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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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How TikTok’s rise sparked a short-form video race

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How TikTok’s rise sparked a short-form video race

TikTok’s grip on the short-form video market is tightening, and the world’s biggest tech platforms are racing to catch up.

Since launching globally in 2016, ByteDance-owned TikTok has amassed over 1.12 billion monthly active users worldwide, according to Backlinko. American users spend an average of 108 minutes per day on the app, according to Apptoptia.

TikTok’s success has reshaped the social media landscape, forcing competitors like Meta and Google to pivot their strategies around short-form video. But so far, experts say that none have matched TikTok’s algorithmic precision.

“It is the center of the internet for young people,” said Jasmine Enberg, vice president and principal analyst at Emarketer. “It’s where they go for entertainment, news, trends, even shopping. TikTok sets the tone for everyone else.”

Platforms like Meta‘s Instagram Reels and Google’s YouTube Shorts have expanded aggressively, launching new features, creator tools and even considering separate apps just to compete. Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, traditionally a professional networking site, is the latest to experiment with TikTok-style feeds. But with TikTok continuing to evolve, adding features like e-commerce integrations and longer videos, the question remains whether rivals can keep up.

“I’m scrolling every single day. I doom scroll all the time,” said TikTok content creator Alyssa McKay.

But there may a dark side to this growth.

As short-form content consumption soars, experts warn about shrinking attention spans and rising mental-health concerns, particularly among younger users. Researchers like Dr. Yann Poncin, associate professor at the Child Study Center at Yale University, point to disrupted sleep patterns and increased anxiety levels tied to endless scrolling habits.

“Infinite scrolling and short-form video are designed to capture your attention in short bursts,” Dr. Poncin said. “In the past, entertainment was about taking you on a journey through a show or story. Now, it’s about locking you in for just a few seconds, just enough to feed you the next thing the algorithm knows you’ll like.”

Despite sky-high engagement, monetizing short videos remains an uphill battle. Unlike long-form YouTube content, where ads can be inserted throughout, short clips offer limited space for advertisers. Creators, too, are feeling the squeeze.

“It’s never been easier to go viral,” said Enberg. “But it’s never been harder to turn that virality into a sustainable business.”

Last year, TikTok generated an estimated $23.6 billion in ad revenues, according to Oberlo, but even with this growth, many creators still make just a few dollars per million views. YouTube Shorts pays roughly four cents per 1,000 views, which is less than its long-form counterpart. Meanwhile, Instagram has leaned into brand partnerships and emerging tools like “Trial Reels,” which allow creators to experiment with content by initially sharing videos only with non-followers, giving them a low-risk way to test new formats or ideas before deciding whether to share with their full audience. But Meta told CNBC that monetizing Reels remains a work in progress.

While lawmakers scrutinize TikTok’s Chinese ownership and explore potential bans, competitors see a window of opportunity. Meta and YouTube are poised to capture up to 50% of reallocated ad dollars if TikTok faces restrictions in the U.S., according to eMarketer.

Watch the video to understand how TikTok’s rise sparked a short form video race.

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Elon Musk’s xAI Holdings in talks to raise $20 billion, Bloomberg News reports

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Elon Musk's xAI Holdings in talks to raise  billion, Bloomberg News reports

The X logo appears on a phone, and the xAI logo is displayed on a laptop in Krakow, Poland, on April 1, 2025. (Photo by Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

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Elon Musk‘s xAI Holdings is in discussions with investors to raise about $20 billion, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The funding would value the company at over $120 billion, according to the report.

Musk was looking to assign “proper value” to xAI, sources told CNBC’s David Faber earlier this month. The remarks were made during a call with xAI investors, sources familiar with the matter told Faber. The Tesla CEO at that time didn’t explicitly mention any upcoming funding round, but the sources suggested xAI was preparing for a substantial capital raise in the near future.

The funding amount could be more than $20 billion as the exact figure had not been decided, the Bloomberg report added.

Artificial intelligence startup xAI didn’t immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment outside of U.S. business hours.

Faber Report: Elon Musk held call with current xAI investors, sources say

The AI firm last month acquired X in an all-stock deal that valued xAI at $80 billion and the social media platform at $33 billion.

“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent,” Musk said on X, announcing the deal. “This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.”

Read the full Bloomberg story here.

— CNBC’s Samantha Subin contributed to this report.

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Alphabet jumps 3% as search, advertising units show resilient growth

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Alphabet jumps 3% as search, advertising units show resilient growth

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai during the Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, on May 10, 2023.

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Alphabet‘s stock gained 3% Friday after signaling strong growth in its search and advertising businesses amid a competitive artificial intelligence environment and uncertain macro backdrop.

GOOGL‘s pace of GenAI product roll-out is accelerating with multiple encouraging signals,” wrote Morgan Stanley‘s Brian Nowak. “Macro uncertainty still exists but we remain [overweight] given GOOGL’s still strong relative position and improving pace of GenAI enabled product roll-out.”

The search giant posted earnings of $2.81 per share on $90.23 billion in revenues. That topped the $89.12 billion in sales and $2.01 in EPS expected by LSEG analysts. Revenues grew 12% year-over-year and ahead of the 10% anticipated by Wall Street.

Net income rose 46% to $34.54 billion, or $2.81 per share. That’s up from $23.66 billion, or $1.89 per share, in the year-ago period. Alphabet said the figure included $8 billion in unrealized gains on its nonmarketable equity securities connected to its investment in a private company.

Adjusted earnings, excluding that gain, were $2.27 per share, according to LSEG, and topped analyst expectations.

Read more CNBC tech news

Alphabet shares have pulled back about 16% this year as it battles volatility spurred by mounting trade war fears and worries that President Donald Trump‘s tariffs could crush the global economy. That would make it more difficult for Alphabet to potentially acquire infrastructure for data centers powering AI models as it faces off against competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic to develop largely language models.

During Thursday’s call with investors, Alphabet suggested that it’s too soon to tally the total impact of tariffs. However, Google’s business chief Philipp Schindler said that ending the de minimis trade exemption in May, which created a loophole benefitting many Chinese e-commerce retailers, could create a “slight headwind” for the company’s ads business, specifically in the Asia-Pacific region. The loophole allows shipments under $800 to come into the U.S. duty-free.

Despite this backdrop, Alphabet showed steady growth in its advertising and search business, reporting $66.89 billion in revenues for its advertising unit. That reflected 8.5% growth from the year-ago period. The company reported $8.93 billion in advertising revenue for its YouTube business, shy of an $8.97 billion estimate from StreetAccount.

Alphabet’s “Search and other” unit rose 9.8% to $50.7 billion, up from $46.16 billion last year. The company said that its AI Overviews tool used in its Google search results page has accumulated 1.5 billion monthly users from a billion in October.

Bank of America analyst Justin Post said that Wall Street is underestimating the upside potential and “monetization ramp” from this tool and cloud demand fueled by AI.

“The strong 1Q search performance, along with constructive comments on Gemini [large language model] performance and [AI Overviews] adoption could help alleviate some investor concerns on AI competition,” Post wrote in a note.

WATCH: Gemini delivering well for Google, says Check Capital’s Chris Ballard

Gemini delivering well for Google, says Check Capital's Chris Ballard

CNBC’s Jennifer Elias contributed to this report.

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