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A Facebook whistleblower who brought internal documents detailing the company’s research to The Wall Street Journal and the U.S. Congress unmasked herself ahead of an interview she gave to “60 Minutes,” which aired Sunday night.

Frances Haugen, a former product manager on Facebook’s civic misinformation team, according to her website, revealed herself as the source behind a trove of leaked documents. On her personal website, she shared that during her time at the company, she “became increasingly alarmed by the choices the company makes prioritizing their own profits over public safety — putting people’s lives at risk. As a last resort and at great personal risk, Frances made the courageous act to blow the whistle on Facebook.”

Haugen previously worked as a product manager at Pinterest, Yelp and Google, according to her LinkedIn profile. She also lists herself as the technical co-founder behind the dating app Hinge, saying she took its precursor, Secret Agent Cupid, to market.

“I’ve seen a bunch of social networks and it was substantially worse at Facebook than anything I’d seen before,” Haugen told “60 Minutes.”

Haugen told “60 Minutes” she left Facebook in May.

Jeff Horwitz, the Journal reporter who wrote the series of articles based on the leaked documents, also shared Haugen’s identity on Twitter on Sunday night, revealing her as the key source behind the stories.

The documents, first reported by the Journal, revealed that Facebook executives had been aware of negative impacts of its platforms on some young users, among other findings. For example, the Journal reported that one internal document found that of teens reporting suicidal thoughts, 6% of American users traced the urge to kill themselves to Instagram.

Facebook has since said that the Journal’s reporting cherry-picked data and that even headlines on its own internal presentations ignored potentially positive interpretations of the data, like that many users found positive impacts from engagement with their products.

“Every day our teams have to balance protecting the ability of billions of people to express themselves openly with the need to keep our platform a safe and positive place,” Facebook spokesperson Lena Pietsch said in a statement following Haugen’s identity reveal. “We continue to make significant improvements to tackle the spread of misinformation and harmful content. To suggest we encourage bad content and do nothing is just not true.”

Haugen said she decided this year to make Facebook’s internal communications public, saying she realized she would need to do so “in a systemic way” and “get out enough that no one can question that this is real.”

Haugen in turn copied and released tens of thousands of pages of documents, “60 Minutes” reported.

Haugen pointed to the 2020 election as a turning point at Facebook. She said Facebook had announced it was dissolving the “Civic Integrity” team, to which she was assigned, after the election. Just a few months later, social media communications would be a key focus in the wake of the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

“When they got rid of Civic Integrity, it was the moment where I was like, ‘I don’t trust that they’re willing to actually invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous,'” Haugen told “60 Minutes.”

Facebook told the news program that it had distributed the work of the Civic Integrity team to other units.

Haugen pointed to Facebook’s algorithm as the element that pushes misinformation onto users. She said Facebook recognized the risk of misinformation to the 2020 election and therefore added safety systems to reduce that risk. But, she said, Facebook loosened those safety measures once again after the election.

“As soon as the election was over, they turned them back off or they changed the settings back to what they were before, to prioritize growth over safety,” Haugen said. “And that really feels like a betrayal of democracy to me.”

Lawmakers have appeared unmoved by Facebook’s responses to the Journal’s reporting based on Haugen’s disclosures. During a hearing before the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection Thursday, senators on both sides of the aisle lambasted the company, urging it to make its temporary pause on building an Instagram platform for kids permanent. The lawmakers said they did not have faith Facebook could be a good steward of such a platform based on the reports and past behavior.

The whistleblower is scheduled to testify before the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection on Tuesday. Facebook’s Global Head of Safety Antigone Davis told lawmakers on Thursday that Facebook would not retaliate against the whistleblower for her disclosures to the Senate.

Haugen said she has “empathy” for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, saying he “has never set out to make a hateful platform. But he has allowed choices to be made where the side effects of those choices are that hateful, polarizing content gets more distribution and more reach.”

She called for more regulations over the company to keep it in check.

“Facebook has demonstrated they cannot act independently Facebook, over and over again, has shown it chooses profit over safety,” Haugen told “60 Minutes.” “It is subsidizing, it is paying for its profits with our safety. I’m hoping that this will have had a big enough impact on the world that they get the fortitude and the motivation to actually go put those regulations into place. That’s my hope.”

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Samsung Electronics to acquire heating and cooling solutions provider FläktGroup for 1.5 billion euros

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May 14, 2025

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Samsung Electronics to acquire heating and cooling solutions provider FläktGroup for 1.5 billion euros

A Samsung Group flag flutters in front of the company’s Seocho building in Seoul. 

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Samsung Electronics on Wednesday announced that it would acquire all shares of German-based FläktGroup, a leading heating and cooling solutions provider, for 1.5 billion euros ($1.68 billion) from European investment firm Triton. 

Samsung said the acquisition would help it expand in the heating, ventilation and air conditioning business as the market experiences rapid growth. 

“Our commitment is to continue investing in and developing the high-growth HVAC business as a key future growth engine,” said TM Roh, Acting Head of the Device eXperience (DX) Division at Samsung Electronics.  

The acquisition of FläktGroup stands to bolster Samsung’s position in the HVAC market against rivals such as LG Electronics. 

FläktGroup supplies heating, HVAC solutions to a wide range of buildings and facilities, notably data centers which require a high degree of stable cooling. Samsung said it anticipates sustained growth in data center demand due to the proliferation of generative AI, robotics, autonomous driving and other technologies.

FläktGroup has more 60 major customers, including leading pharmaceutical companies, biotech and food and beverage firms, and gigafactories, according to Samsung’s statement.

Samsung said in March that its HVAC solutions had achieved double-digit annual revenue growth over the past five years, and that the company aimed to boost revenue by more than 30% in 2025.

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Stock and crypto trading site eToro prices IPO at $52 per share ahead of Nasdaq debut

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May 13, 2025

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Stock and crypto trading site eToro prices IPO at per share ahead of Nasdaq debut

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EToro, a stock brokerage platform that’s been ramping up in crypto, has priced its IPO at $52 a share, as the company prepares to test the market’s appetite for new offerings.

The Israel-based company raised nearly $310 million, selling nearly 6 million shares in a deal that values the business at about $4.2 billion. The company had planned to sell shares at $46 to $50 each. Another almost 6 million shares are being sold by existing investors.

IPOs looked poised for a rebound when President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January after a prolonged drought spurred by rising interest rates and inflationary concerns. CoreWeave’s March debut was a welcome sign for IPO hopefuls such as eToro, online lender Klarna and ticket reseller StubHub.

But tariff uncertainty temporarily stalled those plans. The retail trading platform filed for an initial public offering in March, but shelved plans as rising tariff uncertainty rattled markets. Klarna and StubHub did the same.

EToro’s Nasdaq debut, under ticker symbol ETOR, may indicate whether the public market is ready to take on risk. Digital physical therapy company Hinge Health has started its IPO roadshow, and said in a filing on Tuesday that it plans to raise up to $437 million in its upcoming offering. Also on Tuesday, fintech company Chime filed its prospectus with the SEC.

Another trading app, Webull, merged with a special-purpose acquisition company in April.

Founded in 2007 by brothers Yoni and Ronen Assia along with David Ring, eToro competes with the likes of Robinhood and makes money through fees related to trading, including spreads on buy and sell orders, and non-trading activities such as withdrawals and currency conversion.

Net income jumped almost thirteenfold last year to $192.4 million from $15.3 million a year earlier. The company has been ramping up its crypto business, with revenue from cryptoassets more than tripling to over $12 million in 2024. One-quarter of its net trading contribution last year came from crypto, up from 10% the prior year.

This isn’t eToro’s first attempt at going public. In 2022, the company scrapped plans to hit the market through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) during a sharp downturn in equity markets. The deal would have valued the company at more than $10 billion.

CEO Yoni Assia told CNBC early last year that eToro was still aiming for a market debut but “evaluating the right opportunity” as it was building relationships with exchanges, including the Nasdaq.

“We definitely are eyeing the public markets,” he said at the time. “I definitely see us becoming eventually a public company.”

EToro said in its prospectus that BlackRock had expressed interest in buying $100 million in shares at the IPO price. The company said it planned to sell 5 million shares in the offering, with existing investors and executives selling another 5 million.

Underwriters for the deal include Goldman Sachs, Jefferies and UBS.

— CNBC’s Ryan Browne and Jordan Novet contributed reporting

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Dallas Mavericks were paid $33 million over 3 years by Chime for jersey patch

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May 13, 2025

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Dallas Mavericks were paid million over 3 years by Chime for jersey patch

Klay Thompson #31 of the Dallas Mavericks handles the ball during the game against the Memphis Grizzlies during the 2025 SoFi Play-In Tournament on April 18, 2025 at FedExForum in Memphis, Tennessee.

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Chime Financial paid the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks roughly $33 million over three years to have its logo worn as a patch on player jerseys, the company disclosed in its IPO filing Tuesday. 

The Mavericks finalized the jersey deal, along with “certain other sponsorship and promotional rights,” in 2020, but terms weren’t announced. CNBC reported at the time that, citing an NBA official, that the league’s patch sponsorships ranged from $2 million to $20 million per season, depending on market size.

Chime, a San Francisco-based fintech company that provides online banking services like direct deposit and credit cards, plans to soon debut on the Nasdaq. Cynthia Marshall, who was CEO for the Mavericks from 2018 until December of last year, is on Chime’s board, so the company included details of the arrangement in the related party transactions section of its filing.

The company said it paid the Mavericks $10.5 million in 2022, $11.5 million in 2023 and $11.2 million last year.

Marshall told CNBC in 2020 that the decision to select Chime for its jersey patch came as the team was looking to fill its official sponsorship slot, which came with the deal. The logo has been displayed around American Airlines Center, where the Mavericks play their home games.

“We wanted somebody that was doing well as a business and growing,” Marshall said. “It’s a perfect fit.”

Chime’s IPO filing lands a day after the Mavericks shocked the NBA world by winning the draft lottery and the right to draft presumed top pick Cooper Flagg from Duke University. The Mavericks had only a 1.8% chance of landing the top pick based on where they finished in the standings. ESPN reported on Wednesday that the Mavericks plan to draft Flagg and are not considering the possibility of trading him.

It was a remarkably fortuitous turn of events for a front office and ownership team that’s been roundly criticized for months since trading franchise cornerstone Luka Doncic in February, bringing back older star Anthony Davis in return.

Longtime owner Mark Cuban sold a majority stake in the Mavericks in 2023 to casino owner Miriam Adelson and her family.

In October, the Mavericks announced a multi-year extension to its Chime deal, agreeing to showcase the brand and the company’s products more broadly. One new aspect was the creation of Chime Lane, “a dedicated entrance featuring exclusive benefits for Chime members during Mavs games and select events at AAC,” the team said in a press release.

— CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed to this report.

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