Connect with us

Published

on

Facebook Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the House Financial Services Committee on “An Examination of Facebook and Its Impact on the Financial Services and Housing Sectors” in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC on October 23, 2019.

MANDEL NGAN | AFP | Getty Images

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg failed to anticipate a newer trend in social networking that contributed to the success of rival TikTok.

In an interview published Wednesday in analyst Ben Thompson’s Statechery newsletter, the Facebook founder said he “sort of missed” a newer way that people “interact with discovered content” via social networking services. People are increasingly using their social networking “feeds” to discover compelling content as opposed to viewing the media shared by the friends that they follow, he explained.

Although people still interact with content that their friends share in their feeds, the overall social networking trend has “by and large shifted to you use your feed to discover content, you find things that are interesting, you send them to your friends in messages and you interact there,” Zuckerberg said.

“So in that world, it is actually somewhat less important who produces the content that you’re finding, you just want the best content,” the Facebook founder said. (Facebook changed its corporate name to Meta last year.)

Analysts have attributed TikTok’s rapid rise in popularity due to its algorithm, which can recommend compelling short videos to users based on their habits and viewing history. TikTok’s rise has posed a significant challenge to the company, which is experiencing a decline in North American Facebook users, and a stock price that’s lost more than 56% this year so far.

Zuckerberg referred to TikTok as a “very effective competitor” during the interview, and acknowledged that the company was somewhat slow to this because it didn’t fit my pattern of a social thing, it felt more like a shorter version of YouTube to me,” he said.

Zuckerberg also believes it’s important for Meta to develop AI that can recommend a range of content including photos and text to users besides just short videos.

“Sometimes I want to watch specifically videos, but a lot of the times I just want the best stuff,” he said.

Earlier this week, Meta debuted the Quest Pro virtual reality headset intended for VR enthusiasts as opposed to newcomers that will cost $1,500.  

Watch: Meta will attract more buyers because it’s at an attractive price.

Meta will attract more buyers because it's at an attractive price, says Aureus' Kari Firestone

Continue Reading

Technology

AI voice startup ElevenLabs pushes global expansion as it gears up for an IPO

Published

on

By

AI voice startup ElevenLabs pushes global expansion as it gears up for an IPO

Founded in 2022, ElevenLabs is an AI voice generation startup based in London. It competes with the likes of Speechmatics and Hume AI.

Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

LONDON — ElevenLabs, a London-based startup that specializes in generating synthetic voices through artificial intelligence, has revealed plans to be IPO-ready within five years.

The company told CNBC it is targeting major global expansion as it prepares for an initial public offering.

“We expect to build more hubs in Europe, Asia and South America, and just keep scaling,” Mati Staniszewski, ElevenLabs’ CEO and co-founder, told CNBC in an interview at the firm’s London office.

He identified Paris, Singapore, Brazil and Mexico as potential new locations. London is currently ElevenLabs’ biggest office, followed by New York, Warsaw, San Francisco, Japan, India and Bangalore.

Staniszewski said the eventual aim is to get the company ready for an IPO in the next five years.

“From a commercial standpoint, we would like to be ready for an IPO in that time,” he said. “If the market is right, we would like to create a public company … that’s going to be here for the next generation.”

Undecided on location

Fundraising plans

ElevenLabs was valued at $3.3 billion following a recent $180 million funding round. The company is backed by the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and ICONIQ Growth, as well as corporate names like Salesforce and Deutsche Telekom.

Staniszewski said his startup was open to raising more money from VCs, but it would depend on whether it sees a valid business need, like scaling further in other markets. “The way we try to raise is very much like, if there’s a bet we want to take, to accelerate that bet [we will] take the money,” he said.

Continue Reading

Technology

U.S. lifts chip software curbs on China amid trade truce, Synopsys says

Published

on

By

U.S. lifts chip software curbs on China amid trade truce, Synopsys says

Synopsys logo is seen displayed on a smartphone with the flag of China in the background.

Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

The U.S. government has rescinded its export restrictions on chip design software to China, U.S.-based Synopsys announced Thursday. 

“Synopsys is working to restore access to the recently restricted products in China,” it said in a statement

The U.S. had reportedly told several chip design software companies, including Synopsys, in May that they were required to obtain licenses before exporting goods, such as software and chemicals for semiconductors, to China. 

The U.S. Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.

The news comes after China signaled last week that they are making progress on a trade truce with the U.S. and confirmed conditional agreements to resume some exchanges of rare earths and advanced technology.

Continue Reading

Technology

Datadog stock jumps 10% on tech company’s inclusion in S&P 500 index

Published

on

By

Datadog stock jumps 10% on tech company’s inclusion in S&P 500 index

The Datadog stand is being displayed on day one of the AWS Summit Seoul 2024 at the COEX Convention and Exhibition Center in Seoul, South Korea, on May 16, 2024.

Chris Jung | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Datadog shares were up 10% in extended trading on Wednesday after S&P Global said the monitoring software provider will replace Juniper Networks in the S&P 500 U.S. stock index.

S&P Global is making the change effective before the beginning of trading on July 9, according to a statement.

Computer server maker Hewlett Packard Enterprise, also a constituent of the index, said earlier on Wednesday that it had completed its acquisition of Juniper, which makes data center networking hardware. HPE disclosed in a filing that it paid $13.4 billion to Juniper shareholders.

Over the weekend, the two companies reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, which had sued in opposition to the deal. As part of the settlement, HPE agreed to divest its global Instant On campus and branch business.

While tech already makes up an outsized portion of the S&P 500, the index has has been continuously lifting its exposure as the industry expands into more areas of society.

DoorDash was the latest tech company to join during the last rebalancing in March. Cloud software vendor Workday was added in December, and that was preceded earlier in 2024 with the additions of Palantir, Dell, CrowdStrike, GoDaddy and Super Micro Computer.

Stocks often rally when they’re added to a major index, as fund managers need to rebalance their portfolios to reflect the changes.

New York-based Datadog went public in 2019. The company generated $24.6 million in net income on $761.6 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2025, according to a statement. Competitors include Cisco, which bought Splunk last year, as well as Elastic and cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon and Microsoft.

Datadog has underperformed the broader tech sector so far this year. The stock was down 5.5% as of Wednesday’s close, while the Nasdaq was up 5.6%. Still, with a market cap of $46.6 billion, Datadog’s valuation is significantly higher than the median for that index.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

CNBC: Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel on the cloud computing outlook

Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel on the cloud computing outlook

Continue Reading

Trending