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Legislation headed for the Senate that could ban TikTok is putting some U.S. venture capitalists in an uncomfortable position. Those with stakes in TikTok’s parent ByteDance could lobby in support of TikTok, prioritizing future returns. Or they could stay quiet, protecting both their relationships with policymakers and their reputations, as the pressure to appear patriotic increases in Silicon...
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Team,
The Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW) has awarded their 2023 awards, and we cleaned up! For those who count such things, we were in second place with total wins (5) behind the...
Goldman Sachs promoted two of its senior investment bankers this week to prepare for a moment it has long been hoping for: a return of tech deals.
Jane Dunlevie, a tech-focused banker who helped run Instacart’s initial public offering and Stripe’s $7 billion private capital raise last year, will expand her role to become global head of investment banking services for tech, media and telecom. She...
European Union lawmakers on Wednesday approved the world’s most sweeping regulation so far of artificial intelligence. The AI Act, which will take effect in stages over the next several years, will ban some applications of AI that the law considers high risk, such as social scoring. It will also require the developers of AI models to adopt cybersecurity protections, among other safety and...
A former Nextdoor employee alleged to a company-appointed investigator and to its board of directors in the summer of 2018 that its chief executive and co-founder, Nirav Tolia, sexually harassed her in 2015.
A Nextdoor spokesperson confirmed the investigation of Tolia, who left the CEO job in 2018 but was reappointed last month by its board of directors to run the company again. “The Board took...
Amid increasing Wall Street skepticism toward the makers of passenger electric vehicles, investors are still funding companies making commercial EVs. Among them, California-based Harbinger Motors last week delivered the first of its stripped-down electric chassis to recreational vehicle manufacturer Thor Industries, which will design and install an RV body for it.Harbinger makes an extremely...
It’s taken four years, but the push to ban TikTok is moving at lightning speed—which will continue until it comes to a dead halt sometime in the near future. Today’s lopsided vote in the House of Representatives on the ban-or-sell TikTok bill moves the battle to the Senate, where its prospects are uncertain. Let’s assume it passes in that chamber and then gets signed by President Joe Biden. The...
Is TikTok’s pain Instagram’s gain? In the past, employees at the Meta Platforms app certainly thought so. Instagram’s short-video feature, Reels, has come a long way since its bumpy start in 2020. But it’s hard to imagine any Instagram exec isn’t intrigued by the reprise of Washington’s efforts to ban the ByteDance-owned app. After all, Reels could still use some of that TikTok magic.
TikTok, facing a growing threat of a U.S. ban, has been a global juggernaut over the past few years, drawing more than a billion monthly users and prompting rivals to launch similar services. But what is an open secret among investors is that the app loses money.
TikTok’s parent, ByteDance, doesn’t disclose TikTok’s financial performance. But ByteDance investors estimate TikTok lost several...
In March last year, the former girlfriend of Erik Hosler—then the CEO of semiconductor manufacturing startup xLight—applied for a domestic violence restraining order against him, accusing Hosler of stalking and harassing her. A judge in California had already granted a temporary order, and when xLight learned of the dispute, it asked Hosler to step aside while it investigated the matter.
While...