Linda Yaccarino: CEO of X speaking with CNBC’s Sara Eisen on Aug. 10th, 2023.
CNBC
Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X, formerly known as Twitter, on Thursday laid out how the social media platform is tackling potential illegal content related to the Israel-Hamas conflict after one of the European Union’s top regulators said it had seen signs that the service was being used to spread disinformation.
The militant Palestinian group Hamas launched an attack on Israel over the weekend. Hamas has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., Japan, Australia, Israel, the European Union and many other countries.
In a letter posted on X, Yaccarino said that after the Hamas attack on Israel, the social media firm “assembled a leadership group to assess the situation.”
X has “identified and removed hundreds of Hamas-affiliated accounts” since the start of the war, Yaccarino said.
The CEO also detailed the company’s policies around violent speech, synthetic or manipulated media and perpetrators of violent attacks.
“X is committed to serving the public conversation, especially in critical moments like this and understands the importance of addressing any illegal content that may be disseminated through the platform,” Yaccarino said.
“There is no place on X for terrorist organizations or violent extremist groups and we continue to remove such accounts in real time, including proactive efforts.”
EU reminds X of potential fines
Yaccarino’s letter comes after Thierry Breton, the EU’s commissioner for internal market, on Wednesday gave X 24 hours to respond to a notice in which he said the EU has “indications” that X is “being used to disseminate illegal content and disinformation in the EU” after the “terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas against Israel.”
This year, the EU introduced the Digital Services Act (DSA), a sweeping piece of regulation that forces online platforms to police illegal content more aggressively or risk huge fines.
Breton, in his letter to X owner Elon Musk, called out a change in the social media firm’s public interest policy, which defines which posts on the service can be kept up even if they go against the company’s own content rules. Breton said that the changes “left many European users uncertain.”
The EU commissioner also said that there are reports of “fake and manipulated images and facts circulating” on X.
Breton also said that he expects X to be in contact with relevant law enforcement authorities and Europol and respond “promptly” to their requests.
Yaccarino said so far, X has responded to more than 80 take down requests received in the EU “within required timelines in a diligent and objective manner.” She asked the European Commission to “provide more detail” of the alleged illegal content on X. The CEO added that the company has not received any notices from Europol relating to illegal content on the service.
Breton also sent a similar letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg this week, urging him to be “vigilant” regarding content in relation to the Israel-Hamas conflict.
The EU continues to ramp up scrutiny of Big Tech. In April, under the DSA, the European Commission designated 19 companies, including Apple and Amazon, as “very large” online platforms, meaning that they will come under closer monitoring under the regulations.
Neptune and OpenAI have collaborated on a metrics dashboard to help teams that are building foundation models. The companies will work “even more closely together” because of the acquisition, Neptune CEO Piotr Niedźwiedź said in a blog.
The startup will wind down its external services in the coming months, Niedźwiedź said. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
“Neptune has built a fast, precise system that allows researchers to analyze complex training workflows,” OpenAI’s Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki said in a statement. “We plan to iterate with them to integrate their tools deep into our training stack to expand our visibility into how models learn.”
OpenAI has acquired several companies this year.
It purchased a small interface startup called Software Applications Incorporated for an undisclosed sum in October, product development startup Statsig for $1.1 billion in September and Jony Ive’s AI devices startup io for more than $6 billion in May.
Neptune had raised more than $18 million in funding from investors including Almaz Capital and TDJ Pitango Ventures, according to its website. Neptune’s deal with OpenAI is still subject to customary closing conditions.
“I am truly grateful to our customers, investors, co-founders, and colleagues who have made this journey possible,” Niedźwiedź said. “It was the ride of a lifetime already, yet still I believe this is only the beginning.”
A person walks by a sign for Micron Technology headquarters in San Jose, California, on June 25, 2025.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Micron said on Wednesday that it plans to stop selling memory to consumers to focus on meeting demand for high-powered artificial intelligence chips.
“The AI-driven growth in the data center has led to a surge in demand for memory and storage,” Sumit Sadana, Micron business chief, said in a statement. “Micron has made the difficult decision to exit the Crucial consumer business in order to improve supply and support for our larger, strategic customers in faster-growing segments.”
Micron’s announcement is the latest sign that the AI infrastructure boom is creating shortages for inputs like memory as a handful of companies commit to spend hundreds of billions in the next few years to build massive data centers. Memory, which is used by computers to store data for short periods of time, is facing a global shortage.
Micron shares are up about 175% this year, though they slipped 3% on Wednesday to $232.25.
AI chips, like the GPUs made by Nvidia and AdvancedMicro Devices, use large amounts of the most advanced memory. For example, the current-generation Nvidia GB200 chip has 192GB of memory per graphics processor. Google’s latest AI chip, the Ironwood TPU, needs 192GB of high-bandwidth memory.
Memory is also used in phones and computers, but with lower specs, and much lower quantities — many laptops only come with 16GB of memory. Micron’s Crucial brand sold memory on sticks that tinkerers could use to build their own PCs or upgrade their laptops. Crucial also sold solid-state hard drives.
Micron competes against SK Hynix and Samsung in the market for high-bandwidth memory, but it’s the only U.S.-based memory supplier. Analysts have said that SK Hynix is Nvidia’s primary memory supplier.
Micron supplies AMD, which says its AI chips use more memory than others, providing them a performance advantage for running AI. AMD’s current AI chip, the MI350, comes with 288GB of high-bandwidth memory.
Micron’s Crucial business was not broken out in company earnings. However, its cloud memory business unit showed 213% year-over-year growth in the most recent quarter.
Analysts at Goldman on Tuesday raised their price target on Micron’s stock to $205 from $180, though they maintained their hold recommendation. The analysts wrote in a note to clients that due to “continued pricing momentum” in memory, they “expect healthy upside to Street estimates” when Micron reports quarterly results in two weeks.
A Micron spokesperson declined to comment on whether the move would result in layoffs.
“Micron intends to reduce impact on team members due to this business decision through redeployment opportunities into existing open positions within the company,” the company said in its release.
Microsoft pushed back on a report Wednesday that the company lowered growth targets for artificial intelligence software sales after many of its salespeople missed those goals in the last fiscal year.
The company’s stock sank more than 2% on The Information report.
A Microsoft spokesperson said the company has not lowered sales quotas or targets for its salespeople.
The sales lag occurred for Microsoft’s Foundry product, an Azure enterprise platform where companies can build and manage AI agents, according to The Information, which cited two salespeople in Azure’s cloud unit.
AI agents can carry out a series of actions for a user or organization autonomously.
Less than a fifth of salespeople in one U.S. Azure unit met the Foundry sales growth target of 50%, according to The Information.
In another unit, the quota was set to double Foundry sales, The Information reported. The quota was dropped to 50% after most salespeople didn’t meet it.
In a statement, the company said the news outlet inaccurately combined the concepts of growth and quotas.
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“Aggregate sales quotas for AI products have not been lowered, as we informed them prior to publication,” a Microsoft Spokesperson said.
The AI boom has presented opportunities for businesses to add efficiencies and streamline tasks, with the companies that build these agents touting the power of the tools to take on work and allow workers to do more.
OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Salesforce, Amazon and others all have their own tools to create and manage these AI assistants.
But the adoption of these tools by traditional businesses hasn’t seen the same surge as other parts of the AI ecosystem.
The Information noted AI adoption struggles at private equity firm Carlyle last year, in which the tools wouldn’t reliably connect data from other places. The company later reduced how much it spent on the tools.