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A Silicon Valley Bank worker talks with people lining up outside of the bank office on March 13, 2023 in Santa Clara, California.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

After turning on CNBC last Thursday to see SVB’s stock price getting hammered and news of venture firms urging startups to hit the exits, EarthOptics CEO Lars Dyrud acted quickly. At 4 p.m. ET, he requested a $25 million wire transfer from Silicon Valley Bank, representing roughly 90% of his company’s deposits.

It was too late. EarthOptics didn’t get a response on Thursday, and the following day SVB was seized by regulators in the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history. Dyrud had no idea when he’d be able to access his company’s deposits, as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. only guarantees $250,000 per client.

Like thousands of SVB customers, Dyrud was most immediately worried about missing payroll for March 15, which was just a few days away. He spent all day Friday and the weekend devising an emergency plan that centered around a $1 million loan from three board members, including from one investor who would be wiring funds to BambooHR, the company’s paycheck processor.

“We started planning to be without cash for nine months,” said Dyrud, in an interview Tuesday. “We had four plans in place in priority order in case something went wrong.”

Dyrud sent a Slack message to his employees late last week, updating them on the situation.

“We ultimately expect to be made whole but need to prepare for alternate access to cash while this is sorted,” Dyrud wrote in the memo, which he shared with CNBC.

SVB’s speedy collapse sent shock waves across Silicon Valley as the failure of the preeminent bank for venture-backed startups threatened to indefinitely freeze access to the money companies need to pay their staff, vendors and partners, while also destabilizing the banking system.

According to California regulators, investors and depositors withdrew $42 billion from SVB by the end of Thursday after the bank said it was selling $21 billion worth of securities at a loss and trying to raise additional capital. Dyrud feared at the time that it would be the fastest bank run the country has ever seen due to the nature of the clientele and the speed with which information travels.

On Friday afternoon, Dyrud went with his chief administrative officer and controller to a local Wells Fargo branch, in Arlington, Virginia, to open a new account. It was the only bank that would open a same-day account for his 75-person startup, whose technology is used by agricultural companies and farmers to measure the health of their soil.

I think you'll see depositors flow toward the healthiest banks, says WaFd Bank CEO

That evening, Dyrud held a 45-minute board meeting over Zoom to make sure everyone was aware of the gameplan and the loan arrangement, which was structured as an unsecured promissory note. Dyrud said he was on the phone 12 hours a day, starting Thursday.

Four days of panic finally came to an end late Sunday, when regulators announced a plan to backstop deposits and ensure that all clients would be able to retrieve their money starting Monday.

By early this week, EarthOptics had its cash safely in Wells Fargo and was repaying two investors for the loans. Dyrud said he was able to call off the loan from the third investor before the money was sent.

“It was the most heavily negotiated two-day loan ever,” Dyrud said.

Refreshing Google

Otter.ai founder and CEO Sam Liang spent Monday driving to SVB branches in Silicon Valley to try and retrieve millions of dollars of his company’s money.

Liang said the company, whose software transcribes audio from meetings and interviews, tried to initiate a transfer Thursday night, but it never went through.

“We were pretty worried over the weekend, watching the news all the time,” Liang said, in an interview on Monday from the parking lot of the SVB branch in Menlo Park, California. “I checked Google like 20 times an hour, watched [Treasury Secretary Janet] Yellen talking about not bailing out Silicon Valley Bank.”

He woke up at 7 a.m. on Monday and tried logging into his account, but kept getting error messages because the system was overloaded. That’s when he got in his car.

“I figured, OK I’ll just go to an office physically,” Liang said. “I went to the Palo Alto office first. There was a line there, but a guy said they couldn’t do much. I drove from the Palo Alto office to the Menlo Park office.” At that branch, Liang said he waited between 90 minutes and two hours for help.

Liang said he’s lucky that a few months earlier Otter, which has about 100 employees, had moved the majority of its money to another bank, though he didn’t say why. Still, he said the company had a lot of money in SVB — in the millions of dollars, but less than $10 million — which would represent “a huge damage” if it disappeared.

“We need to make sure payroll and everything works,” Liang said.

He wasn’t able to get a hold of all of his money right away, though he’s confident it’s all available following the plan announced by regulators on Sunday.

Silicon Valley Bank customers listen as FDIC representatives, left, speak with them before the opening of a branch SVBs headquarters in Santa Clara, California on March 13, 2023.

Noah Berger | AFP | Getty Images

“I just got a cashier’s check,” he said. “They couldn’t give us everything so they gave us a percentage of the money. We have to do it again probably later today.”

Meanwhile, as clients plotted their next move, SVB’s newly appointed leader sent out a plea for customers to come back home.

Tim Mayopoulos, who was appointed by the FDIC as CEO of the bank, now called Silicon Valley Bridge Bank, emailed customers to tell them that SVB is open for business and ready to receive and hold deposits.

“The number one thing you can do to support the future of this institution is to help us rebuild our deposit base, both by leaving deposits with Silicon Valley Bridge Bank and transferring back deposits that left over the last several days,” Mayopoulos wrote in an email that was also posted on the company’s website.

Liang said Otter opened accounts at two larger banks over the weekend and will “distribute money over multiple banks.”

Dyrud has a similar plan. For now, all of EarthOptics’ cash is parked at Wells Fargo, but he said the company will soon spread some of it to JPMorgan Chase and one other bank.

“It just makes sense,” Dyrud said. “We wouldn’t have been in this position had we had even a second account.”

Dyrud traveled from Washington, D.C., where he’s based, to San Francisco for a conference this week. Dyrud said he’d never done business with SVB prior to running EarthOptics, but he’s spoken with people at the event who have much longer and deeper ties to the bank through venture debt arrangements and other types of financing.

“There are some that are more loyal than I,” he said.

Like buying Taylor Swift tickets

Will Glaser would put himself in the more loyal category, though he had an equally chaotic four days as he tried to shore up his company’s liquidity.

Glaser is founder and CEO of Grabango, a developer of checkout-free shopping technology. He’s a longtime Bay Area technologist, having co-founded Pandora in 2000.

Grabango was more limited than some other companies in how it could respond to the SVB crisis because of the terms of its agreement with the bank. Grabango counts on the bank for a venture debt line, which includes a provision that forbids the company from doing much banking with other institutions.

That exclusivity created a huge headache for Glaser over the weekend. He wasn’t sure how he’d be able to come up with the funds needed to meet March 15 payroll without breaching his company’s covenant with SVB. And nobody was picking up the phone at the bank to tell him it was OK, or alternatively, to help him get an additional short-term loan from SVB.

“I was definitely scrambling with my team and investors to line up alternatives,” Glaser said. “There was never a moment where I thought we’d lose our deposits, but it was definitely a liquidity crunch. Would we have money and time to make payroll?”

Glaser said he was communicating all weekend with his investors and lawyers from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. They were discussing all possible contingencies and trying to determine if there were any emergency funding options to pay the company’s 110 staffers without potentially breaking the terms of its SVB contract. That could’ve involved “me funding payroll personally” or “one of our investors leaning in,” he said.

Ultimately, Glaser was relieved of having to make a tough decision. All of Grabango’s cash at the bank, which totals in the double-digits millions, would be available by Monday, in time for the company to transfer money to its payment service provider and meet payroll by Wednesday.

Not that it was smooth sailing on Monday, when Glaser was among the many SVB clients trying to get everything back up and running. The bank’s tech system wasn’t prepared for the onslaught.

“I’m on the SVB website and I felt a little like a teenager trying to buy Taylor Swift tickets,” Glaser said,

Despite the madness that spanned Thursday to Monday, Glaser is now more confident than ever with his banking situation. Prior to the run on SVB, Grabango’s deposits weren’t protected. Now they are, under the government’s action to protect depositors, whether insured or uninsured.

Grabango even pulled down an extra credit line with SVB this week, giving the company more access to capital for its hardware business.

“I think the world will diversify more going forward,” Glaser said. “But at the moment, as long as Silicon Valley Bridge Bank is 100% federally guaranteed, there’s no need to diversify. There’s no safer place to be.”

— CNBC’s Rebecca Smith contributed to this report

WATCH: Here’s how legislators are looking at the collapse of SVB

FDIC sending clear message that bank accounts are safe in America, says Rep. Patrick McHenry

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How TikTok’s rise sparked a short-form video race

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How TikTok’s rise sparked a short-form video race

TikTok’s grip on the short-form video market is tightening, and the world’s biggest tech platforms are racing to catch up.

Since launching globally in 2016, ByteDance-owned TikTok has amassed over 1.12 billion monthly active users worldwide, according to Backlinko. American users spend an average of 108 minutes per day on the app, according to Apptoptia.

TikTok’s success has reshaped the social media landscape, forcing competitors like Meta and Google to pivot their strategies around short-form video. But so far, experts say that none have matched TikTok’s algorithmic precision.

“It is the center of the internet for young people,” said Jasmine Enberg, vice president and principal analyst at Emarketer. “It’s where they go for entertainment, news, trends, even shopping. TikTok sets the tone for everyone else.”

Platforms like Meta‘s Instagram Reels and Google’s YouTube Shorts have expanded aggressively, launching new features, creator tools and even considering separate apps just to compete. Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, traditionally a professional networking site, is the latest to experiment with TikTok-style feeds. But with TikTok continuing to evolve, adding features like e-commerce integrations and longer videos, the question remains whether rivals can keep up.

“I’m scrolling every single day. I doom scroll all the time,” said TikTok content creator Alyssa McKay.

But there may a dark side to this growth.

As short-form content consumption soars, experts warn about shrinking attention spans and rising mental-health concerns, particularly among younger users. Researchers like Dr. Yann Poncin, associate professor at the Child Study Center at Yale University, point to disrupted sleep patterns and increased anxiety levels tied to endless scrolling habits.

“Infinite scrolling and short-form video are designed to capture your attention in short bursts,” Dr. Poncin said. “In the past, entertainment was about taking you on a journey through a show or story. Now, it’s about locking you in for just a few seconds, just enough to feed you the next thing the algorithm knows you’ll like.”

Despite sky-high engagement, monetizing short videos remains an uphill battle. Unlike long-form YouTube content, where ads can be inserted throughout, short clips offer limited space for advertisers. Creators, too, are feeling the squeeze.

“It’s never been easier to go viral,” said Enberg. “But it’s never been harder to turn that virality into a sustainable business.”

Last year, TikTok generated an estimated $23.6 billion in ad revenues, according to Oberlo, but even with this growth, many creators still make just a few dollars per million views. YouTube Shorts pays roughly four cents per 1,000 views, which is less than its long-form counterpart. Meanwhile, Instagram has leaned into brand partnerships and emerging tools like “Trial Reels,” which allow creators to experiment with content by initially sharing videos only with non-followers, giving them a low-risk way to test new formats or ideas before deciding whether to share with their full audience. But Meta told CNBC that monetizing Reels remains a work in progress.

While lawmakers scrutinize TikTok’s Chinese ownership and explore potential bans, competitors see a window of opportunity. Meta and YouTube are poised to capture up to 50% of reallocated ad dollars if TikTok faces restrictions in the U.S., according to eMarketer.

Watch the video to understand how TikTok’s rise sparked a short form video race.

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Elon Musk’s xAI Holdings in talks to raise $20 billion, Bloomberg News reports

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Elon Musk's xAI Holdings in talks to raise  billion, Bloomberg News reports

The X logo appears on a phone, and the xAI logo is displayed on a laptop in Krakow, Poland, on April 1, 2025. (Photo by Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Elon Musk‘s xAI Holdings is in discussions with investors to raise about $20 billion, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The funding would value the company at over $120 billion, according to the report.

Musk was looking to assign “proper value” to xAI, sources told CNBC’s David Faber earlier this month. The remarks were made during a call with xAI investors, sources familiar with the matter told Faber. The Tesla CEO at that time didn’t explicitly mention any upcoming funding round, but the sources suggested xAI was preparing for a substantial capital raise in the near future.

The funding amount could be more than $20 billion as the exact figure had not been decided, the Bloomberg report added.

Artificial intelligence startup xAI didn’t immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment outside of U.S. business hours.

Faber Report: Elon Musk held call with current xAI investors, sources say

The AI firm last month acquired X in an all-stock deal that valued xAI at $80 billion and the social media platform at $33 billion.

“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent,” Musk said on X, announcing the deal. “This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.”

Read the full Bloomberg story here.

— CNBC’s Samantha Subin contributed to this report.

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Alphabet jumps 3% as search, advertising units show resilient growth

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Alphabet jumps 3% as search, advertising units show resilient growth

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai during the Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, on May 10, 2023.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Alphabet‘s stock gained 3% Friday after signaling strong growth in its search and advertising businesses amid a competitive artificial intelligence environment and uncertain macro backdrop.

GOOGL‘s pace of GenAI product roll-out is accelerating with multiple encouraging signals,” wrote Morgan Stanley‘s Brian Nowak. “Macro uncertainty still exists but we remain [overweight] given GOOGL’s still strong relative position and improving pace of GenAI enabled product roll-out.”

The search giant posted earnings of $2.81 per share on $90.23 billion in revenues. That topped the $89.12 billion in sales and $2.01 in EPS expected by LSEG analysts. Revenues grew 12% year-over-year and ahead of the 10% anticipated by Wall Street.

Net income rose 46% to $34.54 billion, or $2.81 per share. That’s up from $23.66 billion, or $1.89 per share, in the year-ago period. Alphabet said the figure included $8 billion in unrealized gains on its nonmarketable equity securities connected to its investment in a private company.

Adjusted earnings, excluding that gain, were $2.27 per share, according to LSEG, and topped analyst expectations.

Read more CNBC tech news

Alphabet shares have pulled back about 16% this year as it battles volatility spurred by mounting trade war fears and worries that President Donald Trump‘s tariffs could crush the global economy. That would make it more difficult for Alphabet to potentially acquire infrastructure for data centers powering AI models as it faces off against competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic to develop largely language models.

During Thursday’s call with investors, Alphabet suggested that it’s too soon to tally the total impact of tariffs. However, Google’s business chief Philipp Schindler said that ending the de minimis trade exemption in May, which created a loophole benefitting many Chinese e-commerce retailers, could create a “slight headwind” for the company’s ads business, specifically in the Asia-Pacific region. The loophole allows shipments under $800 to come into the U.S. duty-free.

Despite this backdrop, Alphabet showed steady growth in its advertising and search business, reporting $66.89 billion in revenues for its advertising unit. That reflected 8.5% growth from the year-ago period. The company reported $8.93 billion in advertising revenue for its YouTube business, shy of an $8.97 billion estimate from StreetAccount.

Alphabet’s “Search and other” unit rose 9.8% to $50.7 billion, up from $46.16 billion last year. The company said that its AI Overviews tool used in its Google search results page has accumulated 1.5 billion monthly users from a billion in October.

Bank of America analyst Justin Post said that Wall Street is underestimating the upside potential and “monetization ramp” from this tool and cloud demand fueled by AI.

“The strong 1Q search performance, along with constructive comments on Gemini [large language model] performance and [AI Overviews] adoption could help alleviate some investor concerns on AI competition,” Post wrote in a note.

WATCH: Gemini delivering well for Google, says Check Capital’s Chris Ballard

Gemini delivering well for Google, says Check Capital's Chris Ballard

CNBC’s Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.

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