Category: Tech

The CEO of HubSpot says he avoids the anxiety of Sunday night by simply working through the weekend
We all know that familiar feeling of dread: setting our alarm clocks for Monday morning on Sunday evening, or even earlier in the day knowing your weekend of fun has come to an end.
But HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan knows no such feeling, she said in an episode of The Grit podcast published last week. That’s because she uses Sundays as her own personal work day.
“I’m not scared of Sundays. I enjoy it because it’s my time,” said Rangan, who helms the $34 billion software company. “I get to decide what I’m learning, what I’m doing, what I’m thinking, what I’m writing. It is completely my schedule.”
Instead, Rangan—who said she struggles to sit still and take time away from work—carves out Friday night and all of Saturday to take a break. She spends this time going on walks with her husband Kash (a managing director with Goldman Sachs), doing yoga, meditating, and reading.
“Saturdays are precious to me,” Rangan said. “When I didn’t take breaks, I got burned out pretty quickly.”
HubSpot employees know Rangan won’t look at or respond to emails on Saturdays, but she’ll spend time on Sundays scheduling emails that hit inboxes in the wee morning hours on Mondays.
Rangan, who’s been with HubSpot for about five years now, typically starts her weekdays around 6 a.m. and is on work calls by 7 a.m. She says she will work as late as 11 p.m.
She joined the marketing software company right before the pandemic began as chief customer officer. The pandemic actually boded well for HubSpot as more and more companies started digitizing more of their processes and procedures. The company’s revenue more than doubled, said Rangan, who became CEO in September 2021. HubSpot was also recognized on Fortune’s Future 50 list in 2024 for companies that are likely to adapt, thrive, and grow. HubSpot didn’t immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment about Rangan’s worth ethic and how she’s impacted the company.
Rangan built her 25-year-plus tech career serving in leadership positions at other large software companies including Dropbox, Workday, and SAP. But the tech powerhouse came from humble beginnings.
Rangan was born and raised in South India, where she grew up in a 350-foot apartment with her parents and older sister. She says her mother inspired her to become a woman pioneer—whether it was becoming the first woman in India to win a major case, the first woman engineer to “do something really cool,” or becoming a doctor who would do something amazing, Rangan said.
She ended up studying computer engineering at Bharathiar University in India, and moved to the U.S. at age 21 to earn her MBA from the University of California—Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. She used her combined experience of engineering and business to become a successful salesperson, eventually climbing the ranks in the tech industry.
Although Rangan is successful—and has a near-$26 million salary to match—she reminds her two teenage sons they’ll have to work hard like she did in order to earn the lifestyle they live now. Rangan is one of the highest-paid Indian-origin CEOs in the U.S., alongside Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks.
She takes her sons to India every couple of years to show where she and her husband grew up and takes her sons to see a local orphanage they sponsor to “give them a sense of what your responsibility is in society,” Rangan said.
“[It’s] not just for you to make money and live in the Bay Area,” she said. “It is to figure out how you can actually have a broader impact.”
May 13, 2025
Stock prices jumped after the U.S. and China agreed to a 90-day pause in increasing tariffs, with Apple’s stock price rising by more than 6%
The world’s two superpowers have reached an accord on their bruising trade war—for 90 days, at least. On Monday, the U.S. and Chinese governments announced they had agreed to slash reciprocal tariffs for 90 days as they continue to hammer out details on a broader deal. Markets soared on the news, with the S&P 500 gaining 3.26%.
Though Trump has imposed wide-ranging tariffs against all imports coming into the U.S. during his second term in office, China has been his primary target. Trump has argued that the Chinese government has not done enough to stem the flow of fentanyl into the U.S.
As part of Monday’s deal, both countries will reduce their so-called “reciprocal” tariffs from 125% to 10%, though a 20% tariff imposed by Trump related to fentanyl will remain—meaning U.S. levies will be 30%. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hailed the agreement, describing it to reporters on Monday as “substantial progress” between the two countries. He told CNBC in an interview that he does not want a “generalized decoupling from China,” but rather a more strategic approach to make U.S. supply chains more resilient.
Stocks surge
While investors expected booming markets under Trump’s second term, his insistence on a severe tariff campaign against many of the U.S.’s top trade partners has sent markets reeling. Stocks fell dramatically after Trump’s Liberation Day event in early April, where he introduced the tariff plan. Though they have largely recovered from the dip, markets have yet to rise to the levels achieved around his inauguration.
Monday’s announcement—the latest reversal by the Trump administration from its initial trade strategy—spurred stocks to rise to a two-month high. Though Bessent has argued that the administration is prioritizing moving manufacturing of key industries such as steel and semiconductors to the U.S., much of the country’s economy remains dependent on imports from China. On Monday, Trump described Monday’s deal as a “total reset,” while adding that it doesn’t apply to specific sectors such as cars, steel, and aluminum.
Still, the long-awaited accord represents a temporary pause, with investors still anxious for further clarity. Bessent told CNBC on Monday that the two countries would be meeting again in the next few weeks for a “more fulsome agreement.” He added in a later interview with Bloomberg that the reciprocal tariffs with China will likely not fall below 10%.
Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives argued on Monday that the deal meant new highs for the market—and tech stocks in particular—are possible for 2025. “These massive tariff reductions at this time likely take a recession off the table for now in our view,” he wrote. Apple’s shares rose 6.31% on Monday, while Amazon rose 8.07%.
A key question is still on the table for both countries: rare earth minerals. Dexter Roberts, nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, argued to Fortune that China will likely use the key resources, which are used in everything from smartphones to missiles, as a negotiating chip. “Dominating this sector is probably one of their most important sources of leverage over the U.S. and over the world,” he said.
May 13, 2025
Elizabeth Holmes’s Partner Starts a New Blood-Testing Company
Elizabeth Holmes is in prison for defrauding investors through her blood-testing company, Theranos. In the meantime, her partner is starting one of his own.
Billy Evans, who has two children with Ms. Holmes, is trying to raise money for a company that describes itself as “the future of diagnostics” and “a radically new approach to health testing,” according to marketing materials reviewed by The New York Times.
If that sounds familiar, it’s because Theranos similarly aimed to revolutionize diagnostic testing. The Silicon Valley start-up captured the world’s attention by claiming, falsely as it turned out, to have developed a blood-testing device that could run a slew of complex lab tests from a mere finger prick.
Mr. Evans’s company is named Haemanthus, which is a flower also known as the blood lily. It plans to begin with testing pets for diseases before progressing to humans, according to two investors pitched on the company who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they had agreed to keep the plans secret. Mr. Evans’s marketing materials, which lay out hopes to eventually raise more than $50 million, say the ultimate goal is nothing short of “human health optimization.”
The Haemanthus testing device.Credit…Haemanthus
A photo provided to potential investors of the start-up’s prototype bears more than a passing physical resemblance to Theranos’s infamous blood-testing machine, variously known as the Edison or miniLab. The device that Mr. Evans’s company is developing is a rectangular contraption with a door, a digital display screen and what the investor materials describe as tunable lasers inside.
Haemanthus says its device will test blood as well as saliva and urine.
The marketing documents provided with the photo say there is “no regulatory oversight — U.S.D.A. confirmed in writing.”
It’s not clear what the company means by that. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Seth W. Christensen, said he was not able to confirm whether the agency had corresponded with Haemanthus. “U.S.D.A. does regulate vet diagnostics,” including blood testing, Mr. Christensen said.
Mr. Evans responded in an interview, “When you’re in stealth, you’re trying to be in stealth. They aren’t going to find anything associated with the name Haemanthus.” Mr. Evans sent a partially redacted document from the U.S.D.A. that said, “It does not appear that the proposed product is within the regulatory jurisdiction” of the Center for Veterinary Biologics, which is a part of the U.S.D.A.
Mr. Evans, the 33-year-old heir to a California hotel fortune who met Ms. Holmes while federal authorities were investigating her, has not publicly discussed the new venture. The documents indicate he has already assembled roughly 10 employees. He describes his employment on social media simply as working for a “stealth start-up.”
James W. Breyer, the well-known venture capitalist and early investor in Facebook, said his team had been asked to put in money and decided against it “for many of the same reasons we passed twice on Theranos.”
“In diagnostics, we’ve long held that the difference between a compelling story and a great company lies in scientific defensibility and clinical utility,” he wrote in an email.
If sequels are de rigueur in the so-called disruptive world of technology, this one is particularly bold. Theranos became one of the most celebrated start-ups in the globe last decade and attracted both big-time investors (Rupert Murdoch, Larry Ellison) and a board of advisers that included Henry Kissinger.
Ms. Holmes, often clad in a black turtleneck that invited comparisons to the Apple founder Steve Jobs, was feted on magazine covers, and at the White House.
Few knew that Theranos’s technology could not diagnose hundreds of conditions it claimed it could. As was chronicled in The Wall Street Journal, a best-selling book, a podcast, television series and later criminal proceedings, Theranos was largely using third-party technology to run rudimentary assays — when it did any testing at all. Patients received false diagnoses. The company crumbled ahead of Ms. Holmes’s indictment for fraud.
The Theranos blood-testing machine. (Jim Wilson/The New York Times)
Ms. Holmes, who has always maintained that she is innocent, was convicted of fraud in 2022 and sentenced to 11 years in prison. She is incarcerated in a Bryan, Texas, federal prison.
Mr. Evans’s idea for Haemanthus traces back at least a year and a half, when he incorporated the company in Delaware, according to public corporate filings. Documents filed in Delaware and Texas show that its offices have been at various addresses in the trendy South Lamar neighborhood of Austin, Texas, where Mr. Evans lives with his and Ms. Holmes’s two children.
Haemanthus began by soliciting $3.5 million in funding from friends and family and this spring began reaching out to other well-to-do backers in Austin and the San Francisco Bay Area for an additional $15 million, according to the investor materials.
The billionaire Michael Dell’s investment firm turned down the effort, according to two people briefed on the outreach.
The one investor who could be identified in public records is Matthew E. Parkhurst, the part owner of a Mediterranean tapas bar in downtown Austin and other investments. Mr. Parkhurst did not respond to requests for comment.
Much of the Haemanthus executive team hails from Luminar, a struggling self-driving car company where Mr. Evans worked for two years, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Pet health care is the first market Mr. Evans’s company aims to address. The start-up has thus far received one patent.
According to the company’s marketing materials and patent, the Haemanthus device will use a laser to scan blood, saliva or urine from pets and analyze the samples on a molecular level. In a matter of seconds, the marketing material said Mr. Evans’s machine would be able to identify and qualify biomarkers such as glucose and hormones, and deploy what the company calls deep learning models to detect cancer and infections.
Animal medicine has grown into a colossal industry as private-equity firms have increasingly acquired and consolidated independent veterinary practices.
Pet cancer screenings alone are a multibillion-dollar market. Edgemont Partners, a health care investment bank, describes it as a “recession-proof industry.”
Haemanthus told investors that it had roughly two dozen advisers, including veterinarians and diagnosticians, though it did not name them.
Haemanthus’s materials say the long-term goal is to develop a stamp-size, wearable version of the product for humans. “Based on our experience and partner input,” it says, that will require three years and $70 million.
The investor presentation makes no mention of Mr. Evans’s connection to Ms. Holmes.
May 12, 2025
Wikipedia is opposing the UK’s online safety regulations, calling them ‘flawed’ and ‘burdensome’
The non-profit Wikimedia Foundation is challenging the United Kingdom’s online safety rules in court over concerns they may enable “vandalism, disinformation, or abuse” to go unchecked on its Wikipedia platform.
Wikimedia announced on Thursday that its legal challenge specifically targets the Online Safety Act’s (OSA) categorization regulations, which the foundation says are written broadly enough to hold Wikipedia to the strictest duties that websites can be subject to. OSA is a set of safety regulations passed in 2023 that aim to protect both children and adults from harmful online content. While it was largely created to hold social media platforms, video sharing platforms, and online communications platforms accountable for user safety, the bill is so broad that services like Wikipedia can also fall under its requirements.
Platforms designated as a “category 1 service” — which the OSA defines as a platform that attracts over seven million monthly UK users, uses content recommendation algorithms, and allows users to share user-generated content with other users on the service — are required to provide tools that allow users to verify their identity and block other users. Some obvious examples of a category 1 service would be platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and Discord.
“As a Category 1 service, Wikipedia could face the most burdensome compliance obligations, which were designed to tackle some of the UK’s riskiest websites,” said Wikimedia senior advocacy manager Franziska Putz. “Someone reading an online encyclopaedia article about a historical figure or cultural landmark is not exposed to the same level of risk as someone scrolling on social media.”
Wikimedia says that even content forwarding Wikipedia features, like allowing users to choose the daily “Picture of the day,” places it at risk of being designated as a category 1 service. While not every Wikipedia user would be required to verify their identity under these rules, Wikimedia says the regulations could enable malicious users to prevent unverified volunteers from fixing or removing any harmful content or disinformation they publish.
In a larger post on Medium, the Wikimedia Foundation’s lead counsel, Phil Bradley-Schmieg, said enforcing category 1 duties would undermine the privacy and safety of Wikipedia volunteers, and could “expose users to data breaches, stalking, vexatious lawsuits or even imprisonment by authoritarian regimes.”
Companies can be fined up to £18 million (around $24 million) or ten percent of their global turnover for breaching OSA rules, and risk their services being blocked in the UK in extreme cases. OSA regulations for categorized services are expected to be in effect by 2026. Wikimedia says it has requested to expedite its legal challenge, and that UK communications regulator Ofcom is already demanding the information required to make a preliminary category 1 assessment for Wikipedia.
“We regret that circumstances have forced us to seek judicial review of the OSA’s Categorisation Regulations,” said Bradley-Schmieg. “Given that the OSA intends to make the UK a safer place to be online, it is particularly unfortunate that we must now defend the privacy and safety of Wikipedia’s volunteer editors from flawed legislation.”
May 9, 2025
You can now file a claim for Apple’s $95 million settlement over Siri spying
Eligible Apple customers can now apply for their share of a $95 million Siri snooping payout. A website has been set up to distribute the funds, allowing Apple device owners in the US who experienced an unintended Siri activation during private conversations between September 17th, 2014, and December 31st, 2024, to submit a claim.
The payout is related to a 2019 class action lawsuit that alleged Apple was infringing on its users’ privacy by capturing conversations overheard by its Siri voice assistant without consent, passing the recordings to third-party quality control contractors. Apple offered a formal apology and pledged it would no longer retain user recordings, but pushed back against additional allegations that it allowed advertisers to target consumers based on Siri recording data. In January 2025, the company agreed to pay $95 million out to impacted users to settle the case.
Applications are open until July 2nd, 2025. Claims can be submitted for up to five Siri-enabled devices, including iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, HomePod, iPod touch, and Apple TV, provided the user swears under oath that the voice assistant was unintentionally activated on each device. If approved, settlement payouts are capped at $20 per device.
Eligible Apple device owners who already received a Claim Identification Code and Confirmation Code are in the process of being notified about the settlement, but applications can be submitted by anyone who believes they’re eligible, regardless of whether they received a claim notice.
May 8, 2025
A Standard Chartered analyst has walked back their previous $120,000 bitcoin price prediction, suggesting that this target “may be too low.
A Standard Chartered analyst who predicted bitcoin hitting $120,000 by the second quarter now says his price call is “too low.”
“I apologise that my USD120k Q2 target may be too low,” Geoffrey Kendrick, head of digital assets at Standard Chartered, said in a tongue-in-cheek comment shared with clients via email Thursday.
Last month, Kendrick wrote a note saying that he expects bitcoin to reach an all-time high of around $120,000 in the second quarter of 2025 on the back of a “strategic asset reallocation away from US assets” and “accumulation by ‘whales’ (major holders).”
“We expect these supportive factors to push BTC to a fresh all-time high around USD 120,000 in Q2,” Kendrick said at the time. “We see gains continuing through the summer, taking BTC-USD towards our year-end forecast of 200,000.”
On Thursday, Kendrick said his $120,000 bitcoin price call now “looks very achievable” and that this may even be too low a target.
“The dominant story for Bitcoin has changed again,” the Standard Chartered analyst said. “It was correlation to risk assets … It then became a way to position for strategic asset reallocation out of US assets.”
“It is now all about flows. And flows are coming in many forms,” he added.
His comments come as bitcoin once again topped the $100,000 level. The price of the cryptocurrency was last trading up by 4.5% at $$100,511.22, according to Coin Metrics.
In recent years, analysts have picked up on a pattern that shows bitcoin trading in a similar way to risk assets such as U.S. technology stocks — the rationale being that increased inflows of more institutional capital into bitcoin makes it more prone to the same market risks equity markets face.
Kendrick — who has long held a bullish position on the cryptocurrency — said that U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds have seen $5.3 billion of inflows in the past three weeks, suggesting more institutional money is piling in.
He pointed to several examples of large investors allocating part of their portfolios to bitcoin, including software firm MicroStrategy ramping up bitcoin purchases, the Abu Dhbai sovereign wealth fund holding BlackRock’s IBIT bitcoin ETF, and the Swiss National Bank buying shares of MicroStrategy.
MicroStrategy is widely considered a proxy for bitcoin.
May 8, 2025
OpenAI Appoints Instacart Chief Executive to Oversee Business and Operational Functions
OpenAI said late Wednesday that it hired Fidji Simo, the chief executive of Instacart, to take on a new role running the artificial intelligence company’s business and operations teams.
In a blog post, Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, said he would remain in charge as the head of the company. But Ms. Simo’s appointment as chief executive of applications would free him up to focus on other parts of the organization, including research, computing and safety systems, he said.
“We have become a global product company serving hundreds of millions of users worldwide and growing very quickly,” Mr. Altman said in the blog post. He added that OpenAI had also become an “infrastructure company” that delivered artificial intelligence tools at scale.
“Each of these is a massive effort that could be its own large company,” he wrote. “Bringing on exceptional leaders is a key part of doing that well.”
Ms. Simo, a member of OpenAI’s board, will oversee sales, marketing and finance. She will report to Mr. Altman.
OpenAI, which ignited a frenzy over A.I. with its ChatGPT chatbot, has grown rapidly and juggled multiple initiatives — sometimes unsuccessfully. The San Francisco company has steadily released new A.I. models and products, including systems that can “reason.” In March, it completed a $40 billion fund-raising deal, led by the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, that valued it at $300 billion and made it one of the most valuable private companies in the world.
But OpenAI, which was set up as a nonprofit, has struggled to adopt a new corporate structure. As the commercial appeal of artificial intelligence has grown, the company had tried to remove itself from control by the nonprofit. That attracted scrutiny from critics such as Elon Musk, an OpenAI founder who sued the company and accused it of putting profit ahead of A.I. safety. The attorneys general of California and Delaware also scrutinized the restructuring.
On Monday, OpenAI backtracked on the plan and said it would allow the nonprofit to retain its grip on the company.
(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, accusing them of copyright infringement regarding news content related to A.I. systems. OpenAI and Microsoft have denied those claims.)
In a statement late Wednesday, Ms. Simo said that OpenAI “has the potential of accelerating human potential at a pace never seen before and I am deeply committed to shaping these applications toward the public good.”
She added in a memo to Instacart employees that she had a “passion for A.I. and in particular for the potential it has to cure diseases” and that “the ability to lead such an important part of our collective future was a hard opportunity to pass up.”
Ms. Simo will remain at Instacart for the next few months as the company names a successor, a role she said would be filled by a member of Instacart’s management team. She will also remain on the company’s board as its chairperson.
“Today’s announcement is not a reflection of any changes in our business or operations,” Instacart said in a statement.
May 8, 2025
NSO Group, the maker of spyware, received a $167 million judgment against it for hacking into WhatsApp
A federal jury on Tuesday ordered the best-known maker of government spyware to pay a record-setting $167 million for hacking more than 1,000 people through WhatsApp messages in a stunning cap to six years of litigation.
The verdict came on the second day of deliberations in the damages phase of the trial in Oakland, California. U.S. District Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton granted WhatsApp’s motion for summary judgment against Israel-based NSO Group in December, finding that it had violated the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and a similar California law with its spying program known as Pegasus.
Tuesday’s award was for $167,256,000 in punitive damages and $440,000 in compensatory damages, the largest blow ever dealt to the burgeoning spyware industry.
While Pegasus is marketed to governments as a tool to fight terrorism and organized crime, a steady stream of investigations have shown it being used against political leaders, peaceful activists and journalists around the world.
“Today’s verdict in WhatsApp’s case is an important step forward for privacy and security as the first victory against the development and use of illegal spyware that threatens the safety and privacy of everyone,” WhatsApp parent Meta said.
“The jury’s decision to force NSO, a notorious foreign spyware merchant, to pay damages is a critical deterrent to this malicious industry against their illegal acts aimed at American companies and the privacy and security of the people we serve.”
NSO said it would probably appeal.
“NSO remains fully committed to its mission to develop technologies that protect public safety, while continuously strengthening our industry-leading compliance framework and ensuring our technology is deployed solely for their legitimate, authorized purposes by legitimate sovereign governments,” spokesman Gil Lanier said.
Meta said that if it collects the money from the Israeli company, it would donate to the sort of digital rights groups that have been critical in detecting and examining spyware attacks.
“We have a long road ahead to collect awarded damages from NSO and we plan to do so,” it said. “Ultimately, we would like to make a donation to digital rights organizations that are working to defend people against such attacks around the world. Our next step is to secure a court order to prevent NSO from ever targeting WhatsApp again.”
The Toronto-based nonprofit Citizen Lab, which led the way in exposing Pegasus, praised WhatsApp for persisting in its litigation and for notifying victims when it detected attacks.
“Back in 2019 no country had sanctioned NSO Group,” Citizen Lab researcher John Scott-Railton posted on Bluesky. “No parliamentary hearings, no hearings in congress, no serious investigations. For years, WhatsApp’s lawsuit helped carry momentum & showed governments that their tech sectors were in the crosshairs from mercenary spyware too.”
Hamilton’s December ruling held NSO liable for hacking into the Meta unit’s systems by sending malicious software through its servers to about 1,400 targeted phones, which Meta said belonged to government officials, journalists, human rights activists and dissidents in dozens of countries.
Hamilton also found that WhatsApp was entitled to sanctions against NSO for its refusal to turn over source code for the software in discovery, with the penalty to be determined later. She ruled that with the underlying legal issues settled, the case should proceed to trial only to determine how much the company should pay in civil damages.
The case included the first U.S. testimony from NSO executives, who have long taken pains to stay out of the public eye.
The jury’s award is by far the most consequential result from scores of lawsuits in an industry at the center of global disputes over governmental surveillance powers and individual freedoms. That it took so long to come to trial, after an appeal that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, underscores the high stakes and national interests involved.
The U.S. government blacklisted NSO and a handful of other companies and individuals after determining that they were operating in opposition to U.S. interests. Most American allies have been slow to follow suit.
Apple dropped a similar case against NSO in September after Israeli authorities reportedly seized the company’s source code and NSO said it could no longer produce it. NSO has been closely allied with the Israeli government, from which the company has said it needs permission to export its products.
NSO had argued that it should be exempt from legal punishment because it sells only to government agencies, which determine which people to target with the programs, but appeals courts rejected that defense. The company’s executives acknowledged in depositions that it determines how hacks are conducted, based on what phone and software each target uses.
Pegasus and similar wares have exploited security flaws, including those in WhatsApp and Apple’s operating system, to get inside phones and capture pictures, emails and texts, even those that are fully encrypted in transmission.
In some cases, those exploits require no user interaction and leave the software all but indiscoverable.
Evidence developed in the case showed how capable and dangerous NSO has been, with 140 employees looking for ways to exploit Apple’s iPhone and Google-supported Android phones and the apps that run on them. An NSO executive testified that the spyware had been installed through operating systems, instant messengers and browsers.
Pegasus is programmed with technical blocks against spying within the United States and on phones with U.S. numbers that are physically located elsewhere in the world, an attorney for NSO said.
But spy programs made by other vendors or within national agencies do not have such limitations. That is one reason security experts have been aghast at the use of Signal and an archiving program for its messages by White House officials including Michael Waltz, who was recently ousted as national security adviser, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Although Signal is end-to-end encrypted, any spy software that can take control of a phone can access all of those messages.
Testimony in the WhatsApp case showed that NSO used a succession of attacks on the company between 2018 and 2020, altering its technique when WhatsApp blocked earlier methods. One of those modifications came after WhatsApp had filed suit, strengthening Meta’s argument that NSO had acted willfully.
Meta told the court that it had paid more than $400,000 in salary to employees as they battled with NSO.
But NSO attorney Joseph Akrotirianakis told the jury that those salaries would have been paid in any case and that jurors were not being asked to weigh the impacts on the ultimate hacking targets, only any costs to Meta.
“This lawsuit is about publicity,” he said in closing arguments. “Facebook wanted to make headlines about how deeply and strongly and genuinely they believe in protecting their users’ privacy, and it viewed suing NSO as an easy way to get those good headlines.”
NSO emphasized that it had used WhatsApp’s computers only in passing tainted messages through to the victims.
“Pegasus did not take anything from WhatsApp servers,” Akrotirianakis said. “It did not leave anything behind. It did not execute any code on WhatsApp servers, it did not delete, change or corrupt any data.”
To win punitive damages under the California hacking statute, Meta had to show by convincing evidence that NSO was “guilty of oppression, fraud, or malice.”
To convey to the jury how big an award would need to be to have an impact, WhatsApp established in sometimes combative testimony that NSO spent about $50 million yearly on research and development.
NSO chief executive Yaron Shohat testified that NSO lost $12 million in 2024 and $9 million in 2023 and that it would struggle to pay significant damages.
May 7, 2025
Sam Altman’s decision to scrap OpenAI’s for-profit plan can be seen as a win for Elon Musk
SAN FRANCISCO — ChatGPT maker OpenAI will remain under the control of its founding nonprofit board after abandoning a plan to split off its commercial operations as a for-profit company.
Former employees and Elon Musk, a co-founder of OpenAI who later split with its leaders, had criticized the restructuring plan, saying it would remove crucial oversight of its artificial intelligence technology. Musk filed a lawsuit seeking to block the move; the suit is ongoing.
OpenAI’s new plan seeks a compromise between allegations it was set toabandon its original mission of benefiting humanity and the claims of company leaders that it must raise more money and deliver profits to investors to compete in the race to advance AI.
It is unclear how the change will alter OpenAI’s operations, but it offers a fillip to Musk, who has waged a public war against the company that he co-founded but now competes against with his AI venture xAI. In addition to his lawsuit, the billionaire has publicly criticized OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Musk’s lead attorney in the lawsuit, Marc Toberoff, in a statement late Monday dismissed the new plan as “sleight of hand” that “changes nothing.” “OpenAI’s announcement is a transparent dodge that fails to address the core issues: charitable assets have been and still will be transferred for the benefit of private persons,” he said, including Altman and OpenAI investors, such as Microsoft.
OpenAI’s nonprofit board, pledged to ensure that supersmart AI benefits all of humanity, will now retain ultimate control of its operations. But the company will remove limitations it placed on the maximum returns investors could receive from investing in its for-profit arm. That division, which develops ChatGPT, will become a public benefit corporation, allowing it to seek profits while serving a particular mission.
In a call with reporters Monday, Altman said that once completed, the new plan will let the company receive the full $30 billion investment recently announced by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank. The deal valued OpenAI at $300 billion, making it one of the most valuable private companies in history, but had terms linked to changes in OpenAI’s structure.
Being able to grow and raise more money will enable OpenAI to deliver on its mission of ensuring that AI benefits all of humanity, Altman said. “We are obsessed with our mission,” he said. “We believe the structure works for that.”
Altman said in a letter to employees provided to reporters Monday that the previous restructuring plan was abandoned “after hearing from civic leaders and having discussions with the oﬃces of the Attorneys General of California and Delaware.”
OpenAI is still talking to the attorneys general of the two states, which have to sign off on changes to nonprofit companies. The company is incorporated in Delaware but has most of its operations in California.
In response to a question from The Washington Post, a spokesperson for California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the state’s department of justice was reviewing the new plan. “This remains an ongoing matter — and we are in continued conversations with OpenAI,” the spokesperson said.
Jill Horwitz, an expert in nonprofit law and a professor at Northwestern University, said state officials would be expected to have a role in OpenAI’s restructuring. “It makes sense that the board would have thought through such a major change to the nonprofit structure in conversation with the regulators,” she said.
It is unclear whether the nonprofit board’s oversight of OpenAI’s operations will remain unchanged, Horwitz said. “Without more detail, however, it’s difficult to know what control means,” she said.
Monday’s announcement was the latest abrupt change at a company that since its founding in 2015 has grown to huge influence but has also been roiled by internal drama.
OpenAI was founded by tech luminaries including Altman and Musk to counterbalance tech corporations such as Google as they developed more powerful AI software. The nonprofit’s leaders soon realized they needed more resources to compete with the tech giants, but disagreed about how to secure them.
Musk initially bankrolled OpenAI but split from the company after his suggestion that he take full control was rejected by Altman and others.
Altman began taking on huge investment from Microsoft to keep up with the costs of AI development, and oversaw the launch of ChatGPT. But he was briefly ousted by OpenAI’s nonprofit board in 2023, an episode that contributed to company leaders deciding that it needed a more conventional structure.
OpenAI reconstituted its board and promised investors more stability, but over the past year several senior leaders and other employees quit the company, including its chief scientist and chief technology officer. Some departing employees accused the company of skimping on testsand other work needed to prevent OpenAI’s technology causing harm.
Former OpenAI employee Page Hedley, who helped organize a letter calling on the company to remain under nonprofit control, said on Monday that he welcomes its change of plans, but still has questions.
“Will OpenAI’s commercial goals continue to be legally subordinate to its charitable mission, which is enforceable by the attorneys general? Who will own the technology that OpenAI develops?” Hedley said in an emailed statement.
May 5, 2025
A regulatory filing reveals Jeff Bezos’ plan to sell up to $5 billion of his Amazon stock
Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos is planning to sell some of his holdings in the company.
Bezos, whose net worth is valued at over $200 billion, will sell up to 25 million shares in the company, valued at around $5 billion, Amazon disclosed in a regulatory filing Friday. The value of the shares could change, of course, depending on Amazon’s stock price. If it declines, they would be worth less, if it rises, they would be worth more.
Amazon filed its quarterly 10-Q report with the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday morning, revealing a 10b5-1 trading plan for Bezos. The plans are meant to preempt concerns of insider trading by creating a pre-planned schedule for sales that are executed automatically when certain stock conditions are met.
The specifics of the trading plan were not disclosed, beyond the 25 million share figure, and an end date of May 29, 2026. For comparison, Disney CEO Bob Iger disclosed a 10b5-1 plan late last year covering about $41 million in stock.
Bezos, it should be noted, has consistently sold a small portion of his Amazon holdings for the last couple of years to help fund his other ventures, which include The Washington Post and the space firm Blue Origin. Last year, for example, he filed a trading plan that covered up to 50 million shares in the company.
The planned sale comes amid a challenging environment for Amazon, which is navigating tariff uncertainty. That said, the company’s advertising business continues to surge, growing 19 percent in Q1 to $13.9 billion.
May 4, 2025