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Doximity at the New York Stock Exchange for their IPO, June 24, 2021.

Source: NYSE

Doximity, the medical website that’s used by more than 80% of U.S. doctors, is now trying to protect its millions of members after a spike in harassment that started during the Covid pandemic.

The 13-year-old company has introduced a free service called DocDefender that can scrub a physician’s personal contact information from the internet. The technology scans dozens of the most common websites where a doctor’s information might reside and automatically initiates the removal process.

Doximity’s platform, which for years was described as LinkedIn for doctors, allows health-care workers to stay current on medical news, manage paperwork, find referrals and carry out telehealth appointments with patients. Since the Covid pandemic broke out in 2020, health-care workers have faced elevated levels of harassment and violence due largely to the politicization of masking, social distancing and vaccine requirements.

Doximity says the new feature is all about giving peace of mind to doctors so they can feel safer in their personal and professional lives and can focus on providing better care.

Dr. Amit Phull, chief physician experience officer at Doximity, said the feature is a service that users wanted. In March, more than 200 doctors traveled to Doximity’s headquarters in San Francisco to help the company workshop new ideas for its platform. When executives presented DocDefender, they received a resounding standing ovation. 

“We’ve gotten positive feedback before,” Phull told CNBC in an interview. “That was a first for us.” 

Two months after the workshopping event, Doximity conducted a survey of more than 2,000 doctors and found that 85% of them worry about whether patients will access their personal information online. That number is higher within certain high-stress specialties like physical medicine and rehabilitation, neurology, emergency medicine and psychiatry.

Jeff Tangney, CEO, of Doximity at the New York Stock Exchange for their IPO, June 24, 2021.

Source: NYSE

Phull, who practices as a physician in emergency medicine, said he’s felt concerned about his safety many times throughout his career. He carried out his trauma training in Chicago, where he treated several victims of gang-related violence. Phull said he was often thrust in the middle of complex conflicts that were out of his control, and he worried that people would find him online and retaliate.  

“If you find yourself in one of those high-intensity situations, and outside of the scope of your practice that conflict still persists, that online element can be kind of scary,” he said.  

Since the onset of the pandemic, many patients have a shorter fuse. 

“I’ve been swung at by patients,” he said. “We certainly deal with a lot of hostility.”

Phull said that in testing the technology, he found details like his phone number, his relatives, his past and current addresses — and even a map to his old home on more than 25 websites. Now that he knows that information is being removed, Phull said he and his wife feel a little more comfortable.  

DocDefender users can monitor the removal process directly through Doximity’s interface, and they will receive regular follow-up reports about the status of their online presence. Additional scans will also be carried out periodically to identify any new listings. 

The service will be available to all doctors on Doximity starting Wednesday, and will expand to nurse practitioners and others over time. 

‘Opportunity to think very long term’

In addition to reaching more than 80% of U.S. doctors, Doximity says it’s also used by 50% of nurse practitioners and physician assistants. 

The platform verifies members to ensure that they’re practicing health-care professionals. Approved clinicians can use Doximity for free, as the company primarily generates revenue through its hiring, marketing and telehealth solutions.  

Doximity debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in June 2021, during the peak of the tech bull market. Its market cap climbed to $9.4 billion in its first day of trading, but has since fallen below $4 billion.

CEO Jeff Tangney, who co-founded Doximity in 2010, told CNBC the company is able to offer DocDefender for free in part because of its strong profit margins. 

“We just have the opportunity to think very long term and to invest in things that doctors really want, and that’s what we’re doing here,” he said.

Dr. Azlan Tariq, a physical medicine and rehabilitation doctor and the chief clinical officer at a  physiatry organization called Medrina, had early access to DocDefender.

Doximity CEO on physician social network going public: "Our mission is to help doctors be more productive"

PM&R physicians often deal with patients suffering chronic pain and are responsible for prescribing — and denying — medications like opioids. Around 96% of PM&R doctors reported feeling concerned about their online privacy in Doximity’s May survey.

Tariq said he’s taken steps to try and protect both his online identity and his physical safety, leaving social media sites like Facebook and taking down personal information elsewhere. He tries not to shop near his clinic to avoid disgruntled patients, and he said he’s always paying attention to his environment.

On one occasion, a patient was waiting for Tariq in the parking lot outside of his clinic. While the patient ultimately meant no harm, Tariq said he had to assume the worst. 

“You just think about exits. How can I get out of this?” he said. “Can I get back in the car? Can I get the door of the clinic and go behind? Those are just the normal behaviors.”

He added that some of his colleagues seriously consider carrying a gun. 

Since testing DocDefender, Tariq said he’s already noticed some of his personal information has been removed online, adding he feels a little more at ease.

Still, DocDefender doesn’t entirely remove the risk of being found. Dr. Jasdeep Gill, a psychiatrist, said there are some databases for Medicare and Medicaid that list doctors’ information, as well as websites that use their specific provider numbers. 

“Within the last two weeks, I’ve had two different people call my cell phone and request care, and I don’t know how they found my cellphone number,” said Gill, commenting that DocDefender is a step in the right direction to guard against this. “Trying to figure out how they got that information left me feeling just kind of uncomfortable.”

Gill works with patients, including some who are incarcerated, dealing with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and substance abuse. He said he started taking the risks more seriously after a patient made threats against him while he was in residency. 

Gill said he paid $20 a month for an information-removal service, but that process was “clunky” and “cumbersome.” He called Doximity’s tool a “really easy service to use” and sees it as a way for physicians to maintain the boundary between their professional and private lives. 

“Our background history of where we live, who we’re married to, what our cellphone numbers are, are things that are personal and that should be kept separate from the public’s view,” Gill said. “By creating that separation, it allows us to just do our jobs and focus on health care instead of worrying about safety.”

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Apple scores big victory with ‘F1,’ but AI is still a major problem in Cupertino

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Apple scores big victory with 'F1,' but AI is still a major problem in Cupertino

Formula One F1 – United States Grand Prix – Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas, U.S. – October 23, 2022 Tim Cook waves the chequered flag to the race winner Red Bull’s Max Verstappen 

Mike Segar | Reuters

Apple had two major launches last month. They couldn’t have been more different.

First, Apple revealed some of the artificial intelligence advancements it had been working on in the past year when it released developer versions of its operating systems to muted applause at its annual developer’s conference, WWDC. Then, at the end of the month, Apple hit the red carpet as its first true blockbuster movie, “F1,” debuted to over $155 million — and glowing reviews — in its first weekend.

While “F1” was a victory lap for Apple, highlighting the strength of its long-term outlook, the growth of its services business and its ability to tap into culture, Wall Street’s reaction to the company’s AI announcements at WWDC suggest there’s some trouble underneath the hood.

“F1” showed Apple at its best — in particular, its ability to invest in new, long-term projects. When Apple TV+ launched in 2019, it had only a handful of original shows and one movie, a film festival darling called “Hala” that didn’t even share its box office revenue.

Despite Apple TV+ being written off as a costly side-project, Apple stuck with its plan over the years, expanding its staff and operation in Culver City, California. That allowed the company to build up Hollywood connections, especially for TV shows, and build an entertainment track record. Now, an Apple Original can lead the box office on a summer weekend, the prime season for blockbuster films.

The success of “F1” also highlights Apple’s significant marketing machine and ability to get big-name talent to appear with its leadership. Apple pulled out all the stops to market the movie, including using its Wallet app to send a push notification with a discount for tickets to the film. To promote “F1,” Cook appeared with movie star Brad Pitt at an Apple store in New York and posted a video with actual F1 racer Lewis Hamilton, who was one of the film’s producers.

(L-R) Brad Pitt, Lewis Hamilton, Tim Cook, and Damson Idris attend the World Premiere of “F1: The Movie” in Times Square on June 16, 2025 in New York City.

Jamie Mccarthy | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

Although Apple services chief Eddy Cue said in a recent interview that Apple needs the its film business to be profitable to “continue to do great things,” “F1” isn’t just about the bottom line for the company.

Apple’s Hollywood productions are perhaps the most prominent face of the company’s services business, a profit engine that has been an investor favorite since the iPhone maker started highlighting the division in 2016.

Films will only ever be a small fraction of the services unit, which also includes payments, iCloud subscriptions, magazine bundles, Apple Music, game bundles, warranties, fees related to digital payments and ad sales. Plus, even the biggest box office smashes would be small on Apple’s scale — the company does over $1 billion in sales on average every day.

But movies are the only services component that can get celebrities like Pitt or George Clooney to appear next to an Apple logo — and the success of “F1” means that Apple could do more big popcorn films in the future.

“Nothing breeds success or inspires future investment like a current success,” said Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian.

But if “F1” is a sign that Apple’s services business is in full throttle, the company’s AI struggles are a “check engine” light that won’t turn off.

Replacing Siri’s engine

At WWDC last month, Wall Street was eager to hear about the company’s plans for Apple Intelligence, its suite of AI features that it first revealed in 2024. Apple Intelligence, which is a key tenet of the company’s hardware products, had a rollout marred by delays and underwhelming features.

Apple spent most of WWDC going over smaller machine learning features, but did not reveal what investors and consumers increasingly want: A sophisticated Siri that can converse fluidly and get stuff done, like making a restaurant reservation. In the age of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini, the expectation of AI assistants among consumers is growing beyond “Siri, how’s the weather?”

The company had previewed a significantly improved Siri in the summer of 2024, but earlier this year, those features were delayed to sometime in 2026. At WWDC, Apple didn’t offer any updates about the improved Siri beyond that the company was “continuing its work to deliver” the features in the “coming year.” Some observers reduced their expectations for Apple’s AI after the conference.

“Current expectations for Apple Intelligence to kickstart a super upgrade cycle are too high, in our view,” wrote Jefferies analysts this week.

Siri should be an example of how Apple’s ability to improve products and projects over the long-term makes it tough to compete with.

It beat nearly every other voice assistant to market when it first debuted on iPhones in 2011. Fourteen years later, Siri remains essentially the same one-off, rigid, question-and-answer system that struggles with open-ended questions and dates, even after the invention in recent years of sophisticated voice bots based on generative AI technology that can hold a conversation.

Apple’s strongest rivals, including Android parent Google, have done way more to integrate sophisticated AI assistants into their devices than Apple has. And Google doesn’t have the same reflex against collecting data and cloud processing as privacy-obsessed Apple.

Some analysts have said they believe Apple has a few years before the company’s lack of competitive AI features will start to show up in device sales, given the company’s large installed base and high customer loyalty. But Apple can’t get lapped before it re-enters the race, and its former design guru Jony Ive is now working on new hardware with OpenAI, ramping up the pressure in Cupertino.

“The three-year problem, which is within an investment time frame, is that Android is racing ahead,” Needham senior internet analyst Laura Martin said on CNBC this week.

Apple’s services success with projects like “F1” is an example of what the company can do when it sets clear goals in public and then executes them over extended time-frames.

Its AI strategy could use a similar long-term plan, as customers and investors wonder when Apple will fully embrace the technology that has captivated Silicon Valley.

Wall Street’s anxiety over Apple’s AI struggles was evident this week after Bloomberg reported that Apple was considering replacing Siri’s engine with Anthropic or OpenAI’s technology, as opposed to its own foundation models.

The move, if it were to happen, would contradict one of Apple’s most important strategies in the Cook era: Apple wants to own its core technologies, like the touchscreen, processor, modem and maps software, not buy them from suppliers.

Using external technology would be an admission that Apple Foundation Models aren’t good enough yet for what the company wants to do with Siri.

“They’ve fallen farther and farther behind, and they need to supercharge their generative AI efforts” Martin said. “They can’t do that internally.”

Apple might even pay billions for the use of Anthropic’s AI software, according to the Bloomberg report. If Apple were to pay for AI, it would be a reversal from current services deals, like the search deal with Alphabet where the Cupertino company gets paid $20 billion per year to push iPhone traffic to Google Search.

The company didn’t confirm the report and declined comment, but Wall Street welcomed the report and Apple shares rose.

In the world of AI in Silicon Valley, signing bonuses for the kinds of engineers that can develop new models can range up to $100 million, according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

“I can’t see Apple doing that,” Martin said.

Earlier this week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent a memo bragging about hiring 11 AI experts from companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google’s DeepMind. That came after Zuckerberg hired Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang to lead a new AI division as part of a $14.3 billion deal.

Meta’s not the only company to spend hundreds of millions on AI celebrities to get them in the building. Google spent big to hire away the founders of Character.AI, Microsoft got its AI leader by striking a deal with Inflection and Amazon hired the executive team of Adept to bulk up its AI roster.

Apple, on the other hand, hasn’t announced any big AI hires in recent years. While Cook rubs shoulders with Pitt, the actual race may be passing Apple by.

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Jefferies upgrades Apple to 'Hold'

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Musk backs Sen. Paul’s criticism of Trump’s megabill in first comment since it passed

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Musk backs Sen. Paul's criticism of Trump's megabill in first comment since it passed

Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks alongside U.S. President Donald Trump to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who bombarded President Donald Trump‘s signature spending bill for weeks, on Friday made his first comments since the legislation passed.

Musk backed a post on X by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who said the bill’s budget “explodes the deficit” and continues a pattern of “short-term politicking over long-term sustainability.”

The House of Representatives narrowly passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on Thursday, sending it to Trump to sign into law.

Paul and Musk have been vocal opponents of Trump’s tax and spending bill, and repeatedly called out the potential for the spending package to increase the national debt.

On Monday, Musk called it the “DEBT SLAVERY bill.”

The independent Congressional Budget Office has said the bill could add $3.4 trillion to the $36.2 trillion of U.S. debt over the next decade. The White House has labeled the agency as “partisan” and continuously refuted the CBO’s estimates.

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The bill includes trillions of dollars in tax cuts, increased spending for immigration enforcement and large cuts to funding for Medicaid and other programs.

It also cuts tax credits and support for solar and wind energy and electric vehicles, a particularly sore spot for Musk, who has several companies that benefit from the programs.

“I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!” Trump wrote in a social media post in early June as the pair traded insults and threats.

Shares of Tesla plummeted as the feud intensified, with the company losing $152 billion in market cap on June 5 and putting the company below $1 trillion in value. The stock has largely rebounded since, but is still below where it was trading before the ruckus with Trump.

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Tesla one-month stock chart.

— CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger and Erin Doherty contributed to this article.

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Microsoft layoffs hit 830 workers in home state of Washington

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Microsoft layoffs hit 830 workers in home state of Washington

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at the Axel Springer building in Berlin on Oct. 17, 2023. He received the annual Axel Springer Award.

Ben Kriemann | Getty Images

Among the thousands of Microsoft employees who lost their jobs in the cutbacks announced this week were 830 staffers in the company’s home state of Washington.

Nearly a dozen game design workers in the state were part of the layoffs, along with three audio designers, two mechanical engineers, one optical engineer and one lab technician, according to a document Microsoft submitted to Washington employment officials.

There were also five individual contributors and one manager at the Microsoft Research division in the cuts, as well as 10 lawyers and six hardware engineers, the document shows.

Microsoft announced plans on Wednesday to eliminate 9,000 jobs, as part of an effort to eliminate redundancy and to encourage employees to focus on more meaningful work by adopting new technologies, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. The person asked not to be named while discussing private matters.

Scores of Microsoft salespeople and video game developers have since come forward on social media to announce their departure. In April, Microsoft said revenue from Xbox content and services grew 8%, trailing overall growth of 13%.

In sales, the company parted ways with 16 customer success account management staff members based in Washington, 28 in sales strategy enablement and another five in sales compensation. One Washington-based government affairs worker was also laid off.

Microsoft eliminated 17 jobs in cloud solution architecture in the state, according to the document. The company’s fastest revenue growth comes from Azure and other cloud services that customers buy based on usage.

CEO Satya Nadella has not publicly commented on the layoffs, and Microsoft didn’t immediately provide a comment about the cuts in Washington. On a conference call with analysts in April, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said the company had a “focus on cost efficiencies” during the March quarter.

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Microsoft layoffs not performance-based, largely targeting middle managers

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