Tag: company structure and ownership

Jack Ma to relinquish control of Ant group | CNN Business

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Chinese billionaire Jack Ma will no longer control Ant Group after the fintech giant’s shareholders agreed to reshape its shareholding structure, according to a statement released by the company on Saturday.

After the adjustment, Ma’s voting rights will fall to 6.2%, according to the statement and CNN calculations.

Before the restructure, Ma possessed more than 50% of voting rights at Ant via Hangzhou Yunbo and two other entities, according to its IPO prospectus filed with the exchanges in 2020.

Ant added in the statement that the voting rights adjustment, a move to make the company’s shareholder structure “more transparent and diversified,” will not result in any change to the economic interests of any shareholders.

Ant said its 10 major shareholders, including Ma, had agreed to no longer act in concert when exercising their voting rights, and would only vote independently, and thus no shareholder would have “sole or joint control over Ant Group.”

The voting rights overhaul came after Chinese regulators pulled the plug on Ant’s $37 billion IPO in November 2020, and ordered the company to restructure its business.

As part of the company’s restructuring, Ant’s consumer finance unit applied for an expansion of its registered capital from $1.2 billion to $2.7 billion. The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission recently approved the application, according to a government notice issued late last week.

After the fund-raising drive, Ant will control half of its key consumer finance unit, while an entity controlled by the Hangzhou city government will own a 10% stake. Hangzhou is where Alibaba and Ant have been headquartered since their inceptions.

Ant Group is a fintech affiliate of Alibaba, both of which were founded by Ma.

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January 7, 2023
Facebook parent company Meta will lay off 11,000 employees | CNN Business

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CNN Business
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Facebook parent company Meta on Wednesday said it is laying off 11,000 employees, marking the most significant job cuts in the tech giant’s history.

The job cuts come as Meta confronts a range of challenges to its core business and makes an uncertain and costly bet on pivoting to the metaverse. It also comes amid a spate of layoffs at other tech firms in recent months as the high-flying sector reacts to high inflation, rising interest rates and fears of a looming recession.

“Today I’m sharing some of the most difficult changes we’ve made in Meta’s history,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post to employees. “I’ve decided to reduce the size of our team by about 13% and let more than 11,000 of our talented employees go.”

The job cuts will impact many corners of the company, but Meta’s recruiting team will be hit particularly hard as “we’re planning to hire fewer people next year,” Zuckerberg said in the post. He added that a hiring freeze would be extended until the first quarter, with few exceptions.

In September, Meta had a headcount of more than 87,000, per a September SEC filing.

Meta’s core ad sales business has been hit by privacy changes implemented by Apple, advertisers tightening budgets and heightened competition from newer rivals like TikTok. Meanwhile, Meta has been spending billions to build a future version of the internet, dubbed the metaverse, that likely remains years away from widespread acceptance.

Last month, the company posted its second quarterly revenue decline and said that its profit was cut in half from the prior year. Once valued at more than $1 trillion last year, Meta’s market value has since plunged to around $250 billion.

“I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here,” Zuckerberg wrote in his post Wednesday. “I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to those impacted.”

Shares of Meta rose 5% in trading Wednesday following the announcement.

Meta is not alone in feeling the pain of a market downturn. The tech sector has been facing a dizzying reality check as inflation, rising interest rates and more macroeconomic headwinds have led to a stunning shift in spending for an industry that only grew more dominant as consumers shifted more of their lives online during the pandemic.

“At the start of Covid, the world rapidly moved online and the surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth,” Zuckerberg wrote Wednesday. “Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended. I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected.”

“I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that,” he added.

Meta’s headcount in September was nearly twice the 48,268 staffers it had at the start of the pandemic in March of 2020.

A handful of tech companies have announced hiring freezes or job cuts in recent months, often after having seen rapid growth during the pandemic. Last week, rideshare company Lyft said it was axing 13% of employees, and payment-processing firm Stripe said it was cutting 14% of its staff. The same day, e-commerce giant Amazon said it was implementing a pause on corporate hiring.

Also last week, Facebook-rival Twitter announced mass layoffs impacting roles across the company as its new owner, Elon Musk, took the helm.

In addition to the layoffs, Zuckerberg said the company expects to “roll out more cost-cutting changes” in the coming months. Meta, which like other tech giants is known for its vast, perk-filled offices, is rethinking its real estate needs, he said, and “transitioning to desk sharing for people who already spend most of their time outside the office.”

“Overall,” he said, “this will add up to a meaningful cultural shift in how we operate.”

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November 11, 2022
This oil refiner is cutting 1,100 jobs — and giving billions of dollars to its shareholders | CNN Business

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CNN
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Phillips 66 is cutting at least 1,100 jobs by the end of this year as the refining giant seeks to slash costs and steer a larger chunk of its soaring profits to shareholders.

At its investor day meeting in New York Wednesday, Phillips 66 detailed plans to slim down in a bid to save about $1 billion in annual costs.

In a presentation to shareholders, the refiner projected a workforce of under 12,900 people by the end of this year, down from 14,000 last year and 14,300 in 2020.

Phillips 66 spokesperson Bernardo Fallas said the smaller workforce was driven by a combination of attrition and eliminated positions.

Most of the job cuts have already taken place and were communicated to employees in late October, the spokesperson said, adding that recent attrition levels significantly lowered the number of employees impacted.

The layoffs come despite the fact that Phillips 66, one of the nation’s largest refiners, has raked in $9.1 billion in profit so far this year, up from just $44 million a year ago. The company’s share price has soared 45% so far this year, easily outperforming the 20% decline for the broader S&P 500.

“Phillips 66 is undergoing a company-wide effort to optimize its cost structure and reimagine its operating model to enable sustainable savings,” the spokesperson said.

Houston-based Phillips 66 said the cost-cutting moves, along with other steps, will give the company more financial firepower to boost stock buybacks and dividends.

Phillips 66 said it plans to return an additional $10 billion to $12 billion to shareholders between mid-2022 and the end of 2024.

“We are announcing a number of priorities designed to reward shareholders,” Phillips 66 CEO Mark Lashier said in a statement.

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November 9, 2022
Analysis: Elon Musk owning Twitter should give everyone pause | CNN Business

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CNN Business
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In late May, something unusual happened at Twitter. Shareholders voted to approve two proposals to change how the company operates — and did so against Twitter’s recommendations.

While shareholder votes are often nonbinding for management, these nonetheless pushed for good corporate governance practices. The first proposal required Twitter to compile a report on the risks of using concealment clauses, such as nondisclosure agreements, to ensure greater accountability for the company and protections for staff. The second proposal required Twitter to disclose its spending on elections.

The developments, however, were overshadowed by something else unusual happening at the company. Elon Musk, the mercurial billionaire, had agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion the month before only to begin raising doubts about the deal soon after. The deal to take Twitter private, which was finally completed this week, likely renders the votes moot; Musk will have final say, not shareholders, a power he wields over numerous entities.

In the tech industry, and especially in the social media sector, annual shareholder meetings have long been something of a farce that captures the broader power imbalance in Silicon Valley. Rather than hold management accountable, shareholders typically run into an unbreachable wall of opposition from founders like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Snap’s Evan Spiegel, and Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who control a majority of voting shares at their respective companies.

Twitter was different. The company billed itself as a “town square,” and also operated in a more democratic fashion than many of its peers, sometimes to its detriment. The company’s CEOs, of which there have been several over the years, clashed with the board and left or were pushed out. Twitter was vulnerable to an activist investor, shareholder proposals and ultimately a takeover from the world’s richest man. It was messy, sure. Zuckerberg once allegedly described Twitter as a “clown car.” But at least it was a clown car that partly belonged to the public.

Now, Musk joins the list of rich, white men who single-handedly control social platforms that collectively reach and shape the lives of billions of people around the world. And Musk, who will reportedly have “absolute control over Twitter” according to a shareholders’ agreement, promises to be uniquely disruptive.

In an effort to support his maximalist vision of “free speech,” the Tesla CEO plans to rethink Twitter’s content moderation policies and permanent bans for users who previously violated the platform’s policies, including former President Donald Trump. He also reportedly wants to gut Twitter’s staff. and has already fired several top executives.

Each of these moves has the potential to undo the work of employees who have labored to make Twitter a better platform with “healthy” conversations after years of complaints from users about harassment and toxic discourse. These moves could also upend the many corners of society shaped to some degree by Twitter. While it is barely a tenth the size of Facebook, Twitter has always had an outsized influence over the worlds of media, politics and tech.

That influence now belongs to Musk. There are two vastly diverging views of the billionaire. Many think of him as a generational figure who is a hybrid of Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs and the fictional Tony Stark — an innovative spirit who defies skeptics to build big businesses that better the world. The others can’t look past his history of false promises, erratic behavior and incendiary remarks.

To those in the first camp, Musk serving as the sole decider at Twitter may be cause for celebration. To those in the second, quite the opposite. But both camps have cause for concern.

More than any other figure, Musk has become the embodiment of a level of concentration of power and wealth that would have seemed almost unthinkable just a couple of decades ago.

The world’s richest man, worth more than the GDPs of many countries, is now in control of one of the world’s most influential social networks. One individual now owns or oversees businesses that are shaping the automotive and space industries, rethinking core infrastructure with freight tunnels and satellite internet, building humanoid robots and brain-interface machines and determining how millions connect with each other and find news.

Musk, prone to self-aggrandizement, insists his interest is to aid humanity, but he also insists that he knows best how to do so at each turn and does not seem to take criticism very well. He and his supporters have been known to lash out at detractors on Twitter, where he spends an unusual amount of time for someone running multiple companies. And now, rather than take his ball and going home when countless users criticize him for, say, offering unsolicited advice on how to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, he is buying the whole field for $44 billion.

In 2022, many people may be accustomed to the tremendous power wielded by tech founders. Jeff Bezos, a fellow billionaire and Musk’s rival, also owns a rocket company and used his vast wealth to acquire The Washington Post. But Musk isn’t buying a newspaper, he’s buying the news, or at least one of the key platforms that shape it.

It’s a level of unimpeachable power perhaps only rivaled by Zuckerberg, and there have been clear downsides in this sphere. Zuckerberg, whether he was being truthful or not, tried to downplay his platforms’ influence in the 2016 US presidential election only to spend years trying to extinguish scandals related to it. Facebook has since tried to push off its most difficult decisions to an independent oversight board, but the buck still stops with Zuckerberg. The same will go for Musk.

Elon Musk is a conglomerate, and each arm of his empire potentially gives him more leverage, real or imagined, in advocating for the others. Before lawmakers choose to speak out about concerns with Tesla, for example, some may also weigh whether Musk might discontinue offering his Starlink broadband internet system in Ukraine, or whether he might put his thumb on the scale to promote certain content on Twitter that may disadvantage them.

More immediately, however, owning a social network ensures Musk a different kind of personal power increasingly sought by other controversial billionaires, including Trump (with Truth Social) and Musk’s friend Ye (with a proposed deal to buy Parler). It is the power of knowing that, no matter what he says and no matter how offensive it may be, he can never be turned off.

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October 29, 2022
Elon Musk’s bumpy road to possibly owning Twitter: A timeline | CNN Business

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CNN Business
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A board seat accepted and then rejected. A stunning $44 billion takeover offer with uncertain financing. And a surprise early morning tweet putting the deal on hold, temporarily.

Even by the standards of Twitter, a company that has known plenty of chaos and dysfunction in its history, the weeks-long effort by billionaire Elon Musk to buy the company has proven to be uniquely tumultuous – and there’s no clear end in sight.

Should the deal go through, it would place the world’s richest man in charge of one of the world’s most influential social media platforms. The acquisition has the potential to upend not just Twitter itself but politics, media and the tech industry. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has repeatedly stressed that his goal is to bolster what he calls “free speech” on the platform, by which he means all legal speech that complies with local laws in the markets where Twitter operates. He has also said he would reverse Twitter’s ban of former President Donald Trump.

But the attempt by Musk, a wildly successful entrepreneur with a history of erratic behavior, to buy Twitter has been viewed with some skepticism from the start. On the day he made his offer, Musk said: “I’m not sure I’ll actually be able to acquire it.” Some have questioned how he would finance the deal, especially as shares of Tesla

(TSLA), which he’s partially using to back his financing of the Twitter deal, and the broader tech sector have declined in the weeks since.

After Musk recently said he was temporarily pausing the deal so he could assess the amount of spam and fake accounts, it prompted speculation that the billionaire might be looking to renegotiate the deal – or back out of it entirely. His actions in the days that followed only reinforced that thinking.

Here is a look back at the many twists and turns in one of the most high-profile tech deals in recent memory.

Musk starts quietly buying up Twitter shares, building his stake in the company. But it would be months before he disclosed this fact to the public.

Musk’s stake in Twitter tops 5%, but that fact is not disclosed until the following month. Musk was obligated to disclose his stake within 10 days of crossing the 5% threshold, but waited 21 days to do so. During that time, he continued building up his stake.

The billionaire begins to make pointed statements about the platform from his account. “Twitter algorithm should be open source,” he wrote, with a poll for users to vote “yes” or “no.”

The following day, Musk tweets out another poll to his followers: “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?”

Musk reaches out to Twitter cofounder and former CEO Jack Dorsey to “discuss the future direction of social media,” according to a company filing later put out by the company. The two tech founders are known to have a bit of a billionaire bromance on and off Twitter.

Twitter’s board and some of its leadership team meet with representatives from Wilson Sonsini, a law firm, and J.P. Morgan to discuss the possibility of Musk joining the company’s board, according a later securities filing. Dorsey is said to have told the board that “he and Mr. Musk were friends,” according to the filing.

In the meeting, the Twitter board discussed wanting Musk to agree to “‘standstill’ provisions”,” according to the filing. This would effectively “limit his public statements regarding Twitter, including the making of unsolicited public proposals to acquire Twitter (but not private proposals) without the prior consent of the Twitter Board.”

Musk is revealed to be Twitter’s largest individual shareholder, with a more than 9% stake in the company.

News of the purchase sends shares of the social media company soaring more than 20% in early trading and kicks off a wave of speculation about how Musk might push for changes on the platform.

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announces Musk will join Twitter’s board of directors. “Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board,” Agrawal says in a post on Twitter.

As part of the appointment, Musk agrees not to acquire more than 14.9% of the company’s shares while he remains on the board. His term on the board is set to go through 2024, according to a regulatory filing.

Agrawal announces that Musk has decided not to join the board after all. “I believe this is for the best,” Agrawal writes in a letter to the Twitter team.

The reversal opens the door for Musk to pursue a greater stake in the company – and frees him to tweet his many thoughts about the company.

Musk stuns the industry by making an offer to acquire all the shares in Twitter he does not own at a valuation of $41.4 billion. The cash offer represents a 38% premium over the company’s closing price on April 1, the last trading day before Musk disclosed that he had become the company’s biggest shareholder.

“I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy. However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company,” Musk writes in his offer letter. “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.”

Twitter’s board of directors adopts a “poison pill” provision, a limited-term shareholder rights plan that potentially makes it harder for Musk to acquire the company.

Musk lines u p $46.5 billion in financing for the deal, including two debt commitment letters from Morgan Stanley and other unnamed financial institutions and one equity commitment letter from himself, according to a regulatory filing.

The billionaire also reveals that he has not received a formal response from Twitter a week after his acquisition offer. He said he is “seeking to negotiate” a definite acquisition agreement and “is prepared to begin such negotiations immediately” — an apparent reversal from his statement in his acquisition offer letter that it would be his “best and final” offer.

Although he is the richest person in the world, much of Musk’s wealth is tied up in Tesla stock, and some followers of the company speculate that it could be challenging for Musk to raise debt against the historically volatile stock.

Twitter announces that it has agreed to sell itself to Musk in a deal valued at around $44 billion. At a conference later in the day, Musk describes his offer to buy Twitter in characteristically sweeping terms as being about “the future of civilization,” not just making money.

At an all-hands meeting that afternoon, Twitter employees raise questions about everything from what the deal would mean for their compensation to whether former US President Donald Trump would be let back on the platform.

Filings reveal Musk sold $8.5 billion of his Tesla stock in the three days after Twitter board agreed to the sale for an average of $883.09 per share. The filings did not disclose the reason for the sale, but Musk appeared to be raising funds to buy Twitter.

Musk raises another $7 billion in financing for the deal. The new investors include Oracle founder Larry Ellison, cryptocurrency platform Binance and venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, according to a filing.

Musk aims to increase Twitter’s annual revenue to $26.4 billion by 2028, up from $5 billion last year, according to a New York Times report, citing Musk’s pitch deck presented to investors. To achieve that lofty goal, Musk intends to bolster Twitter’s subscription revenue and build up a payments business while decreasing the company’s reliance on advertising sales, according to the report.

Musk confirms what many have assumed for weeks: he would reverse Twitter’s Trump ban if his deal to buy the company is completed.

“I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump, I think that was a mistake,” Musk said. “I would reverse the perma-ban. … Banning Trump from Twitter didn’t end Trump’s voice, it will amplify it among the right and this is why it’s morally wrong and flat out stupid.”

Twitter confirms to CNN Business that the platform is pausing most hiring and backfills, except for “business critical” roles, and pulling back on other non-labor costs ahead of the acquisition. In addition, Twitter says general manager of consumer, Kayvon Beykpour, and revenue product lead, Bruce Falck, are leaving the company.

Musk tweets that the deal is on hold, linking to a Reuters report from nearly two weeks earlier, about Twitter’s most recent disclosure about its amount of spam and fake accounts. The figure cited in the report, however, is in line with prior quarterly disclosures.

“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” Musk tweeted.

Shares of the social media site plummet after Musk’s announcement, dropping more than 10% at market open. Two hours after announcing the hold, Musk says he remains set on purchasing Twitter. “Still committed to acquisition,” he wrote.

Later in the day, Musk says his team is testing Twitter’s numbers and “picked 100 as the sample size number, because that is what Twitter uses to calculate

Musk tweets out that Twitter’s legal team accused him of breaking a nondisclosure agreement when the billionaire revealed the platform’s sample size for automated user checks is allegedly just 100 users.

“Twitter legal just called to complain that I violated their NDA by revealing the bot check sample size is 100! This actually happened,” wrote Musk.

The standoff over bot accounts continues as Musk exchanges a series of tweets with Agrawal over the issue. After Agrawal carefully explains how Twitter attempts to combat and measure spam accounts, Musk responds with a poop emoji.

Musk follows up with a somewhat more thoughtful question. “So how do advertisers know what they’re getting for their money?” Musk asked. “This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter,” he added.

Musk announces that his acquisition of Twitter “cannot move forward” until he sees more information about the prevalence of spam accounts, claiming that the social media platform falsified numbers in filings. Without citing a source, he claims in a tweet that Twitter is “20% fake/spam accounts” and suggests Twitter’s previous filings with the SEC were misleading.

Later in the day, Musk posts a poll to his Twitter followers: “Twitter claims that >95% of daily active users are real, unique humans. Does anyone have that experience?” before calling on the SEC to evaluate the platform’s numbers. “Hello @SECGov, anyone home?” Musk tweets, in an apparent attempt to get the regulator to look into the matter.

In a statement, Twitter says it remains “committed to completing the transaction on the agreed price and terms as promptly as practicable.” Later, the company says it intends to “enforce the merger agreement.”

In a letter to Twitter’s head of legal, Musk threatens to walk away from his purchase of the platform, alleging that Twitter is “actively resisting and thwarting his information rights” as outlined by the deal.

In the letter, an attorney for Musk accuses the social media company of breaching the merger agreement by not providing the data he has requested on Twitter spam bots, stating that the lack of information gives him a right “not to consummate the transaction” and “to terminate the merger agreement.”

Musk moved to terminate the acquisition agreement. A lawyer representing him claimed in a letter to Twitter’s top lawyer that the company is “in material breach of multiple provisions” of the deal over its alleged failure to provide all the data Musk says he needs to evaluate the number of spam and fake accounts on the platform.

“For nearly two months, Mr. Musk has sought the data and information necessary to ‘make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform,’” the letter reads. “This information is fundamental to Twitter’s business and financial performance and is necessary to consummate the transactions contemplated by the Merger Agreement. … Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information.”

Twitter was not having it.

“The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement,” Twitter board chair Bret Taylor said in a tweet Friday, echoing earlier statements by the company that it planned to follow through with the deal. “We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.”

Twitter sued the Tesla billionaire in Delaware court in an attempt to force him to complete the deal.

The 62-page lawsuit, sprinkled with memes, tweets and a poop emoji, effectively highlighted the bizarre spectacle of the deal from the start. The company paints Musk as a non-serious potential owner — alleging at one point that he has “disdain” for the company, and at another saying, “Musk’s strategy is … a model of bad faith” — while seeking to compel him to become its owner. (Twitter’s board has an obligation to its shareholders to try to see the deal through if they believe it is in their best interest. The dispute could also end in a settlement.)

Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk over his move to terminate their $44 billion acquisition agreement will go to trial on Oct. 17 and run for five days, a Delaware judge ruled.

The decision came after Judge Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, who is overseeing the case, previously ruled in Twitter’s favor that the proceedings could be expedited and take place in October. Twitter initially pushed for an October 10th start.

Musk’s legal team had asked for the trial to take place in 2023. Twitter’s legal team argued it was necessary to expedite the case in order to limit the “harm” to its business and to ensure the deal can be completed before Oct. 24, the “drop dead” date by which the two sides had previously agreed to close the deal.

Twitter whistleblower Peiter “Mudge” Zatko testifies before Congress in his first public appearance after his bombshell allegations against the social media company were reported in August by CNN and The Washington Post.

In a whistleblower disclosure sent to multiple lawmakers and government agencies in July, Zatko accused Twitter of failing to safeguard users’ personal information and of exposing the most sensitive parts of its operation to too many people, including potentially to foreign spies. Zatko — who was Twitter’s head of security from November 2020 until he was fired in January — also alleged company executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, have deliberately misled regulators and the company’s own board about its shortcomings.

Zatko claimed in his testimony that Twitter is extremely vulnerable to being penetrated and exploited by agents of foreign governments, as well as detailed some of the personal information Twitter collects on users and alleged that the company does not know where the majority of its collected data goes.

Days earlier, a judge allowed Musk’s legal team to add arguments based on the whistleblower disclosure to its case.

Musk sends a letter to Twitter proposing to complete the deal as originally signed for $54.20 per share, citing people familiar with the negotiations. News of the letter, revealed in a security filing the next day, sends Twitter stock surging more than 20%, approaching the deal price for the first time in months.

Such an agreement could bring to an end a contentious, months-long back and forth between Musk and Twitter that has caused massive uncertainty for employees, investors and users of one of the world’s most influential social media platforms.

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October 9, 2022
Amazon is ‘investing heavily’ in the technology behind ChatGPT | CNN Business

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CNN
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Amazon wants investors to know it won’t be left behind in the latest Big Tech arms race over artificial intelligence.

In a letter to shareholders Thursday, Amazon

(AMZN) CEO Andy Jassy said the company is “investing heavily” in large language models (LLMs) and generative AI, the same technology that underpins ChatGPT and other similar AI chatbots.

“We have been working on our own LLMs for a while now, believe it will transform and improve virtually every customer experience, and will continue to invest substantially in these models across all of our consumer, seller, brand, and creator experiences,” Jassy wrote in his letter to shareholders.

The remarks, which were part of Jassy’s second annual letter to shareholder since taking over as CEO, hint at the pressure that many tech companies feel to explain how they can tap into the rapidly evolving marketplace for AI products. Since ChatGPT was released to the public in late November, Google

(GOOG), Facebook

(FB) and Microsoft

(MSFT) have all talked up their growing focus on generative AI technology, which can create compelling essays, stories and visuals in response to user prompts.

Amazon’s goal, according to Jassy, is to offer less costly machine learning chips so that “small and large companies can afford to train and run their LLMs in production.” Large language models are trained on vast troves of data in order to generate responses to user prompts.

“Most companies want to use these large language models, but the really good ones take billions of dollars to train and many years, most companies don’t want to go through that,” Jassy said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday morning.

“What they want to do is they want to work off of a foundational model that’s big and great already, and then have the ability to customize it for their own purposes,” Jassy told CNBC.

With that in mind, Amazon on Thursday unveiled a new service called Bedrock. It essentially makes foundation models (large models that are pre-trained on vast amounts of data) from AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Stability AI and Amazon accessible to clients via an API, Amazon said in a blog post.

Jassy told CNBC he thinks Bedrock “will change the game for people.”

In his letter to shareholders, Jassy also touted AWS’s CodeWhisperer, another AI-powered tool which he said “revolutionizes developer productivity by generating code suggestions in real time.”

“I could write an entire letter on LLMs and Generative AI as I think they will be that transformative, but I’ll leave that for a future letter,” Jassy wrote. “Let’s just say that LLMs and Generative AI are going to be a big deal for customers, our shareholders, and Amazon.”

In the letter, Jassy also reflected on leading Amazon through “one of the harder macroeconomic years in recent memory,” as the e-commerce giant cut some 27,000 jobs as part of a major bid to rein in costs in recent months.

“There were an unusual number of simultaneous challenges this past year,” Jassy said in the letter, before outlining steps Amazon took to rethink certain free shipping options, abandon some of its physical store concepts and significantly reduce overall headcount.

Amazon disclosed in a securities filing Thursday that Jassy’s pay package last year was valued at some $1.3 million, and that the CEO did not receive any new stock awards in 2022. (When Jassy took over as CEO in 2021, he was awarded a pay package mostly comprised of stock awards that valued his total compensation package at some $212 million.)

Despite the challenges at Amazon, however, Jassy said in his letter that he finds himself “optimistic and energized by what lies ahead.” Jassy added: “I strongly believe that our best days are in front of us.”

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April 12, 2021
Despite TikTok ban threat, influencers are flocking to a new app from its parent company | CNN Business

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CNN
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In the days after TikTok’s CEO was grilled by Congress for the first time, many TikTok users began posting about an alternative platform called Lemon8, sometimes with eerily similar language.

Multiple creators described the app as being like “if Pinterest and Instagram had a baby, with TikTok’s algorithm.” Some compared it to TikTok circa 2020 and encouraged other influencers to join the app before it grows. They also asked followers to share their Lemon8 usernames in the comments.

As it turned out, the app wasn’t just a random alternative to TikTok. Lemon8 is a social media platform launched in the United States earlier this year by TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance amid federal and state efforts to ban or restrict TikTok in the country over national security concerns.

The similarities in the videos comparing the new service to Instagram and Pinterest, which were posted by both English and Spanish-speaking creators, raised questions about whether people were being paid to promote the new app on TikTok. But despite that speculation — and the mounting scrutiny on TikTok and ByteDance — a growing number of US users and influencers are now eagerly touting Lemon8, with its focus on photos and highly curated, informational or “aspirational” content.

“We have to talk about TikTok’s new sister app,” a creator said in one such video.

“I’ve seen a lot of bigger content creators that I love on it and promoting it on their Instagram stories, so I thought, ‘okay, it’s my time to hop on this bandwagon,’” said Melanie Cruz, who got her start creating content as a YouTube vlogger in high school around 2018. “I like that it’s something simple, it’s nothing too in your face … it’s not overwhelming.”

Lemon8 has been downloaded just over one million times in the United States since it became available on US app stores in February, and had around half a million daily active US users last month, according to intelligence platform Apptopia.

The early traction for Lemon8 hints at the whack-a-mole challenge lawmakers could face in reining in TikTok and other social media platforms. It also carries some hints of TikTok’s own rise, which was reportedly fueled in part by ByteDance spending heavily to advertise the service on rival platforms Facebook and Snapchat. This time, however, the best place to promote the next TikTok may be on TikTok itself.

The New York Times reported last month that ByteDance had begun early marketing efforts for Lemon8 that included working with influencers. Now, some creators featured on Lemon8’s “for you” feed appear to be disclosing their work with the company using the hashtag #Lemon8Partner in their captions.

A ByteDance company source said that Lemon8 is still in its early days and testing how to work with creators. They said ByteDance has not launched any formal marketing efforts for Lemon8, but in some cases has made deals to pay creators to post on the platform. However, they denied rumors that ByteDance had paid creators to promote the new app on TikTok.

ByteDance has also recently listed open jobs for Lemon8 creator partnerships roles, according to postings viewed by CNN. “Lemon8 is a social media platform committed to building a diverse and inclusive community where people can discover new content and creators every day,” the job postings read.

Lemon8’s photo-heavy focus marks a stark shift away from most of the major social apps that, following TikTok’s lead, have gone all-in on endlessly scrollable short-form videos in recent years.

Lemon8’s homepage is a “for you” feed where users can scroll through content, similar to TikTok, but instead of videos, the feed is two columns of still images. When you click through to a post, it might be a single photo or a carousel of images. It’s also possible to post videos on the app, but they’re less popular.

The app is heavily centered on beauty and lifestyle content — the “for you” page can be sorted into six categories including fashion, home and travel. Many of the posts feature lengthy captions, and users can also edit images to include text overlays. On top of similarities to Instagram and Pinterest, Lemon8 looks nearly identical to the Chinese app Xiaohongshu.

Still, the app lacks some standard social platform features such as messaging and the option to tag other users in posts.

A recent scroll through Lemon8’s “for you” page showed before-and-after photos of a botox treatment, a “no restrictions” day-long eating plan, book recommendations, black tie wedding attire tips and “10 recent girly Amazon buys I do NOT regret.”

“It seems like people love it or hate it,” Madison Bravenec, a health coach and content creator, said of the app’s focus on aesthetics. But she added that the app’s targeted focus on certain types of content has made it easier to find a community that’s interested in the wellness content she likes to create, whereas the most popular posts on TikTok often have to appeal to a wider audience.

Some creators say Lemon8 is filling a hole in the social media ecosystem that was left when Instagram moved to prioritize short-form video content in order to better compete with TikTok, frustrating many creators who joined the app for its original focus on photos.

“We’re not videographers, we’re not the types of people who would like to change the ways we create content and communicate with others just because a platform is prioritizing one deliverable over the other,” said Can Ahtam, a professional photographer who joined Instagram more than a decade ago. “So all of us did feel the impact of reach being lower with the photos we were sharing [on Instagram].”

Ahtam added: “If we were to compare them side-by-side right now, Lemon8 would have the upper hand in photos being shared.”

Lemon8’s userbase remains a far cry from the 150 million users TikTok says it has in the United States.

Still, in videos reviewing Lemon8, some creators have pondered whether the app could ultimately function as a replacement if TikTok were to get banned in the United States, preserving the content recommendation algorithm that helped make TikTok one of the country’s most popular apps and launched the careers of countless influencers.

But if TikTok were to go down, Lemon8 would likely go with it, according to James Lewis, director of the strategic technologies program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“The concern is still the same, which is that ByteDance is a Chinese company subject to Chinese law,” Lewis said. “If it collects [users’ personal] information, then you’ve got the same problem.”

TikTok, for its part, has said that its app does not pose a risk to US users, and that the Chinese government has never asked for US user data.

The practical ramifications for creators of a TikTok (and, perhaps by extension, Lemon8) ban — if one were enacted — would still likely be months away, if not more. Lewis said he doesn’t expect any nationwide legislation to be passed before the end of this year, and it would almost certainly face legal challenges that could drag out its implementation if it did.

By launching a new app even with TikTok in the spotlight, “ByteDance clearly doesn’t feel like they’re at risk,” Lewis said. And many creators say they’re not necessarily worried either.

Even if TikTok and Lemon8 were banned, Cruz said, “I already have a following on all the other platforms.”

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April 12, 2021
One of Asia’s top female entrepreneurs is stepping down at Grab, the ride-hailing company she helped found | CNN Business

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Hong Kong
CNN
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One of Southeast Asia’s most well-known female entrepreneurs is to step down from her operational roles at Grab, the ride-hailing giant she helped found more than a decade ago.

Tan Hooi Ling, a former chief operating officer who currently leads the firm’s technology and corporate strategy teams, will move to an advisory role by the end of the year, the company said Thursday. She will also give up her seat on the board.

Her exit leaves Grab’s Chief Executive Officer Anthony Tan the tough task of reversing years of losses amid increasingly fierce competition in the ride-hailing and food delivery markets, all without the help of the woman who helped him co-found the company in 2012.

“Grab has been one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life. The impact we create is a reflection of who we are as a team, and I am humbled to have been able to walk alongside Anthony and the many amazing Grabbers who share the same values and work ethic to build something that improves lives in Southeast Asia,” a statement from the company quoted Tan Hooi Ling as saying.

After being founded as a ride-hailing company by the two Tans – who are both from Malaysia but are unrelated – Grab quickly soared to become Southeast Asia’s most valuable private company. It acquired Uber’s Southeast Asia business in 2018, and has since expanded into a variety of other services, including food delivery, digital payments and even financial services.

But Grab has faced intensifying competition from Southeast Asia rivals, including Singapore’s Sea Ltd, Indonesia’s GoTo Group, and Berlin-based Delivery Hero’s Foodpanda.

Grab, which unlike some of its competitors avoided mass layoffs during the coronavirus pandemic, posted an annual loss of $1.74 billion in 2022. That was a 51% improvement on the year before, according to its annual report.

In 2021, the company merged with a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, backed by Altimeter Capital in a deal that would pave the way for a New York listing and value Grab at nearly $40 billion.

Before that, Grab had heavyweight backers including Japan’s SoftBank

(SFTBF) and China’s ride-hailing startup, Didi Chuxing.

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April 12, 2021
First on CNN: New bipartisan bill in Senate could address TikTok security concerns without a ban | CNN Business

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Five US senators are set to reintroduce legislation Wednesday that would block companies including TikTok from transferring Americans’ personal data to countries such as China, as part of a proposed broadening of US export controls.

The bipartisan bill led by Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and Wyoming Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis would, for the first time, subject exports of US data to the same type of licensing requirements that govern the sale of military and advanced technologies. It would apply to thousands of companies that rely on routinely transferring data from the United States to other jurisdictions, including data brokers and social media companies.

The legislation comes amid a flurry of proposals to regulate how TikTok and other companies may handle the sensitive and valuable data of Americans — not just their names, email addresses and phone numbers but also potentially their behavioral data such as location information, search and browsing histories and personal interests.

“Massive pools of Americans’ sensitive information — everything from where we go, to what we buy and what kind of health care services we receive — are for sale to buyers in China, Russia and nearly anyone with a credit card,” Wyden said in a statement. “Our bipartisan bill would turn off the tap of data to unfriendly nations, stop TikTok from sending Americans’ personal information to China, and allow nations with strong privacy protections to strengthen their relationships.”

Lawmakers have scrutinized TikTok, in particular, for its ties to China through its parent company, ByteDance. Much of the existing legislation addressing TikTok at the federal and state level has focused on bans of the app. But Wyden’s bill subjecting US data to export licensing could address the issue without wading into the thorny legal issues surrounding a potential ban, an aide said, and simultaneously avoid giving broad new powers to the executive branch.

Wednesday’s legislation, known as the Protecting Americans’ Data From Foreign Surveillance Act, does not identify TikTok by name. Instead, it directs the Commerce Department to maintain lists of countries that are considered trustworthy and untrustworthy for the purposes of receiving US data.

There would be no restrictions applied to personal information transferred to trustworthy states, and no restrictions on individual internet users’ own transfers of their personal data, but companies seeking to transfer Americans’ personal information to countries outside of the trustworthy list would be required to apply for a license. Transfers to countries on the untrustworthy list would be automatically prohibited unless companies could prove they have a valid reason for a transfer, according to a copy of the bill text reviewed by CNN.

Factors the Commerce Department would need to consider when building its lists include whether a country has enough of its own privacy safeguards — reflected in laws, regulations and norms — to prevent sensitive US data from being transferred further to one of the untrustworthy countries. Another factor includes whether a country has engaged in “hostile foreign intelligence operations, including information operations, against the United States,” language that appears to refer to China, Russia and other foreign adversaries.

The Commerce Department would also be authorized to identify the specific types of information that would be subject to licensing requirements, based on their sensitivity, as well as how much information a company could transfer to a non-approved country before needing a license.

A previous version of the bill was introduced last summer. The newest version, the Wyden aide said, includes fresh language that targets TikTok indirectly by prohibiting data transfers from one company to a parent company that may receive data requests by a hostile foreign government, when the company holds data on more than one million users.

TikTok has faced criticism from US officials who say the company’s links to China pose a national security risk. TikTok has said it has never received a request for US user data from the Chinese government and would never comply with such a request.

TikTok has also said it is working on securing US user data by storing it on servers controlled by Oracle and by establishing special US access protocols to prevent unauthorized use of the information.

Should TikTok abide by its plan, known as Project Texas, Wednesday’s legislation would not affect the company, according to the Wyden aide, but if TikTok or ByteDance did seek to move US user data to China, then those transfers would potentially be subject to the proposed Commerce Department restrictions.

Congress has made several attempts in recent months to address data transfers to foreign adversaries. In February, House lawmakers advanced a bill that would all but require the Biden administration to ban TikTok over national security concerns about the app. The next month, Senate lawmakers introduced a bill that would give the Commerce Department wide latitude to assess all foreign-linked technologies and to take virtually any measures, up to and including imposing a nationwide ban, to restrict their domestic use.

Those bills have provoked a backlash from industry and civil liberties groups, as well as among some fellow lawmakers. Among the concerns are their potential impact on Americans’ First Amendment rights and a potential conflict with laws facilitating the free flow of media to and from foreign rivals. Other concerns include whether the breadth of the legislation could give the US government too much power and whether it could end up harming industries that are not the target of the legislation.

The new bill includes language requiring more input from privacy, civil rights and civil liberties experts, said Justin Sherman, founder and CEO of the research firm Global Cyber Strategies and a senior fellow at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy who has seen the bill.

“You don’t load up Excel sheets in a shipping crate and send them to a foreign port,” Sherman said, but data transfers are a “hugely and often ignored problem in national security.”

“We need to get beyond just looking at a couple mobile apps and platforms, and start looking at all parts of this ecosystem, including how data gets sold and transferred,” Sherman added, “and this bill takes an important look at that issue.”

Other senators co-sponsoring Wednesday’s legislation include Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Tennessee Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty, New Mexico Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich and Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio. A companion bill in the House will also be unveiled Wednesday, sponsored by Ohio Republican Rep. Warren Davidson and California Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo.

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April 12, 2021
Top US general says increased partnership between Iran, Russia, and China will make them ‘problematic’ for ‘years to come’ | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told lawmakers Wednesday that China, Russia, and Iran would be a problem for the US “for many years to come” as the three are working more closely together.

Speaking before the House Armed Services Committee alongside Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Milley said Russia and China are “getting closer together.”

“I wouldn’t call it a true full alliance in the real meaning of that word, but we are seeing them moving closer together, and that’s troublesome,” Milley said. “And then … Iran is the third. So those three countries together are going to be problematic for many years to come I think, especially Russia and China because of their capability.”

While the US has made clear for years now that the three countries are focuses of the military – particularly China and Russia – tensions with all three have been on the rise in recent months and even weeks.

The US continues to help fund Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion, which Milley said Wednesday “in and of itself is a war crime.” Tensions with China rose recently following a suspected Chinese spy balloon’s travel over the continental US. It was ultimately shot down by the US military off the eastern coast of the country; Chinese Minister of National Defense Wei Fenghe refused to take a call with Austin regarding the incident.

And just last week, the US launched retaliatory strikes against Iran-backed groups in Syria, after a suspected Iranian drone struck a facility housing US personnel, killing an American contractor and injuring five service members. Following the US strike, additional rocket and drone attacks were carried out targeting US and coalition personnel in Syria.

Milley warned during a hearing on Tuesday that Iran could “produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon in less than two weeks,” and ultimately create a nuclear weapon within “several months thereafter.”

“The United States military has developed multiple options for our national leadership to consider if or when Iran decides to develop a nuclear weapon,” he said.

But he added Wednesday that China and Russia specifically have “the means to threaten our interests and our way of life,” and mark the first time that the US is “facing two major nuclear powers.”

And while Milley also said Wednesday that China’s nuclear capabilities are “not matched” with those of the US, he added that they are still significant.

“We are probably not going to be able to do anything to stop, slow down, disrupt, interdict, or destroy the Chinese nuclear development program that they have projected out over the next 10 to 20 years,” Milley said. “They’re going to do that in accordance with their own plan. And there’s very little leverage, I think, that we can do externally to prevent that from happening.”

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April 12, 2021