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U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) response and vaccination program during a speech in the East Room at the White House in Washington, August 18, 2021.
Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters

President Joe Biden will meet Wednesday with top executives from several of the largest companies in tech, financial services, insurance, energy and education to discuss how to combat cybersecurity threats.

The event comes after the U.S. experienced several large cyberattacks that have added urgency to the public and private sectors in containing such threats. Those incidents include the attack on software firm SolarWinds that impacted several government agencies and the Colonial Pipeline hack. The latter resulted in a gas shortage in some parts of the country.

Biden plans to meet with CEOs from Amazon, Apple, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Travelers, PG&E, Girls Who Code and more to discuss ways to improve U.S. cybersecurity, a senior administration official told reporters Tuesday. Members from Biden’s cabinet and national security team will also join the meeting before leading break-out discussions with executives from various sectors.

One of the three break-out sessions will include energy, water and financial services leaders in a discussion about “Critical Infrastructure Resilience.” The talks will be led by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.

A second will include tech and insurance leaders on “Building Enduring Cybersecurity” chaired by Department of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Small Business Administrator Isabel Guzman.

The third discussion will be among education leaders on “Cybersecurity Workforce,” led by National Cyber Director Chris Inglis.

On the call with reporters, the senior administration official said concrete steps for beefing up cybersecurity practices would come out of Wednesday’s event. The official emphasized the goal was to address “root causes” of the attacks, like vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure and 500,000 unfilled U.S. cybersecurity jobs.

The U.S. needs to move to a system where cybersecurity is built into all technology, the official said, suggesting that insurance providers could play a role in incentivizing businesses to keep up with good cybersecurity practices.

The Biden administration has undertaken several actions to address the growing cybersecurity threat. In May, Biden signed an executive order to strengthen government software security, mandate IT service providers to report attacks that could impact U.S. networks and streamline info-sharing. He later issued a memo directing federal agencies to take action to improve cybersecurity for critical infrastructure.

Here’s the full list of CEOs participating in Wednesday’s events, by sector:

Tech

Financial Services

Energy and Water

Insurance

  • Coalition CEO Joshua Motta
  • Resilience CEO Vishaal Hariprasad
  • Travelers CEO Alan Schnitzer
  • Vantage Group Holdings CEO Greg Hendrick

Education

  • Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi
  • Girls Who Code CEO Tarika Barrett
  • Tougaloo College President Dr. Carmen Walters
  • University of Texas System Chancellor JB Milliken
  • Whatcom Community College President Dr. Kathi Hiyane-Brown

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Palantir tops estimates, boosts fourth-quarter guidance on AI adoption

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Palantir tops estimates, boosts fourth-quarter guidance on AI adoption

Alex Karp, chief executive officer of Palantir Technologies Inc., speaks during the AIPCon conference in Palo Alto, California, US, on March 13, 2025.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Palantir reported quarterly results that topped analysts’ estimates and issued better-than-expected guidance for the fourth quarter, attributing much of its strength to artificial intelligence. The stock rose about 1% in extended trading.

Here’s how the company did compared to LSEG estimates:

Earnings per share: 21 cents adjusted vs. 17 cents expected

Revenues: $1.18 billion vs. $1.09 billion expected

Palantir, which builds analytics tools for large companies and government agencies, said it expects revenue of about $1.33 billion for the current period, exceeding the $1.19 billion expected by analysts, according to LSEG.

The optimistic guidance comes even as the government shutdown stretches into its second calendar month, and potentially threatens some key contracts. Revenue in Palantir’s U.S. government business grew 52% in the quarter from a year ago to $486 million.

Government sales, particularly from military agencies, have been central to Palantir’s ongoing ascent. Over the years, Palantir has steadily beat out major legacy government contractors, and recently landed a deal worth up to $10 billion contract with the U.S. Army.

Palantir has also faced criticism over how its tools are being used by government agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Total revenue in the quarter jumped 63% from $725.5 million a year ago, exceeding $1 billion for the second straight quarter. Net income more than tripled to $475.6 million, or 18 cents per share, from $143.5 million, or 6 cents per share, a year earlier.

For the full year, Palantir now expects about $4.4 billion in sales, topping the $4.17 billion forecast by Wall Street. The company also bumped up its full-year free cash flow outlook to between $1.9 billion and $2.1 billion.

Palantir’s U.S. commercial business more than doubled to $397 million. Total contract value for U.S. commercial deals closed more than quadrupled to $1.31 billion. Over the last few weeks, the company has announced new partnerships with Snowflake, Lumen and Nvidia.

Retail investors have helped drive Palantir’s skyrocketing stock price to new heights. The shares have surged more than 170% this year, lifting the company’s market cap past $490 billion and cementing the company among the most valuable technology names in the world.

Analysts have raised concerns about the stock, which trades at an extreme multiple relative to technology behemoths with far more revenue. In a letter to shareholders, CEO Alex Karp called out the “detractors” who have been “left in a kind of deranged and self-destructive befuddlement.”

“The reality is that Palantir has made it possible for retail investors to achieve rates of return previously limited to the most successful venture capitalists in Palo Alto,” he wrote. “And we have done so through authentic and substantive growth.”

In an interview with CNBC’s Morgan Brennan on Monday, Karp acknowledged that there’s excess in the AI market today and that some companies are eventually going to feel the pain.

“The strong companies are going to get much stronger, and the people pretending they’re doing stuff are going to disappear very quickly,” Karp said.

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Ether falls 7% following a multimillion dollar hack of a decentralized finance protocol

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Ether falls 7% following a multimillion dollar hack of a decentralized finance protocol

Representation of Ethereum, with its native cryptocurrency ether.

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Ether fell as much as 9% on Monday, slipping below its critical $3,600 support level, shortly after a multimillion dollar hack affected a protocol on the token’s native network. 

The cryptocurrency, which is issued on Ethereum, was last down 6.6% at around $3,600, CoinMetrics data shows. That’s roughly 25% off its high of $4,885 hit on August 22

The coin’s tumble came after Ethereum-based decentralized finance protocol Balancer on Monday lost possibly more than $100 million in a hack. The exploit marks the latest in a series of bearish events that have put digital assets investors on tenterhooks over the past few weeks.

In mid-October, U.S. President Donald Trump announced “massive” tariffs on China over its restriction of rare earth exports, kicking off investors’ flight from crypto to risk-off assets such as gold. And although the president later walked back that threat, his comments sparked a sell-off that triggered cascading liquidations of highly leveraged digital asset positions

Last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell cautioned investors about expecting future rate cuts, adding to existing bearish market sentiment.     

“These events have put investors on uneasy footing as we roll into November,” Juan Leon, senior investment strategist at Bitwise, told CNBC. “Macro volatility notwithstanding, this October’s drawdown appears to have been a healthy, albeit sharp, de-leveraging event that flushed speculative excess from the market.”

Some stocks linked to digital assets are also coming under pressure. Coinbase shares were down nearly 4%, while Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy edged down more than 1%.   

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