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A Facebook whistleblower, two former U.S. defense secretaries, several past lawmakers and intelligence chiefs are forming a new group to address the harmful impacts social media can have on kids, communities and national security.

The Council for Responsible Social Media, publicly launched on Wednesday, is a project of the cross-partisan political reform nonprofit Issue One, which focuses on strengthening U.S. democracy and works with many former members of Congress on solutions.

Dick Gephardt, former House majority leader and Democratic representative from Missouri, had been involved with Issue One and helped create the council after trying to understand the roots of the country’s current polarization, he told CNBC in a phone interview Tuesday. Gephardt is one of the co-chairs of the council, along with Republican former Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey.

“People used to come to me and say, ‘What’s wrong with Congress? They can’t do anything, all they do is fight,'” Gephardt said. His response, he said, was that the division comes from the people.

“Congress has to be a reflection of the people and if the people are bitterly divided, then Congress will be bitterly divided,” he said.

Gephardt said he first considered whether traditional media may be contributing to the division, but figured there’s always been opinion and politicization on editorial pages. After watching the documentary “The Social Dilemma,” he began to believe that tech platforms could be a significant factor and began to speak with experts and read up on technology’s effect on democracy.

“My experience in Congress leads me always to believe that to solve any problem in a democracy, you’ve got to get diverse people together, to talk to one another, to listen to one another,” Gephardt said.

Some well-known names joining the council include former Secretaries of Defense Chuck Hagel and Leon Panetta, former Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., former Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen and former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris.

Chris Krebs, Michael Rogers and Porter Goss, who previously led the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, respectively, are also members.

The council said it aims to drive bipartisan conversation around tech in Washington, D.C., and across the country, elevate nonpartisan voices like parents and pediatricians, and advance effective solutions to reform social media. While members have already met virtually to kick off their work, they will have their first in-person meeting Thursday in Washington.

“I think things like this group are very important for providing a unified front, to get common-sense change that can really make a difference,” Haugen, the former Facebook employee who leaked internal documents about the company’s policies and research to lawmakers, journalists and the Securities and Exchange Commission, told CNBC in a phone interview Tuesday.

Haugen said the issues stemming from social media are truly bipartisan in nature, which could be made more clear by avoiding framing them as issues of content moderation. Many conservatives are skeptical of content moderation because they believe platforms can use it to censor certain viewpoints, though mainstream platforms have repeatedly denied they do so.

Haugen said she sees content moderation as largely a “distraction from the real path forward, which is around product design, safety by design, transparency.”

It’s more important than ever to design for safety rather than rely on content moderation alone, Haugen said, as platforms move toward end-to-end encryption that prevents them from being able to monitor the substance of messages between users.

“The way you keep people safe in those environments is through design, and through each other,” Haugen said.

Gephardt said he sees the role of the council as a way to create informed solutions and keep the attention on these issues in Washington. He remembered some advice that a mentor gave him during his first year in Congress.

“You can never pass some meaningful legislation here with just support on the inside of Congress, you have to build support on the outside by the people for anything that you really want to pass,” Gephardt recalled former Rep. Richard Bolling, D-Mo., told him. “So I guess I see this group as being just a part, a little part, of that outside pressure that’s needed to try to drive something across the finish line.”

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Winklevoss-founded Gemini reportedly prices IPO at $28 per share, valuing the crypto exchange at $3.3 billion

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Winklevoss-founded Gemini reportedly prices IPO at  per share, valuing the crypto exchange at .3 billion

Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss (L-R), creators of crypto exchange Gemini Trust Co., on stage at the Bitcoin 2021 Convention, a cryptocurrency conference held at the Mana Convention Center in Wynwood in Miami, Florida, on June 4, 2021.

Joe Raedle | Getty Images

Gemini Space Station, the crypto company founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, priced its initial public offering at $28 per share late Thursday, according to Bloomberg.

A person familiar with the offering told the news service that the company priced the offering above its expected range of $24 to $26, which would value the company at $3.3 billion.

Since Gemini capped the value of the offering at $425 million, 15.2 million shares were sold, according to the report. That was a measure of high demand for the crypto company, which had initially marketed 16.67 million shares. Earlier this week, it increased its proposed price range from between $17 and $19 apiece.

A Gemini spokesperson could not confirm the report.

The company and the selling stockholders granted its underwriters — led by and Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley — a 30-day option to sell an additional 452,807 and 380,526 shares, respectively, per the registration form. Gemini stock will trade on the Nasdaq under ticker symbol “GEMI.”

Up to 30% of the shares offered will be reserved for retail investors through Robinhood, SoFi, Hong Kong-based Futu Securities, Singapore’s Moomoo Financial, Webull and other platforms.

Gemini, which primarily operates as a cryptocurrency exchange, was founded by the Winklevoss brothers in 2014 and holds more than $21 billion of assets on its platform as of the end of July.

Initial trading will give the market a sense of how long it can keep the crypto IPO party going. Circle Internet and Bullish had successful listings, but there has been a recent consolidation in the prices of blue chip cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether. Also, in contrast to those companies’ profitability, Gemini has reported widening losses, especially in 2025. Per its registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gemini posted a net loss of $159 million in 2024, and in the first half of this year, it lost $283 million.

This week, however, Gemini received a big vote of institutional confidence when Nasdaq said it’s making a strategic investment of $50 million in the crypto company. Nasdaq is seeking to offer its clients access to Gemini’s custodial services, and gain a distribution partner for its trade management system known as Calypso.

Gemini also offers a crypto-backed credit card, and last month, launched another card in partnership with Ripple. The latter garnered more than 30,000 credit card sign-ups in August, a new monthly high that was more than twice the number of credit card sign-ups in the prior month, according to the S-1 filing.

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OpenAI says nonprofit parent will own equity stake in company of over $100 billion

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OpenAI says nonprofit parent will own equity stake in company of over 0 billion

Microsoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella (L), speaks with OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman, who joined by video during the Microsoft Build 2025, conference in Seattle, Washington on May 19, 2025.

Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images

OpenAI on Thursday said its nonprofit parent will continue to have oversight over the company and will own an equity stake of more than $100 billion.

The artificial intelligence startup, recently valued at $500 billion, said this structure will make the nonprofit “one of the most well-resourced philanthropic organizations in the world,” and will allow the company to continue to raise capital.

OpenAI also announced it has signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with Microsoft, which outlines the next phase of their partnership. Microsoft has invested over $13 billion in OpenAI, backing the company as early as 2019, three years before the launch of of the chatbot ChatGPT.

“We are actively working to finalize contractual terms in a definitive agreement,” OpenAI said in a joint statement with Microsoft, which is also the company’s key cloud partner. “Together, we remain focused on delivering the best AI tools for everyone, grounded in our shared commitment to safety.”

In May, OpenAI bowed to pressure from civic leaders and ex-employees, announcing that its nonprofit would retain control even as the company was restructuring into a public benefit corporation. OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit research lab in 2015, but has in recent years become one of the fastest-growing commercial entities on the planet.

OpenAI said Thursday it is working closely with the California and Delaware Attorneys General to establish its structure.

“OpenAI started as a nonprofit, remains one today, and will continue to be one – with the nonprofit holding the authority that guides our future,” the company’s Chairman Bret Taylor said in a statement Thursday.

The startup has been engulfed in a heated legal battle with Elon Musk, one of its co-founders. Musk has been trying to keep OpenAI from converting into a for-profit company as he competes in the generative AI market with his own startup, xAI.

OpenAI said its nonprofit is also opening applications for the first phase of a $50 million grant initiative that is aimed to support other nonprofit and community organizations across AI literacy, economic opportunity and community innovation.

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‘We will do better.’ Microsoft CEO Nadella admits company has to rebuild trust with employees

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'We will do better.' Microsoft CEO Nadella admits company has to rebuild trust with employees

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella departs following a meeting of the White House Task Force on AI Education in the East Room of the White House in Washington on Sept. 4, 2025.

Eric Lee | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told employees in a meeting on Thursday that the company has work to do to smooth relations with employees after announcing several rounds of layoffs and a mandated partial return to in-person work.

In the meeting that was held online, an employee asked executives to speak about a perceived lack of empathy in the company’s culture as of late and steps Microsoft is taking to rebuild trust with its workforce.

“I deeply appreciate that, the question and the sentiment behind it,” Nadella said, in audio that was obtained by CNBC. “I take it as feedback for me and everyone in the leadership team, because at the end of the day, I think we can do better, and we will do better.”

Nadella’s comments come after Microsoft slashed 9,000 jobs in July, following smaller reductions in the months prior. On Tuesday, Microsoft said workers living near its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, must come into the office three days a week, starting in February, with a broader rollout to follow.

Amy Coleman, Microsoft’s human resources chief, said at Thursday’s meeting that reception to the return-to-office announcement has been mixed, with some workers feeling like they’re losing autonomy. But she said that employees in and around Seattle already come in, on average, 2.4 times each week.

Like most of the tech industry, Microsoft went fully remote during the pandemic, and made particular use of its internal Teams video and chat offerings, which gained rapid adoption during that period. Microsoft has been slower than many of its peers to put a mandate in place for coming back to the office. Amazon, one of Microsoft’s top rivals, called employees back to offices five days a week in January.

While Nadella and the executive team are taking criticism from some staffers, Wall Street is applauding the company’s growth and execution. The stock is up almost 20% this year, outperforming the broader market, pushing Microsoft’s market cap to $3.7 trillion, which trails only Nvidia among the world’s most-valuable companies.

In July, Microsoft reported a 24% increase in net income to $27 billion. The company’s gross margin was under 69%, compared with 71% in late 2023. It’s rapidly building and renting data center infrastructure to meet artificial intelligence demand.

AI infrastructure build-up is a long-term story as adoption is only consumer based now

Nadella said at the meeting that with remote work, new employees and those who are early in their careers don’t always feel a sense of apprenticeship or mentorship.

“Management is just mostly all remote, but the interns are all, you know, in one location,” he said. “And so those are things that just will break a social contract.”

Microsoft didn’t immediately provide a comment.

Even with Microsoft’s rapid expansion, Nadella said the company is feeling the pressure. It’s a common theme in the software industry, as concerns proliferate about the impact of AI and its potential to automate work.

“We have some very, very hard work ahead of us, and that hard process of renewal is essentially what we have to do,” Nadella said. “You have to be hardcore in terms of an intellectual honesty about what really needs to happen.”

Microsoft’s Azure cloud business grew 39% in the latest quarter, but revenue in the Windows and devices business increased by just 2.5%.

“Some of the biggest businesses we built may not be as relevant going forward,” Nadella said. “Some of the margin that we love today may not be there tomorrow, and that means you have to be way ahead of all of those going away, right?”

Microsoft, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in April, will retain its core values as it confronts market realities, Nadella said.

“Capital markets have one simple truth,” he said. “There is no permission for any company to exist forever.”

That wasn’t the only contentious topic at the meeting.

Employees are awaiting details from a third-party investigation after The Guardian said in August that Israel’s military used Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure to store Palestinians’ phone calls as part of Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Microsoft has fired five employees following protests at its headquarters in Redmond, according to a statement from the group No Azure for Apartheid.

Microsoft President Brad Smith, whose office the protesters entered, addressed the issue on Thursday. He said that he and Coleman met with Jewish Microsoft employees, who have been harassed and threatened and have seen their public information shared online.

“We don’t get to control what happens outside Microsoft, but we need to be clear about one thing,” Smith said. “There is no room for antisemitism at Microsoft, and as a company and as a community, we will protect this group and defend them from that.”

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