Technology

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri to testify before Congress for the first time

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4 years ago

November 24, 2021

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Adam Mosseri, Facebook

Beck Diefenbach | Reuters

Instagram’s chief executive Adam Mosseri is expected to testify before Congress for the first time the week of Dec. 6, a spokesperson for Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., confirmed to CNBC.

“After bombshell reports about Instagram’s toxic impacts, we want to hear straight from the company’s leadership why it uses powerful algorithms that push poisonous content to children driving them down rabbit holes to dark places, and what it will do to make its platform safer,” Blumenthal, chair of the Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection, said in a statement. “I appreciate Mr. Mosseri voluntarily coming to the Subcommittee and hope that he will support specific legislative reforms and solutions, particularly in its immensely potent algorithms.”

The news, first reported by The New York Times, comes after Instagram has faced heightened scrutiny after former Facebook employee Frances Haugen released thousands of pages of internal documents from parent company Facebook (which recently rebranded to Meta) to the Senate, the Securities and Exchange Commission and several news outlets.

Among the findings in the documents was that Instagram had conducted research on how its platform impacted the mental health of young users and found negative effects on a portion of that userbase. For example, the research found that about a third of teen girl respondents said when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse. It also found that among teens reporting suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced the issue to Instagram.

The company has since downplayed its own research, claiming a small number of respondents can’t be extrapolated to the whole userbase. But many lawmakers argue the research is still enough to have shown Instagram it could have done more to combat the negative impacts of its platform for young users. Lawmakers pressured the company to back off plans to create a specialized app for kids. Instagram has since paused the effort.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has testified several times before Congress on topics including competition, content moderation and privacy in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. While Congress often seeks out top executives to testify, their deputies may have more hands-on knowledge about the topics lawmakers want to learn about. Some policy watchers have made note that Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, has also yet to testify before Congress while CEO of parent company Google Sundar Pichai has made several appearances.

“We continue to work with the Committee to find a date for Adam to testify on the important steps Instagram is taking,” Meta spokesperson Dani Lever said in a statement.

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WATCH: Instagram’s Mosseri talks new features and antitrust concerns

Technology

ServiceNow in talks to acquire cybersecurity startup Armis in potential $7 billion deal, Bloomberg reports

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4 hours ago

December 14, 2025

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ServiceNow in talks to acquire cybersecurity startup Armis in potential billion deal, Bloomberg reports

Software company ServiceNow is in advanced talks to buy cybersecurity startup Armis, which was last valued at $6.1 billion, Bloomberg reported.

The deal, which could reach $7 billion in value, would be ServiceNow’s largest acquisition, the outlet said, citing people familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.

The acquisition could be announced as soon as this week, but could still fall apart, according to the report.

Armis and ServiceNow did not immediately return a CNBC request for comment.

Armis, which helps companies secure and manage internet-connected devices and protect them against cyber threats, raised $435 million in a funding round just over a month ago and told CNBC about its eventual plans for an IPO.

Armis CEO Yevgeny Dibrov and CTO Nadir Izrael.

Courtesy: Armis

CEO and co-founder Yevgeny Dibrov said Armis was aiming for a public listing at the end of 2026 or early 2027, pending “market conditions.”

Armis’s decision to be acquired rather than wait for a public listing is a common path for startups at the moment. The IPO markets remain choppy and many startups are choosing to remain private for longer instead of risking a muted debut on the public markets.

Founded in 2016, Armis said in August it had surpassed $300 million in annual recurring revenues, a milestone it achieved less than a year after reaching $200 million in ARR.

Its latest funding round was led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives’ growth equity fund, with participation from CapitalG, a venture arm of Alphabet. Previous backers have included Sequoia Capital and Bain Capital Ventures.

Read the complete Bloomberg article here.

Technology

Here are 4 major moments that drove the stock market last week

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20 hours ago

December 13, 2025

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Here are 4 major moments that drove the stock market last week

Technology

Oracle says there have been ‘no delays’ in OpenAI arrangement after stock slide

Published

2 days ago

December 12, 2025

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Oracle says there have been 'no delays' in OpenAI arrangement after stock slide

Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk appears on a media tour of the Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas, on Sept. 23, 2025.

Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Oracle on Friday pushed back against a report that said the company will complete data centers for OpenAI, one of its major customers, in 2028, rather than 2027.

The delay is due to a shortage of labor and materials, according to the Friday report from Bloomberg, which cited unnamed people. Oracle shares fell to a session low of $185.98, down 6.5% from Thursday’s close.

“Site selection and delivery timelines were established in close coordination with OpenAI following execution of the agreement and were jointly agreed,” an Oracle spokesperson said in an email to CNBC. “There have been no delays to any sites required to meet our contractual commitments, and all milestones remain on track.”

The Oracle spokesperson did not specify a timeline for turning on cloud computing infrastructure for OpenAI. In September, OpenAI said it had a partnership with Oracle worth more than $300 billion over the next five years.

“We have a good relationship with OpenAI,” Clay Magouyrk, one of Oracle’s two newly appointed CEOs, said at an October analyst meeting.

Doing business with OpenAI is relatively new to 48-year-old Oracle. Historically, Oracle grew through sales of its database software and business applications. Its cloud infrastructure business now contributes over one-fourth of revenue, although Oracle remains a smaller hyperscaler than Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

OpenAI has also made commitments to other companies as it looks to meet expected capacity needs.

In September, Nvidia said it had signed a letter of intent with OpenAI to deploy at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia equipment for the San Francisco artificial intelligence startup. The first phase of that project is expected in the second half of 2026.

Nvidia and OpenAI said in a September statement that they “look forward to finalizing the details of this new phase of strategic partnership in the coming weeks.”

But no announcement has come yet.

In a November filing, Nvidia said “there is no assurance that we will enter into definitive agreements with respect to the OpenAI opportunity.”

OpenAI has historically relied on Nvidia graphics processing units to operate ChatGPT and other products, and now it’s also looking at designing custom chips in a collaboration with Broadcom.

On Thursday, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan laid out a timeline for the OpenAI work, which was announced in October. Broadcom and OpenAI said they had signed a term sheet.

“It’s more like 2027, 2028, 2029, 10 gigawatts, that was the OpenAI discussion,” Tan said on Broadcom’s earnings call. “And that’s, I call it, an agreement, an alignment of where we’re headed with respect to a very respected and valued customer, OpenAI. But we do not expect much in 2026.”

OpenAI declined to comment.

WATCH: Oracle says there have been ‘no delays’ in OpenAI arrangement after stock slide