What would Plan B look like?
As TikTok faces a countdown to a possible ban in the United States, Chinese authorities are reportedly considering an unexpected Plan B: taking over the video platform popular with Elon Musk.
On paper, such a deal makes sense given the existing ties and trust between the Chinese government and some of the world's wealthiest people. But beyond whether this will actually happen, there are many other questions that need to be answered for it to work.
latest: According to Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, Chinese authorities are debating whether the tech mogul should be allowed to invest in or acquire TikTok's U.S. operations to meet U.S. laws requiring them to sell the app. It is said that they are doing so.
It is unclear whether Chinese authorities have spoken with Musk or TikTok's parent company ByteDance. TikTok called the report “pure fiction.”
The logic behind such a move is as follows.
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Musk is a close ally of President-elect Donald Trump, and both have said they oppose outlawing TikTok in the United States. (The Times reports that the billionaire plans to use office space in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House, as part of his work for the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.) Musk is a counterweight to China hawks. It has become a force. Sen. Marco Rubio, his nominee for secretary of state, is also in Trump's orbit.
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musk Also Tesla has close ties to China, and officials likely feel they have influence over Mr. Musk. China accounts for about 40% of Tesla's sales, and its market share is under threat from its own competitors.
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For Musk, merging TikTok with X could significantly expand the audience of his social media empire and potentially make it more attractive to advertisers. (This would also help the investors who funded Mr. Musk's 2022 acquisition of Twitter.) And TikTok has a huge amount of potential to help train Mr. Musk's xAI artificial intelligence models. It generates a huge amount of data.
There are still many unknowns. Beijing wants to show strength in standing up to Washington, especially as President Trump prepares to take office, having spoken out about escalating the trade war despite opposing a ban on TikTok. There is. The magazine added that some previous discussions have led to the conclusion that the better course of action may be to have TikTok banned and then negotiate with Trump. Because the law only prohibits ByteDance from: Updating TikTok, such negotiations would give TikTok and the White House time to reach an agreement.
It's also unclear how Musk will finance the acquisition. One possibility is that he borrowed against Tesla's stock, which has soared since President Trump's victory. (This is an option he considered but didn't take when he moved to buy Twitter.)
And the agreement could raise questions about the closeness of Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump and where his loyalties lie. Tesla's top executives have already drawn criticism from right-wing figures like Steve Bannon for putting business interests first.
what's happening here
Qatar said a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas appeared imminent. A Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesperson said mediators had “succeeded in minimizing the many differences between the parties”, paving the way for a breakthrough that halted the months-long war and freed the hostages. said. Investors welcomed the development, sending stocks in the region higher and helping to cap oil price rises.
Former special counsel says Donald Trump would have been convicted in election case. Jack Smith's report, released overnight despite efforts by the president-elect's legal team to block its release, said Trump essentially escaped prosecution by winning re-election. insisted. Mr. Smith resigned last week, and the report was a scathing rebuke (but nothing more) of Mr. Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Trump's team is reportedly considering a trickle-down approach to tariffs. One idea that has been floated is to use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to introduce a phased monthly schedule of tariffs, rather than one big blow to trading partners. President Trump vowed to impose tariffs on his first day in office, and the threat weighs heavily on world leaders and markets.
hollywood is on hold
A week later, wildfires in the Los Angeles area continue to rage due to strong winds, with some areas on high alert.
Here's the latest information: More than 100,000 people have been evacuated, entire neighborhoods have been destroyed, and the housing crisis is deepening. Approximately 24 people died.
Economic losses now exceed $250 billionAccuWeather estimates that number appears to be rising daily. Here in Southern California, the entertainment industry has been particularly hard hit. Disney CEO Bob Iger told The Times' Brooks Burns that he has taken on a new role leading the entertainment giant's relief efforts. As of Monday, 64 Disney employees were homeless and hundreds more, including Iger, had been evacuated.
The entertainment industry is a major employer in the region According to a study compiled after the devastating 2023 Hollywood strike, about 27 percent of the nation's film and television workers are employed in Los Angeles County. Work at many studios has come to a halt as executives, agents and talent focus on destroying their homes and neighborhoods.
The good news: Almost all of Los Angeles' studio infrastructure is secure. Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Netflix, Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures are either far away from the fire or have little damage.
But the industry is divided on whether to continue business as usual. Most studios were open on Monday, and the Recording Academy announced that the Grammy Awards would be broadcast as scheduled on February 2nd. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has extended the voting period for Oscar nominations, but announced that the ceremony will remain on March 2nd. The move comes after studios last week postponed movie premieres and shows like “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” A rebroadcast was broadcast.
Will the fire accelerate the decline of Los Angeles' movie business? States like Georgia and Illinois are dangling billions of dollars in tax breaks to lure Hollywood productions. And these days, virtually all live-action movies are shot outside the region. In response, Gov. Gavin Newsom last year proposed that the state double its tax incentives for film productions to $750 million a year.
In the face of such disruption, some industry players are asking tough existential questions. “It's become a Los Angeles-based business, but a lot of the work is done elsewhere,” Terry Press, a veteran film marketer and former president of CBS Films, told the Times. told. She added: “Why not go where the jobs are?” And what does that mean for the vibrancy of this community? ”
Exclusive: AI coding startup raises $105 million
Despite artificial intelligence emerging as a flashpoint in the trade war, investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence in general shows no signs of slowing. The latest example: Anysphere, whose Cursor product helps developers automate the creation of code, has raised about $105 million, DealBook's Michael de la Merced first reported.
The new round values Anysphere at $2.5 billion, an increase of about six times since May.
A flood of investor interest in AI continues to push up valuations and round sizes. In recent months, OpenAI has raised $6.6 billion at a staggering $157 billion valuation. Last month, data company Databricks raised $10 billion at a valuation of $62 billion.
Anysphere's new round was led by Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, who invested in OpenAI and Databricks. Benchmarking also participated.
Backers point out how quickly Cursor's user base has grown. Anysphere currently has annual recurring revenue of more than $100 million, according to Michael Tuell, the company's co-founder and CEO. Miles Grimshaw, a partner at Thrive who helped lead the new investment round, said nearly all of his firm's portfolio companies use Cursor. . (About half of the developers on the Fortune 1,000 list also use Anysphere, Truell added.)
“I have never seen a company achieve such widespread and rapid adoption, let alone such deep technical adoption,” Martin Casado, partner at Andreessen Horowitz and director of Anysphere, said in a statement. I've never seen a company that did that,” he added.
Automated code creation is becoming a highly competitive field. Other companies such as Codeium, Poolside, and Sourcegraph also offer competing products. Microsoft's GitHub also offers Copilot to help you write code.
But Truell and Grimshaw pointed to Anysphere's ambitions, including updates to its tab autocomplete feature that allows Cursor to predict up to the next 10 minutes of a user's line of code.
The biggest names in the technology world have high hopes for this technology. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently said on “The Joe Rogan Experience” that his company will start automating some code writing. The aspiration is to have AI write all the code for an app.
A conglomerate without a CEO
It's not every day that a company announces the resignation of a CEO without naming an interim CEO or replacement. But IAC did just that on Monday, announcing that Joey Levin would leave the company as executive chairman of the home services platform to oversee the Angi spinoff.
IAC has not named a replacement for Mr. Levin. The remaining executives will report directly to IAC Chairman Barry Diller. What could be the cause?
That's how IAC works. Diller's media empire is an unusual holding company that buys companies, tries to improve them, and then spins out the best ones. The company's businesses, including Dotdash Meredith and Care.com, essentially operate as separate entities with their own CEOs.
IAC has done this before. When former IAC chief Greg Blatt resigned in 2013 to become chairman of Match Group, which was also spun out, the company did not immediately name a replacement. The company appointed Levin as CEO in 2015.
Here's what Levin wrote about Diller in an internal memo: “He's never seen a plan this ambitious. He's never seen a product good enough, a story told enough. And as a result, he It made many of us think bigger and better.”
speed reading
Great deals
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The CEO of American steelmaker Cleveland-Cliffs has hinted at the possibility of making a new bid for U.S. Steel in a bid to sell the company to Nippon Steel's defaulters, but did not provide details. (New York Times)
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Honeywell International, a major industrial conglomerate, reportedly plans to split itself in two following pressure from activist investor Elliott Investment Management. (Bloomberg)
politics, policy, regulation
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Robinhood paid $45 million to settle SEC charges that the brokerage violated securities rules, including failing to protect sensitive customer data and failing to report suspicious transactions. (New York Times)
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“The UK is the 'weakest link' in the rout of world markets”
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Harvard University hired Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm led by a large donor to President Trump, which also hired incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles to lobby the university in Washington. . (Washington Free Beacon)
the best of the rest
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