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Arvind Jain, co-founder and CEO of Glean, makes a selfie with employees of the startup, which is based in Palo Alto, Calif.

Glean

Artificial intelligence startup Glean attracted tech companies Databricks and Workday into its latest investment round. The Silicon Valley company also reeled in cash from Wall Street.

Glean, whose software sifts through corporate repositories to provide quick answers to workers’ questions, said Tuesday that it’s raised $200 million at a $2.2 billion valuation. Banking giant Citigroup joined the lineup of software companies and traditional venture firms Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed and Sequoia in getting a piece of the fast-growing AI business.

“When people are excited about the potential of a technology relative to other things, people are willing to pay a higher valuation, because they’re excited about the market potential,” Arvind Purushotham, head of Citi Ventures, told CNBC in an interview. “They think the overall exit will be even larger.”

Glean’s annualized revenue at the end of January was $39 million, up from $10 million a year earlier. Advancements in AI have allowed the company to augment its product with large language models (LLMs) that can produce natural-sounding text in response to a few words of written input.

The 4-year-old company, which currently has 337 employees, wants to get bigger quickly and could hit 700 staffers by the end of the year, according to co-founder and CEO Arvind Jain.

Many organizations are trying to figure out how much productivity can increase by using generative AI tools such as the Copilot add-on for Microsoft 365 subscriptions. Popularity in the space has surged since OpenAI launched the free ChatGPT chatbot in late 2022, but the business-focused products can be pricey.

Jain declined to talk about the cost of the service. He said it’s based on the number of people using the product each month. OpenAI doesn’t disclose pricing for ChatGPT’s enterprise tier either, but the team version costs $25 per person per month.

Jain, a former Google distinguished engineer and co-founder of data security startup Rubrik, said he sees OpenAI as a partner, because Glean draws on LLMs from OpenAI and other companies to operate an AI assistant to answer questions based on available data. The Copilot for Microsoft 365, which offers a chat tool, is a more direct competitor, Jain said.

At the moment, Jain said he isn’t spending a lot of energy trying to increase the amount of revenue the company derives from each individual engaging with the product.

“I’m way more focused on how do we get way more users on the platform,” he said.

Clients include Confluent, Databricks and Sony Electronics. A spokesperson said one client has more than 100,000 users, and another is in the midst of deploying Glean to over 100,000 of its employees.

While Glean initially targeted the tech industry, it’s now looking to expand in financial services, retail, manufacturing and other sectors, Jain said.

The tech team inside Citigroup’s Markets business segment, which offers cross-asset sales and trading to companies and governments, came across Glean as it was looking for the ability to search and summarize data, Purushotham said. The technology is applicable companywide, he added.

Citi hasn’t started paying for Glean, but the bank will do a pilot evaluation and might end up as a customer, Purushotham said.

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Apple’s 3-day loss in market cap swells to almost $640 billion

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Apple's 3-day loss in market cap swells to almost 0 billion

(L-R) Apple CEO Tim Cook, Vivek Ramaswamy and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem attend the inauguration ceremony before Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th U.S. President in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2025.

Saul Loeb | Afp | Getty Images

While the stock market broadly fared better on Monday than in the prior two trading days, Apple got hammered once again, losing 3.7%, as concerns mounted that the company will take a major hit from President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The sell-off brings Apple’s three-day rout to 19%, a downdraft that has wiped out $638 billion in market cap.

Apple is one of the most exposed companies to a trade war, analyst say, due largely to its reliance on China, which is facing 54% tariffs. Although Apple has production in India, Vietnam and Thailand, those countries also face increased tariffs as part of Trump’s sweeping plan.

Among tech’s megacap companies, Apple is having the roughest stretch. On Monday, the only stocks to drop in that group of seven were Apple, Microsoft and Tesla.

The Nasdaq finished almost barely up on Monday after plummeting 10% last week, its worst performance in more than five years.

Analysts say Apple will likely either need to raise prices or eat additional tariff costs when the new duties come into effect. UBS analysts estimated on Monday that Apple’s highest-end iPhone could rise in price by about $350, or around 30%, from its current price of $1,199.

Barclays analyst Tim Long wrote that he expects Apple to raise prices, or the company could suffer as much as a 15% cut to earnings per share. Apple may also be able to rearrange its supply chain so that imports to the U.S. come from other countries with lower tariffs.

Apple declined to comment on the tariffs.

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Apple’s highest-end iPhone could see $350 price hike in U.S. on Trump tariffs, analyst predicts

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Apple's highest-end iPhone could see 0 price hike in U.S. on Trump tariffs, analyst predicts

A customer checks Apple’s latest iPhone 16 Plus (right) and Apple’s latest iPhone 16 Pro Max (left) series displayed for sale at Master Arts Shop in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, on Sept. 26, 2024.

Firdous Nazir | Nurphoto | Getty Images

President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs could lead Apple to raise the price of the iPhone 16 Pro Max by as much as $350 in the U.S., UBS analysts estimated Monday.

The iPhone 16 Pro Max is Apple’s highest-end iPhone on the market, and currently retails for $1,199. UBS is predicting a nearly 30% increase in retail price for units that were manufactured in China.

Apple’s $999 phone, the iPhone 16 Pro, could see a smaller $120 price increase, if the company has it manufactured in India, the UBS analysts wrote.

Shares of Apple have plummeted 20% over the past three trading days, wiping out nearly $640 billion in market cap, on concern that Trump’s tariffs will force the company to raise prices just as consumers are losing buying power.

“Based on the checks we have done at a company level, there is a lot of uncertainty about how the increased cost sharing will be done with suppliers, the extent to which costs can be passed on to end-customers, and the duration of tariffs,” UBS analyst Sundeep Gantori wrote in the note.

Apple, which does the majority of its manufacturing in China, is one of the most exposed companies to a trade war. China has a potential incoming 54% tariff rate — before new increases were proposed Monday. Smaller tariffs were also placed on secondary production locations, such as India, Vietnam and Thailand.

JPMorgan Chase analysts predicted last week that Apple could raise its prices 6% across the world to offset the U.S. tariffs. Barclays analyst Tim Long wrote that he expects Apple to raise prices, or it could suffer as much as a 15% cut to earnings per share.

If Apple were to relocate iPhone production to the U.S. — a move that most supply chain experts say is impossible — Wedbush’s Dan Ives predicts an iPhone could cost $3,500.

Morgan Stanley analysts on Friday said Apple could absorb additional tariff costs of about $34 billion annually. They wrote that although Apple has diversified its production in recent years to additional countries — so-called friendshoring — those countries could also end up with tariffs, reducing Apple’s flexibility.

After last week’s “reciprocal tariff announcement, there becomes very little differentiation in friend shoring vs. manufacturing in China — if the product is not made in the US, it will be subject to a hefty import tariff,” Morgan Stanley wrote.

Last week, the firm estimated that Apple may raise its prices across its product lines in the U.S. by 17% to 18%. Apple could also get exemptions from the U.S. government for its products.

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Elon Musk’s brother slams Trump tariffs, calls them ‘permanent tax on the American consumer’

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Elon Musk's brother slams Trump tariffs, calls them 'permanent tax on the American consumer'

Kimbal Musk, co-founder of The Kitchen Community, speaks during the annual Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, May 3, 2016.

Patrick T. Fallon  | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Elon Musk’s younger brother, Kimbal, took to the social network X on Monday to lambaste President Donald Trump’s tariffs, calling them a “structural, permanent tax on the American consumer.” He also said Trump appears to be the “most high tax American President in generations.”

“Even if he is successful in bringing jobs on shore through the tariff tax, prices will remain high and the tax on consumption will remain the form of higher prices because we are simply not as good at making things,” Kimbal Musk wrote on X, one of the companies in his brother’s extensive portfolio.

The younger Musk owns a restaurant chain called The Kitchen, is a board member at Tesla and a former director at SpaceX and Chipotle. He has also co-founded and invested in other food and tech startups, including Square Roots, an indoor farming company, and Nova Sky Stories, a creator of drone light shows that he bought from Intel.

Elon Musk is a top advisor to Trump, overseeing the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, an effort to drastically cut federal spending, largely through layoffs, and consolidate or eliminate agencies and regulations. However, his relationship with some key figures in the Trump administration has been showing signs of strain in recent days as the president’s sweeping tariffs have led to a dramatic selloff in stocks, including for Tesla, which is down 42% this year and just wrapped up its worst quarter since 2022.

Over the weekend, Elon Musk took aim at Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro, disparaging his qualifications in a post on X.

“A PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing,” Musk wrote, after Navarro told CNN on Saturday that “The market will find a bottom” and that the Dow will “hit 50,000 during Trump’s term.” It’s currently at about 38,200.

Musk also said that Navarro hasn’t built “sh—.” Navarro told CNBC on Monday that Musk is “not a car manufacturer” but rather a “car assembler,” dependent on parts from Japan, China and Taiwan.

Tesla was seeking a more moderate approach to trade and tariffs in a recent letter to the U.S. Trade Representative.

According to Federal Election Commission filings, Kimbal Musk this year has contributed funds to the Libertarian National Committee and Libertarian Party of Connecticut. In 2024, while his brother became the biggest financial backer and promoter of Trump, Kimbal donated to Unite America PAC, a group that markets itself as a “philanthropic venture fund that invests in nonpartisan election reform to foster a more representative and functional government.”

A representative for Kimbal Musk didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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