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Binance's Changpeng Zhao to step down as part of $4.3 billion DOJ settlement: CNBC Crypto World

Binance chief Changpeng Zhao will plead guilty to criminal charges and step down as the company’s CEO as part of a $4.3 billion settlement with the Department of Justice, according to court documents. The plea arrangement with the government resolves a multi-year investigation into the world’s largest crypto exchange.

Zhao and others are charged with violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to implement an effective anti-money laundering program and for willfully violating U.S. economic sanctions “in a deliberate and calculated effort to profit from the U.S. market without implementing controls required by U.S. law,” according to the Justice Department.

Zhao said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that he had “made mistakes” and “must take responsibility,” adding that Richard Teng, the company’s former global head of regional markets, has been named the new CEO of Binance.

The action against Binance and its founder was a joint effort by the Department of Justice, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Treasury Department. The Securities and Exchange Commission was noticeably absent.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a release Tuesday the exchange allowed illicit actors to make more than 100,000 transactions that supported activities like terrorism and illegal narcotics. And it allowed more than 1.5 million virtual currency trades that violated U.S. sanctions.

It also allowed transactions associated with terrorist groups like Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Al Qaeda and ISIS, Yellen said in the release, noting Binance “never filed a single suspicious activity report.”

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press conference on Tuesday afternoon that the fine is “one of the largest penalties we have ever obtained.” Yellen said it’s the largest enforcement in the Treasury’s history.

“Using new technology to break the law does not make you a disruptor. It makes you a criminal,” continued Garland.

“Binance prioritized its profits over the safety of the American people,” he added.

The former Binance chief will personally plead guilty to violating and causing a financial institution to violate the Bank Secrecy Act, according to the plea agreement. The DOJ is also recommending that the court impose a $50 million fine on Zhao.

Zhao was scheduled to appear before Judge Brian Tsuchida for a hearing in a Seattle courtroom at 10:00 a.m. Pacific Time (1:00 p.m. ET).

Binance will continue to operate but with new ground rules. The company will be required to maintain and enhance its compliance program to ensure its business is in line with U.S. anti-money laundering standards. The company is required to appoint an independent compliance monitor.

The case against Binance, which was unsealed on Tuesday afternoon, shows that the exchange faces three criminal charges, including conducting an unlicensed money-transmitting business, violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, as well as a conspiracy charge.

Binance has agreed to forfeit $2.5 billion to the government, as well as to pay a fine of $1.8 billion.

Binance will continue to operate but with new ground rules. The company is required to maintain and enhance its compliance program to ensure its business is in line with U.S. anti-money laundering standards. The company will also be required to appoint an independent compliance monitor.

The U.S. DOJ said in its filing Tuesday that Binance “knowingly and willfully” caused the supply of services to Iran, in breach of U.S. sanctions. It follows a report that Binance processed billions’ worth of Iranian transactions.

“Let me be clear: We are also sending a message to the virtual currency industry more broadly, today and for the future,” Yellen wrote in a press brief.

The settlement comes just after FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty of several criminal counts of fraud and conspiracy following just three hours of deliberation by the jury. For a high-profile monthlong trial that involved nearly 20 witnesses and hundreds of exhibits, experts told CNBC they’d never seen such a speedy decision.

Zhao Changpeng, founder and chief executive officer of Binance, speaks at the Blockchain Week Summit in Paris, France, on Wednesday, April 13, 2022. 

Benjamin Girette | Bloomberg | Getty Images

CNBC reached out to Zhao for comment but did not immediately hear back. Binance did not respond to several CNBC requests for comment.

The charges follow civil suits brought earlier this year by both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Binance has been the center of intense regulatory scrutiny over how it operates, with officials in multiple jurisdictions flagging concerns with the company’s gung-ho attitude to launching in certain markets even when it lacks the authority to do so, and allegations of involvement in illicit dealings such as money laundering and securities fraud.

The Securities and Exchange Commission targeted the company with an expansive lawsuit in June, alleging that Binance was running an illegal securities exchange and mishandling customer funds. The SEC hit rival exchange Coinbase with a similar lawsuit shortly after, alleging it is operating as an unauthorized securities exchange, broker and clearing agency.

And just this week, the SEC sued Kraken, claiming that the exchange commingled $33 billion in customer crypto assets with its own company assets, creating the potential for a significant risk of loss to its users.

In the 13 charges brought against Binance by the SEC, the agency accused Binance of commingling billions of dollars in customer money with Binance’s own funds, similar to allegations made against the now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX. SEC Chair Gary Gensler added, “Zhao and Binance entities engaged in an extensive web of deception, conflicts of interest, lack of disclosure, and calculated evasion of the law.”

Started by the Chinese-born entrepreneur in 2017, Binance went from a relatively obscure name to a major force in crypto in a matter of weeks. To this day, Binance remains the world’s largest crypto exchange globally, processing billions of dollars in trading volume every year. The exchange took an aggressive approach to growth, rapidly expanding its reach globally often without gaining permission first.

While its holding company is based in the Cayman Islands, Binance doesn’t have a single global headquarters and Zhao has frequently resisted calls to do so, saying he wants the platform to run on a “decentralized” operating model.

In 2021, the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority barred Binance’s U.K. unit from operating in the country, saying it wasn’t authorized to carry out regulated activities. More recently, Binance scrapped plans to pursue a full U.K. license after the regulator said its know-your-customer and anti-money laundering controls didn’t meet its requirements.

In the CFTC’s complaint, the regulator alleged that Binance, Zhao, and the company’s ex-chief compliance officer, Samuel Lim, operated an “illegal” exchange, ran a “sham” compliance program, and allegedly violated the Commodity Exchange Act including laws “designed to prevent and detect money laundering and terrorism financing.”

Binance and Zhao filed a motion in July to dismiss the CFTC’s suit. The U.S. arm of the exchange is also pushing back on the SEC’s lawsuit, filing a protective order against what they call the SEC’s “fishing expedition.”

Of particular concern for the crypto industry are the implications of the agency’s crackdown on crypto for myriad tokens and blockchains — not just the exchanges. The SEC maintains that several of the tokens Binance and Coinbase offer on their platforms — such as Solana’s sol, Cardano’s ada, and Polygon’s matic — are securities that should have been registered with the agency.

CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger contributed to this report.

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Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

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Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

Chief executive officer of Google Sundar Pichai.

Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.

As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.

“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”

The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup. 

Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.

“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.

Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.

This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.

Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.

The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.

WATCH: Google pushes “AI Mode” on homepage

Google pushes "AI Mode" on homepage

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Nvidia’s Jensen Huang sells more than $36 million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

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Nvidia's Jensen Huang sells more than  million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.

Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unloaded roughly $36.4 million worth of stock in the leading artificial intelligence chipmaker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.

Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.

Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.

The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.

Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.

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The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.

On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.

Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.

Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.

WATCH: Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports

Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports

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Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

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Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

Elon Musk meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington DC, USA on February 13, 2025.

Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images

Tesla will open a showroom in Mumbai, India next week, marking the U.S. electric carmakers first official foray into the country.

The one and a half hour launch event for the Tesla “Experience Center” will take place on July 15 at the Maker Maxity Mall in Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai, according to an event invitation seen by CNBC.

Along with the showroom display, which will feature the company’s cars, Tesla is also likely to officially launch direct sales to Indian customers.

The automaker has had its eye on India for a while and now appears to have stepped up efforts to launch locally.

In April, Tesla boss Elon Musk spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss collaboration in areas including technology and innovation. That same month, the EV-maker’s finance chief said the company has been “very careful” in trying to figure out when to enter the market.

Tesla has no manufacturing operations in India, even though the country’s government is likely keen for the company to establish a factory. Instead the cars sold in India will need to be imported from Tesla’s other manufacturing locations in places like Shanghai, China, and Berlin, Germany.

As Tesla begins sales in India, it will come up against challenges from long-time Chinese rival BYD, as well as local player Tata Motors.

One potential challenge for Tesla comes by way of India’s import duties on electric vehicles, which stand at around 70%. India has tried to entice investment in the country by offering companies a reduced duty of 15% if they commit to invest $500 million and set up manufacturing locally.

HD Kumaraswamy, India’s minister for heavy industries, told reporters in June that Tesla is “not interested” in manufacturing in the country, according to a Reuters report.

Tesla is looking to recruit roles in Mumbai, job listings posted on LinkedIn . These include advisors working in showrooms, security, vehicle operators to collect data for its Autopilot feature and service technicians.

There are also roles being advertised in the Indian capital of New Delhi, including for store managers. It’s unclear if Tesla is planning to launch a showroom in the city.

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