Former President Donald Trump’s social media post earlier in the week asking his supporters to give Anheuser-Busch a “second chance” came after Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White personally asked him to back the beer company, a person familiar with the situation told CNBC.

Anheuser-Busch last year suffered a major backlash over its Bud Light marketing promotion with a transgender influencer, Dylan Mulvaney.

White, whose UFC is the leading mixed martial arts promotion company, reached out directly to Trump to encourage positive commentary about Anheuser-Busch, according to the person.

In his Truth Social post Tuesday, Trump appeared to be well-informed about detailed aspects of the beverage company’s operations.

He noted that the company spends $700 million a year “with our GREAT Farmers,” employs 65,000 Americans and has provided scholarships to families of fallen members of the military. Trump wrote, “Anheuser-Busch is a GREAT American brand that perhaps deserves a Second Chance?”

UFC, which is owned by TKO Group Holdings, in October announced a partnership with Anheuser-Busch to make Bud Light the official beer partner of the mixed martial arts company, in a deal that was reported at the time to be worth $100 million.

In a press release announcing the deal, White said, “There are many reasons why I chose to go with Anheuser-Busch and Bud Light, most importantly because I feel we are very aligned when it comes to our core values and what the UFC brand stands for.”

A spokesman for UFC declined to comment on White’s conversation with Trump. A spokesperson for Anheuser-Busch did not respond to a request for comment.

In his social media post on Tuesday, Trump threatened to release a list of companies — other than Anheuser-Busch — that he considers to be “woke.”

“Am building a list, and might just release it for the World to see,” Trump wrote. His followers, Trump suggested, should be “going after those companies that are looking to DESTROY AMERICA!”

Those comments came after Trump in a social media post on Sunday was much more critical of the company, saying: “the Bud Light ad will go down as the WORST AD in history.”

“In a matter of minutes 30 billion dollars worth of market cap simply disappeared from the face of the earth. Will they ever get it back? Who knows, but what a mess!” Trump wrote.

Trump, who is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, attended UFC’s Dec. 16 event in Las Vegas, where he walked out into the audience with White and the musical artist Kid Rock.

Trump had attended two other UFC events previously in 2023 and had been at other of the promoter’s events in prior years.

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s presidential hopefuls are pulling out all stops to win over voters on social media ahead of the Feb. 14 election.

In the country of 274 million, millennials and Gen Z voters make up 56.5% of the electorate — and campaigning on social media is heating up.

One platform in particular has emerged as a key battleground: TikTok.

“In 2019, it was the Instagram election. This time it’s the TikTok election,” says Aryo Seno Bagaskoro, a young spokesperson for the presidential campaign of Ganjar Pranowo, the former governor of Central Java.

With 125 million monthly active users, Indonesia is TikTok’s second biggest market, making the platform key for Indonesians trying to get news and updates about the election.

All three candidates have taken note and are churning out youth-oriented content on TikTok, with Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto dancing for the crowds, the former governor of Jakarta Anies Baswedan courting K-pop fans, and former Central Java governor Ganjar Pranowo promoting penguin-related posts.

For Prabowo, the clear frontrunner who’s polling in the mid-40s, the messaging on TikTok fits into the wider “gemoy,” or cute, image of his presidential campaign.

The approach is markedly different from the macho image adopted by 72-year-old during his previous runs for the presidency in 2014 and 2019.

Rather than videos of him arriving at rallies on the back of stallions and rousing crowds with nationalist speeches, the most popular content on TikTok has portrayed him as having a sensitive — even vulnerable — side.

One of the most popular campaign posts on TikTok, with 49 million views, appeared to show Prabowo on the verge of tears after tough questioning in the second presidential debate. Many supporters of Prabowo, often young women, posted videos of themselves weeping in solidarity and alleging that Prabowo was a victim of bias.

Anies’ signature has been live broadcasts on TikTok dubbed locally as “Desak Anies,” or “Interrogate Anies.”

Polling in the mid-twenties, he is running neck-and-neck with Ganjar, and cultivating followers who send questions directly to him. Topics vary from his political program to advice on first dates.

Anies has found unexpected popularity among K-pop fans, mainly young women, belying his past associations with conservative Islam.

One of his supporters is a 22-year-old female student who posts on social media platform X about Anies and his campaign using Korean hangul captions. Much of the footage posted is taken from TikTok.

“He is the perfect fit for K-popification,” the owner of the account told CNBC, asking not to be named for fear of backlash.

“When he did live TikTok, the background is like the ones used by K-pop idols, maybe it was the curtain.”

The Anies campaign and its official supporter groups have taken note, occasionally sending her photos or videos they’d like her to promote.

The Ganjar campaign has gimmicks of its own too, such as “Top Gun”-style jackets and penguin symbols. But, according to his campaign team, they are most interested in videos of him interacting naturally with voters on the ground to showcase his humble roots.

“TikTok has unique characteristics. The algorithm values so much the authenticity and the originality of the videos,” says Karaniya Dharmasaputra, deputy for media channels on the Ganjar campaign team. “On TikTok we prefer an unpolished kind of video. Instagram, I think values more the polished content.”

Older politicians have had to embark on a crash course for TikTok campaigning.

Ganjar’s running mate, Mahfud MD has taken a lead role here, copying Anies’ signature live broadcasts. But introducing the 66-year-old minister and former chief justice of the constitutional court to the platform was tricky at first.

“When we first encouraged Pak Mahfud to do a livestream, it was a bit awkward to be very honest,” said Karaniya. “But he adapted very quickly.”

With the power of TikTok becoming clear, worries about its potential for misuse have also grown.

Misinformation has been a major issue on social media in past Indonesian elections, with outright lies spreading widely boosted by bots and “buzzers,” persons employed to churn out and promote propaganda by one group or another.

TikTok is now trying to limit not only the spread of misinformation, but also its role as a platform for political messages.

Paid political advertising or fundraising by politicians and political parties is not allowed on the social media platform. The company has also forged partnerships with government bodies, local NGOs, and newswire agency Agence-France Presse to combat misinformation.

“The short video format used on TikTok means most of the misinformation we see circulating on the platform consists of edited clips or footage shared out of context with a misleading or false caption,” said a representative for AFP.

Some examples include clips doctored to make them appear like crowds at a Prabowo rally — who were in fact his supporters — were cheering on his opponents, one claiming that Anies had converted to Christianity, and another of a leading journalist endorsing Prabowo.

According to Mafindo, one of the NGOs working with TikTok, between January and November last year, just 7.4% of the hoaxes they recorded and helped debunk were on TikTok.

“It’s on YouTube and Facebook that we found the most disinformation, but I think TikTok is catching up. Meaning a lot of hoaxes are now happening on TikTok,” said Septiaji Nugroho, chairperson of Mafindo.

It’s night. I’m at a lake near Oregon’s Mount Hood, sitting on the beach. Jazz music is playing as I write. I’m not in the real world.

Well, I sort of am. 

I’m wearing Apple’s new Vision Pro headset, which looks like a fancy pair of glowing ski goggles.

Apple’s long-awaited headset, which starts at $3,500, launches in the U.S. on Friday. It’s the company’s first major new gadget to hit the market since the Apple Watch debuted in April 2015. I’ve been testing it for nearly a week. While it has some shortcomings, it’s easily the most fun new product I’ve tried out in years.

Analysts don’t expect the Vision Pro to drive massive amounts of revenue initially. UBS anticipates Apple will ship about 400,000 headsets, leading to a “relatively immaterial” $1.4 billion in revenue this year. However, I’m convinced that if Apple eventually sells cheaper versions, we’ll see millions of people using them in the coming years.

The Vision Pro offers a new kind of experience that Apple calls “spatial computing.” You sit in your world while looking at a digital one, and then plop different apps around you. You can work, play games, watch movies or surf the web.

Thanks to very sharp displays, and a full M2 processor that’s usually found in Macs, the Vision Pro has the power to do a lot of what you’d expect from an Apple device. There’s a dedicated App Store for Vision Pro apps, but you can also install more than a million iPhone or iPad apps. Or pair it with your Mac and work while looking at a 4K display inside the goggles.

I’m only scratching the surface of the capabilities, but here’s the gist: This is an entirely new type of computing, providing a whole new world of experiences. It feels like the future.

Here’s what you need to know:

I was skeptical when I first met with Apple to see the Vision Pro. Companies have been trying to do virtual reality and augmented reality and mixed reality or gobbledygook reality for years.

Sometimes it’s cool, but most of the time I’m done after an hour or so.

With the Vision Pro, there are three key parts that come into play. It has super sharp and colorful screens, it allows you to see the world around you by default using “passthrough” technology, and it has a fast processor.

The displays help remove the “screendoor” effect that’s common in lower-cost headsets like the Meta Quest 3. That’s where you can see the pixels as you look through a headset. You can easily read text on a website or a book on the Vision Pro. And I was able to watch movies, including in 3D, on screens bigger and nicer than any TV in my house.

The Quest 3 and other headsets also have passthrough. But Apple’s works better. It’s clearer and sharper, enough so that I can comfortably see the room around me in full color and without any lag, though I still can’t read my phone. And I love how you can turn the small digital crown, just like on the Apple Watch or AirPods Max, to adjust the volume or transport yourself into a fully 3D landscape.

Virtual travel is a nice touch. You can work or watch movies in Hawaii, by a lake, in White Sands or at Joshua Tree. They’re all relaxing environments with calming sounds and slow animations – like clouds moving across the sky — that help you feel like you’re almost there.

Navigation is easy once you get the hang of it. This reminds me a bit of the iPhone moment, when Apple launched its multitouch display that changed how we interact with phones that had largely been navigated with a stylus, touchpad or keyboard. There aren’t any controllers here. The headset uses sensors to track your eyes (and even verify when you’re making purchases online or in the App Store.) Apple has a quick setup process that aligns the headset to your eyes and then has you look at a series of dots, pinching your fingers as you go so you can calibrate. If you wear glasses, Apple also sells inserts that pop into the headset.

It’s incredibly accurate. You just look where you want to go and then tap your thumb and index finger to select a button or app. There’s a white bar at the bottom of every app, for example, that you can grab to pull and push around. You can adjust the size of any app by looking at the corner and then dragging it out or in at a diagonal angle. And you can swipe through photos or scroll websites by holding your index finger and thumb together while pulling up or down.

Likewise, you zoom in and out by holding those fingers on both hands and pulling outward or inward. You don’t have to flail your hands in front of you. The headset’s external cameras can detect your fingers down in your lap. You can be subtle.

It packs a punch.

I launched more than a dozen apps around me. There’s no point in doing more, because you can’t see it all. I loved setting it up with a browser in front of me, music next to me and a TV screen above it all. But the world is yours to customize. You can open mail and a browser or leave Slack open next to a Word document with your calendar on the other side. Put your text messages on the ceiling if you want. It’s a completely new way to multitask.

A note: My screenshots show apps askew. But, in the headset, they’re all perfectly level.

I didn’t run into any slowdowns during my time with the Vision Pro. Part of that is due to how Apple renders content. It’s technically only sharpening the areas of the screen where you’re focusing, leaving the other areas blurry. That’s why some of the screenshots here look out of focus around the sides. Inside the headset, it’s all super crisp. It’s called foveated rendering, and it allows for optimized processing.

I loved watching movies with the headset. I lounged on my couch and put up a huge screen across the wall of my living room and watched an hour of “Barbie,” and the two first episodes of “Masters of the Air” before the battery was at about 5%. Another night I watched “Greyhound.” I used the NBA app, which was updated to work on the Vision Pro, to stream four games at once, with the main game in the middle and others pinned to the sides. It’s wild.

Apple also has some specially recorded content that’s so sharp you feel like you’re standing right there next to a rendered dinosaur or a video of a rhinoceros. There’s a slightly terrifying clip with a woman walking on a tightrope between cliffs. Don’t watch if you’re afraid of heights. The clips show the type of content third parties will eventually be able record and publish to the headset. I imagine sports highlights or even sitting courtside at a live game.  

The Disney+ app is fun. You can watch movies in one of about four different 3D landscapes. I sat in a racer on Tatooine and watched a bit of a Star Wars movie, but then switched over to watch “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse” in 3D. Unlike 3D TVs and movies, which generally flopped, the effects work well in the headset. It’s neat, but I still prefer watching movies in 2D. It feels more natural to me.

FaceTime works well. You see a clear video of the person you’re calling on a screen in front of you. But they don’t see you. Or, not the real you. They see a 3D-rendered version of you called a digital Persona. It’s still in beta, and mine looked like a much older version of me. My colleague thought I looked like an 80-year-old man. My wife laughed.

You create a Persona by selecting an option in the settings menu and then removing the headset and following screens on the external display. It asks you to look up, look down, look left, look right, smile, smile with teeth, and close your eyes. Then, in seconds, it creates a 3D Persona.

It looks more human than cartoony like with other headsets. I spoke with people over FaceTime also using Personas, and it’s much easier to hold a conversation without feeling like you’re two goofy avatars trying to talk. You can hold a real meeting if necessary in your pajamas while your Persona is in work attire. Personas also carry over to other apps like WebEx.

Your Persona’s eyes can appear on the outside display. Someone will see glowing effects on the outside of the headset if you have screens up in front of you. If they begin talking to you and you’re in an immersive view – like one of the landscapes I mentioned earlier – they’ll start to fade into focus so you can see them. As you look at them, the eyes of your digital Persona become visible on the outside of the headset. It looks like you’re wearing a snorkeling mask.

In real life, I just removed the headset face when my wife came in to chat.

The built-in speakers are great. They get nice and loud and support spatial audio, so if you turn your head away from the movie in front of you, the sound stays in the same place, much like if you were watching a real TV. Music and movies sounded fantastic, with full surround sound. People can hear the audio coming out of the headset, though, so you’ll want to use AirPods in public.

I love the “spatial photos” you can capture using the cameras on the outside of the Vision Pro or with the latest iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. The camera creates a 3D version of a photo or video. I filmed my 4-month-old daughter eating and my dog’s 9th birthday, for example, in hopes that I’ll be able to come back and relive some of those moments. I wish I had recorded some of these videos when my stepfather was alive because it’d feel like he was in the room with me. Some people might see it as a gimmick, but I found it moving.

Lastly, the build quality is superb. Apple used top-of-the-line glass, screens and metals. It feels like a premium headset and it’s comfortable to wear. My only complaint is that I had to be deliberate to hold it by the metal frame. The padded inserts pop off their magnets if you try to grab them. Those could be stronger, but they were designed to be easily removed so people could share the headset by popping in their own inserts.

Apple’s apps work well. You’ll find Notes, Music, Safari, Podcasts, Photos, Apple TV+, Maps and more. Other apps include SkyGuide and Disney+ and there are Apple Arcade games. Many more are coming, as most apps haven’t yet been built specifically for Vision Pro.

The Vision Pro supports more than a million iPhone and iPad apps. But you need to search for each app individually and some of them aren’t available. Netflix and Spotify haven’t been shy about not supporting the Vision Pro, though you can easily access either using the browser. Still, there are lots of others that I couldn’t find: 1Password isn’t there, which made logging into some apps a bit of a pain. You won’t find Uber, DoorDash (but there’s GrubHub!) or Amazon. None of Google’s apps are here, including YouTube TV, though it works fine in the browser.

Popular games like Diablo Immortal and Genshin Impact aren’t available. Facebook’s apps aren’t here, so no Instagram. These are just a few I noticed.

Some work well, though. I didn’t have any issues with the X iPad app, for example. CNBC’s app worked fine. Others, like Amazon Prime Video, exist but weren’t great during initial tests. A bug showed a big box in the middle of the screen when I was watching a movie. That bug has since been fixed.

For some apps that aren’t yet available, developers are working to optimize them and eliminate bugs.

Apple Keychain was sometimes buggy in iPad apps. This is Apple’s version of 1Password, and I rely on it to enter my username and passwords. It generally works fine. But if you have two usernames for apps, like my wife and I do for Amazon Prime Video or Peacock, the app locks up when you try to select a different login. I informed Apple of the bug.

The floating keyboard is useful for search or typing quick messages, but you won’t be able to type very fast at first. You look at each letter on a digital keyboard and select it, or reach out and tap the digital keyboard. I got faster during my time with the Vision Pro, but nowhere near as quick as I am on my iPhone or a real keyboard. You can just use Siri voice-to-text to respond to iMessages or enter URLs in the browser (and launch apps). Still, you’re going to want to use a keyboard if you have to do a lot of typing.

There’s also the battery pack that plugs into the headset with a proprietary plug that you twist in. I don’t mind it. I thought the pack worked fine, but it would be a lot easier if it was just embedded into the headset, though that would add weight.

I’d buy the Vision Pro right now if I had an extra $3,500. I’d even consider trading in my iPad Pro and MacBook Pro to offset the cost since the headset gives me a lot of the same capabilities. But that’s not an option.

You’ll definitely love it for movies. I think a lot of people will also really enjoy being able to read the news and browse the web while having a huge TV screen open and lounging on their couch. Some may find they can work in it. I did. It’s fun.

Apple’s real opportunity will materialize when it finds a way to mass produce the Vision Pro at closer to $2,000, or less. Until then, it may be a niche product. But the experience blows everything else out of the water. It’s Apple’s most exciting product in years and it’s the best example yet that this will become a new way of computing.

Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO:

OpenAI investors are pushing to bring back Sam Altman as CEO one day after he was ousted by the board, according to people familiar with the matter.

Microsoft, Tiger Global and venture firm Thrive Capital are among several of OpenAI’s top backers that are part of an effort to reinstate Altman, said a source, who asked not to be named because discussions are confidential.

Sequoia Capital has also been in contact with Altman, a person familiar with knowledge of the matter told CNBC. Sequoia supports Altman and former OpenAI president Greg Brockman in whatever they choose to do next, whether it’s returning to OpenAI or creating a new startup, the person said. Sequoia also informed Microsoft that it would back efforts to bring back Altman and Brockman, the person said.

The Verge first reported on the talks to bring back Altman. The publication, citing a source, said Altman is “ambivalent” about returning and would demand governance changes. Altman didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. Nor did Thrive. Microsoft declined to comment.

OpenAI’s announcement late Friday that the company was firing Altman and replacing him on an interim basis with technology chief Mira Murati sent shockwaves across Silicon Valley. OpenAI has emerged as the hottest startup on the planet since launching its ChatGPT chatbot last year and spurring a rush of investment generative artificial intelligence market. The company had reportedly been in talks as recently as last month to sell employee shares at a valuation of $86 billion.

Microsoft, which has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI and has a close technology partnership with the company, was surprised by the announcement. In addition to ousting Altman, the company removed Brockman, the chairman, from his board leadership position but said he would remain as president. Brockman said later in the day that he quit.

WATCH: The OpenAI shakeup will not have a major impact on Microsoft, says analyst

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg just had surgery as a result of an injury to his ACL that occurred during mixed-martial arts training.

The Facebook co-founder revealed his injury on Friday via an Instagram post in which he said that he “tore my ACL sparring and just got out of surgery to replace it.”

“I was training for a competitive MMA fight early next year, but now that’s delayed a bit,” Zuckerberg said. “Still looking forward to doing it after I recover.”

“Thanks to everyone for the love and support,” he added.

Zuckerberg included several photos of himself at an undisclosed hospital that shows the executive prior to his surgery and then after the procedure with his wife Priscilla Chan comforting him during his recovery.

The Meta CEO has taken an interest in MMA and competitive fighting in recent years and has been training in a variety of martial arts, including Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

In May, he revealed in a Facebook post that competed in his first jiu-jitsu tournament in which he won a gold and silver medal.

Zuckerberg’s recent injury to his ACL comes after a brief verbal exchange between the Meta executive and Tesla chief Elon Musk who were floating a possible cage match.

The fight never took place, however, with Zuckerberg saying during the summer via a post on Threads that “we can all agree Elon isn’t serious and it’s time to move on.”

Zuckerberg said that while Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White offered to make the match between the two executives “a legit competition for charity,” Musk never confirmed a date.

“If Elon ever gets serious about a real date and official event, he knows how to reach me,” Zuckerberg said at the time. “Otherwise, time to move on. I’m going to focus on competing with people who take the sport seriously.”

Watch: Jim Cramer says this beer stock can go higher after the company’s promising Investor Day

X, the social media service formerly known as Twitter, will launch two new tiers of subscriptions for users, its owner Elon Musk said on Friday.

One tier will be “lower cost with all features, but no reduction in ads,” while the other is “more expensive, but has no ads,” Musk said.

This week, X announced it will begin a test that charges users $1 per year in New Zealand and the Philippines in order to “post & interact with other posts.” X said it is part of a program designed to fight spam and bot activity. Those who opt out will only be able to read posts.

It’s unclear if the $1 annual subscription is one of the two new subscription tiers that Musk is referencing.

The social media company already has a $8 per month subscription service called X Premium. Users who signed up to this can get the blue checkmark on their account as well as other features, such as the ability to edit a post.

Since taking over Twitter in October 2022 and rebranding to X, Musk has made sweeping changes, including making cuts to trust and safety teams and removing the blue checkmark from non-paying accounts. The blue checkmark helped users identify authentic accounts belonging to public figures. Musk has also reinstated previously banned accounts on the platform.

Those changes have scared off advertisers. In July, Musk said X’s cash flow remains negative because of a nearly 50% drop in advertising revenue coupled with “heavy debt.”

New subscriptions could be a bid to improve the company’s finances and open new revenue streams.

X is facing challenges from less mature players such as Meta’s Threads and Bluesky.

Imran Ahmed refuses to be intimidated by Elon Musk. And he’s insisting that researchers at his nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate remain equally unafraid.

Earlier this week, the company formerly known as Twitter filed a lawsuit in federal court against the CCDH, after the organization in June published research that Musk didn’t like. The group found a rise in hate speech on Twitter since Musk purchased the company last year, and said X, as it’s now known, fails to take action against paying subscribers who post racist, homophobic, conspiratorial and other inflammatory content.

In an interview with CNBC, Ahmed said the CCDH has no plans to suspend its research into the spread of hateful content and other emerging problems it finds on the social media platform. Rather, Ahmed told staffers in a meeting after he heard about the lawsuit that they should “double down” on probing X.

“I’ve never, ever, ever walked away from a fight,” Ahmed said.

Ahmed, 44, lives in Washington, D.C., though he studied in the U.K. at the University of Cambridge. He founded the CCDH in 2018 after the death of Jo Cox, a U.K. Labour Party colleague and member of parliament, by a white supremist who was reportedly “a loner obsessed with Nazis.”

Lawyers representing X alleged in this week’s lawsuit that the CCDH improperly obtained access to social media analysis tool Brandwatch and also illegally scraped data from Twitter using other methods. The attorneys claimed the CCDH has used “flawed methodologies to advance incorrect, misleading narratives” that have driven away X’s advertisers, damaging its business.

In March, the CCHD published a study showing that since Musk took over Twitter, there’s been a 119% increase in tweets mentioning the grooming narrative, referring to a conspiracy theory that implies LGBTQ+ people are grooming children. The study was based on an analysis of 1.7 million tweets from the beginning of 2022 through February 2023. The CCDH said it obtained the tweets using a data-scraping tool and Twitter’s search function.

X said in its lawsuit that it’s seeking a jury trial, unspecified monetary damages, and wants to block CCDH and any of its collaborators or employees from accessing data provided by X to Brandwatch.

Ahmed declined to comment about the specifics of the case though he noted that X has not yet physically served him or the CCDH with a lawsuit.

He’s accustomed to the criticism.

Prior to the challenges from X, Meta and TikTok took issue with the CCDH’s research methodology after the group released reports alleging those platforms fostered misinformation and content that could harm the mental health of teenagers.

However, neither of those companies went so far as to sue the nonprofit or allege that it acted unlawfully.

The lawsuit from X follows a previous letter sent from another law firm representing the company, accusing the CCDH of false and misleading claims linked to a separate trademark-related law known as the Lanham Act.

Ahmed characterized Musk’s actions toward his organization as those of “a man who is desperately fishing around for ways to blame someone else.”

X did not respond to questions about the lawsuit or when it plans to serve CCDH with it. The company issued a statement to CNBC, reiterating prior comments and accusing the nonprofit of spreading false claims against X to stymie public discourse. Prior to the lawsuit, Musk referred to Ahmed as a “rat” and the nonprofit as “truly evil.”

Brandwatch and its parent company Cision didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Ahmed defended the CCDH against claims that it’s a “censorship organization,” and also shot down allegations in the complaint and from Musk that the group is covertly bankrolled by potential competitors or foreign governments.

“I made clear that we don’t take money from tech companies, social media companies, and we don’t take money from governments,” Ahmed said. “We take money from philanthropic trusts and the public. If people want to donate, they can donate to us here.”

The CCDH has provided evidence to the governments of the U.S. and U.K. on Internet harms, and advocated for the U.K.’s Online Safety Bill, which was designed to make social media companies more responsible for the safety of their users.

When it comes to Musk, Ahmed has a particular point to make: He doesn’t “understand how free speech truly works.”

He’s a “self-proclaimed champion of free speech,” Ahmed said, but he “doesn’t understand the marketplace of ideas.”

Ultimately, Ahmed’s conclusion is that, “Musk is behaving like a child who simply cannot take responsibility for the fact that he pooped in his own pants and it wasn’t someone else that did it for him.”

Earlier this week, three Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to Musk and X, accusing the world’s richest person of taking a “hostile stance” toward independent researchers. They said the studies have “raised legitimate and serious questions regarding X’s business practices since Mr. Musk’s acquisition.”

But Musk has his backers on the other side of the aisle.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, sent a letter to the CCDH and Ahmed as part of a broader “censorship investigation.” The letter, which the CCDH confirmed it received on Thursday, said the committee is seeking documents from the nonprofit that show its “interactions” with the federal government, including the Biden administration, and social media companies.

“The Committee on the Judiciary is conducting oversight of how and to what extent the Executive Branch has coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech,” Jordan wrote. “Certain third parties, including organizations like yours, appear to have played a role in this censorship regime by advising the government and social media companies on so-called ‘misinformation’ and other types of content — sometimes with direct or indirect support or approval from the federal government.”

Ahmed said that in the days since the X lawsuit was made public, the CCDH has received “hundreds of donations” and “so many messages of support” from organizations including Amnesty International, the Anti-Defamation League, Friends of the Earth, and Planned Parenthood.

Other groups that have voiced support for CCDH include LGBTQ advocate GLAAD, the Molly Rose Foundation, the Free Press, Check My Ads and Coalition for Independent Tech Research.

Ahmed said these organizations recognize what’s at stake, especially as Musk shows his increasing willingness to use his wealth and power to inject his ideologies onto a major communications platform.

There are “all these other groups who are all coming out going, no no, our information ecosystem is valuable,” Ahmed said. “We have the right to comment on it, on the private companies who administer significant parts of it.”

WATCH: Elon Musk has vision to make Twitter into ‘an everything app’ with X rebrand.

Artificial intelligence will be the biggest bubble of all time, according to the CEO of open-source AI company Stability AI.

Speaking with UBS analysts on a call last week, Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque said of artificial intelligence: “I think this will be the biggest bubble of all time.” He added that it is still at the very early stages and not ready for mass-scale adoption in industries like banking just yet.

“I call it the ‘dot AI’ bubble, and it hasn’t even started yet,” he said.

Stability AI is the company behind Stable Diffusion, one of the other more popular generative AI tools aside from OpenAI.

Stable Diffusion allows users to generate photo-realistic images by inputting text. It has more than a million users and has raised over $100 million from investors including Coatue and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Mostaque, its co-founder and CEO, has been accused of making misleading claims about his background, achievements, and partnerships. He disputed the claims one by one in a detailed response on his personal blog.

Generative AI has captivated the imagination of many an academic, boardroom executive, and even school student, for its ability to produce humanlike language and visual content from scratch in response to user prompts by using vast amounts of data.

AI has long been around, with the technology now a common feature of online browsing, social media platforms, and home assistants. Beyond consumer applications, the technology is being used in medicine, transportation, robotics, science, education, finance, defense, and other industries.

However, a more novel form of AI which has come about recently is generative AI, which is used in tools such as the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT, from U.S. tech firm OpenAI, as well as Google Bard and Microsoft Bing Chat, and image generators like Dall-E, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney.

Mostaque said that the total amount of investment needed in AI was likely to be $1 trillion “because it’s more important than 5G as infrastructure for knowledge,” and suggested banks like UBS would have to adopt the technology as it is a “massive market.”

But, he added, it is at the “early stages” of development right now.

“It’s not quite ready” to be deployed at scale within large industries like financial services, “but we can see the value,” Mostaque said.

Mostaque said that companies that do not use AI appropriately in their businesses will be “punished” by the stock market.

He cited the example of Google, which lost $100 billion in a single day after its Bard AI chatbot gave inaccurate information in a promotional video upon its release. Google is competing aggressively with Microsoft to win in the race to build superior AI tools.

“I think this is real. I think that there aren’t many investable opportunities here, and you’ll see people moving from the best chip manufacturers to companies that are using this to impact their bottom line and their top line appropriately. And you will see the market punishing those that don’t use this,” Mostaque said.

“This will be one of the biggest investment themes over the next few years,” he added.

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Car-sharing service Turo filed its IPO prospectus in January 2022. A month earlier, Reddit said it submitted a draft registration for a public offering. Instacart’s confidential paperwork was filed in May of last year.

None of them have hit the market yet.

Despite a bloated pipeline of companies waiting to go public and a rebound in tech stocks that pushed the Nasdaq up 30% in the first half of 2023, the IPO drought continues. There hasn’t been a notable venture-backed tech initial public offering in the U.S. since December 2021, when software vendor HashiCorp debuted on the Nasdaq.

Across all industries, only 10 companies raised $100 million or more in U.S. initial share sales in the first six months of the year, according to FactSet. During the same stretch in 2021, there were 517 such transactions, highlighted by billion-dollar-plus IPOs from companies including dating site Bumble, online lender Affirm, and software developers UiPath and SentinelOne.

As the second half of 2023 gets underway, investors and bankers aren’t expecting much champagne popping for the rest of the year.

Many once high-flying companies are still hanging onto their old valuations, failing to reconcile with a new reality after a brutal 2022. Additionally, muted economic growth has led businesses and consumers to cut costs and delay software purchases, which is making it particularly difficult for companies to comfortably forecast the next couple of quarters. Wall Street likes predictability.

So if you’re waiting on a splashy debut from design software maker Canva, ticket site StubHub or data management company Databricks, be patient.

“There’s a disconnect between valuations in 2021 and valuations today, and that’s a hard pill to swallow,” said Lise Buyer, founder of IPO consultancy Class V Group in Portola Valley, California. “There will be incremental activity after a period of absolute radio silence but it isn’t like companies are racing to get out the door.”

The public markets tell an uneven story. This year’s rally has brought the Nasdaq to within 15% of its record from late 2021, while an index of cloud stocks is still off by roughly 50%.

Some signs of optimism popped up this month as Mediterranean restaurant chain Cava went public on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock more than doubled on its first day of trading, indicating high demand from retail investors. Buyer noted that institutions were also enthused about the deal.

Last Friday, Israeli beauty and tech company Oddity, which runs the Il Makiage and Spoiled Child brands, filed to go public on the Nasdaq.

That all comes after a big month for secondary offerings. According to data from Goldman Sachs, May was the busiest month for public stock sales since November 2021, driven by a jump in follow-on deals.

While investors are craving new names, they’re much more discerning when it comes to technology than they were at the tail end of the decade-long bull market.

Mega-cap stocks Apple and Nvidia have seen outsized gains this year and are back to trading near all-time highs, boosting the Nasdaq because of their hefty weightings in the index. But the advances are not evenly spread across the industry.

In particular, investors who bet on less mature businesses are still hurting. The companies that held the seven-biggest tech IPOs in the U.S. in 2021 have lost at least 40% of their value since their debut. Coinbase, which went public through a direct listing, is down more than 80%.

That year’s IPO class featured high-growth businesses with even higher cash burn, an equation that worked fine until recession concerns and rising interest rates pushed investors into assets better positioned to withstand an economic slowdown and increased capital costs.

Bankers and investors tell CNBC that optimism is picking up, but ongoing economic concerns and the valuation overhang from the pre-2022 era set the stage for a quiet second half for tech IPOs.

One added challenge is that fixed income alternatives are back. Following a lengthy stretch of near-zero interest rates, the Federal Reserve this year lifted its target rate to between 5% and 5.25%. Parking money in short-term Treasurys, certificates of deposit and high-yield savings offerings can now generate annual returns of 5% or more.

“Interest rates are not only about the cost of financing, but also getting investors to trade out of 5% risk-free returns,” said Jake Dollarhide, CEO of Longbow Asset Management. “You can make 15%-20% in the stock market but lose 15%-20%.”

Dollarhide, whose firm has invested in milestone tech offerings like Google and Facebook, says IPOs are important. They offer more opportunities for money managers, and they generate profits for the tech ecosystem that help fund the next generation of innovative companies.

But he understands why there’s skepticism about the window reopening. Perhaps the biggest recent bust in tech investing followed the boom in special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), which brought scores of less mature companies to the public market through reverse mergers.

Names like Opendoor, Clover Health, 23andMe and Desktop Metal have lost more than 80% of their value since hitting the market via SPAC.

“It seems the foul odor of failure from the 2021 SPAC craze has spoiled the appetite from investors seeking IPOs,” Dollarhide said. “I think that’s done some harm to the traditional IPO market.”

Private markets have felt the impact. Venture funding slowed dramatically last year from record levels and has stayed relatively suppressed, outside of the red-hot area of artificial intelligence. Companies have been forced to cut staff and close offices in order to preserve cash and right-size their business

Pre-IPO companies like Stripe, Canva and Klarna have taken huge hits to their valuations, either through internal measures or markdowns from outside investors.

Few have been hit as hard as Instacart, which has repeatedly slashed its valuation, from a peak of $39 billion to as low as $10 billion in late 2022. Last year, the company confidentially registered for an IPO, but still hasn’t filed publicly and doesn’t have immediate plans to do so.

Similarly, Reddit said in December 2021 that it had confidentially submitted a draft registration statement to go public. That was before the online ad market took a dive, with Facebook suffering through three straight quarters of declining revenue and Google’s ad sales also slipping.

Now Reddit is in the midst of a business model shift, moving its focus beyond ads and toward generating revenue from third-party developers for the use of its data. But that change sparked a protest this month across a wide swath of Reddit’s most popular communities, leaving the company with plenty to sort through before it can sell itself to the public.

A Reddit spokesperson declined to comment.

Turo was so close to an IPO that it went beyond a confidential filing and published its full S-1 registration statement in January 2022. When stocks sold off, the offering was indefinitely delayed. To avoid withdrawing its filing, the company has to continue updating its quarterly results.

Like Instacart, Turo operates in the sharing economy, a dark spot for investors last year. Airbnb, Uber and DoorDash have all bounced back in 2023, but they’ve also instituted significant job cuts. Turo has gone in the opposite direction, more than doubling its full-time head count to 868 at the end of March from 429 at the time of its original IPO filing in 2021, according to its latest filing. The company reportedly laid off about 30% of its staff in 2020, during the Covid pandemic.

Turo and Instacart could still go public by year-end if market conditions continue to improve, according to sources familiar with the companies who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Byron Deeter, a cloud software investor at Bessemer Venture Partners, doesn’t expect any notable activity this year, and says the next crop of companies to debut will most likely wait until after showing their first-quarter results in 2024.

“The companies that were on file or were considering going out a little over a year ago, they’ve pulled, stopped updating, and overwhelmingly have no plans to refile this calendar year,” said Deeter, whose investments include Twilio and HashiCorp. “We’re 10 months from the real activity picking up,” Deeter said, adding that uncertainty around next year’s presidential election could lead to further delays.

In the absence of IPOs, startups have to consider the fate of their employees, many of whom have a large amount of their net worth tied up in their company’s equity, and have been waiting years for a chance to sell some of it.

Stripe addressed the issue in March, announcing that investors would buy $6.5 billion worth of employee shares. The move lowered the payment company’s valuation to about $50 billion from a high of $95 billion. Deeter said many late-stage companies are looking at similar transactions, which typically involve allowing employees to sell around 20% of their vested stock.

He said his inbox fills up daily with brokers trying to “schlep little blocks of shares” from employees at late-stage startups.

“The Stripe problem is real and the general liquidity problem is real,” Deeter said. “Employees are agitating for some path to liquidity. With the public market still pretty closed, they’re asking for alternatives.”

G Squared is one of the venture firms active in buying up employee equity. Larry Aschebrook, the firm’s founder, said about 60% of G Squared’s capital goes to secondary purchases, helping companies provide some level of liquidity to staffers.

Aschebrook said in an interview that transactions started to pick up in the second quarter of last year and continued to increase to the point where “now it’s overwhelming.” Companies and their employees have gotten more realistic about the market reset, so significant chunks of equity can now be purchased for 50% to 70% below valuations from 2021 financing rounds, he said.

Because of nondisclosure agreements, Aschebrook said he couldn’t name any private company shares he’s purchased of late, but he said his firm previously bought pre-IPO secondary stock in Pinterest, Coursera, Spotify and Airbnb.

“Right now there’s a significant need for that release of pressure,” Aschebrook said. “We’re assisting companies with elongating their private lifecycle and solving problems presented by staying private longer.”

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SEC Chair Gary Gensler stepped up his attack on the crypto industry this week, suing Coinbase and Binance for securities violations and casting doubt on the future of token trading.

Crypto investors took the hint. Four of the 10 most valuable coins plunged in value by at least 15% this week, according to CoinMarketCap, a sell-off sparked by the lawsuits and Gensler’s interview with CNBC on Tuesday, in which he said “we don’t need more digital currency.”

In alleging that Coinbase was acting as an unregistered broker and exchange, the Securities and Exchange Commission said at least 13 crypto assets available to the company’s customers were considered “crypto asset securities.” They include Solana’s SOL token, Cardano’s ADA token, Polygon’s MATIC coin and Protocol Labs’ Filecoin token (FIL).

Trading app Robinhood followed on Friday by announcing that, starting June 27, it will no longer support trading of coins from Cardano, Polygon and Solana. The company said “no other coins are affected.” Also on Friday, Crypto.com said it will shut down its U.S. institutional exchange.

“No other coins are affected and your crypto is still safe on Robinhood,” the company said in a post.

Cardano’s coin, the seventh-most valuable cryptocurrency, according to CoinMarketCap, tumbled 20% in the past week. Solana, ranked ninth, dropped 18%. Polygon, ranked 10th, also slid 18%. Filecoin, which is further down the list, dropped 19%. Binance’s BNB token, ranked fourth, fell 16%.

Bitcoin and ethereum, the two most popular cryptocurrencies, were more stable, each declining less than 5%.

Gensler, who was appointed to head the SEC by President Joe Biden in 2021, has spent much of the past year going after crypto firms and exchanges for effectively selling highly speculative and risky securities dressed up as something else.

From high-profile fraud cases involving Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX and Do Kwon’s Terraform Labs to dozens of charges involving coin offerings and alleged false marketing, Gensler has made the once-burgeoning crypto industry his primary takedown target.

“The investing public has the benefit of U.S. securities laws,” Gensler said in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Tuesday. “Crypto should be no different, and these platforms, these intermediaries need to come into compliance.”

Gensler’s TV appearance came after the SEC sued Coinbase and said the company should be “permanently restrained and enjoined” from “operating its crypto asset trading platform as an unregistered national securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency.”

Shares of Coinbase, the only major crypto exchange that’s publicly traded in the U.S., sank 18% this week. Coinbase legal chief Paul Grewal told CNBC in a statement that the SEC’s approach to enforcement without laying out clear rules is “hurting America’s economic competitiveness and companies like Coinbase that have a demonstrated commitment to compliance.”

A day earlier, in its lawsuit against Binance, the SEC alleged that the company and founder Changpeng Zhao comingled billions of dollars worth of user funds and sent them to a European company controlled by Zhao.

While Binance claims no official headquarters and does most of its business overseas, the SEC’s complaint cited a senior executive allegedly telling a compliance officer that the company was operating as a “[f—ing] unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro.”

In a blog post, Binance said it was “disappointed” in the SEC’s suit and said it had “engaged in extensive good-faith discussions to reach a negotiated settlement to resolve their investigations.”

Others named in the SEC lawsuit also weighed in after this week’s charges landed.

The Cardano Foundation, which works to advance use of its namesake technology, said in a tweet that it disagrees with the labeling of its ADA coin as a security and “we look forward to the continued engagement with regulators and policymakers to achieve legal clarity and certainty on these matters.”

Protocol Labs, the developer of Filecoin, said in a series of tweets on Thursday that the token is critical to the operation of its distributed storage network. It’s how people buy storage from providers, and Protocol says the cost is much less than what users would pay Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud.

“Filecoin is a cryptocurrency-powered global storage network preserving humanity’s most important information, not a security,” Protocol Labs tweeted.

In its 101-page complaint against Coinbase, the SEC made clear that regardless of whether these tokens have some level of utility, they can easily be purchased on the app by people who have no interest beyond investing. And Coinbase generates revenue by executing those trades.

“Coinbase makes these crypto assets available for trading,” the SEC said, “without restricting transactions to those who might acquire or treat the asset as anything other than as an investment.”

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