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SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks during a conversation with legendary game designer Todd Howard (not pictured) at the E3 gaming convention in Los Angeles, California, June 13, 2019.

Mike Blake | Reuters

Twitter has suspended the account dedicated to tracking the location of billionaire Elon Musk’s private jet.

The account, @ElonJet, was run by Florida college student Jack Sweeney and had amassed more than half a million followers. It tracked Musk’s plane’s location using publicly available flight data and appears to have been suspended Wednesday morning.

“Well it appears @ElonJet is suspended,” Sweeney tweeted Wednesday. He encouraged users to follow him on other platforms.

Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion in October, and he has been vocal about his efforts to protect free speech on the site. In early November, Musk claimed he was such a staunch advocate for free speech that he would not ban the plane tracking account, which he called a “direct personal safety risk.” 

Internally, however, Twitter employees may have received different instructions. Sweeney shared a thread of tweets on Dec. 10 claiming his account had been shadow banned, which means the reach of the account is intentionally limited.

He said an employee sent him a screenshot of the company’s vice president of Twitter’s Trust and Safety council asking to place heavy visibility filtering on @ElonJet. The Trust and Safety council was disbanded Monday.

But on Dec. 12, Sweeney said in a tweet that it appeared as though the @ElonJet account was no longer hidden or banned “in any way.”

Sweeney also runs accounts dedicated to tracking the private flights of other public figures like Bill Gates, former President Donald Trump and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Sweeney’s Instagram account dedicated to tracking Musk still appears to be active.

Sweeney and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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Cramer slams Amazon for considering a circular AI deal reminiscent of the dotcom bubble

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Cramer slams Amazon for considering a circular AI deal reminiscent of the dotcom bubble

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Amazon says AI chief Rohit Prasad is leaving, Peter DeSantis to lead ‘AGI’ group

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Amazon says AI chief Rohit Prasad is leaving, Peter DeSantis to lead 'AGI' group

Rohit Prasad, Senior VP & Head Scientist for Alexa, Amazon, on Centre Stage during day one of Web Summit 2022 at the Altice Arena in Lisbon, Portugal.

Ben McShane | Sportsfile | Getty Images

Rohit Prasad, a top Amazon executive overseeing its artificial general intelligence unit, is leaving the company at the end of this year, the company confirmed Wednesday.

As part of the move, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company is reorganizing the AGI unit under a more expansive division that will also include its silicon development and quantum computing teams. The new division will be led by Peter DeSantis, a 27-year veteran of Amazon who currently serves as a senior vice president in its cloud unit.

This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.

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Oracle stock dips 5% on report Blue Owl Capital won’t back $10 billion data center

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Oracle stock dips 5% on report Blue Owl Capital won't back  billion data center

Blue Owl decided not to pursue Oracle’s $10 billion Michigan data center, source familiar

Oracle stock dipped about 5% on Wednesday following a report that discussions with Blue Owl Capital on backing a $10 billion data center in Michigan had stalled, although the cloud company later disputed the report.

Blue Owl had been in talks with Oracle about funding a 1-gigawatt facility for OpenAI in Saline Township, Michigan, according to the Financial Times.

However, the plans fell through due to concerns about Oracle’s rising debt levels and extensive artificial intelligence spending, the FT reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

This comes as some investors raise red flags about the funding behind the rush to build ever more data centers.

The concern is that some hyperscalers are turning to private equity markets rather than funding the buildings themselves, and entering into lease agreements that could prove risky.

Blue Owl did look into the project, but pulled out due to unfavorable debt terms and the structure of repayments, according to a person familiar with the company’s plans who asked not to be named in order to discuss a confidential matter.

Blue Owl is still involved in two other Oracle sites, the person said.

The person added that Blue Owl was also concerned that local politics in Michigan would cause construction delays.

Oracle later responded to the FT report, saying the project was moving forward and that Blue Owl was not part of equity talks.

“Our development partner, Related Digital, selected the best equity partner from a competitive group of options, which in this instance was not Blue Owl. Final negotiations for their equity deal are moving forward on schedule and according to plan,” Oracle spokesperson Michael Egbert said in a statement.

The cloud company did not name the firm involved in current equity talks for the project.

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CNBC has reached out to the FT for comment.

The FT said that Blackstone is in discussions to potentially replace Blue Owl Capital as a financial partner for the data center, although no deal has been signed yet.

Blue Owl Capital has been the primary investor in Oracle’s data center projects in the U.S., including a $15 billion center in Abilene, Texas, and an $18 billion site in New Mexico, the FT said.

“This appears to be a case where the deal simply wasn’t the right one, and seasoned investors understand that success does not require winning every transaction,” Evercore ISI analysts wrote in a note on Wednesday.

The bank added that digital infrastructure remains a “core growth vertical” for the Blue Owl, noting an upcoming digital infrastructure fund in 2026 that would add to its $7 billion fund announced in May.

Oracle has $248 billion in lease commitments for data centers and cloud capacity commitments over the next 15 to 19 years as of Nov. 30, the company said in its latest quarterly filing. That is up almost 148% from August.

In September, the cloud computing giant raised $18 billion in new debt, according to an SEC filing. That same month, OpenAI announced a $300 billion partnership with Oracle over the next five years.

By the end of November, the company owed over $124 billion, including operating lease liabilities, according to the filing.

Oracle shares are down about 50% from the high of $345.72 reached in September.

Read the full FT story here.

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