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Chinese technology giant ByteDance is offering to buy back stock options from employees at a higher price than earlier this year, in a bid to boost motivation and inject confidence among employees after a challenging year.

ByteDance, which owns popular short video app TikTok, on Wednesday told employees outside of the U.S. that it is willing to purchase restricted stock units (RSU) or options from them for $160 each, up from the $155 price it was offering in April, a person familiar with the matter, who was not authorized to speak publicly, told CNBC.

The exercise is optional. U.S. employees were given the same deal earlier this year.

RSUs or options are an instrument employees can purchase, which convert into actual shares if the company goes public or gets acquired.

A ByteDance spokesperson confirmed the plan to CNBC and said the company aims to provide liquidity of its RSUs and options to motivate employees through buyback programs.

It has been a challenging few years for ByteDance, which has faced tougher regulation at home, a fall in valuation and scrutiny of its flagship app TikTok in the U.S.

In March, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was grilled by U.S. lawmakers who have grown concerned that American user data can end up in the hands of the Chinese government.

ByteDance is not public. Longer-standing private technology companies may offer to buy back options to give them liquidity, in a bid by management to signal their confidence in the prospects of the business in the future.

It is also a way for early employees who may have purchased stock options at a cheaper price to make some return on their investment.

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Online trading platform Webull soars 375% in second day on market after SPAC merger

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Online trading platform Webull soars 375% in second day on market after SPAC merger

Anthony Denier, CEO fo Webull, speaks during an interview on CNBC on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., June 1, 2022. 

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Shares of Webull soared nearly 375% on Monday, the second day on the market for the stock-trading app, which completed its merger last week with SK Growth Opportunities Corp., a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

The rally gives Webull a market cap of almost $30 billion.

Webull competes with Robinhood, Charles Schwab and E-Trade. The app lets investors buy and sell shares and options in individual securities, exchange-traded funds and cryptocurrencies, and offers charts, watchlists, screening tools and paper trading.

The company says it has over 23 million registered users and operates in 15 regions globally. In addition to charging fees on trades, Webull has a premium tier with real-time data that costs $40 per year.

In an investor presentation last month, the company said it was expecting $390.2 million in 2024 revenue, which would be roughly flat from 2023.

Former Alibaba and Xiaomi manager Wang Anquan founded Webull in 2016, and he remains the company’s global CEO. Investors include Coatue, General Atlantic and Lightspeed. The app gained popularity during the Covid pandemic, as U.S. citizens used stimulus checks to invest, Anthony Denier, the company’s group president and U.S. CEO, told CNBC in 2021. Webull users are “much more intellectual” than Robinhood’s, Denier has said.

In November, the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party sent a letter to Denier inquiring about the company’s ties to China. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The rise of blank-check companies such as SK Growth Opportunities peaked in 2021, with 613 IPOs completed, according to SPAC Insider. The market fell apart the following year as soaring inflation and rising interest rates pushed investors out of risky assets. So far this year there have been 23 SPAC IPOs.

Webull said last year that it was planning for its market debut to take place in the second half of 2024.

WATCH: House Committee slams Webull over alleged ties to Chinese Communist Party

House Committee slams Webull over alleged ties to Chinese Communist Party

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Apple regains $3 trillion market cap after Trump exempts tariffs on iPhones

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Apple regains  trillion market cap after Trump exempts tariffs on iPhones

Apple CEO Tim Cook greets former President Barack Obama at the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2025.

Julia Demaree Nikhinson | Getty Images

Apple shares rose more than 2% on Monday, pushing the company’s market cap back above $3 trillion, as Wall Street expressed some level of relief that the iPhone maker will be able to withstand President Donald Trump’s widespread tariffs.

Late Friday, the Trump administration announced that phones, computers and chips were exempted from new tariffs. Apple is among the most exposed companies to Trump’s tariffs because the majority of its iPhones, iPads and MacBooks are manufactured in China and other Asian countries. Trump has called for Apple to make its products in the U.S.

Most of Apple’s critical imports were exempted from the tariffs, a move that Wall Street analysts said could save Apple billions in costs. However, administration officials warned over the weekend that the exemptions were temporary and could change over the coming weeks.

“I speak to Tim Cook. I helped Tim Cook, recently, and that whole business,” Trump said Monday in a briefing with reporters in the Oval Office, referring to Apple’s CEO. “I don’t want to hurt anybody, but the end result is we’re going to get to the position of greatness for our country.”

Uncertainty about what the future holds helps explain Apple’s relatively muted gain on Friday. The stock is still down almost 9% in April after falling more than 8% in March. The 11% drop in the first quarter marked Apple’s worst performance since 2023.

Apple is the most valuable publicly traded U.S. company once again, edging out Microsoft.

Apple fell below the $3 trillion mark on April 4, two days after Trump announced “reciprocal tariffs” that would place significant duties on China and countries where the company does manufacturing.

The stock rallied last week after Trump announced his administration was dropping new tariff rates to 10% on imports from countries other than China, which would face tariffs as high as 145%.

Analysts at Morgan Stanley wrote in a note Monday that the latest news from the White House brings Apple’s “annualized tariff cost burden” to $7 billion, down from $44 billion as of Thursday.

WATCH: Having exposure to Apple is important

Having exposure to Apple is important, says Bokeh’s Kim Forrest

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Meta resorted to ‘buy-or-bury scheme’ with Instagram and WhatsApp deals, former FTC Chair Lina Khan says

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Meta resorted to 'buy-or-bury scheme' with Instagram and WhatsApp deals, former FTC Chair Lina Khan says

Watch CNBC's full interview with former FTC Chair Lina Khan

Former U.S. Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan said Monday that Facebook “panicked” when making the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp as smartphone use took off.

“It saw companies like Instagram and WhatsApp experiencing astronomical growth, and that’s the point at which it resorted to this buy-or-bury scheme where, if it couldn’t outcompete a rival, it either bought them out or cut them off its network,” Khan said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, begins a trial with the FTC on Monday. The government alleges that the company monopolized the personal social networking market with its $1 billion acquisition of Instagram in 2012 and $19 billion purchase of WhatsApp in 2014.

Meta did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

The trial could result in the social media giant divesting the two companies. Meta has filed a pretrial brief detailing its disagreement with the FTC and reiterating that it believes the company does not have a monopoly.

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“There’s no expiration date when it comes to the illegality of the transaction,” Khan said. “I think there is a way in which the entire social networking ecosystem looks different today because Facebook was permitted to go out and make these acquisitions.”

The case is, at its core, about “free and fair trade,” Khan added. Though no settlement has been reached, she said there’s always a possibility of a settlement before the case concludes.

With President Donald Trump regularly holding court with tech executives, Khan said she’s “glad” that Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg‘s efforts to dismiss the case have been, thus far, unsuccessful.

Zuckerberg donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, co-hosted an inaugural ball and has reportedly met with the president multiple times since January.

“Until the trial is over and until we actually get a liability verdict and then a remedy, we’re all going to have to wait and see,” Khan said.

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