Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick speaks at the CNBC Evolve conference November 19th in Los Angeles.
Jesse Grant | CNBC
Microsoft-owned Activision Blizzard has agreed to settle a case from a California state agency that alleged the video game publisher discriminated against women, including denying them promotion opportunities and paying them less.
California’s Civil Rights Department said in a statement on Friday that as part of a proposed settlement agreement, Activision Blizzard will pay nearly $55 million to provide relief to female employees and contractors from October 2015 to December 2020 and cover legal fees. About $46 million of the total will go to the fund for affected women, the agency said in the statement.
The news comes almost two years after Activision Blizzard settled a case from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which pointed to sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination and retaliation. As a result, the company agreed to form an $18 million fund to pay victims.
In 2021, the agency, then known as the Department of Fair Employment and Housing, filed a suit against the company, presenting allegations of sexual harassment, discrimination and retaliation. Months later, the Wall Street Journal reported that while Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick was aware of allegations of misconduct inside the company, he didn’t share all relevant information with its board.
The $69 billion deal closed in October after regulators in the U.S. and Europe looked carefully at it. The Federal Trade Commission argued in San Francisco appellate court last week that a federal judge made mistakes in rejecting the regulatory agency’s attempt to stop the companies from completing the transaction.
The Los Angeles County Superior Court must approve Activision’s settlement with the state agency, according to the statement. The agency will file a new complaint that excludes prior harassment allegations, according to the proposed settlement agreement, which CNBC viewed.
The agreement would require Activision to keep up efforts around inclusion of underrepresented people in recruiting. Except when compensation is non-negotiable, the company would have to tell job applicants in writing at the start of hiring and promotion processes that they can negotiate their pay.
“We appreciate the importance of the issues addressed in this agreement and we are dedicated to fully implementing all the new obligations we have assumed as part of it,” Activision said in a statement to CNBC.
In this photo illustration, the Spotify music app is seen on a phone on June 04, 2024 in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images
Spotify is minting music millionaires.
Nearly 1,500 artists generated over $1 million in royalties from Spotify in 2024, the company said Wednesday in its annual Loud and Clear Report.
Spotify said more than 80% of the artists in that pool didn’t have a song reach the app’s Global Daily Top 50 chart.
“Spotify has helped level the playing field for artists at every stage of their careers,” read a portion of the report. “Success in the streaming era doesn’t require a decade-spanning catalog nor a chart-topping hit.”
The news comes about a month after the company reported a fourth-quarter earnings beat that saw the Swedish music streamer record its first full year of profitability. The company said it paid an all-time high of $10 billion in royalties to the music industry for the year.
Marc Benioff, Chairman & CEO of Salesforce, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 22nd, 2025.
Gerry Miller | CNBC
Salesforce on Wednesday announced plans to invest $1 billion in Singapore over the next five years.
The cloud software giant said the investment is designed to accelerate the country’s digital transformation and the adoption of Salesforce’s flagship AI offering Agentforce.
Salesforce is among the many technology companies hoping to boost revenue with generative AI features.
The company launched the newest version of Agentforce last month. It has previously described the system — which it says can tackle sophisticated questions in Salesforce’s Slack communications app, based on all available data — as the first digital AI platform for enterprises.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is scheduled to speak at CNBC’s CONVERGE LIVE at around 9:25 a.m. Singapore time (9:25 p.m. ET) on Wednesday.
“We are in an incredible new era of digital labor where every business will be transformed by autonomous agents that augment the work of humans, revolutionizing productivity and enabling every company to scale without limits,” Benioff said in a statement.
“Singapore is at the forefront of this shift, and as the world’s largest provider of digital labor through our Agentforce platform,” he added.
Salesforce said Agentforce can help Singapore to “rapidly expand” its labor force in several key service and public sector roles at a time when the country is grappling with an aging population and declining birth rates.
Jermaine Loy, managing director of the Singapore Economic Development Board, welcomed Salesforce’s investment, saying it will help to boost the country’s efforts “to build a vibrant hub for AI innovation.”
Reddit CEO Steve Huffman stands on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) after ringing a bell on the floor setting the share price at $47 in its initial public offering (IPO) on March 21, 2024 in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Reddit shares rose more than 10% on Tuesday, reversing a three-day slump that coincided with a broader decline among technology companies.
Despite Tuesday’s gains, Reddit shares are still roughly 30% below the close on Wednesday.
Reddit’s stock market upswing was likely bolstered by a Loop Capital analyst note published Tuesday that reiterated a buy rating and characterized the company’s shares as “extremely attractive.” The analyst note said that Reddit’s 50% drop on Wall Street in the past month “is excessive,” and that the social media company “has the biggest upside potential relative to Street estimates in our coverage universe.”
The company’s shares dropped more than 15% in February after the company reported weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter user numbers as a result of a Googlesearch change that temporarily hurt its search-derived traffic. Although Reddit said at the time that it had recovered from the algorithmic shift, the user number miss spooked investors.
Loop Capital managing director Alan Gould acknowledged in the note that investors are operating in a “risk-off market environment,” but he contended that Reddit “has been one of the top performing stocks over the past year,” aside from its most recent dip.
“RDDT wildly exceeded ours and Street estimates for 2024, which explains why the stock increased almost 7-fold from a $34 IPO price to a peak of $230 in less than a year,” Gould wrote, noting Reddit’s growing revenue and improved advertising tools, among other positive developments.
Reddit’s fourth-quarter sales grew 71% year over year to $428 million, which represents the fastest growth rate for any quarter since 2022.
“In our view, RDDT deserves the revaluation it had experiencing based on the growth it has shown in the recent earnings reports and future projected growth driven by the ability to narrow the ARPU gap, and data licensing possibilities,” Gould wrote.