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China is beating the U.S. when it comes to innovation in online money, posing challenges to the U.S. dollar’s status as the de facto monetary reserve. Nearly 80 countries — including China and the U.S. — are in the process of developing a CBDC, or Central Bank Digital Currency. It’s a form of money that’s regulated but exists entirely online. China has already launched its digital yuan to more than a million Chinese citizens, while the U.S. is still largely focused on research.

The two groups tasked with this research in the U.S., MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, are parsing out what a digital currency might look like for Americans. Privacy is a major concern, so researchers and analysts are observing China’s digital yuan rollout.

“I think that if there is a digital dollar, privacy is going to be a very, very important part of that,” said Neha Narula, director of the Digital Currency Initiative at the MIT Media Lab. “The United States is pretty different than China.”

Another concern is access. According to the Pew Research Center, 7% of Americans say they don’t use the internet. For Black Americans, that rises to 9%, and for Americans over the age of 65, that rises to 25%. Americans with a disability are about three times as likely as those without a disability to say they never go online. That is part of what MIT is researching.

“Most of the work that we’re doing assumes that CBDC will coexist with physical cash and that users will still be able to use physical cash if they want to,” Narula said.

The idea of a CBDC in the U.S. is aimed, in part, at making sure the dollar stays the monetary leader in the world economy.

“The United States should not rest on its current leadership in this area. It should push ahead and develop a clear strategy for how to remain very strong and take advantage of the strength of the dollar,” said Darrell Duffie, professor of finance at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.

Others see the digital yuan as insidious.

“The digital yuan is the largest threat to the West that we’ve faced in the last 30, 40 years. It allows China to get their claws into everyone in the West and allows them to export their digital authoritarianism,” said Kyle Bass of Hayman Capital Management.

Watch CNBC’s deep dive video into CDBCs to learn more.

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Uber delivery chief Gore-Coty is leaving after almost 13 years at ride-hailing company

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Uber delivery chief Gore-Coty is leaving after almost 13 years at ride-hailing company

Courtesy: Uber Eats

Uber said Monday that Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, one of the company’s longest-tenured top executives and the head of is delivery business is leaving after almost 13 years.

Gore-Coty joined Uber as a general manager in France in 2012, and worked his way up to become vice president of mobility for the Europe and Middle East region four years later, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was named senior vice president of delivery in 2021.

“It’s hard to imagine Uber without Pierre, because there hasn’t been much Uber without Pierre,” CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a statement that was part of a regulatory filing. “As one of our first employees, he was a driving force behind our global Mobility expansion and stepped up to run Uber Eats just weeks before the first Covid lockdowns.”

The company didn’t say what Gore-Coty plans to do next.

Uber also said that Andrew Macdonald, the company’s senior vice president of mobility and business operations, will become chief operating officer, reporting to Khosrowshahi. Macdonald, 41, will oversee the company’s global mobility, delivery and autonomous businesses in addition to “key cross-platform functions like membership, customer support, safety, and more,” the filing said.

Gore-Coty is one of 11 people listed on Uber’s executive team page. Macdonald is the only one who has worked at the company longer. He joined in May 2012, four months before Gore-Coty, according to LinkedIn.

“These last nearly 13 years have been the ride of a lifetime,” Gore-Coty said in the statement. “It was a true team effort, and I’m so proud of what we’ve built and the impact we’ve had on daily life in cities around the world.”

Uber shares were little changed in extended trading after closing on Monday at $83.64. The stock is up 39% this year, while the Nasdaq is about flat.

Last month, the company reported first-quarter results that beat on earnings but missed on revenue. A month earlier, the Federal Trade Commission sued Uber, alleging that the company engaged in “deceptive billing and cancellation practices” related to its Uber One subscription service.

In an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Khosrowshahi characterized the lawsuit as “a bit of a head-scratcher for us.”

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Applied Digital shares rip 40% higher on CoreWeave AI lease agreement

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Applied Digital shares rip 40% higher on CoreWeave AI lease agreement

Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images

Shares of Applied Digital rose more than 40% after the company said it signed two long-term lease agreements with CoreWeave for artificial intelligence data centers.

Nvidia-backed CoreWeave climbed more than 7% following the announcement.

Financial terms of the two agreements were not provided, but Applied Digital said it expects $7 billion in total revenue during the approximately 15-year period.

“Through these newly signed long-term leases with CoreWeave, we are taking a step forward in our strategic expansion into advanced compute infrastructure,” said Applied Digital CEO Wes Cummins in a release announcing the news.

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CoreWeave will provide AI and high-performance computing infrastructure for the Applied Digital data center campus in Ellendale, North Dakota, according to the release.

Applied Digital will provide 250 megawatts of critical IT load for CoreWeave. The campus is designed to host 400 MW of load.

CoreWeave shares have been on a tear over the past couple of weeks, setting a record high of $130.76 on May 29. The company, which rents AI servers powered by Nvidia chips, started trading at $39 on March 28.

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Amazon’s pricing controls may be anticompetitive, German regulator warns

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Amazon's pricing controls may be anticompetitive, German regulator warns

Packages with the logo of Amazon are transported at a packing station of a redistribution center of Amazon in Horn-Bad Meinberg, western Germany, on Dec. 9, 2024.

Ina Fassbender | Afp | Getty Images

German antitrust regulators warned Amazon on Monday that the company’s pricing mechanisms for third-party sellers could run afoul of competition laws.

The Federal Cartel Office said in its preliminary assessment that Amazon’s pricing controls limit the visibility of merchants’ products and, “based on non-transparent marketplace rules,” interfere with their freedom to set prices.

Amazon uses algorithms and statistical models to calculate certain price caps for products, the Cartel Office said. Products that are flagged as having “prices that are too high” or “prices that are not competitive” can then be demoted in search results, excluded from advertising or removed from the buy box, they added.

The buy box is the listing that pops up first when a visitor clicks on a particular product, and the one that gets purchased when a shopper taps “Add to Cart.”

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“Competition in online retail in Germany is largely determined by Amazon’s rules for the trading platform,” Federal Cartel Office President Andreas Mundt said in a statement. “Since Amazon competes directly with other marketplace retailers on its platform, influencing competitors’ pricing, even in the form of price caps, is fundamentally questionable from a competition perspective.”

Amazon’s pricing practices not only threaten sellers’ businesses, but could also harm other retailers by deterring them from offering lower prices, the Cartel Office said.

An Amazon spokesperson said the company strongly disagrees with the Cartel Office’s preliminary findings. They added that any changes to Amazon’s pricing mechanisms would be “bad for customers and selling partners.”

“If Amazon is prevented from helping people find competitively priced offers, it will lead to a bad shopping experience for them, as we’d need to promote uncompetitive or even abusive pricing in our store,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “This would mislead customers into thinking they’re getting good value when, in reality, they’re not.”

Amazon can provide feedback to the Cartel Office on its preliminary assessment before it reaches a final decision.

Amazon in 2022 reached a deal with European Union antitrust regulators who were investigating its use of seller data and buy box practices. As part of the settlement, Amazon agreed to display a second buy box on products sold in Europe when there is a second competing offer that’s different on price or delivery.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is also probing Amazon’s use of pricing algorithms on its sprawling third-party marketplace as part of a wide-ranging antitrust lawsuit filed in 2023. Amazon has said the FTC’s complaint is “wrong on the facts and the law.”

The case is set to go to trial in October 2026.

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