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 rejectedBoots Capital’s entreaties, thepeople 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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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.
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.
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.
Elon Musk meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington DC, USA on February 13, 2025.
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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.