Kanye West, the superstar rapper who has made several inflammatory and antisemitic comments in recent weeks, has agreed in principle to buy conservative social media platform Parler, the app’s parent company said in a statement Monday.
“In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” said West, who now goes by Ye, in a statement released by Parler.
Financial terms of the deal weren’t announced. The company previously said it had raised $56 million in funding from outside investors.
The move comes after Ye was locked out of his Twitter and Instagram accounts for making antisemitic remarks. In one post, Ye played into a long-standing antisemitic conspiracy theory that fellow rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs is being controlled by Jewish people. On Twitter, meanwhile, Ye’s account was restricted after he said he would go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.”
A representative for Ye didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ye’s net worth is reportedly $2 billion. Much of his fortune comes from his Yeezy sneakers brand and partnerships with Gap and Adidas. However, Ye severed business ties with Gap recently, and Adidas said it’s also reviewing its business relationship with him. JPMorgan Chase also cut ties with the rapper.
Parler is one of several right-wing-friendly platforms to emerge during the Donald Trump era, as the former president’s supporters claim unfair treatment by Twitter and other apps. There’s also Gettr, which is run by former Trump advisor Jason Miller, and Trump’s own app, Truth Social, whose parent company is under federal investigation as it seeks to go public. Conservative-friendly video platform Rumble went public last month.
Parler, which initially launched in 2018, was swept up in controversy last year over the role it played in the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the Capitol building. That led a slew of tech companies, including Google and Amazon, to blacklist the service, rendering its app and website inaccessible.
In September, however, Google reinstated the app on its Play Store, stating the company changed some of its content moderation policies and enforcement. Apple restored the app on its App Store platform earlier, in April 2021.
Parler has sought to reduce its dependence on technologies from other firms by establishing its own cloud infrastructure in-house. The company set up a new parent company in September, called Parlement Technologies, aimed at providing its own cloud service for online business. “The future is uncancelable,” the company said at the time.
Ye and Parler’s parent company expect to finalize the deal before the end of the year, the company said. The terms of the deal include technical support for Parler from its parent company, as well as the use of its private cloud services.
After Ye’s suspension from Instagram, the rapper turned to Twitter, posting for the first time since 2020. “Look at this Mark How you gone kick me off instagram,” he wrote, referring to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Instagram parent Meta.
Elon Musk, a friend of Ye’s, responded saying, “Welcome back to Twitter, my friend!”
Ye was then locked out of his Twitter account for a violation of its policies, after which Musk tweeted he had talked to Ye and “expressed my concerns about his recent tweet, which I think he took to heart.”
Musk is currently pursuing an acquisition of Twitter. That takeover was revived last week after the Tesla CEO said he would buy the social media platform at the $54.20 a share price they initially agreed on in April. The billionaire, who calls himself a “free speech absolutist,” has said he wants to make Twitter a “digital town square” that promotes free expression.
Commenting on the agreement Monday, Parlement Technologies CEO George Farmer said it “will change the world, and change the way the world thinks about free speech.”
“Ye is making a groundbreaking move into the free speech media space and will never have to fear being removed from social media again,” Farmer said in a statement. “Once again, Ye proves that he is one step ahead of the legacy media narrative. Parlement will be honored to help him achieve his goals.”
Farmer is married to American conservative activist Candace Owens, one of Ye’s advocates on social media. He is also the son of Michael Farmer, a British Conservative politician who sits in the upper chamber of the U.K. Parliament.
George Farmer was named CEO of the conservative-leaning social app in May of last year, after a dispute between its early investor Rebekah Mercer and ex-Parler chief John Matze led to Matze’s ousting. Mercer, the heiress daughter of hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, is Parler’s controlling shareholder.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang gives a keynote address at CES 2025, an annual consumer electronics trade show, in Las Vegas on Jan. 6, 2025.
Steve Marcus | Reuters
Nvidia has lost nearly a third of its value just two months after notching a fresh high.
The leading chipmaker slumped about 5% on Monday, building on last week’s losses as heavy selling continued across the tech sector. The popular artificial intelligence stock has shed about a fifth of its market cap since President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
The stock hit an intraday high of $153.13 on Jan. 7.
Tariff fears and growth concerns have rocked technology stocks, including Nvidia, over the past week, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropping more than 4%. The Nasdaq traded at a six-month low on Monday.
Many technology companies rely on parts and manufacturing overseas and new levies could push up prices. That has also sparked worries of a U.S. recession, which Trump did not rule out over the weekend.
Tesla led the declines among the “Magnificent Seven” names, plummeting more than 13%. The Elon Musk-backed electric vehicle company has plunged 16% over the past week and shed nearly 44% since Trump took office in January. The stock is also coming off its longest weekly losing streak in history as a public company.
Elon Musk’s social media platform X experienced several outages on Monday morning, leaving some users unable to load the site.
Nearly 40,000 users reported problems with the platform around 10 a.m. ET, according to the analytics platform Downdetector, which gathers data from users who spot glitches and report them to the service. Around 28,000 people were experiencing issues as of 11:30 a.m. ET.
When X resumed loading for users Monday afternoon, Musk said the company had suffered a “massive cyberattack.” Musk did not provide any evidence, and CNBC could not independently verify that a cyberattack took place.
“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources,” Musk wrote in a post. “Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved.”
X did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Musk acquired X, formerly known as Twitter, for $44 billion in 2022. The Tesla CEO slashed the company’s headcount by about 80% from 7,500 employees to 1,300 workers, and just 550 full-time engineers, by January 2023.
X has experienced several large-scale outages since Musk’s takeover. Users reported problems with the platform in December 2022 and with the site’s desktop app in July 2023, for instance.
The timing of the X outage couldn’t have been worse for NFL fans, who rely on the service for news updates. The first day of the NFL’s free agency tampering window began at 12 p.m. ET with the service down, sending fans searching for other options such as linear TV and Bluesky to get their news on player signings.
— CNBC’s Alex Sherman contributed reporting.
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Watch: Elon Musk on X subscriptions: ‘Free speech isn’t exactly free it costs a little bit’
Bitcoin dropped under the $80,000 level Monday, dragged by the continued selling pressure in the equities market.
The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last lower by 5% at $78,714.96, its lowest level since November, according to Coin Metrics.
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Bitcoin in the past day
Shares of companies linked to the crypto space also slid. Coinbase fell roughly 14%. Robinhood lost 17%, and bitcoin proxy play Strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy, declined 16%.
Bitcoin ETFs are coming off their fourth week in a row of outflows. They logged $867 million of outflows last week, bringing the four-week total to $4.75 billion, according to CoinShares. Continued bearishness pushed crypto prices even lower over the weekend, with bitcoin dropping sharply on Sunday evening to the $80,000 level for the first time since Feb. 28.
Absent a crypto-specific catalyst, macro concerns are likely to continue weighing on cryptocurrency prices in the near term. This week, the market will be watching for key economic indicators, including the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) Tuesday, the consumer price index on Wednesday and the producer price index slated for Thursday.
Although investors expect cryptocurrency prices are likely to pull back even more before making a run for a new record, their positive outlook on the year driven by regulatory tailwinds is still intact.
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