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Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg plans to visit South Korea, scheduling key meetings during the trip, according to a statement by Meta on Wednesday, which did not provide further details. Reportedly, Zuckerberg is anticipated to meet with Samsung Electronics chairman Jay Y. Lee later this month to discuss AI chip supply and other generative AI issues, as per the South Korean newspaper Seoul Economic Daily, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter.

Alex Wong | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Meta said Thursday that it would remove a dedicated section for news articles in April that will affect Facebook users in the United States and Australia.

The social networking giant characterized the decision to shutter the Facebook News tab as “part of an ongoing effort to better align our investments to our products and services people value the most,” according to a corporate blog post.

“As a company, we have to focus our time and resources on things people tell us they want to see more of on the platform, including short form video,” the blog post said. “The number of people using Facebook News in Australia and the U.S. has dropped by over 80% last year.”

Meta’s decision to remove the Facebook News tab comes after the company said in September that it would eliminate the news section for Facebook users in the U.K., France and Germany. It marks another step in Meta’s efforts to distance itself from the news industry following several years of controversies related to how it addresses misinformation and enforces other content-moderation-related policies throughout its family of apps.

Although the social networking company debuted Facebook News in 2019 as a way to “bring people closer to the stories that affect their lives,” it’s been reallocating its resources into short-form video content via its Reels product as it faces competition from the ByteDance-owned TikTok social video app.

Despite Meta shuttering the Facebook News tab in various countries, it said in the blog post that people can still view links to news articles on the core Facebook app and that news publishers will still be able to access their Facebook accounts and Pages, “where they can post links to their stories and direct people to their websites, in the same way any other individual or organization can.”

The update will also not impact any of the existing Facebook News agreements that Meta has with publishers in Australia, France and Germany; the company noted that similar news-related “deals have already expired in the US and the UK,” according to the blog post.

However, Meta said that it “will not enter into new commercial deals for traditional news content in these countries and will not offer new Facebook products specifically for news publishers in the future.”

In 2021, Meta reversed a decision to “restrict publishers and people in Australia from sharing or viewing Australian and international news content” after it reached an agreement with the Australian government over a law that would require tech companies to pay content fees to news outlets.

Meta said that it would “continue to invest in products and services that drive user engagement” and that “News organizations can also still leverage products like Reels and our ads system to reach broader audiences and drive people to their website, where they keep 100% of the revenue derived from outbound links on Facebook.”

Earlier in January, CNBC reported on the detrimental effects to publishers who have seen a massive drop in referral traffic as Meta continues to exit the news distribution business. Last summer, Meta said that Canadian Facebook and Instagram users would no longer be able to access news on Facebook following a disagreement between the company and the Canadian government over its passing of the Online News Act, which requires tech companies like Meta to pay fees to news publishers in the country.

The analytics firm Chartbeat conducted an analysis of 1,930 news and media websites from over 370 companies on behalf of CNBC, which showed that Facebook represented about 33% of these publishers’ overall social traffic as of December 2023. A year ago, Facebook represented about 50% of the media outlets’ social traffic.

A similar study by the analytics company Similarweb also revealed that Facebook referral traffic declined heavily in 2023 for some of the top 100 global news publishers after years of a consistent drop.

Mother Jones CEO Monika Bauerlein said that the nonprofit news publication’s Facebook referrals have declined by 99% since 2017 when publishers were experiencing a massive amount of referrals from the social networking giant. Bauerlein added that while the Facebook page of Mother Jones has amassed more followers than it ever had, users are seeing less of the publication’s news stories that it shares on the app.

“At this point, it seems pretty clear from the comments that executives at Facebook and Meta made that they have just decided that news is more trouble than it’s worth and that they will show people a fairly minimal amount of it,” Bauerlein said at the time.

Watch: Nvidia, Sam Altman and the trillion-dollar AI dream

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It’s a huge week for crypto in D.C. But the industry may not get everything it wants

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It's a huge week for crypto in D.C. But the industry may not get everything it wants

The U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 27, 2025.

Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters

It’s “Crypto Week” in Washington.

The cryptocurrency industry is set to notch a major win this week if the House can pass two bills that would set up a long-lobbied-for regulatory framework for digital assets.

The stablecoin bill, known as the GENUIS Act, has already passed the Senate and looks set to become the first standalone crypto measure signed into law should the House do the same.

But the real prize for the industry is a wider and more complex bill on market structure called the CLARITY Act, which faces a more difficult path to President Donald Trump‘s desk.

Seeking CLARITY

The CLARITY Act sets the rules for when an asset is considered a security and overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission versus when it’s considered a commodity that is overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC.

The act is likely to pass the House on Wednesday, given the bipartisan support when the bill cleared two committees. But the path in the Senate is murky, as Democrats could withhold their support over concerns about how Trump and his family are benefiting from crypto.

The Trump family’s growing crypto empire includes $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coins, a stablecoin, and a decentralized finance firm called World Liberty Financial, among other ventures.

Some lawmakers who backed the narrower stablecoin bill did so with the hopes of seeing the wider market structure package address conflicts of interest.

“President Trump’s crypto corruption distorts the digital asset marketplace,” said Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., who voted for the stablecoin bill. “Writing a bill with a corruption caveat for the president sends a clear message — that Congress is not serious about addressing corruption, which we know undermines investors’ faith in capital markets.”

Pushing it to pass

Coinbase attempted to literally sweeten the deal on the CLARITY Act for lawmakers with an advertising push that included handing out about 5,000 chocolate bars around D.C.

The candy wrappers cited a Morning Consult poll that found about “1 in 5” Americans own crypto.

Coinbase, Ripple and other crypto companies are lobbying Congress to put their concerns aside and back the market structure package, anticipating that more regulatory certainty will encourage more investment in crypto.

“When consumers buy and sell and trade these digital assets, they want to know what they’re getting and they want to know that they’re using a reputable intermediary,” Coinbase Vice President of U.S. Policy Kara Calvert told CNBC. “And what this bill does is provide that construct to do that.”

Read more CNBC tech news

The Senate is set to introduce its own market structure bill this month that is expected to differ slightly from the House version.

Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott, R-S.C., is working with Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., and others on the measure.

Other Democrats are planning to work with Republicans on a bill, including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who worked on previous market structure bills with Lummis.

“We have a lot of work to do, and we’re going to work on a bipartisan basis over the next month,” she told CNBC in a brief interview in the Capitol.

GENIUS and the Fed

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Coreweave stock pops after company announces $6 billion AI data center in Pennsylvania

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Coreweave stock pops after company announces  billion AI data center in Pennsylvania

CoreWeave Inc. signage in Times Square in New York, US, on Friday, May 9, 2025.

Yuki Iwamura | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Coreweave stock climbed more than 9% on Tuesday after the company announced a $6 billion artificial intelligence data center project in Pennsylvania.

The commitment includes an initial 100 megawatt data center built in Lancaster, a city about 70 miles west of Philadelphia. The data center will be able to expand to 300 MW.

“The demand for high-performance AI compute is relentless,” said CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator in a release, “and CoreWeave is scaling a cloud purpose-built for AI to meet it and strengthen US leadership.”

The announcement comes as part of the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit in Pittsburgh hosted by Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Penn., where President Donald Trump, members of his administration and executives are meeting to discuss AI and investment opportunities in the state.

Read more CNBC tech news

Google announced a $25 billion data center and AI infrastructure deal Tuesday in conjunction with the summit, and pledged $3 billion to upgrade two hydropower plants in Pennsylvania.

CoreWeave, which rents out access to Nvidia AI chips, has been on a tear since it went public at the end of March. Shares opened at $39 and are up more than 250% since then.

The company announced a $9 billion acquisition of data center infrastructure provider Core Scientific last week, a deal that will boost CoreWeave’s access to power and real estate.

CoreWeave was already a major customer of Core Scientific and the deal will cut $10 billion in future lease commitments, according to the company.

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Tesla’s Model Y debuts in India priced at a hefty $70,000 as the EV maker ‘tests the waters’

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Tesla’s Model Y debuts in India priced at a hefty ,000 as the EV maker 'tests the waters'

In this photo illustration, logo of Tesla is displayed on a mobile phone screen in front of the Indian flag in Ankara, Turkiye on November 28, 2023.

Cem Genco | Anadolu | Getty Images

Tesla has made its long-awaited debut in India, where it will sell its electric SUV, the Model Y, starting at $69,770, a significant markup from other major markets, its website showed Tuesday. 

The sales launch comes the same day the American electric vehicle maker opened a showroom in Mumbai, its first in the country. 

Isabel Fan, Southeast Asia Director at Tesla, also announced that the company would soon launch a showroom in the Indian capital of New Delhi, according to a report from CNBC-TV18

The report added that Tesla would hire staff locally and set up experience centers, service centers, delivery systems, charging stations and logistics hubs throughout the country. 

There has long been speculation about when Tesla would enter India, the third-largest automotive market in the world by sales. However, the high price tag may come as a surprise to many. For example, the Model Y starts from $44,990 in the U.S.

Why are prices so high?

Vaibhav Taneja, Tesla’s Chief Financial Officer, in April, confirmed the company’s interest in India but said it would take a careful approach to the market considering its 70% tariff on EV imports and about 30% luxury tax. 

These high taxes explain why Tesla was forced to set its prices so high in India, despite the country’s preference for EVs at much lower price ranges.

Experts told CNBC that this will see Tesla in India compete in the premium segment of the market with the likes of BMW, rather than with local EV companies like Tata Motors

“I won’t say that these prices are completely out of range because you will find buyers in India for all price points,” Vivek Vaidya, global client leader for mobility at research firm Frost & Sullivan, told CNBC’s “Inside India” on Tuesday.

“The question is whether they are going to threaten the mass market. The answer to that is no because the most popular selling cars probably sell at one-tenth of this price,” he added. 

Tesla's entry into India will not threaten domestic mass market: Analyst

Testing the waters

While the Model Y will struggle to be price competitive, Tesla is likely more focused on “testing the waters” than generating sales in India, Puneet Gupta, Director for the Indian automotive market at S&P Global Mobility, told CNBC.  

India first announced a new EV policy last year that promised to reduce duties for companies that commit to building up a local supply chain. While this could help Tesla push its prices down, the company has yet to commit to building any local manufacturing plants in India.

“The Mumbai showroom is a strategic ‘soft power’ move, not a full commitment,” Diwakar Murugan, automotives analyst at Canalys, told CNBC in a statement, adding that Tesla’s hesitation in India is pragmatic, as the market still lacks the demand to justify a large-scale manufacturing facility. 

“Shifting a significant portion of its production to India would require a major re-evaluation of its global manufacturing strategy, something it’s not ready to do while its primary focus remains on scaling production in its established markets,” he said. 

Murugan predicted that Tesla may only commit to full-scale Indian manufacturing between 2028 and 2030, with incentives like land subsidies and tax holidays, as well as the maturity of the local battery market expected to be important factors.

In the meantime, the Model Y will be a “niche, limited-volume product for wealthy, tech-savvy early adopters who seek a status symbol,” he added.

S&P’s Gupta noted that India’s tariffs on EV exports could also soon change as a result of ongoing trade negotiations between Washington and New Delhi, as well as further tweaks to its EV policy. 

Tesla CEO Elon Musk spoke with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi on topics including collaboration on technology and innovation in April.

“The Indian government has been very proactive in terms of pushing green, cleaner, electric cars, and I think that Tesla has a clear advantage due to the India-U.S. relationship,” Gupta said. 

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