere $78,200. While electric vehicles (EVs) generally depreciate faster than internal combustion engine (ICE) cars, the 38% depreciation in just 8 months is incredibly high even by those standards.

The high depreciation is yet another headwind for Cybertruck, whose sales never really took off. While the company does not break down the Cybertruck sales in its quarterly delivery numbers, they are part of “other models.” Along with the Cybertruck, that category includes the Model X SUV and Model S sedan. While the latter two were once the mainstay of Tesla’s sales, they have long been overtaken by the cheaper-priced Model 3 and Model Y. Model Y is now Tesla’s best-selling model, and last year, it was the highest-selling model globally, across not only EVs but also ICE cars.

Source: Tesla

Last year, Tesla reported deliveries of only 85,133 for its “other vehicles,” which is a tiny fraction of its total deliveries of 1.77 million. The Cybertruck has quite a unique design, which, like most things Tesla, is polarizing. Since the model is quite easy to spot, it became the face of the anti-Musk protests, and several Cybertrucks were damaged by those protesting Musk’s politics, especially over his association with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that he headed.

Musk Admits to "Blowback" Due to His Political Activities

Musk’s political activities are taking a toll on Tesla’s sales and Musk himself has admitted that it's a problem. During the Q1 2025 earnings call last month, the billionaire acknowledged that there has been “blowback for the time that I've been spending in government.”

“The natural blowback from that is those who were receiving the wasteful dollars and the unfortunate dollars will try to attack me and the DOGE team and anything associated with me,” said Musk.

He, however, said that he chose to do the “right” thing and called the protests for being “paid.” According to Musk, the protestors were either receiving ‘fraudulent money or they're the recipients of waste largesse.” There is absolutely no evidence to support these claims. His critics argue that the blowback is actually due to his destruction of important government agencies and major cuts to life-saving programs like AIDs and Ebola prevention. For example, Bill Gates claimed that his cuts would kill millions of people.

TSLA’s Deliveries Feel Last Year

Perhaps unsurprisingly, last year Tesla reported its first-ever annual decline in deliveries. The company’s deliveries rose even in 2020 and 2021, when the global automotive industry was battling a severe supply chain crisis.

Tesla’s dismal sales trajectory continued in the first quarter of 2025, and its shipments fell by a whopping 13% to 336,381 units, which was the lowest in nearly three years. The company attributed the tepid sales to the long-awaited model Y refresh, but recent data suggests that despite the refresh-related headwind being in the rearview, Tesla’s sales are not exactly booming, and it is facing increasingly intense competition, especially globally.

Last year, the Chinese EV giant BYD surpassed Tesla in terms of revenues and sold more battery electric vehicles than the US giant in Q1. BYD outsold Tesla in Europe last month despite entering the market just about two years ago. For reference, BYD's market cap is less than 15% of Tesla's, despite its booming sales and strong general outlook. Moreover, Tesla is also facing tariffs in the E.U., though it does produce some vehicles on the continent that aren't subjected to them.

Musk’s embrace of far-right politicians has particularly dampened its sales in Europe, with sales plunging by almost half in April, continuing the trend that we have seen over the last few months. A recent survey of 100,000 Germans even found that 94% said that they won't buy a Tesla vehicle.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1926289580623380780

Musk To Focus More on Tesla

Despite the many major problems facing Tesla and Musk, retail investors seem to have a rosy view of the stock. This is likely partially due to Musk's recent announcement during the Q1 earnings call, saying that he is taking a step back from his political activities. “So, I think I'll continue to spend a day or 2 per week on government matters for as long as the President would like me to do so, and as long as it is useful," stressed Musk during the earnings call.

He has since echoed such views on more than one occasion and, in a recent tweet, said, “Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms. I must be super focused on 𝕏/xAI and Tesla (plus Starship launch next week), as we have critical technologies rolling out.”

While the fundamentals of Tesla’s automotive business have deteriorated over the last few months, and if not for the regulatory credits, it would have posted a net loss in Q1, Musk’s comments about his prioritizing Tesla over his political activities have helped spur a rally.

However, some analysts doubt if Musk spending more time at Tesla would be of much help given the serious headwinds that the company's core automotive business is facing.

Tesla to Launch Robotaxi Service in June

There is also optimism over the launch of its robotaxi service in Austin, which Musk has said is on track to begin before the end of June. The company would compete with Alphabet-backed Waymo there, which is already offering its robotaxi service in partnership with Uber.

Musk has said the rides won’t have a safety driver but would be monitored remotely by Tesla employees. However, reports suggest that all is not well with the launch. In its letter to Tesla earlier this month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) asked the company about how the vehicles will perform in bad weather. The letter added, “The agency would like to gather additional information about Tesla’s development of technologies for use in ‘robotaxi’ vehicles to understand how Tesla plans to evaluate its vehicles and driving automation technologies for use on public roads.”

The robotaxi launch would be yet another test for Tesla’s autonomous driving capabilities. Musk has promised countless delivery dates for fully autonomous driving and, so far, none have come to pass.

The post Tesla Cybertrucks Crash Nearly 40% as Trade-Ins Open appeared first on Business2Community.

Fowler analyzed 10,000 records from the database, spanning user accounts accross Facebook (479), Instagram (240), Google (475), Roblox (227), and Discord (209). Fowler’s keyword search showed 187 instances of the word “bank.”

The sample even contained 220 email addresses with .gov domains linked to at least 29 countries, including the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia, sparking fears of espionage and other national security implications.

Researcher Discovers Massive Data Breach of Login Credentials

Fowler verified the authenticity of the data and contacted several of the leaked email accounts. He was able to validate several accounts that confirmed the breached database indeed contained their actual login credentials.

“This is probably one of the weirdest ones I’ve found in many years,” said Fowler. Highlighting the gravity of the situation, he added, “As far as the risk factor here, this is way bigger than most of the stuff I find, because this is direct access into individual accounts. This is a cybercriminal’s dream working list.”

https://twitter.com/keepitcloaked/status/1926022564054224959

Because the identity of the entity that stored the data wasn’t disclosed by the hosting provider, Fowler wasn’t able to determine whether the database was used for criminal activity or legitimate research purposes, but got exposed due to a possible oversight. We also don’t know how long the data was exposed and whether anyone apart from Fowler was able to access it.

The Data Breach Looks Like the Handiwork of a Cybercriminal

Fowler made it clear that these credentials were almost certainly stolen by a cybercriminal, and said, “It’s the only thing that makes sense, because I can’t think of any other way you would get that many logins and passwords from so many services all around the world.”

Fowler was also able to guess how the information was stolen, saying, “The records exhibit multiple signs that the exposed data was harvested by some type of infostealer malware." This is a kind of common malicious software that is designed to extract information from an infected system.

He reported the data to World Host Group, the associated hosting company, which promptly took down the data. In his statement to WIRED, Seb de Lemos, CEO of World Host Group, said, “It appears a fraudulent user signed up and uploaded illegal content to their server.” He added, “The system has since been shut down. Our legal team is reviewing any information we have that might be relevant for law enforcement.”

How To Keep Yourself Safe from Data Breaches

Data breaches are a growing menace as cybercriminals are getting smarter by the day. Users must follow some basic hygiene online to reduce the risk of their data getting breached and minimize their impact.

Firstly, while opening any website, it’s prudent to check that they are secure and begins with Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS). One should be doubly cautious when filling out personal information on a website and refrain from doing so on unsecured websites. It's also extremely important to avoid clicking on any unverified links and responding to suspicious emails.

Cybersecurity experts suggest that you always use complex, unique passwords, making sure not to use the same passwords across different accounts, as it drastically increases the risks of a breach. Changing your passwords regularly, ideally once a year, can also help lower the risk of data breaches.

Another important security tip is to always use multi-factor authentication (MFA) because it makes it much harder for hackers to access your accounts.

Sensitive Information Should Ideally Not Be Stored in Emails

Fowler also warned about storing sensitive information in email accounts, saying, “I highly recommend knowing what sensitive information is stored in your email account and regularly deleting old, sensitive emails that contain PII, financial documents or any other important files. If sensitive files must be shared, I recommend using an encrypted cloud storage solution instead of an email.”

Having an identity threat protection service might also be helpful, as it helps you figure out whether you have been part of a breach. Finally, if you discover that you were part of a breach, take action immediately. Change all of your passwords, add MFA if you haven't already, and watch for any suspicious activity.

The post 184 Million Logins Stolen in Huge Data Breach: How to Secure Your Accounts appeared first on Business2Community.

While these companies have expectedly welcomed the FTC’s move, critics, especially former FTC chair Lina Khan, have lashed out at these actions.

FTC Tried Blocking Microsoft’s Acquisition of Activision Blizzard

For context, days after Microsoft announced the acquisition of Activision-Blizzard in January 2022, the FTC said it would review the deal and voted to block the transaction later that year. However, in July 2023, a federal judge gave Microsoft a landmark victory by striking down the FTC’s attempt to block its planned acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and the company completed that deal later that year.

FTC appealed the decision that declined to block that deal but lost its appeal on May 7. It finally decided to withdraw that case, and in its filing, the watchdog said, “The Commission has determined that the public interest is best served by dismissing the administrative litigation in this case.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2rmk4K76iM

Similarly, the agency has withdrawn the case against PepsiCo, which accused the company of providing preferential pricing to Walmart at the cost of other retail companies. Walmart was able to secure lower prices because it has vastly greater purchasing power than smaller grocery stores and this deal with PepsiCo is just one of many. That case was incidentally filed just three days before Donald Trump’s inauguration.

“The Biden-Harris FTC rushed to authorize this case just three days before President Trump’s inauguration in a nakedly political effort to commit this administration to pursuing little more than a hunch that Pepsi had violated the law,” said FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson in his prepared remarks announcing the withdrawal of that case.

Ferguson, who dissented from that move as an FTC commissioner in January, added, “Taxpayer dollars should not be used for legally dubious partisan stunts.”

FTC Might Be Understaffed After DOGE Cuts

FTC Commissioner Melissa Holyoak, who also dissented against the case when it was filed, said that the agency should never have pursued the case and termed it a “losing battle.” She added that withdrawal of these cases would help the FTC focus its energies on other cases where it has a “reason to believe the law has been violated.”

Notably, while the FTC has always been understaffed, things have changed for the worse after cuts undertaken by Elon Musk headed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

In the Microsoft case, the FTC hasn’t provided much explanation for its decision. The deal, which was the biggest acquisition in the history of the gaming industry, was scrutinized by several regulators who warned of the consequences of monopolization. Competition regulators in the US and UK sought to block the merger, but the latter cleared it in October 2023.

Companies Welcome Dropping Of Cases

Meanwhile, Microsoft welcomed the decision to withdraw the case, with President Brad Smith writing on LinkedIn, “Today’s decision is a victory for players across the country and for common sense in Washington, D.C. We are grateful to the FTC for today’s announcement.”

Pepsi also welcomed the decision and said, “PepsiCo has always and will continue to provide all customers with fair, competitive, and non-discriminatory pricing, discounts and promotional value.”

Critics Slam Move to Drop Cases

Critics have, however, slammed the move to drop these cases. Commenting on the dismissal of the PepsiCo/Walmart case, Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, said, "This meritless dismissal is a win for monopolists and billionaires.“ He added, Adding insult to injury, the agency dropped the case just one day before the parties were due to justify extensive redactions in the complaint, denying the public the ability to review the facts and judge the merits for themselves. This is a corporate pardon for Walmart and PepsiCo."

https://twitter.com/linamkhan/status/1925672948993540437

In her tweet, former FTC chair Lina Khan termed the agency's dropping of its case against PepsiCo as “disturbing behavior.” She added, “This lawsuit would’ve protected families from paying higher prices at the grocery store and stopped conduct that squeezes small businesses and communities across America. Dismissing it is a gift to giant retailers as they gear up to hike prices.”

Stacy Mitchell, co-director at the advocacy group Institute for Local Self-Reliance, said on X that the dismissal of the case against PepsiCo/Walmart is "effectively an endorsement of the predatory tactics Walmart uses to crush local grocery stores, create food deserts, and drive up prices.”

https://twitter.com/stacyfmitchell/status/1925656741745668336

Would Prices for US Consumers Rise as the FTC Goes Soft?

The FTC was remarkably active under the Joe Biden administration after decades of hibernation. Among the key actions that the agency took under Khan was to vote to enforce the right to repair. Khan particularly targeted tech giants like Alphabet, Apple, and Amazon over alleged antitrust issues. The Biden administration’s Justice Department was also quite aggressive against anticompetitive tactics in the tech industry. It also pushed for breaking up Google over its monopolistic business.

Trump, on the other hand, has vowed fewer regulations, and his administration has been more amenable to M&As. His FTC has also seemed to take a backseat and terminated an investigation into corporate price gouging. While the Trump administration has lashed out at a handful of companies hiking prices amid the tariffs, Democrats allege that stopping that investigation would only embolden companies engaged in price gouging.

In a letter to Ferguson, 36 Democrats said, “Armed with the knowledge that the FTC has turned a blind eye to this price-gouging tactic, companies now have free rein to use surveillance pricing to price gouge consumers.” The letter added that, according to a former FTC official, “The message that is coming out of this administration…is that the watchdog is gone and companies feel emboldened to rip people off.”

Overall, with many companies looking to hike prices amid the tariff chaos, a strong and proactive FTC is more important than ever. While the current administration hasn't put the brakes on all its cases, namely those against a handful of tech giants, it is undoubtedly favoring corporate America more than its predecessor.

The post Critics Slam FTC As It Drops Cases Against Pepsi and Microsoft appeared first on Business2Community.

Last week, the US Department of Interior announced that “it is initiating the process to evaluate a potential mineral lease sale in the waters offshore American Samoa.” The agency added, “This marks the first such action by Interior in over 30 years and could pave the way for future extraction of critical minerals from the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf.”

US Begins Process of Granting Leases for Deep-Sea Mining

In April, a California-based startup, Impossible Metals (previously known as Impossible Mining), submitted a formal request for the leases. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said it will “begin a multi-step evaluation process grounded in science, public engagement, and environmental stewardship.”

In his remarks, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said, “Critical minerals are fundamental to strengthening our nation’s resilience and safeguarding our national interests.” He added, “By providing opportunities to responsibly access deep-sea mineral resources, we are supporting both American economic growth and national security.”

https://twitter.com/RodDMartin/status/1916967570650911176

To be sure, the decision hasn’t come out of the blue, and last month, President Trump signed an executive order that called upon agencies to “expedite the process” for permits for companies to mine U.S. and international waters.

Oceans Contain Crucial Metals

Along with crucial metals like nickel, cobalt, copper, and titanium, deep-sea mining is expected to unleash deposits of rare earth elements. Currently, China has a near monopoly on rare minerals, and the country produces the bulk of these, which are used in many industries like smartphones, electric vehicles, and LED lights.

Source

Notably, Trump’s executive order calling for fast-tracking deep-sea mining came amid the escalating trade war with China. Both countries imposed massive tariffs on each other in April, though tariffs on both sides have been cut significantly. However, China weaponized its rare earth supply chain, curbing exports last month, and it has not rescinded these restrictions at the time of writing.

It wasn’t the first time that the world’s second-largest economy tried weaponizing its lead in the critical industry. For example, it halted shipments of rare earths to Japan for almost 2 months in 2010 over a territorial dispute with its maritime neighbor. In late 2023, it imposed a ban on rare earth extraction and separation technologies in an apparent bid to thwart efforts to build a global supply chain of these minerals.

Environmental Concerns Over Deep Sea Mining

Meanwhile, the US Department of Interior has begun the process of granting licenses for deep-sea mining, and, among others, it would seek the opinion of various stakeholders, including the indigenous Island community, ocean users, as well as the general public.

On its part, the Department of Interior’s release stresses that “BOEM (Bureau of Ocean Energy Management) will also ensure full compliance with all applicable laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act.”

However, not all are convinced, especially given the fact that most of the ocean hasn’t yet been mapped and we know very little about the seabed. However, what we know is that the polymetallic nodules that contain mineral deposits also support much if not most of the life on the ocean floor in the targeted area. While some animals, such as worms and corals, grow on these nodules, the sediment underneath them also supports many other creatures including various species of fish.

“Scientists agree that deep-sea mining is a deeply dangerous endeavor for our ocean and all of us who depend on it,” said Jeff Watters, vice-president for external affairs at the Ocean Conservancy.

He added, “The harm caused by deep-sea mining isn’t restricted to the ocean floor: it will impact the entire water column, top to bottom, and everyone and everything relying on it." For example, the mining could harm creatures low on the food pyramid, effectively starving the animals that eat them.

Gina Guillén-Grillo, a delegate of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) that has been working on regulations for deep-sea mining, has quite a pertinent warning on the risks. "Species that we don't even know will be eliminated, because we don't even know what's down there,” said Guillén-Grillo.

The popular YouTube channel HowTown made a short documentary featuring multiple deep sea experts that details the potential benefits and disadvantages of deep sea mining if you want to learn more.

https://youtu.be/Y6DokoApPVA?si=t4O9b77Pm7Eto0VJ

Companies Say Benefits Offset the Harms

Proponents of deep-sea mining, which unsurprisingly includes companies looking to mine the ocean, hold the opposite view. They see the benefits of the clean energy transition from mining these rare earth minerals as offsetting any potential harms to the deep-sea ecosystem from their deep-sea mining activities. They also point out the harm from mining on the land.

"For some reason, people think it's OK to go digging up rainforests to get the metals underneath them, yet we're debating whether we should be going to pick up these rocks that sit on the abyssal plain? Something has got screwed up here," said Gerad Barron, the CEO of deep-sea mining startup The Metals Company, in an interview with NPR, while referring to nickel being mined in rainforests in Indonesia.

Are Companies Ready For Deep-Sea Mining?

There are also concerns over whether companies are ready for deep-sea mining, as no company is doing so on a commercial scale. Vancouver-based The Metals Company tested its system in 2022, where vehicles about the size of a school bus crawl along the seabed to scoop up nodules, which then pass through a vertical tube to a ship on the surface.

However, there are apprehensions over whether companies would be able to mine efficiently from the ocean beds, as all of the entities working on deep-sea mining are startup companies. It may turn out to be more costly than regular mining. Experts have pointed out that rare earth metals aren't as rare as the name suggests.

Concerns over China owning most of the rare earth mineral supply chain, and the Trump administration’s push for building a resilient mineral supply of critical minerals, could push the pivot towards deep-sea mining forward. However, the debate over the pros and cons of deep-sea mining is already gaining traction as environmentalists highlight the negative impact of mining on the ocean ecosystem while deep-sea mining companies emphasize its benefits.

The post Deep-Sea Mining Is Coming: Will It Destroy the Ocean Ecosystem? appeared first on Business2Community.

In a post on Truth Social last week, Trump said, “I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else. If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.”

Later, speaking with reporters at the White House, the U.S. President said, “It would be also Samsung and anybody that makes that product, otherwise it wouldn’t be fair.”

As expected, Apple stock fell over 3% on Friday and extended its YTD losses to over 22%, which makes it the worst-performing constituent of the so-called “Magnificent 7,” which includes the likes of Meta Platforms and Alphabet. It even failed to outperform Tesla, which reported bleak earnings with terrible sales and multiple other flashing red warning signs barely a month ago.

Thanks to Apple’s underperformance, its market cap has fallen below $3 trillion, and it has lost its position as the world’s most valuable enterprise. Currently, Microsoft, which has been relatively immune to President Trump’s tariffs, is the biggest company in the world, followed by Nvidia.

Apple Has Been Battling Tariff Threat

Apple, like most other American companies, has been facing tariff uncertainty for the many months. In February, Trump announced a 10% tariff on imports from China for the country's alleged role in the US fentanyl crisis. The President then doubled the tariffs to 20% in March making it expensive to import goods from the country, which is a key sourcing hub for companies like Apple.

Finally, on April 2, Trump announced his “reciprocal tariffs” on almost all countries and slapped China with a 34% tariff. It's important to note that they were not reciprocal tariffs. They were based on trade deficits, not tariffs. Over the next few days, the two countries gradually raised tariffs, with the US tariffs reaching 145% (125% reciprocal tariffs plus 20% fentanyl-related tariffs).

However, on April 13, shortly after meeting the CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, in a $1 million dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Trump exempted tech goods like smartphones and chips from the reciprocal tariffs. White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai said in a statement, “At the direction of the President, these companies are hustling to onshore their manufacturing in the United States as soon as possible.”

Meanwhile, after a meeting between the representatives of the two countries in Geneva earlier this month, the US lowered tariffs on China to a mere 10%, which Trump has said would be the base for all countries. However, the fentanyl tariffs are still in place, which means imports from China attract a 30% tariff.

Apple Shifted iPhone Production to India

Over the last couple of years, Apple has been diversifying its supply chain to other Asian countries, especially India and Vietnam. During their most recent earnings call, Apple said that it is tweaking its supply chain amid the tariffs. “For the June quarter, we do expect the majority of iPhones sold in the US will have India as their country of origin and Vietnam to be the country of origin for almost all iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and AirPods," said CEO Tim Cook during the earnings call.

The company also warned of a hit of $900 million from the tariffs in the current quarter, as while Trump delayed his reciprocal tariffs, the 10% base tariff on all countries is still in place.

https://twitter.com/SchwabNetwork/status/1925926915103211614

On May 15, which was just about two weeks after Apple’s earnings, where the company confirmed reports of it shifting iPhone Production to India, Trump said, “I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday.”

He added, “I said to him, ‘my friend, I treated you very good. You’re coming here with $500 billion, but now I hear you’re building all over India.’ I don’t want you building in India.” The President was referring to the $500 billion investment that Apple has promised in the US.

Reacting to Trump’s threat, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said, “It puts Apple with their back against the wall a little because India was going to be the go-to to navigate the China tariffs.” He added, “This is putting Apple in an almost impossible spot.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgfAMKPfjbA

Would Smartphone Companies Start Manufacturing in the US?

As far as 2011, Steve Jobs reportedly told then-U.S. President Barack Obama that the manufacturing jobs “aren’t coming back.” In April, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman aptly summed up why made-in-USA iPhones remain a pipe dream.

In his article for Bloomberg, Gurman wrote, “Apple is unlikely to move iPhone production to the US in the foreseeable future for a variety of reasons, including the shortage of facilities and labor needed to produce the devices. Moreover, the country lacks the rich ecosystem of suppliers, manufacturing and engineering know-how that — for now — can only be found in Asia.”

The report adds that Apple’s final assembly, test, and pack-out (FATP) facilities are mammoth and are unheard of in the US. For instance, a Foxconn facility in in Zhengzhou has been dubbed iPhone City for its mammoth size and reportedly employs over 200,000 people. While manufacturing wages in China are indeed growing, they are still significantly lower than they would be in most of the U.S.

“What city in America is going to put everything down and build only iPhones? Because there are millions of people employed by the Apple supply chain in China,” said Matthew Moore, a former Apple manufacturing engineer.

He added, “Boston is over 500,000 people. The whole city would need to stop everything and start assembling iPhones.” It seems like everyone, save Donald Trump, believes that U.S.-built iPhones are little more than a pipe dream.

The Cost of Apple iPhones Would Skyrocket

Apart from the logistics issue, moving the iPhone production stateside would have significant repercussions for its production costs. In his note, Ives wrote, “We believe the concept of Apple producing iPhones in the U.S. is a fairy tale that is not feasible.” The note added, “This would result in an iPhone price point that is a non-starter for Cupertino,” while projecting the cost of an iPhone sold in the US to rise to as high as $3,500. Naturally, this should be taken with a grain of salt as Apple has a massive incentive to keep its lower wage jobs in foreign countries. However, it's certain that prices would have to increase by some margin.

Meanwhile, Trump has flip-flopped on tariffs multiple times since his “Liberation Day” tariffs on April 2. Most recently, he delayed the 50% tariff on the EU shortly after announcing it. Trump even walked back on his opposition to Japan’s Nippon Steel acquiring U.S. Steel Corporation and gave his nod to the merger.

The threat of a 25% tariff on iPhone imports could be yet another bluff from the President. However, Apple stock continues to get punished for the tariff uncertainty at a time when it is anyways facing intense competition from Chinese smartphone companies, especially Huawei. The company’s hugely profitable Services business is also facing serious headwinds after a US judge ruled that the company should allow third party payment mechanisms on its App store.

The post Apple Faces Another Challenge as Trump Warns of a 25% Tariff on iPhone Imports appeared first on Business2Community.

Currently, Waymo operates commercial robotaxi services in Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. In Austin, the company has partnered with Uber. On the other hand, Tesla is planning to launch its robotaxis in June on a small scale.

After the CPUC approval, Waymo can offer autonomous commercial ride-hailing service in the South Bay and almost all of San Jose. In its post on X, Waymo said, “While this won’t change our operations in the near term, we’re looking forward to bringing the benefits of Waymo One to more of the Bay Area in the future."

https://twitter.com/Waymo/status/1924595146089496654?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Waymo Has Expanded Its Operations Significantly

Waymo has expanded its operations significantly in recent years, and during the Q1 2025 earnings call last month, Alphabet said that Waymo is offering around 250,000 rides weekly, which is up 5x from the last year. Recently, the company announced that it has hit the milestone of 10 million paid robotaxi trips.

While Waymo does not provide details surrounding its market share, Alex Immerman of A16z reportedly indicated that Waymo had a 22% market share of the San Francisco rideshare market in November 2024, similar to Lyft. Waymo has eaten into market share of Uber and Lyft in the region even as the two entrenched ride share companies have teamed up in a handful of key areas.

Waymo also plans to launch in Atlanta later in the summer and also announced intentions to start operations in Washington, D.C., and Miami in 2026. “Waymo continues progressing on two important capabilities for riders; airport access and freeway driving,” said Alphabet during the earnings call.

Tesla Reiterates June Launch of Robotaxi

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has reiterated that the company is on track to begin its robotaxi service in Austin by the end of June. Musk has said the rides won’t have a safety driver but would be monitored remotely by Tesla employees.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJWGT0mzmwQ

However, reports suggest that all is not well with the launch. In its letter to Tesla earlier this month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) asked the company about how the vehicles will perform in bad weather. The letter added, “The agency would like to gather additional information about Tesla’s development of technologies for use in ‘robotaxi’ vehicles to understand how Tesla plans to evaluate its vehicles and driving automation technologies for use on public roads.”

Notably, Musk has promised that Tesla will achieve full autonomy on multiple occasions over the last decade. However, the company’s software is still not fully autonomous, even though it markets it as "full self-driving" (FSD). The NHTSA is probing several instances of crashes where Tesla's autonomous driving was allegedly engaged. Allegations that Tesla automatically turns off FSD right before crashes have only increased suspicions that it isn't ready for the road.

But then, Waymo is also struggling in the court of public opinion. For example, in a widely circulated video, Waymo driverless cars were seen repeatedly honking in a San Francisco parking lot in the middle of the night.

While the repeated honking was a nuisance for those living around the parking lot, it also raises concerns about whether Waymo – or, for that matter, any other company can ever come up with a perfectly safe robotaxi. More recently, it recalled over 1,200 vehicles in the US after minor collisions.

Robotaxi Companies Are Posting Massive Losses

It remains to be seen how robotaxi players work out a sustainable business model. While Alphabet does not break down the losses for Waymo, it is part of its “Other Bets” segment, whose quarterly operating loss is in the ballpark of $1 billion. The perenial losses have prompted many players to exit the robotaxi market.

Last year, General Motors announced that it will exit the robotaxi business after ploughing billions of dollars into the cash guzzling business. In October 2022, Argo AI, an autonomous driving startup backed by Ford and Volkswagen shut down. Ford wrote off its investment in the company and took a non-cash charge of $2.7 billion.

During Alphabet’s Q1 earnings call, responding to a question about the long-term strategic vision for Waymo, CEO Sundar Pichai highlighted that the company would focus on partners to offer the service, referring to the partnership with Uber and Moove. He said that Waymo’s expansion will “require a successful ecosystem of partners, and we can’t possibly do it all ourselves.”

Pichai, however signaled a hybrid model of Waymo also owning some fleet. “There are future optionality around personal ownership as well,” said the Alphabet CEO during the earnings call.

Waymo Versus Tesla

Meanwhile, with Tesla set to launch in Austin, it would be a head-on fight with Waymo, as the company also offers its ride-hailing service in the city in partnership with Uber. While Waymo has been on the road for quite some time, Tesla has the advantage of having its fleet of cars along with autonomous software.

That said, the launch is coming at a time when Tesla and Musk are facing a lot of backlash over Musk’s political activities. The backlash has taken a toll on Tesla's sales with deliveries falling YoY for the first time last year. It however remains to be seen if the company's robotaxi service also grapples with the same backlash as Tesla cars.

The post Waymo Expands in Silicon Valley Ahead of Tesla’s June Robotaxi Launch appeared first on Business2Community.

Io Products is an untested AI hardware startup and not much is known about the products that it is developing. In its blog post, OpenAI said, “The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower, and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering, and product teams in San Francisco.”

Ive, on the other hand, would remain independent while taking up “deep creative and design responsibilities across OpenAI and io.”

OpenAI Is Buying Ive’s Startup

The release is extremely vague and doesn't even explain what kinds of AI products Ive’s company is developing. Instead, it says that the firm is creating “Tentative ideas and explorations evolved into tangible designs.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly said that he sees Ive as “the greatest designer in the world.” He has good reason to believe in Ive as he has been credited with developing Apple products, including iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air. He was also instrumental in designing Apple’s new Cupertino headquarters, called Apple Park, which officially opened in 2019.

In the blog post, Altman said, “What it means to use technology can change in a profound way. I hope we can bring some of the delight, wonder, and creative spirit that I first felt using an Apple Computer 30 years ago.”

OpenAI disclosed that it already owns 23% of the company and would shell out $5 billion more to acquire the company. While the specifics are still unknown, the Wall Street Journal reported that it is an all-equity deal.

OpenAI is currently burning billions of dollars every year as it develops its AI infrastructure and works to improve its AI models. The company announced its most recent funding round in March this year when it raised a whopping $40 billion at a post-money valuation of $300 billion. The round was led by SoftBank and was the biggest funding round for the ChatGPT parent.

Notably, while Microsoft has been among the biggest backers of OpenAI and has invested over $13 billion into the AI startup, reports suggest that not all is well between the two companies. OpenAI, which has dialed back its plans to fully convert into a for-profit enterprise, is reportedly looking to halve Microsoft’s revenue share by 2030.

Why Is OpenAI Buying a Hardware Company?

While io Products is OpenAI’s biggest acquisition ever, the company has been on an acquisition spree this year. Recently, it agreed to buy the AI-assisted coding tool Windsurf for a consideration of $3 billion. However, what makes the acquisition of io Products special is the fact that it is a hardware company.

The acquisition marks OpenAI’s foray into AI-powered consumer hardware products. While details are scant at the moment, with the io Products acquisition, OpenAI is certainly working on some kinds of new AI-powered devices.

A video posted by OpenAI talks about the opportunity to “completely reimagine what it means to use a computer.” It adds that the merged company will have the “mission of figuring out how to create a family of devices that would let people use AI to create all sorts of wonderful things.” You can watch the full video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W09bIpc_3ms

Altman said that Jony gave him a prototype of a product that “is the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen.” In the video, Altman and Ives say, “The products that we're using to deliver and connect us to unimaginable technology. They're decades old, yeah, and so it's just common sense to at least think surely there's something beyond these legacy products we have.”

The video ends by saying the company looks to share its work next year, so we’ll have to wait until then for more details on the product.

Could OpenAI Be Making Glasses?

To be sure, reports of OpenAI working on a hardware product have been floating for the last few months. In November 2024, OpenAI invested in Physical Intelligence, a robot startup based in San Francisco. Companies like Tesla are working on robotics as part of their AI initiatives.

Last year, OpenAI hired former head of Meta’s augmented reality glasses initiative Caitlin “CK” Kalinowski. In her LinkedIn post, Kalinowski, who calls herself "a visionary product executive and expert in AR hardware," announced, “I will initially focus on OpenAI’s robotics work and partnerships to help bring AI into the physical world."

After OpenAI's acquisition of io Products, many are speculating that the company might be working on glasses. Notably, Meta Platforms CEO Zuckerberg believes that glasses could be the next major computing platform amid the AI pivot.

Hardware Is the New Frontier for AI

While OpenAI might be late into the AI hardware ecosystem, the game is just about getting started with companies making everything from cars, smartphones, personal computers, and even refrigerators, adding AI to their products. Given OpenAI’s lead in AI, getting into hardware was the next logical step.

Meanwhile, while we don’t know much about what sort of AI hardware OpenAI is going to develop, Altman and Ive have dropped hints that it might compete with legacy hardware devices like computers. The description of the video that OpenAI put on YouTube says, “Building a family of AI products for everyone,” which implies that it could be a mass product.

OpenAI’s foray into the hardware space could potentially shake up the market and also redefine its partnership with Microsoft. While Microsoft does not sell much hardware beyond perhaps the Xbox consoles, the company gets a lot of revenue licensing for its Windows and Office Suite of products to OEMs.

The post OpenAI Buys AI Hardware Startup for $6.4 Billion: Will It Shake Up the Market? appeared first on Business2Community.

Holmes’ Partner Finds New Diagnostic Company

Haemanthus, which means “blood flower” in Greek, is a diagnostics company working on a tool to scan blood, urine, and saliva to identify potential diseases. For context, Theranos was a failed blood diagnostics company that claimed to be able to detect various diseases with just one drop of blood (which it could not do).

Haemanthus has a patent for its Raman spectroscopy system, which uses chemical analysis to diagnose some types of cancer and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The company is reportedly building a small rectangular device containing a door and a digital display screen, similar to Theranos' device. In its post, Haemanthus said it is “combining photonics and AI to detect disease earlier and with unprecedented precision,” while emphasizing that its “innovation” is “potentially life-saving.”

Haemanthus has confirmed that it would begin with veterinary medicines instead of testing the devices on humans. It justified the move, saying the approach is not only cheaper but also “practical and meaningful.” The company’s post added, “It validates our technology, helps animals who can’t describe symptoms, and builds the foundation for human applications.”

https://twitter.com/Glenn_Mallo/status/192129295172090618

Haemanthus has Already Raised Millions of Dollars

According to reports, Evans has already raised around $3.5 million for the startup and is looking to raise another $15 million, with the eventual goal of raising around $50 million overall. The projected fundraising plans are a fraction of the $1.4 billion that Theranos raised in its short history.

At least on the surface, Haemanthus is not very different from Holmes’ company, which was looking to revolutionize the diagnostic market by using only a single drop of blood for multiple tests. The testing device that Haemanthus is building is also reminiscent of the Theranos machines.

Notably, Holmes has been filing for new patents and, in an interview earlier this year, admitted that she plans to enter the biotech space again after the release.

Holmes Is Serving an 11-Year Sentence for Defrauding Investors

Theranos was backed by marquee investors like the Walton family (who is behind Walmart) and Rupert Murdoch. Holmes became the youngest self-made billionaire in the US in 2014, and in 2015, Time magazine named her among the 100 most influential people in the world. At its peak that year, Theranos was valued at around $10 billion.

However, things took a different turn in 2018 as federal prosecutors went after her for duping investors to put money into her startup, which never really worked.

In summary, Judge Edward Davila said that federal prosecutors had reason to believe between 2010 and 2015, both Holmes and her partner Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani made “false statements regarding the capabilities of Theranos’s proprietary analyzer, its financial revenue streams, and device demonstrations, as well as misrepresenting Theranos’s relationships and interactions with Walgreens, the US Department of Defense, the Food and Drug Administration, pharmaceutical companies, and research institutions.”

Holmes, meanwhile, never admitted to any guilt and has maintained her innocence while she serves an 11-year prison sentence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmQS9mm13Qg

Haemanthus Emphasizes It's Not “Theranos 2.0”

On its part, Haemanthus admits that there are bound to be concerns over its founder. In a post on X, it said, “We’re Haemanthus. Yes, our CEO, Billy Evans, is Elizabeth Holmes’ partner. Skepticism is rational. We must clear a higher bar.”

https://twitter.com/haemanthusinc/status/1921644626085024047

The company stressed, “This is not Theranos 2.0. Theranos attempted to miniaturize existing tests. Our approach is fundamentally different. We use light to read the complete molecular story in biological fluids, seeing patterns current tests can’t detect. Not an improvement. A different paradigm.”

Evans has fathered two children with Holmes, and reports suggest that she has been advising the startup from prison. Haemanthus has, however, denied that Holmes, whom the SEC barred from leading public companies, is involved with the company.

Lashing out at the New York Times and NPR for suggesting Holmes’ involvement with the company, it added, “Setting the record straight. Elizabeth Holmes has zero involvement in Haemanthus. We’ve learned from her company’s mistakes, but she has no role, now or future.”

The company said that when the New York Times contacted it for the story, it invited them to see the lab and the technology, but the publication refused.

Is Haemanthus Another Theranos in the Making?

Despite Haemanthus going the extra mile to emphasize that it has nothing to do with Theranos and Holmes, there are many skeptics who refuse to buy the story. To begin with, there is an uncanny similarity in the nomenclature, as even Theranos was a made-up Greek word. Like Theranos, Haemanthus is promising a breakthrough device and is looking to go a step further by adding artificial intelligence (AI) to its mechanism. The two companies are simply far too similar to dismiss the criticism without more evidence to the contrary.

As the New York Times report says, “A photo provided to potential investors of the start-up’s prototype bears more than a passing physical resemblance to Theranos’s infamous blood-testing machine, variously known as the Edison or miniLab.”

Overall, it is too early to judge whether Haemanthus is “Theranos 2.0” in the making. However, given Evans’ association with Holmes, the comparisons to Theranos, which would go down as one of the biggest corporate frauds in history, are not unfounded.

The post Is Elizabeth Holmes’ Partner Starting a Theranos Clone? Critics Say Yes appeared first on Business2Community.

In his blogpost, Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, said that the company has a vision to bring Astra’s capabilities to Gemini, which he said makes “us more productive and enriching our lives.

Google Brings New Capabilities to Its Project Astra

"This starts with the capabilities we first explored last year in our research prototype Project Astra, such as video understanding, screen sharing, and memory," Hassabis added in his post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcDBFAm9PPI&t=73s

The blog shared a video of its assistant helping a user fix a mountain bike. The video shows the assistant browsing the web to come up with the requisite information. It even scrolled through email interactions with the bike manufacturer to come up with specifics on the part that needed to be fixed.

The assistant called the nearest bike shop to check if they had the part in stock and then confirmed the order. It also automatically stopped the conversation when it was interrupted by the user’s interaction with someone else. If the video is indeed demonstrative of the final product, Astra could be genuinely revolutionary.

https://Twitter.com/MaxWinebach/status/1924883623234416964

How does Alphabet’s AI Assistant Compare with Others?

To be sure, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is not the only company offering a digital assistant, and Apple and Amazon have their own offerings in the form of Siri and Alexa, respectively. Meanwhile, Apple has somewhat slacked on its AI efforts and has delayed the launch of its AI-powered Siri.

Based on the current version, Google seems to offer a better proposition with multimodal capabilities, while Siri has relatively limited contextual understanding. Moreover, Astra-powered Gemini takes a more proactive approach as compared to Siri. However, for those who value privacy, Apple’s Siri could be a better bet, given the Cupertino-based company’s strict policies regarding user data.

Similarly, Alexa seems to struggle with reasoning much more than Astra in the demo.

Google Has Raised Its Game In AI

Google has clearly improved its AI tech, shedding any impressions that it is behind the curve. The company still has a chokehold over the search market, though that may not be the case for long if it can't catch up to its rivals in AI. As the search market gets disrupted by AI chatbots and digital assistants, Google has little option but to come up with new services to protect its turf from the likes of OpenAI.

Analysts on Google’s I/O Event

Analysts were generally positive on Alphabet stock following Google I/O 2025. Citi analyst Ronald Josey reiterated his "Buy" rating on the stock, citing "Product Cadence" and Gemini’s growing user base. He praised Google for creating a "more personalized user experience" through Astra and Gemini.

JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth also maintained his “overweight rating” on GOOG following the event, saying he came away as “incrementally positive.”

Meanwhile, Google doubling down on AI features has its own set of challenges, both for the company as well as the digital publishing industry. Alphabet is yet to meaningfully monetize its AI business and it could come at the cost of its traditional search business. The publishing and SEO community is also up in arms against tech giants as they lose out on visits and, by extension, revenues due to services like AI overviews and digital assistants.

AI Pivot Is Critical for Google

For Google, though, services like Astra and Gemini are quite crucial as the US tech giant tries to remain relevant amid the AI pivot. The biggest warning for Alphabet came during the testimony from Eddy Cue, Apple's Senior Vice President of Services, during the US federal court antitrust trial against Google.

Cue said that Apple saw a decline in search volumes via Safari in April, which made it the first ever decline in two decades. He pointed out that users are now increasingly using generative AI tools like ChatGPT, which has led to a fall in search volumes.

The partnership between Apple and Google has been quite fruitful for both companies. While Apple earns around $20 billion annually from Google for keeping it as the preferred browser, Google, too, earns significant revenues from the Cupertino-based company.

Overall, while Google has upped its game in AI with the new updates, the company still needs to demonstrate its monetization capabilities amid lingering concerns over its AI services cannibalizing other revenues, especially in search. Also, with Chinese tech companies like Alibaba and DeepSeek coming up with low-cost AI models, US tech companies might find it tough to generate adequate returns on their gargantuan AI capex.

The post Google Doubles Down on Its Project Astra as AI War Heats Up appeared first on Business2Community.

Netflix plans to blend ads with the content that the viewer is watching, which would make them feel less like an ad and more like regular content. At Netflix's recent Upfront event for its advertisers, Netflix’s president of advertising, Amy Reinhard, showcased the feature for interactive midroll and pause ads, which would use generative AI to make the ads customizable.

“When you compare us to our competitors, attention starts higher and ends much higher. Even more impressive, members pay as much attention to mid-roll ads as they do to the shows and movies themselves," said Reinhard.

She added, "So, if you take away anything from today, I hope it’s this: the foundation of our ads business is in place," while emphasizing, "And going forward, the pace of progress is going to be even faster."

https://twitter.com/PopCrave/status/1923397161057697911

Netflix Sees Strong Growth in Its Ad Business

While ads are still not a big driver of Netflix’s profits, the company expects it to contribute significantly in coming years, predicting ad revenues to double this year. Netflix has been looking to customize its ads and during the Q1 2025 earnings call last month, an analyst asked whether the company has worked in making its ads as personalized as the content on its platform.

In response to that question, co-CEO Ted Sarandos said that while the company hasn’t yet solved that problem, it is working on it. He added, “We do have an ambition to achieve that same level of sophistication and maturity capability that we did on the personalized recommendations." He added, "So that means, you know, matching the right ad, with the right audience, the right viewer, and the right title.” If Netflix is able to achieve such advanced personalization, its ad revenues could skyrocket.

According to Sarandos, “And we think putting those three things together drives superior campaign outcomes for advertisers. We think it is a better experience for members so it is win-win.”

Netflix Launched Ad Supported Plan in 2022

Netflix, which spoke against ads on streaming platforms for many years, launched an ad-supported tier at $6.99 in North America in November 2022, which it raised to $7.99 earlier this year. The launch of the ad-supported tier was quite a U-turn for the company but was preceded by a fall in streaming subscribers in the first half of 2022. Along with the launch of the ad-supported tier, Netflix also cracked down on password sharing in many regions.

The company estimated that around 100 million households viewed its content through borrowed passwords and gave them the option of paid sharing. These strategies worked wonders for Netflix, and it added more than 41 million subscribers in 2024, ending the year with over 300 million subscribers.

Going forward, Netflix won’t provide quarterly subscriber numbers, but earlier this month, the company disclosed that it has 94 million subscribers on the ad-supported plan, which is over twice what it had at the same time last year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjOkK6Bo448

Most Streamers Now Offer Ad-Supported Plan

While streaming was once the bastion of ad-free TV and movies, it's not anymore. Streamers across the board are adding ad-supported tiers to provide cheaper options and boost profits. Leading streaming platforms like Disney, Amazon, and Discovery have gradually added ad-supported tiers. Streaming companies offer these plans at a sharp discount to their ad-free plans, which helps them cater to those subscribers who might not otherwise buy the higher-priced ad-free tier.

Netflix, for instance rejigged its subscription tiers and its cheapest ad-free tier in the US is priced at $17.99 a month which is $10 higher than the ad-supported tier. While ads spoil the viewing experience and somewhat blur the line between streaming and linear TV, for streaming companies it is emerging as an attractive source of revenues especially as the penetration of streaming reaches near peak levels in many markets.

NFLX Stock Has Soared in 2025

Meanwhile, while the broader markets have whipsawed in 2025, and at one point, all constituents of the so-called “Magnificent 7” were in the red for the year, Netflix has been a steady performer and is outperforming the S&P 500 Index.

The company beat on both the topline and bottomline in Q1 2025 and gave quite an upbeat commentary on its outlook. During the earnings call, responding to queries on whether the uncertain macro environment has impacted Netflix, co-CEO Greg Peters said, “based on what we are seeing by actually operating the business right now, there is nothing really significant to note.”

He added, “Stepping back, we also take some comfort in the fact that entertainment historically has been pretty resilient in tougher economic times. Netflix specifically has also been generally quite resilient, and we have not seen any major impacts during those tougher times, albeit, of course, over a much shorter history.”

Peters stressed that its low-cost ad-supported plans make it even immune to economic downturn.

JPMorgan Downgrades Netflix Stock

However, after Netflix’s strong YTD performance, some analysts are turning cautious. Today, JPMorgan downgraded NFLX from “overweight” to “neutral” while raising its target price from $1,150 to $1,220. While the brokerage is constructive on Netflix’s long-term outlook, it sees the near-term risk-reward as quite balanced.

Notably, after the stellar rally over the last couple of years, Netflix’s valuation multiples have expanded and it now trades at a next 12-month (NTM) P/E multiple of around 45x which is much higher than other streaming companies.

The post Netflix Is About To Get Much Worse: AI Ads Are Coming Soon appeared first on Business2Community.