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Feb 04, 2025
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Good morning! China launched a probe into Google and imposed new tariffs against the U.S. President Trump says a new U.S. sovereign wealth fund he is creating could buy part of TikTok. Elon Musk says regulations should be "default gone."
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The Chinese government on Tuesday launched several investigations into U.S. companies including Google and announced retaliatory tariffs on some American imports including coal, crude oil, liquified natural gas, agricultural machinery and pick-up trucks. China’s State Administration for Market Regulation anti-monopoly regulator said it launched a probe into Google on suspicion of violating the country’s antitrust laws. The one-sentence statement included no specific details but was announced after the U.S. on Saturday imposed a 10% tariff on products imported from China, starting from Tuesday. China said its tariffs on select American goods range from between 10% and 15%, and will take effect from Feb. 10. Google pulled its search engine from China in 2010, and
other services like Google Maps and YouTube are also unavailable in the country. Google still maintains an office in Beijing with employees related to mobile app development, supply chain, cloud services and Chinese partnerships. Although Google doesn’t earn much revenue from China, it still makes billions of dollars a year from Chinese advertisers who promote goods and services outside of China, The Information has previously reported. It’s not clear whether the probe could have any impact on that business.
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President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday to create a sovereign wealth fund for the U.S., telling reporters later that it could buy part of TikTok. “We might put [TikTok] in the sovereign wealth fund, whatever we make or we do a partnership with very wealthy people, a lot of options,” Trump said. “But we could put that as an example in the fund.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnick, the nominee for Commerce secretary, will be in charge of spearheading the effort. The text of the executive order that the president signed was not immediately released. Last month, Trump extended the deadline for TikTok to find a buyer for its U.S. assets by 75 days through a separate executive order. He previously floated the idea of a joint
venture deal for TikTok with 50% U.S. ownership to allow the app to stay in operation in the U.S. However, Bessent said this new fund would be created in the next 12 months, so it’s unclear if it would happen quickly enough to meet the extended deadline for TikTok.
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Elon Musk called for the removal of regulations from the federal government, saying regulations “should be default gone—not default there,” and that if some of that regulation was necessary, it could be added back. Musk was speaking on an X Spaces conversation late Sunday night, joined by former DOGE co-chair Vivek Ramaswamy and Republican Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa. During the audio conversation, Musk laid out plans for DOGE, including shutting down USAID—a move he claimed Trump supported. Musk, who donated millions to Trump’s campaign and is now in regular contact with the president, is advocating for sweeping changes across the federal workforce. In the Spaces conversation, he also said he was doing a live talk this week with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon to discuss DOGE’s cost-cutting efforts.
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Palantir, which sells data analytics software to governments and enterprises, lifted revenue 36% in the fourth quarter, it reported on Monday. For the year, Palantir’s topline expanded 29%. The company projected revenue growth would accelerate to 31% this year. The bullish projection sent Palantir’s stock jumping 23% in after-hours trading. A large part of Palantir’s strong growth in recent quarters has come from commercial customers in the U.S., a group that includes firms in the pharmaceuticals, insurance and telecom sectors. Palantir said revenue from those customers grew by 54% year-over-year to $703 million in 2024. The company now has nearly five times the number of commercial customers in the U.S. as it did three years ago, executives said on the company’s earnings call on Monday. Palantir’s sales to
U.S. government customers also expanded 30% in 2024 to $1.2 billion, as the U.S. Army brokered new contracts with the firm.
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Stephen Yap, who spent nearly two decades at Google, is departing to join publicly-traded adtech firm Perion as chief revenue officer. Yap most recently served as managing director of Google Marketing Platform, which houses Google’s technology for advertisers to buy media across the Internet. Yap was an employee of DoubleClick, the company Google acquired in 2008 that formed the basis of its large advertising technology business. The Department of Justice has alleged Google has a monopoly in this sector; a verdict is expected soon from the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia following a trial that happened last year. In the first three quarters of 2024, Perion’s revenue declined 28% compared to the same period in 2023. The company’s stock is down more than 68% over the year, though it jumped
over 2% today.
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Emily Stubbs, TikTok’s global head of litigation since 2020, is leaving, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, in the latest high-level departure amid the video app’s struggle to stay in operation in the U.S. The departure follows TikTok’s loss of a legal battle to block a federal law that bans the app unless it rids itself of Chinese ownership. TikTok briefly shut off its app for U.S. users last month, but it resumed its service as President Donald Trump issued an executive order that delayed the enforcement of the sale-or-ban law for 75 days. Trump has vowed to make a deal that will allow the app to avoid a ban and continue operating. Stubbs joined TikTok in August 2020, when the app was facing a potential U.S. ban during Trump’s first presidency. Three days after she joined TikTok, Trump
issued an executive order to ban TikTok in the U.S., according to her own LinkedIn profile. Stubbs, who previously worked for ViacomCBS, led TIkTok’s 2020 court battle against Trump’s attempt to force a sale or ban of the app. That legal fight was successful, and TikTok won injunctions that prevented the executive order from coming into effect.
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SoftBank said on Monday it would spend $3 billion per year on technology from OpenAI for itself and its subsidiaries, such as chip designer Arm and electronic payment service PayPay. The commercial relationship will boost OpenAI’s revenue as well as its relationship with SoftBank, which is an existing investor in OpenAI and has been in talks to lead a $40 billion financing of OpenAI that could value it at around $300 billion, including the new capital. The Japanese telecom conglomerate and OpenAI said they will also establish a joint venture to market a suite of OpenAI tools, branded as Cristal Intelligence, exclusively to companies in Japan. Cristal Intelligence will include a version of ChatGPT for businesses as well as OpenAI’s application programming interface. It also “securely integrate[s]” with the “systems and data of individual enterprises in a way that
is customized specifically for each company.” Large consulting firms often handle such customization for AI customers, so the joint venture could become a competitor. Earlier this month, SoftBank also partnered with OpenAI and Oracle as part of a venture, called “Stargate,” to raise $100 billion initially, and $400 billion more over several years to spend on data centers to power OpenAI’s technology.
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