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A co-founder of telecommunications company Crown Castle has nominated a rival slate of directors to the firm’s board, muddying the waters months after activist investor Elliott Management and Crown Castle signed a cooperation agreement.

Ted Miller, who helped launch the company in 1994, along with his investment vehicle Boots Capital presented his thesis to investors in a release Tuesday, urging the company to sell its fiber business and improve operational efficiency.

The slate of four directors he’s nominating includes himself and his son-in-law. Crown Castle said in a statement rejecting the slate that the Boots Capital nominees “do not possess the relevant expertise and experience.”

The former Crown Castle CEO, who last worked at the company two decades ago, also called the cooperation agreement with Elliott “coercive and disenfranchising” and said it should be put to a shareholder vote.

But Miller and his partners reached out to Elliott Management in an effort to join forces with the activist around the same time that Elliott launched its second campaign in November, people familiar with the matter told CNBC.

That preliminary contact between Elliott and Boots Capital was through an advisor, and no formal proposal or offer to form a group was ever made, another person familiar with the matter said. The conversations focused on identifying potential investors who were interested in Boots Capital’s plan for Crown Castle, that person said.

Elliott rejected Boots Capital’s entreaties, the people said, which they described as seeking investment or access to investors.

Now, Miller is publicly excoriating Elliott’s approach as lacking “expertise, vision, and urgency.”

Miller had been trying to raise money for a special-purpose vehicle to launch an activist fight at Crown Castle prior to Elliott’s November launch and had been in conversation with Crown Castle since at least August, the people said. One of the people said the special-purpose vehicle was attempting to raise hundreds of millions of dollars but that it was unable to meet that goal.

A traditional cell phone tower, owned by Crown Castle, is shown near the Texas Medical Center.

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Much of Miller’s plan mirrors Elliott’s latest campaign and an earlier effort from the activist in 2020. In both instances, Elliott said governance changes and operational improvements were needed.

Shortly after Elliott launched its second campaign in 2023, Crown Castle’s then-CEO said he would retire, and several weeks later, the company said it would launch a strategic review of its fiber business, as Elliott had asked.

In a letter to Crown Castle dated Feb. 14, Boots Capital’s counsel urged the company to put the cooperation agreement to a shareholder vote. The letter said that Crown Castle’s board had “appeased” Elliott and allowed it to influence board nominations before the cooperation agreement had been signed.

Crown Castle’s counsel disputed those claims in a letter sent Tuesday.

“Your letter is replete with factual inaccuracies and completely distorts the nature of the relationship between CCI and Elliott,” said Scott Barshay, partner and corporate department chair at Paul, Weiss. Barshay is advising Crown Castle.

Miller said Tuesday that Elliott had shed “93% of its stated investment exposure,” citing the firm’s most recent regulatory filing.

“Remarkably, the Crown Castle Board did not specifically require Elliott maintain ownership thresholds to keep these privileges,” Miller said in his letter to Crown Castle chair Rob Bartolo. 

Elliott said when it launched its campaign that its economic interest in Crown Castle was around $2 billion.

An Elliott spokesperson said that claim was “categorically false.”

“Elliott remains one of the largest investors in the Company and is the largest investor after the three index fund shareholders,” the firm’s spokesperson said.

Elliott’s economic exposure to Crown Castle remains largely unchanged, one of the people said. It is not uncommon for activists to structure their positions using a mix of stock and derivatives, which are not fully reported out on regulatory filings.

Crown Castle announced its cooperation agreement with Elliott in December and added two directors, including Elliott portfolio manager Jason Genrich.

One month later, on Jan. 30, Boots presented its proposal to Crown Castle’s expanded board. A redacted version of that presentation was attached to Miller’s release. Boots said that Crown Castle could fetch up to $15 billion for its fiber business and that by working with Boots and Miller, Crown Castle could provide a list of more than two dozen potential buyers or financing sources for a sale of the fiber business.

Also included in that presentation was a request that Crown Castle cover the costs of Boots’ analysis and pre-proposal outreach, which Miller said in his release were around $5 million.

Crown Castle’s board dismissed the proposal following the call and their review, according to the people familiar, who noted that the company had already hired advisors from Bank of America and Morgan Stanley weeks earlier to conduct the same work.

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Alibaba shares rise over 6% after CEO unveils plans to boost AI spending

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Alibaba shares rise over 6% after CEO unveils plans to boost AI spending

Alibaba‘s Hong Kong-listed shares surged on Wednesday to reach their highest point since 2021 after the company said it will invest more in artificial intelligence and rolled out new AI products and updates. 

Shares of the company jumped over 6%, while its total gains year to date rose above 107%. 

The tech giant plans to increase spending on AI models and infrastructure development, on top of the 380 billion yuan ($53 billion) over three years it announced in February, Chief Executive Officer Eddie Wu said Wednesday at Alibaba Cloud’s annual flagship technology conference.

“We are vigorously advancing a three-year, 380 billion [yuan] AI infrastructure initiative with plans to sustain and further increase our investment according to our strategic vision in anticipation of the [artificial superintelligence] era,” Wu said. 

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Alibaba shares surge after CEO unveils plans to boost AI spending

So-called ‘artificial superintelligence’ refers to AI that would hypothetically surpass the power and intelligence of the human brain, with the hypothetical benchmark becoming a growing focus of major AI companies. 

Alibaba also officially unveiled the latest version of its Qwen large language models — the Qwen3-Max — on Wednesday, along with a series of other updates to its suite of AI product offerings. 

Wu highlighted that Alibaba Cloud is strategically positioned as a “full-stack AI service provider,” delivering the computing power required for training and deploying large AI models on the cloud through its own data centers.

“The cumulative investment in global AI in the next five years will exceed $4 trillion, and this is the largest investment in computing power and research and development in history,” he added.

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Tether reportedly seeks lofty $500 billion valuation in capital raise

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Tether reportedly seeks lofty 0 billion valuation in capital raise

Venezuelan Bolivar and U.S. Dollar banknotes and representations of cryptocurrency Tether are seen in this illustration taken Sept. 8, 2025.

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Tether, the issuer of the largest stablecoin, is planning to raise as much as $20 billion in a deal that could put the crypto company’s value on par with OpenAI, according to a report from Bloomberg News.

The crypto company is looking to raise between $15 billion and $20 billion in exchange for a roughly 3% stake through a private placement, the report said, citing two individuals familiar with the matter. The transaction would involve new equity rather than existing investors selling their stakes, the people told the news service.

The report said that one person close to the matter warned that the talks are in an early stage, which means that the eventual details, including the size of the offering, could change.

However, the deal could ultimately value Tether at around $500 billion, according to the report. That would mean the crypto giant’s valuation would rival some of the world’s biggest private companies, including SpaceX and OpenAI. OpenAI’s fundraising round earlier this year valued the tech company at $300 billion.

Tether, which was once accused of being a criminal’s “go-to cryptocurrency,” has been furthering its plans to return to the U.S. in recent months, given President Donald Trump’s pro-crypto stance. The company earlier this month named a CEO for its U.S. business and launched a new token for businesses and institutions in the U.S. called USAT, which will be regulated in the U.S. under the GENIUS Act.

Stablecoin USD Tether (USDT) is pegged to the U.S. dollar with a market cap that recently surpassed $172 billion. In second place is Tether rival Circle’s USDC stablecoin, which is worth about $74 billion.

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Micron beats on earnings as company sales rise 46% on AI boom

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Micron beats on earnings as company sales rise 46% on AI boom

A person walks by a sign for Micron Technology headquarters in San Jose, California, on June 25, 2025.

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Micron reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue on Tuesday as well as a robust forecast for the current quarter.

The stock rose in extended trading.

Here’s how the company did in comparison with the LSEG consensus:

  • Earnings per share: $3.03, adjusted, vs. $2.86 expected
  • Revenue: $11.32 billion vs. $11.22 billion expected

Micron said revenue in the current period, its fiscal first quarter, will be about $12.5 billion, versus the $11.94 billion average analyst estimate per LSEG.

The company said it had $3.2 billion, or $2.83 per share in net income, versus $887 million, or 79 cents in the year-ago period.

Micron shares have nearly doubled so far in 2025. The company makes memory and storage, which are important components for computers. Micron has been one of the winners of the artificial intelligence boom. That’s because high-end AI chips like those made by Nvidia require increasing amounts of high-tech memory called high-bandwidth memory, which Micron makes.

“As the only U.S.-based memory manufacturer, Micron is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the AI opportunity ahead,” Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said in a statement.

Overall company revenue rose 46% on a year-over-year basis during the quarter.

Micron’s largest unit, which sells memory for cloud providers, reported $4.54 billion in sales during the quarter, more than tripling on a year-over-year basis.

However, the company’s core data center business unit saw sales decline 22% on an annual basis to $1.57 billion in revenue.

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