Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, speaks with CNBC on May 16th, 2023.
David A. Grogan | CNBC
Twitter is accusing Microsoft of using the social media company’s data in ways that were unauthorized and never disclosed.
Alex Spiro, a partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and attorney for Twitter owner Elon Musk, sent a letter to Microsoft on Thursday laying out the claims, including that the software company “may have been in violation of multiple provisions” of its agreement with Twitter over data use.
It’s the latest rift among tech companies in the growing debate over who owns data that can be used to train artificial intelligence and machine learning software. The New York Times first reported on the letter, a copy of which was obtained by CNBC.
After Musk led a buyout of Twitter in October and appointed himself CEO, the company started charging for use of its application programming interface, which enables developers to embed tweets into their software and services and access Twitter data.
The API was previously free to use for some researchers, partners and developers who agreed to Twitter’s terms. Twitter API-driven apps include Hootsuite, Sprout Social and Sprinklr.
According to the letter from Spiro to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and the company’s board, last month Microsoft “declined to pay even a discounted rate for continued access to Twitter’s APIs and content.”
As of April, Microsoft had at least five products that used the Twitter API, including the Azure cloud, Bing search engine and Power Platform low-code application development tools, Spiro wrote.
The agreement restricts excessive use of Twitter’s programming interfaces. However, for one of the Microsoft services using Twitter data, “account information outright states that it intends to allow its customers to ‘go around throttling limits,'” Spiro wrote.
A Microsoft spokesperson acknowledged receipt of the letter and told CNBC the company will review it and “respond appropriately.”
“Today we heard from a law firm representing Twitter with some questions about our previous use of the free Twitter API,” the spokesperson said in an email. “We look forward to continuing our long-term partnership with the company.”
Musk has been openly critical of Microsoft’s tight relationship with OpenAI, the creator of the chatbot ChatGPT. Musk was an early backer of OpenAI, but the company has since raised billions of dollars from Microsoft, which is embedding its AI technology into many core products.
“Microsoft has a very strong say, if not directly controls, OpenAI at this point,” Musk told CNBC in an interview this week. Nadella recently challenged Musk’s claim in an interview with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin, saying Microsoft has “a noncontrolling interest” in the startup.
Spiro did not name OpenAI or mention its ChatGPT and DALL-E applications or large language models in the letter. He did press Microsoft for any details about, “a description of any token pooling implemented in any of the Microsoft Apps, including the time period(s) when any such token pooling occurred and the number of tokens that were pooled.”
Musk and Nadella have had other interactions of late.
Last year, Musk approached Nadella as he was raising money for his Twitter buyout, according to text messages that became public via court filings. Nadella wrote in one text to Musk, “will for sure follow-up on Teams feedback!” Teams is Microsoft’s chat app.
Paxton sued Google in 2022 for allegedly unlawfully tracking and collecting the private data of users.
The attorney general said the settlement, which covers allegations in two separate lawsuits against the search engine and app giant, dwarfed all past settlements by other states with Google for similar data privacy violations.
Google’s settlement comes nearly 10 months after Paxton obtained a $1.4 billion settlement for Texas from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to resolve claims of unauthorized use of biometric data by users of those popular social media platforms.
“In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law,” Paxton said in a statement on Friday.
“For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won,” said Paxton.
“This $1.375 billion settlement is a major win for Texans’ privacy and tells companies that they will pay for abusing our trust.”
Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said the company did not admit any wrongdoing or liability in the settlement, which involves allegations related to the Chrome browser’s incognito setting, disclosures related to location history on the Google Maps app, and biometric claims related to Google Photo.
Castaneda said Google does not have to make any changes to products in connection with the settlement and that all of the policy changes that the company made in connection with the allegations were previously announced or implemented.
“This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed,” Castaneda said.
“We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services.”
Virtual care company Omada Health filed for an IPO on Friday, the latest digital health company that’s signaled its intent to hit the public markets despite a turbulent economy.
Founded in 2012, Omada offers virtual care programs to support patients with chronic conditions like prediabetes, diabetes and hypertension. The company describes its approach as a “between-visit care model” that is complementary to the broader health-care ecosystem, according to its prospectus.
Revenue increased 57% in the first quarter to $55 million, up from $35.1 million during the same period last year, the filing said. The San Francisco-based company generated $169.8 million in revenue during 2024, up 38% from $122.8 million the previous year.
Omada’s net loss narrowed to $9.4 million during its first quarter from $19 million during the same period last year. It reported a net loss of $47.1 million in 2024, compared to a $67.5 million net loss during 2023.
The IPO market has been largely dormant across the tech sector for the past three years, and within digital health, it’s been almost completely dead. After President Donald Trump announced a sweeping tariff policy that plunged U.S. markets into turmoil last month, taking a company public is an even riskier endeavor. Online lender Klarna delayed its long-anticipated IPO, as did ticket marketplace StubHub.
But Omada Health isn’t the first digital health company to file for its public market debut this year. Virtual physical therapy startup Hinge Health filed its prospectus in March, and provided an update with its first-quarter earnings on Monday, a signal to investors that it’s looking to forge ahead.
Omada contracts with employers, and the company said it works with more than 2,000 customers and supports 679,000 members as of March 31. More than 156 million Americans suffer from at least one chronic condition, so there is a significant market opportunity, according to the company’s filing.
In 2022, Omada announced a $192 million funding round that pushed its valuation above $1 billion. U.S. Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Fidelity’s FMR LLC are the largest outside shareholders in the company, each owning between 9% and 10% of the stock.
“To our prospective shareholders, thank you for learning more about Omada. I invite you join our journey,” Omada co-founder and CEO Sean Duffy said in the filing. “In front of us is a unique chance to build a promising and successful business while truly changing lives.”
Liz Reid, vice president, search, Google speaks during an event in New Delhi on December 19, 2022.
Sajjad Hussain | AFP | Getty Images
Testimony in Google‘s antitrust search remedies trial that wrapped hearings Friday shows how the company is calculating possible changes proposed by the Department of Justice.
Google head of search Liz Reid testified in court Tuesday that the company would need to divert between 1,000 and 2,000 employees, roughly 20% of Google’s search organization, to carry out some of the proposed remedies, a source with knowledge of the proceedings confirmed.
The testimony comes during the final days of the remedies trial, which will determine what penalties should be taken against Google after a judge last year ruled the company has held an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search.
The DOJ, which filed the original antitrust suit and proposed remedies, asked the judge to force Google to share its data used for generating search results, such as click data. It also asked for the company to remove the use of “compelled syndication,” which refers to the practice of making certain deals with companies to ensure its search engine remains the default choice in browsers and smartphones.
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The DOJ also proposed the company divest its Chrome browser but that was not included in Reid’s initial calculation, the source confirmed.
Reid on Tuesday said Google’s proprietary “Knowledge Graph” database, which it uses to surface search results, contains more than 500 billion facts, according to the source, and that Google has invested more than $20 billion in engineering costs and content acquisition over more than a decade.
“People ask Google questions they wouldn’t ask anyone else,” she said, according to the source.
Reid echoed Google’s argument that sharing its data would create privacy risks, the source confirmed.
Closing arguments for the search remedies trial will take place May 29th and 30th, followed by the judge’s decision expected in August.
The company faces a separate remedies trial for its advertising tech business, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 22.