Elon Musk speaks onstage during The New York Times Dealbook Summit 2023 at Jazz at Lincoln Center on November 29, 2023 in New York City.
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Elon Musk’s X has been hit with a complaint from privacy activist Max Schrems, which alleges the platform broke the European Union’s hard-hitting privacy rules.
Lodged on Thursday by Schrems’ campaign group Noyb with the Dutch data protection authority, the complaint purports that X unlawfully used people’s political views and religious beliefs to target them with ads.
The European Union is also accused of using X to target users based on their political views and religious beliefs.
In the complaint, Schrems alleges that X showed him an ad from the European Commission that promoted online content regulation to tackle child sexual abuse and the grooming of children online.
Schrems says the ad explicitly targets users from the Netherlands and excludes 44 “targeting segments,” such as political parties like Alternative for Germany, Vox, Sinn Fein, and the English Defense League, as well as far-right politicians Viktor Orban and Marine Le Pen.
The ad also does not target people based on their use on X of terms related to “euroscepticism and/or nationalist political views,” according to the complaint.
The filing states that the allegations are based on the ads repository of X.
X was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC. In reply to a CNBC email, the Commission said that it was aware of reports of the campaign and was conducting a “thorough review.”
“Internally, we provide regularly updated guidance to ensure our social media managers are familiar with the rules and that external contractors also apply them in full,” the Commission said.
“Also, in view of an alarming increase in disinformation and hate speech on social media platforms in recent weeks, we advised Commission services already back in October to refrain from advertising at this stage on X.”
The Commission added that, under its Digital Services Act, a major content regulation law in the EU, platforms including X “must not display targeted advertisements based on the sensitive data of a user.”
Per the complaint, X is able to take users’ clicking behavior and replies to tailor content to them — a practice known as “microtargeting.” Microtargeting was used by Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump win the vote by a narrow margin, the complaint notes.
Who is Max Schrems?
Schrems is a high-profile figure in European privacy campaigning. He most notably won a legal battle against Meta parent company Facebook, defeating the company’s use of the EU-U.S. so-called safe harbor data-transferring mechanism to send Europeans’ information to the U.S.
Scrutiny of the complaint is in its early days. It has been filed with the Dutch data protection authority, which is tasked with investigating the main highlights of the complaint to assess whether there was a breach of GDPR.
X has its main European headquarters in Ireland, meaning that the Dublin data watchdog is the primary privacy regulator for the platform in Europe. Schrems is submitting the complaint to the Dutch authority, rather than Ireland, as he is a Dutch citizen.
The complaint could ultimately lead to a full-blown investigation under the European Union’s General Data Protection, a strict EU privacy regulation introduced by the bloc in 2018.
GDPR has led to massive fines for U.S. technology giants, including Amazon and Meta. Under GDPR, firms can be fined up to 4% of their global annual revenues for breaches.
X has been in a hard place lately, with brands including Apple, Disney and Microsoft, pulling ads from the platform due to controversies surrounding Musk, including sharing a post that explored a popular antisemitic conspiracy theory.
Alphabet can no longer be ignored. It is going back into our Bullpen list of stocks to watch after our unfortunate exit from the Google parent back in March. We got out of the name due to concerns that Google’s Gemini was not advancing quickly enough to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and because the Justice Department was seeking to force a spin-off of Google’s Chrome browser and prohibit Google from paying Club name Apple a hefty sum to be the default search engine in the iPhone maker’s Safari browser Since then, however, Google has launched Gemini 3 — which, in addition to instantly becoming the new standard for all other large language models to beat, was developed and runs entirely on custom silicon developed by Google, in partnership with Club holding Broadcom . The market also started to appreciate that the custom silicon used to run the model with extreme efficiency may very well represent a new revenue stream, with Google beginning to see more interest in the chips from other companies. Also, following our exit, the ruling from the courts came down in favor of Alphabet, stating that it did not need to spin off Chrome and that the long-time, mutually beneficial partnership between Google and Apple could continue. It was especially important given Apple’s clear intention to leverage third-party technology for its highly anticipated Siri AI upgrade, which goes beyond the option to have OpenAI’s ChatGPT answer complex queries to a full-blown conversational digital assistant. Jim Cramer has said that Google would likely be a better AI partner for Apple’s new Siri due to the search arrangement already in place. Plus, OpenAI is approaching a $1 trillion valuation, based on the numbers being discussed in its latest funding round. Jim has been cautious about OpenAI’s ability to pay for some $1.4 trillion worth of commitments to fund data centers and buy AI chips. Considering OpenAI’s massive spending promises and its extreme cash burn, Gemini, inside the cash machine that is Google, should be worth a lot more. Bottom line While it was clearly a mistake to get out of the name, hindsight is 20/20, and allowing that poor decision to keep us from potential gains in the future, when the facts have so drastically changed, would be a sin. It’s not about where stock is coming from but where it’s going. We can’t allow a regrettable sale cloud what needs to be an objective analysis of Alphabet’s future earnings potential. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long AAPL, AVGO. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
Firefly’s CEO Jason Kim reacts during the company’s IPO at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City, U.S., August 7, 2025.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
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Last week’s liftoff also coincided with President Donald Trump‘s “space superiority” executive order, signed on Friday, that aims to create a permanent U.S. base on the moon.
Investors have also gained more clarity on the future of NASA following a whirlwind drama since Trump won the election.
Google parent Alphabet on Monday announced it will acquire Intersect, a data center and energy infrastructure company, for $4.75 billion in cash in addition to the assumption of debt.
Alphabet said Intersect’s operations will remain independent, but that the acquisition will help bring more data center and generation capacity online faster.
In recent years, Google has been embroiled in a fierce competition with artificial intelligence rivals, namely OpenAI, which kick-started the generative AI boom with the launch of its ChatGPT chatbot in 2022. OpenAI has made more than $1.4 trillion of infrastructure commitments to build out the data centers it needs to meet growing demand for its technology.
With its acquisition of Intersect, Google is looking to keep up.
“Intersect will help us expand capacity, operate more nimbly in building new power generation in lockstep with new data center load, and reimagine energy solutions to drive US innovation and leadership,” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, said in a statement.
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Google already had a minority stake in Intersect from a funding round that was announced last December. In a release at the time, Intersect said its strategic partnership with Google and TPG Rise Climate aimed to develop gigawatts of data center capacity across the U.S., including a $20 billion investment in renewable power infrastructure by the end of the decade.
Alphabet said Monday that Intersect will work closely with Google’s technical infrastructure team, including on the companies’ co-located power site and data center in Haskell County, Texas. Google previously announced a $40 billion investment in Texas through 2027, which includes new data center campuses in the state’s Haskell and Armstrong counties.
Intersect’s operating and in-development assets in California and its existing operating assets in Texas are not part of the acquisition, Alphabet said. Intersect’s existing investors including TPG Rise Climate, Climate Adaptive Infrastructure and Greenbelt Capital Partners will support those assets, and they will continue to operate as an independent company.
Alphabet’s acquisition of Intersect is expected to close in the first half of 2026, but it is still subject to customary closing conditions.