Tag Archives: Investment & Company Information

Trump administration will reportedly get $10 billion for brokering the TikTok deal

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There may have been some extra incentive for the Trump administration to get the TikTok US deal done. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration is set to receive a total of $10 billion in the deal that allowed TikTok to remain in the US. The new investors who acquired stakes in the US entity of TikTok already paid a $2.5 billion fee to the administration when the deal closed in January, but WSJ's latest report noted that the group of investors would continue to make payments until the total hits $10 billion.

After a group of investors, which includes Oracle along with the Silver Lake and MGX investment firms, acquired stakes in the US-based TikTok entity called TikTok USDS Joint Venture, the WSJ previously reported that the administration would receive a "multibillion-dollar fee" for its work on the deal. To better contextualize the recently-revealed $10 billion fee the Trump administration is receiving, the US entity of TikTok was valued at $14 billion by Vice President JD Vance.

The Trump administration has previously involved itself in major deals with other US corporations. Last year, the administration invested $8.9 billion into Intel and received a nearly 9 percent equity stake. In terms of unprecedented windfalls, the Trump administration also received a Boeing 747-8 as a gift from the Qatari government in May.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/trump-administration-will-reportedly-get-10-billion-for-brokering-the-tiktok-deal-180954979.html?src=rss

Another longtime Microsoft executive is retiring

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It’s already been a busy year for high-profile Microsoft departures, with longtime Xbox chief Phil Spencer bowing out last month alongside his expected successor Sarah Bond. Today it’s the turn of Microsoft's head of Experiences + Devices, Rajesh Jha, who leaves after more than 35 years at the company.

Jha, who oversaw some of Microsoft’s most important products and services, including Windows, Office and Teams, said in a press release that he’s been planning for his succession alongside CEO Satya Nadella for a while. Rather than bringing in a direct replacement, four members of his team will be promoted to executive vice president and report directly to Nadella.

Taking up these new more senior roles are Office EVP and LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslanksky, Windows and Surface president Pavan Davuluri, president of business and industry Copilot (BIC) Charles Lamanna, and Microsoft 365 Core chief Perry Clarke. The outgoing Jha, who said his long career at Microsoft had been "an incredible privilege," will officially transition out of Microsoft on July 1, after which he’ll remain in an advisory role.

"When I think about the pantheon of leaders who have truly shaped this company, Rajesh stands firmly among them," Nadella said in a statement, adding that Jha had been a "constant" during his own time at the company. "He embodies the commitment that helped build and transform Microsoft into the company it is today, and it is on the strength of that foundation that we will continue to move forward."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/another-longtime-microsoft-executive-is-retiring-174453788.html?src=rss

Honda cancels three EVs that were months away from US production

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Honda has announced it is canceling three electric vehicles it was months from starting production on at its EV Hub in Ohio. The Honda 0 SUV, the Honda 0 sedan and the Acura RSX are all being wound down. The company showed off all three models, and touted them as in near-production form at CES 2025. Unlike the Honda Prologue and Acura ZDX, which run on GM's Ultium platform, the scrapped models were built on Honda's own Zero platform and would have been its first fully in-house EVs.

Honda in part blamed the elimination of federal EV tax credits, eased fossil fuel regulations and US tariffs for the decision. The company said US demand for electric vehicles had slowed because of the policy changes. In China, it admitted it could not match the value offered by newer manufacturers building software-driven vehicles on shorter production cycles. CEO Toshihiro Mibe said at a press conference that the demand shift had made EV profitability "very difficult," according to Reuters.

The company said it will redirect resources toward next-generation hybrids and only bring EVs to market when demand justifies it. It also shared plans to expand in India, where it expects the hybrid market to expand. Honda is not alone in pulling back from EV production, with brands like Hyundai, Kia, Volkswagen, Porsche and Ford having all scrapped or delayed major US EV projects since federal policy shifted.

The total restructuring of its EV business could cost Honda up to 2.5 trillion yen ($15.7 billion), with the company set to lose money for the first time since going public in 1957. Mibe and Executive Vice President Noriya Kaihara will forgo 30 percent of their compensation for three months, with other senior executives giving up 20 percent. Honda said it plans to share a detailed long-term strategy at a press conference in May.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/honda-cancels-three-evs-that-were-months-away-from-us-production-155523384.html?src=rss

Google’s GFiber internet business is merging with Astound Broadband

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Google has announced that GFiber is merging with Astound Broadband, in an agreement that sees Astound’s parent company Stonepeak become the majority owner, with Alphabet retaining a minority stake.

No financial specifics were detailed in a press release, but the new combined business will be an independent provider led by GFiber’s executive team, who Google says will use its "expertise in high-speed fiber innovation to manage the combined network footprint." Astound already serves over one million customers across the US, and by joining forces Google says the two providers will be able to grant better internet access to more communities.

GFiber, formerly known as Google Fiber, has been around for nearly 15 years, and currently offers speeds of up to 8Gbps on its $150/month Edge 8 Gig plan. A 20 Gig service was expected to leave early access later in 2026.

The fiber broadband service is part of Alphabet’s "Other Bets" portfolio, which also includes Waymo, Verily, and Wing, a combined segment that recorded an operating loss of $16.8 billion in 2025, CNBC reports. The company’s deal with Stonepeak is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close in Q4 of this year.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/googles-gfiber-internet-business-is-merging-with-astound-broadband-132832086.html?src=rss

Rad Power Bikes gets a new owner, pledge to build bikes in the US

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Life EV has completed a court-approved acquisition of Rad Power Bikes, granting a second life to the troubled e-bike brand.

The Florida-based Life EV now owns Rad’s brand, intellectual property, inventory and certain unspecified operating assets, and will continue to operate as Rad Power Bikes in the US, with plans to expand to "select key markets."

Rad’s new owner has committed to honoring certain warranties and gift cards purchased prior to the acquisition, and says new bikes will be built in the US going forward. Life EV will adopt a Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) structure for its manufacturing operations, allowing it to take advantage of special domestic customs procedures when sourcing parts from global suppliers.

"Rad Power Bikes has helped define the e-bike category in North America with its innovative products and passionate rider community," said Life EV CEO, Rob Provost. "Respecting and preserving that legacy - its brand, vision, and leadership - is foundational to this acquisition. Together, we will build on that trust and create new opportunities for riders nationwide."

The completed acquisition marks the end of a turbulent period for Rad. Back in December, the company was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) warned Rad’s customers to "immediately stop using" some of its e-bike batteries due to a serious fire hazard. At the time, Rad said it couldn’t afford to recall the at-risk batteries.

Less than two months later, in what can only be described as a strange twist of fate, a fire broke out at a Rad Power Bikes retail store warehouse in Huntington Beach, California. "We’re working with local authorities to review a thermal incident that occurred at our Huntington Beach store Sunday evening," a Rad Power Bikes spokesperson told Engadget at the time. "The incident was contained and happened while the store was closed. The cause of the fire has not been confirmed."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/rad-power-bikes-gets-a-new-owner-pledge-to-build-bikes-in-the-us-144641940.html?src=rss

Meta signs a multimillion dollar AI licensing deal with News Corp

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Meta has signed an AI licensing deal with News Corp that will allow the Meta AI maker to use content from The Wall Street Journal and other brands in its chatbot responses and for training of its AI models. News Corp confirmed to Engadget that it had struck a deal with Meta, but didn't provide specifics on the terms of the arrangement. According to The Wall Street Journal, Meta will pay News Corp. "up to $50 million a year" for a three-year deal that covers content from The Journal, as well as the media giant's other brands in the US and UK. 

News Corp previously struck a five-year deal with OpenAI that was valued at around $250 million. During a recent appearance at Morgan Stanley's annual Technology, Media & Telecom (TMT) conference, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson hinted that the media company was in the "advanced stage with other negotiations."

He described the company's overall approach to such arrangements as "a woo and a sue" strategy, depending on whether companies want to pay for content or scrape it without permission. "We have what you might call a woo and a sue strategy," he said. "We'll woo you. We'd like you to be our partner. But if you're stealing our stuff, we are going to sue you. So there'll be a discount for those who hand themselves in, and there'll be a penalty for those that resist."

A spokesperson for Meta confirmed that the two companies had reached an agreement . The company, which has been reorganizing its AI teams as it looks to create its next model, has struck a number of licensing deals in recent months. It previously signed multi-year agreements with USA Today, People, CNN, Fox News and other outlets. The company said at the time that “by integrating more and different types of news sources, our aim is to improve Meta AI’s ability to deliver timely and relevant content and information with a wide variety of viewpoints and content types.”

Update, March 3, 2026, 4:18PM PT: This story was updated with additional information from a Meta spokesperson.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/meta-signs-a-multimillion-dollar-ai-licensing-deal-with-news-corp-234157902.html?src=rss

Downdetector and Speedtest have been sold for over $1 billion

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The next time you check your internet speed or whether your favorite site is down, another company may be profiting. On Tuesday, Ziff Davis announced that it sold its Connectivity division, which includes Ookla's Speedtest and Downdetector, to Accenture. The deal is worth $1.2 billion in cash.

According to Reuters, the deal will allow Ziff Davis to focus on its core brands, including IGN, Mashable and Everyday Health. Brand consolidation appears to be the name of the game, as the company recently laid off some of Eurogamer's most experienced editors and its entire video team. That followed a rotation of editorial staff among Ziff Davis's other gaming publications, which reduced VG247 to a small, two-person gaming guides site.

Ziff Davis bought Ookla for $15 million in 2014. Reuters notes that the division seized on the 5G rollout and a surge in pandemic-driven bandwidth demand to boost its impressive return on the investment. (Connectivity generated a whopping $231 million in 2025.)

Accenture is a global technology consulting company headquartered in Dublin. The company views the acquisition as a key step in building "end-to-end network intelligence services essential for AI-based transformation." (Can someone who speaks corporate translate, please?) The deal may take a few months to be finalized, and Ziff Davis will continue to operate Speedtest and Downdetector in the meantime.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/downdetector-and-speedtest-have-been-sold-for-over-1-billion-201741894.html?src=rss

OpenAI secures another $110 billion in funding from Amazon, NVIDIA and SoftBank

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OpenAI just announced a massive funding round of $110 billion, which is one of the biggest investment rounds in Silicon Valley history. The investors feature many of the usual suspects, including Amazon with $50 billion, NVIDIA with $30 billion and SoftBank with $30 billion. This investment brings OpenAI to a $730 billion valuation

"We’re super excited about this deal," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told CNBC. "AI is going to happen everywhere." That last statement seems more like a threat than a boast, but I digress.

Beyond the funding round, OpenAI has announced strategic partnerships with both NVIDIA and Amazon. This will involve Amazon Web Services (AWS) running OpenAI models for enterprise customers to "build generative AI applications and agents at production scale." It also names AWS as the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI Frontier, which is an agentic enterprise platform.

OpenAI has also committed to consuming 2 gigawatts of Amazon's Trainium capacity, which is the company's custom-designed AI training accelerator. In other words, Amazon is spending a lot of money on OpenAI and then OpenAI will turn around and spend a lot of money with Amazon. The AI funding ouroboros continues.

It's also worth noting that Amazon's investment in OpenAI will be staggered. The funding begins with $15 billion, but the remaining $35 billion will only be invested when certain conditions are met.

Oddly, it's been reported that one condition is that OpenAI achieves artificial general intelligence. AGI is when AI evolves to or beyond human-level abilities, at which point the entire world turns into rainbows and everyone gets a pony. This could happen later this year, according to those bullish on the technology, or never, according to many researchers. Sam Altman said it was coming in 2025 but has since grown weary of the term.

The new partnership with NVIDIA evolves the long-standing collaboration between the two companies. OpenAI has pledged to consume 2 gigawatts of training capacity on NVIDIA's Vera Rubin systems and an additional 3 gigawatts of computing resources, likely in the form of GPUs, to run specific AI inference tasks. In other words, NVIDIA is spending a lot of money on OpenAI and then OpenAI will turn around and spend a lot of money with NVIDIA. The ouroboros must feed.

As for revenue, OpenAI has forecast a massive loss of $14 billion in 2026. It lost around $5 billion in 2024 and reports estimate a loss of $8 billion in 2025. Despite this trajectory, the company claims it'll be raking in $100 billion in revenue by 2029.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/openai-secures-another-110-billion-in-funding-from-amazon-nvidia-and-softbank-171006356.html?src=rss

Kalshi fined a MrBeast editor for insider trading

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Kalshi, one of several online prediction markets that have exploded in popularity in the last few years, has suspended one of YouTube MrBeast's video editors for insider trading, NPR reports. Besides being suspended from the platform for two years, Kalshi says the editor will also be required to pay a financial penalty that's five times his initial trade size.

The editor, Artem Kaptur, traded in markets related to YouTube and specifically, MrBeast. Kalshi says his transactions were initially flagged because of his "near-perfect trading success on markets with low odds, which were statistically anomalous." Because trades are public on Kalshi, multiple users also flagged the trades as suspicious. Kalshi learned Kaptur was an employee of MrBeast during its investigation and determined he "likely had access to material non-public information connected to his trading." Perhaps unsurprisingly, trading with insider information violates Kalshi's rules.

Kalshi says that it reported the insider trading to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and plans to donate the over $20,000 Kaptur has been fined to "a non-profit that provides consumer education on derivatives markets." In a statement provided to NPR, Beast Industries, MrBeast's production company, said it has a zero-tolerance policy for insider trading. "We have a longstanding policy in place against employees using proprietary company information in order to safeguard the highest standards and ethics throughout our organization," Beast Industries said. 

Separately, Kalshi has also suspended and fined a politician who was running to be Governor of California. "In May, our Surveillance Department saw an online video by a candidate for Governor of California that appeared to show him trading on his own candidacy," Kalshi says. "We immediately froze his account and opened an investigation. The candidate was initially cooperative and acknowledged that this violated the exchange rules. As a candidate in a race, you can (and probably should) follow and use Kalshi’s market forecast, but you should not trade on it."

Like other prediction markets, Kalshi lets users make trades based on a variety of different subjects and events. For example, you could participate in a market focused on the results of a basketball game, or something more unusual, like who'll win the current season of Survivor. Despite resembling gambling, online predictive markets aren't currently regulated by state gambling laws, and instead classify bets as a type of futures contract, placing them under the purview of the CFTC. That hasn't stopped states from trying to regulate prediction markets anyway. For example, Nevada sued Kalshi for operating a sports gambling market without a permit earlier in February.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/kalshi-fined-a-mrbeast-editor-for-insider-trading-191027814.html?src=rss

Xbox head Phil Spencer is leaving Microsoft

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Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, is retiring, Satya Nadella has announced. Asha Sharma, the President of Microsoft's CoreAI division is taking over Spencer's role, while Sarah Bond, the current President of Xbox, is resigning.

"I am long on gaming and its role at the center of our consumer ambition, and as we look ahead, I’m excited to share that Asha Sharma will become Executive Vice President and CEO, Microsoft Gaming, reporting to me," Nadella says. "Over the last two years at Microsoft, and previously as Chief Operating Officer at Instacart and a Vice President at Meta, Asha has helped build and scale services that reach billions of people and support thriving consumer and developer ecosystems. She brings deep experience building and growing platforms, aligning business models to long-term value, and operating at global scale, which will be critical in leading our gaming business into its next era of growth."

In a thread on X, Spencer shared his thoughts on Sharma’s new position. “I’m excited for [Asha Sharma] as she steps into the CEO role,” Spencer wrote. “She’s joining an incredible group of people; teams full of talent, heart, and a deep commitment to the players they serve. Watching her lean in with curiosity and a real desire to strengthen the foundation we've built gives me confidence that our Xbox communities will be well supported in the years ahead.”

Alongside Sharma, Matt Booty, the current head of Xbox Game Studios, is getting promoted to Chief Content Officer, and will report to Sharma. Sarah Bond, who like Spencer served as a public face for the Xbox brand and was assumed to be his successor, is leaving Microsoft to "begin a new chapter." Bond has yet to make a public statement about her resignation.

Spencer joined Microsoft in 1988, and has worked on Xbox since at least 2001. He assumed responsibility for Microsoft's gaming brand and its various studios and associated subscription products in 2013, before becoming an Executive VP of Gaming in 2017 and later CEO of Microsoft Gaming in 2022. Spencer's biggest impact on Xbox will likely be remembered as the creation of Game Pass, Microsoft's "Netflix for Games" and the wave of studio acquisitions Microsoft completed from 2018 to 2022, which included smaller studios like Double Fine and the massive $68.7 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard King.

While Microsoft has plenty of developers and IP to fall back on, it's struggled to compete with the likes of Sony and Nintendo during the current console generation. Microsoft's gaming division has gone through widespread layoffs, its revenue continued to fall throughout 2025 and it raised the prices of both its consoles and Game Pass Ultimate, which likely won't help things going forward. Sharma is in many ways inheriting a broken-down car.

As far as her plans go, Sharma’s email to staff that was included in Nadella's announcement is light on details. Sharma says she plans to continue developing "great games," wants to "recommit" to core Xbox fans and "invent new business models and new ways to play." Whether that’s enough to turn Xbox's fortunes around remains to be seen.

Update, February 20, 4:52PM ET: Added statement from Phil Spencer shared on X.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/xbox/xbox-head-phil-spencer-is-leaving-microsoft-212838419.html?src=rss