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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg rides an electric surfboard holding the American flag. July 4, 2021.
Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram

Mark Zuckerberg celebrated Fourth of July in unique fashion: Holding an American flag as he glided on a body of water, elevated on a board about a foot above the surface.

The Facebook CEO was hydrofoiling, which is a new type of watersport that has grown in popularity among outdoor enthusiasts — and those with plenty of cash to spend on a piece of sporting equipment that costs thousands of dollars. 

Though Zuckerberg is mostly known for being the awkward founder of the world’s largest social network and one of richest people on the planet, he’s also become one of the most visible hydrofoilers out there, bringing more attention to the up-and-coming sport. 

While surfing requires the power of a wave to get going, and wakeboarding relies on a boat to tow the rider, hydrofoiling uses a winglike structure under the surface of the water to create lift. The rider uses a handheld bluetooth controller that connects to an electric motor and underwater propeller, or creates momentum manually by pumping their legs up and down, as Zuckerberg does in his Fourth of July post

“It’s a hydrofoil. There’s a wing under the water that I’m riding that pushes the board into the air,” Zuckerberg wrote in a comment on his post. “It’s a lot of fun. There’s an electric-powered version that you can get, but in this video I’m riding a regular foil board and surfing a little wave.”

Electric boards cost upwards of $10,000

Surfers have been toying with the idea of using hydrofoil technology for decades, but the sport didn’t really take off until foil boards became commercially available in 2018, said Nick Leason, co-founder of Lift Foils, which was one of the first companies to sell them.

Prior to foil boards, Leason and his company had been selling boards for kite surfing, which uses a kite in the air to pull a rider on a board across the water. Kite surfing requires a lot of skill, however, which limits the size of the market, Leason said. Foiling is much easier to pick up, and it feels like you’re gliding. 

“It’s just this really unique feeling of flying over the water,” said Leason, whose company is based in Puerto Rico. “You kind of feel like a pelican, or a wannabe pelican.”

Puerto Rican company Lift Foils is one of the companies that sell hydrofoil boards.
Courtesy of Lift Foils

There are different kinds of hydrofoil boards.

Surf foils include the board and the foil but no motor, requiring users to create momentum with their own bodies, and typically cost about $2,000. Efoils have electric motors that let them reach speeds of 25 miles per hour and typically sell for at least $10,000. 

Although foiling requires less skill than kite surfing, the steep price limits its potential market to extreme watersport enthusiasts and people with deep wallets. Canadian company MSLR Electric E-Foil, for example, notes that many of its customers are NHL hockey players. 

“The boards are made out of such high-quality materials, said MSLR Founder and Owner Carey Missler. MSLR sells two efoil boards, the Navigator and the Player, both for $10,000. “It takes a while to custom build these boards, plus you’ve got your expensive components of lithium ion batteries and carbon fiber.”

For Zuckerberg, who is the fifth-richest person in the world, with a net worth of approximately $125 billion, according to Forbes, money is no problem. That’s why he owns numerous boards, including custom-painted and custom-built versions made by Lift Foil, Leason said. 

“That’s our product that he’s riding on in the video. He probably owns every model that we have,” Leason said. “He’s really into it. He loves it.”

Zuckerberg ‘was ripping’

Zuckerberg first began to post about hydrofoiling in August 2019, when he uploaded two photos of himself on a foilboard being towed by a boat. 

“Trying a new sport in Kauai with one of the best, Kai Lenny,” said Zuckerberg, referring to the professional surfer. 

Leason said Lenny has been essential to the growth of hydrofoiling as a sport, trailblazing how people use the unfamiliar gear and taking the time to teach new folks about foiling. That includes Zuckerberg, Leason said. 

“I think Kai, he’s like magical on a foil, and seeing all the stuff that he does,” Zuckerberg said on Instagram in April. “It’s sort of helped me get into the sport just watching him foil down a huge wave then turn around, go back up wind, up the wave, do a flip off the wave. It’s like Oh my god. It’s unreal.”

In December 2019, Zuckerberg posted a video of himself efoiling while wearing a bright orange helmet. Although helmets aren’t the most stylish getup, they are an important piece of equipment that experts recommend, especially for new foilers. Experts also recommend wearing impact vests. 

“The boards are made with carbon fiber. It’s a very, very durable material, which means that if your head was to strike it, it could be very harmful if you weren’t wearing a helmet,” said MSLR Co-owner Taylor Coulthard. 

Canadian company MSLR Electric E-Foil is one of the companies that sell hydrofoil boards.
Courtesy of MSLR Electric E-Foil

Zuckerberg was caught by paparazzi efoiling in Hawaii with his face completely covered in sunscreen in July 2020. The photo became an instant viral meme. 

“I was foiling around, and then I noticed there was this paparazzi guy following us. I was like ‘Oh I don’t want him to recognize me so you know what I’m gonna do? I’m just gonna put a ton of sunscreen on my face so he won’t know who I am,'” Zuckerberg said with a laugh on Instagram in April. “But that backfired.”

Zuckerberg later poked fun at himself about the whole thing last month when he posted a cartoon version of the picture.

“The sun never stood a chance,” Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook. 

But despite his awkward episodes, those in the world of foiling say Zuckerberg has actually gotten quite good at the sport. 

“It’s funny that most people think that Mark Zuckerberg is a little nerdy guy behind his computer in some lair somewhere, but he’s actually quite a good athlete as you see in that video,” Leason said. “He’s put in a lot of practice on the foil. He’s doing quite well.”

Perhaps more importantly for those that sell foil boards, Zuckerberg is also doing a lot to generate attention and buzz.

“It has brought some interest,” Missler said. “That was an incredible shot. He was ripping. He was doing amazing.”

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AI voice startup ElevenLabs pushes global expansion as it gears up for an IPO

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AI voice startup ElevenLabs pushes global expansion as it gears up for an IPO

Founded in 2022, ElevenLabs is an AI voice generation startup based in London. It competes with the likes of Speechmatics and Hume AI.

Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

LONDON — ElevenLabs, a London-based startup that specializes in generating synthetic voices through artificial intelligence, has revealed plans to be IPO-ready within five years.

The company told CNBC it is targeting major global expansion as it prepares for an initial public offering.

“We expect to build more hubs in Europe, Asia and South America, and just keep scaling,” Mati Staniszewski, ElevenLabs’ CEO and co-founder, told CNBC in an interview at the firm’s London office.

He identified Paris, Singapore, Brazil and Mexico as potential new locations. London is currently ElevenLabs’ biggest office, followed by New York, Warsaw, San Francisco, Japan, India and Bangalore.

Staniszewski said the eventual aim is to get the company ready for an IPO in the next five years.

“From a commercial standpoint, we would like to be ready for an IPO in that time,” he said. “If the market is right, we would like to create a public company … that’s going to be here for the next generation.”

Undecided on location

Fundraising plans

ElevenLabs was valued at $3.3 billion following a recent $180 million funding round. The company is backed by the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and ICONIQ Growth, as well as corporate names like Salesforce and Deutsche Telekom.

Staniszewski said his startup was open to raising more money from VCs, but it would depend on whether it sees a valid business need, like scaling further in other markets. “The way we try to raise is very much like, if there’s a bet we want to take, to accelerate that bet [we will] take the money,” he said.

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U.S. lifts chip software curbs on China amid trade truce, Synopsys says

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U.S. lifts chip software curbs on China amid trade truce, Synopsys says

Synopsys logo is seen displayed on a smartphone with the flag of China in the background.

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The U.S. government has rescinded its export restrictions on chip design software to China, U.S.-based Synopsys announced Thursday. 

“Synopsys is working to restore access to the recently restricted products in China,” it said in a statement

The U.S. had reportedly told several chip design software companies, including Synopsys, in May that they were required to obtain licenses before exporting goods, such as software and chemicals for semiconductors, to China. 

The U.S. Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.

The news comes after China signaled last week that they are making progress on a trade truce with the U.S. and confirmed conditional agreements to resume some exchanges of rare earths and advanced technology.

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Datadog stock jumps 10% on tech company’s inclusion in S&P 500 index

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Datadog stock jumps 10% on tech company’s inclusion in S&P 500 index

The Datadog stand is being displayed on day one of the AWS Summit Seoul 2024 at the COEX Convention and Exhibition Center in Seoul, South Korea, on May 16, 2024.

Chris Jung | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Datadog shares were up 10% in extended trading on Wednesday after S&P Global said the monitoring software provider will replace Juniper Networks in the S&P 500 U.S. stock index.

S&P Global is making the change effective before the beginning of trading on July 9, according to a statement.

Computer server maker Hewlett Packard Enterprise, also a constituent of the index, said earlier on Wednesday that it had completed its acquisition of Juniper, which makes data center networking hardware. HPE disclosed in a filing that it paid $13.4 billion to Juniper shareholders.

Over the weekend, the two companies reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, which had sued in opposition to the deal. As part of the settlement, HPE agreed to divest its global Instant On campus and branch business.

While tech already makes up an outsized portion of the S&P 500, the index has has been continuously lifting its exposure as the industry expands into more areas of society.

DoorDash was the latest tech company to join during the last rebalancing in March. Cloud software vendor Workday was added in December, and that was preceded earlier in 2024 with the additions of Palantir, Dell, CrowdStrike, GoDaddy and Super Micro Computer.

Stocks often rally when they’re added to a major index, as fund managers need to rebalance their portfolios to reflect the changes.

New York-based Datadog went public in 2019. The company generated $24.6 million in net income on $761.6 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2025, according to a statement. Competitors include Cisco, which bought Splunk last year, as well as Elastic and cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon and Microsoft.

Datadog has underperformed the broader tech sector so far this year. The stock was down 5.5% as of Wednesday’s close, while the Nasdaq was up 5.6%. Still, with a market cap of $46.6 billion, Datadog’s valuation is significantly higher than the median for that index.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

CNBC: Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel on the cloud computing outlook

Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel on the cloud computing outlook

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