TikTok Music has launched on Wednesday in Australia, Singapore and Mexico to a small group of users.
Jaap Arriens | Nurphoto | Getty Images
When Joe Biden joined TikTok on the eve of the Super Bowl last month, political scientist Maggie Macdonald was struck by what she called the “meta” nature of the president’s first post.
In the video, Biden poked fun at a conspiracy theory that he rigged the Super Bowl — in favor of the Kansas City Chiefs — to somehow help his reelection efforts.
“Yeah, I’m old, but I’m on TikTok, and I’m on this super online place talking about this super online concept,” Macdonald, an assistant political science professor at the University of Kentucky, said of the messaging and tone of Biden’s video.
While Biden’s debut on the wildly popular social media app came in a playful manner, his use of TikTok in this year’s reelection campaign is at the heart of a heated debate in Washington, D.C., about whether the service should even exist in the U.S. The app, owned by China’s ByteDance, is viewed as both an invaluable tool in trying to reach masses of young potential voters who are unplugged from mainstream media and an easy way, allegedly, for the Chinese government to spy on American consumers.
Members of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party introduced a bill this week that would require ByteDance to divest TikTok or face a U.S. ban, following earlier federal and state-led efforts that never came to fruition. On Thursday, the committee voted 50-0 to send the bill to the House floor.
Shortly after the committee advanced the bill, Rep. Troy Balderson, R-Ohio, called TikTok “a surveillance tool used by the Chinese Communist Party to spy on Americans and harvest highly personal data.”
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew has denied in Senate hearings any ties between the app and the CCP. In a statement to CNBC on Thursday, TikTok said, “The government is attempting to strip 170 million Americans of their Constitutional right to free expression,” an act that “will damage millions of businesses, deny artists an audience, and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country.”
TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew testifies during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on online child sexual exploitation, at the U.S. Capitol, in Washington, U.S., January 31, 2024.
Nathan Howard | Reuters
Since Biden’s playful intro post, his campaign’s TikTok account has notched over 222,000 followers and over 2.4 million likes. With eight months until the general election and a likely rematch of the 2020 contest, Biden narrowly trails Republican challenger Donald Trump in most national polls in what’s expected to be a tight battle to the end.
Biden’s age has shown up as a persistent concern in polling data, so experts say reaching out to younger audiences is key in trying to win over undecided young voters, and mobilize a traditional Democratic constituency whose members sometimes stay home on Election Day.
“It’s really important for him to have a presence, and for him to interact directly with voters, not just through creators and influencers,” said Aaron Earls, CEO of social media influencer firm Activate HQ, which specializes in political campaigns. “The turnout in 2020 was really significant with that younger audience and, everyone’s suggesting that maybe there will be a similar turnout with the younger audience again.”
During the State of the Union address Thursday evening, Biden’s campaign posted clips of the speech on TikTok, a sign that the president plans to stick with the app despite swirling concerns in Washington. But it’s a particularly convoluted matter for Biden because, should the bill pass the full House and the Senate, it would hit the president’s desk.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Thursday that, “This bill is important, we welcome this step.” She said the administration plans to “meet the American people where they are,” adding that, “It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to try to figure out how to protect our national security.”
Biden said on Friday that he will sign the bill if Congress passes it.
The Biden campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
TikTok is trying to generate support from users following the House’s action on Thursday. On the app, users were greeted with a screenshot warning them that Congress was “planning a total ban of TikTok.” Multiple staffers and lawmakers told CNBC their offices were flooded with calls, mostly from kids.
TikTok goes to Washington
U.S. political campaigns more broadly are trying to figure out how best to utilize TikTok.
In recent cycles, Facebook has been the social media app of choice for campaigns because of its ability to narrowly target users with fundraising ads and informational posts. However, Apple’s 2021 iOS privacy update made it much harder to target audiences, raising the cost of ad campaigns across Meta’s platforms.
Additionally, Facebook has skewed older over the years, with younger groups gravitating to TikTok. The challenge for campaigns is that TikTok says it doesn’t allow for political ads or “content such as a video from a politician asking for donations, or a political party directing people to a donation page on their website.”
To date, major campaigns have relied on high-profile TikTok influencers to help rally support for specific issues. Last April, for instance, the White House said it was enlisting a squad of volunteer TikTok and Instagram influencers to help spread awareness of the Biden campaign.
Earls says it’s a strategy that’s long been employed in politics. TikTok just presents a new medium.
“That has historically been a tactic that’s happened since the Kennedy days, but just more in traditional media,” Earls said. “Like you’re going to get an endorsement from Marilyn Monroe or Joe DiMaggio or whatever.”
Political groups are scouring TikTok for influencers with positions that resonate with would-be voters, and are targeting certain swing states that could be critical in deciding an election. During the 2022 midterm elections, the Democratic National Committee and communications groups like Climate Power enlisted the help of TikTok and influencers to discuss issues like abortion rights and to mobilize voters.
Even with its growing popularity, TikTok remains a niche tool in politics.
Anupam Chander, a Georgetown University Law Center professor, released a study with some colleagues last year showing that fewer than 10% of members of the U.S. Congress have a “TikTok account from which they post content,” most likely because of the app’s connection to China. In total, the report said, 34 House members and seven senators had an official TikTok account.
Among major politicians using TikTok, an overwhelming majority are Democrats, the study showed. Some of Republicans’ resistance could tie back to Trump’s vow — which was ultimately unsuccessful — to ban TikTok during his administration.
Reaching ‘young Americans where they are’
One of the few high-profile Republicans now on the app is former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who said during a primary debate that “part of how we win elections is reaching the next generation of young Americans where they are.”
As to whether Trump will use TikTok in his campaign, Earls said he wouldn’t be surprised to see it. The decision, he said, likely has less to do with China and is more about Trump’s connection to his own social media platform, Truth Social, where he posts with frequency.
“We’ve seen him do whatever it takes to win an election including trying to stop the peaceful transition of power,” Earls said. “He will do what he thinks will help him win so I suspect we’ll see his campaign join TikTok in the coming months depending upon how things develop with his ability to monetize Truth Social.”
The Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Anish Mohanty, communications director for Gen-Z for Change, said his nonprofit advocacy group was originally called TikTok for Biden when it formed in 2020 as part of an effort “to defeat Donald Trump.” The group changed its name the following year, and now taps its network of hundreds of TikTok social media influencers to advocate for multiple progressive issues related to climate change, universal health care and for Biden to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
Given the many challenges Biden faces with younger groups, his mere presence on TikTok isn’t enough to win votes, Mohanty said, particularly if the president’s campaign is “just using it to post cringy memes about Trump.”
“Young people care about issues, that’s why young people are so unhappy with Biden over action on climate change, over the situation in Gaza,” Mohanty said. “Just because Biden is posting on TikTok, that’s not what’s going to pull young people over.”
Still, Macdonald sees a big opportunity for Biden.
“If you want to reach younger people who are very apathetic, they’re on TikTok,” said the University of Kentucky professor. “You have an incentive to reach them on TikTok, and it does seem that the Republican Party as a unit is just not doing it.”
Kicking off the week with a bang, OpenAI announced another massive data center buildout partnership. This time with Club name and custom semiconductor industry leader Broadcom. Shares of Broadcom soared as much as 10.7% on Monday after the two companies revealed that they have been working for 18 months on custom-designed chips optimized for inference, the process of running AI models on a day-to-day basis. Deployment of 10 gigawatts of the co-designed chips, which will be networked through Broadcom’s Ethernet stack, is set to start late next year. Broadcom stock has gained roughly 54% year to date. The news is the latest in a series of monster deals over the past few weeks. On Sept. 22, OpenAI struck a deal for 10GW of Nvidia-based data centers . Two weeks later, OpenAI made 6GW deal with Nvidia competitor Advanced Micro Devices . Both of those deals, along with Monday’s Broadcom announcement, follow the massive $500 billion Stargate Project announced by OpenAI, Softbank, and Oracle . Stargate is targeting 10GW of capacity but may exceed that initial goal over time as the initiative expands internationally, starting with Stargate UAE . Adding it all up, Open AI has announced roughly 36GW of data center capacity since the beginning of the year, with 26GW worth of deals coming in the past three weeks alone. To put that into perspective, the Hoover Dam’s power-generating capacity is about 2GW, which is enough to power nearly 1.8 million homes for an entire year. So, what we’re talking about here is the equivalent of about 18 Hoover Dams or enough energy to power more than 31 million homes for an entire year. Though the build-out of all these projects will take several years, OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman, speaking with Jim Cramer on CNBC shortly after the news was announced, made clear that these projects, which combined represent the largest industrial undertaking in history, are needed to get ahead of a clear “avalanche” of demand. Asked if he meant that OpenAI was hoping to see immense demand, Brockman stressed it is not about hope but rather that the company is “currently being swept along by the avalanche.” As an example, Brockman said that while ChatGPT was the fastest-growing consumer app in history, the company’s new video generation app, Sora, is now growing even faster. ChatGPT, which was launched by Microsoft -backed OpenAI in late 2022, quickly went viral. The chatbot brought generative AI to the masses and launched the current boom in developing and deploying the technology. According to Broadcom’s release , “By designing its own chips and systems, OpenAI can embed what it’s learned from developing frontier [or cutting edge] models and products directly into the hardware, unlocking new levels of capability and intelligence. Brockman said on CNBC that it will also reduce the cost of running AI models. OpenAI’s Brockman appeared on CNBC alongside Charlie Kawwas, president of Broadcom’s semiconductor solutions group. CNBC’s David Faber asked Kawwas during Monday’s interview if OpenAI was the fourth new major custom-chip partner that Broadcom disclosed but didn’t name during last month’s post-earnings conference call. Kawwas said , “I would love to take a $10 billion PO [purchase order] from my good friend Greg [Brockman]; he has not given me that PO yet, so I hope that answers the question.” So, this means that there is another major buyer out there looking to stand up significant data center computing power. While we can’t say for sure who it is, analyst Ben Reitzes of Melius Research speculated last week that the fourth Broadcom customer may also be Amazon -backed Anthropic. Jim will ask Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, among other things, during Monday’s interview for “Mad Money.” The Broadcom-OpenAI news is just another example of how early we still are in the AI trade. While we are certainly seeing areas of froth and bubble-like activity in some parts of the market – Jim cautioned against some of those names in his Sunday column – we don’t think that is the case for names like Broadcom and Nvidia, nor is it the case for the highly profitable megacaps driving much of the money behind the trade. Even at these levels, we think names like Broadcom and Nvidia still trade at reasonable levels given their growth outlooks. In terms of Nvidia’s deal with OpenAI, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, at the time, said this one deal was equal to the entirety of the company’s 2025 revenue. Jensen told Jim last week at the Club’s October Monthly Meeting that “partnership with OpenAI is really incremental to all the work that we have done with Azure, OCI, and CoreWeave.” Azure is Microsoft’s cloud. OCI stands for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. CoreWeave, another Nvidia-backed company, rents out computing power run on Nvidia chips. Lastly, we would be remiss if we didn’t call out that with great power demand comes the need for great companies that enable power generation. Jensen told Jim last week that without meeting America’s increasing energy demand, driven in large part by AI, there is no industrial growth, without industrial growth, there’s no stock price growth, there’s no economic growth, there’s no national security.” For the Club, that means GE Vernova , up more than 7% on Monday, and Eaton , up roughly 2.5%. GE Vernova makes natural gas turbines that can and are being hooked up to data centers to make electricity when the power grid is overtaxed. The company also builds small modular nuclear reactors, though meaningful additional nuclear power is still a few years away. Eaton, on the other hand, makes power management systems and components that enable data centers to run more efficiently, with greater uptimes and scalability. Eaton’s cooling and airflow management solutions are also at the heart of maintaining environmental conditions in the data center. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long AVGO, NVDA, MSFT, AMZN. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. 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Oracle CEO, Clay Magouyrk, sits down with CNBC’s David Faber on Oct. 13, 2025.
CNBC
Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk, one of the two people tapped last month to lead the software company, is confident that OpenAI will be able to cover the costs of the massive amount of cloud infrastructure services it consumes.
In an interview with CNBC’s David Faber at Oracle’s AI World conference on Monday, Magouyrk said “of course” OpenAI can pay $60 billion for a year’s worth of cloud resources. In July, OpenAI agreed to a five-year deal with Oracle that’s worth over $300 billion.
“Just look at the rate at which they’ve grown to, you know, almost a billion users. That’s just unheard of,” said Magouyrk, who sat alongside fellow Oracle CEO Mike Sicilia for the interview in Las Vegas.
OpenAI said last week that its flagship ChatGPT chatbot, which was publicly launched less than three years ago, now has 800 million weekly active users. In 2024, OpenAI recorded a $5 billion net loss.
Sicilia said Oracle has started integrating OpenAI artificial intelligence models into a patient portal for viewing electronic health records. Oracle acquired EHR vendor Cerner for about $28 billion in 2022.
“I’ve seen the results, and I really do think that they’re going to have a dramatic impact on industries, on enterprises of all types,” Sicilia said of OpenAI.
OpenAI rents out Nvidia graphics chips to run models through Oracle, as well as CoreWeave, Google and Microsoft. At the same time, the company is designing a custom AI processor that Broadcom will build. Earlier on Monday, Broadcom and OpenAI said they will jointly deploy 10 gigawatts worth of the new OpenAI chips.
Building out that much infrastructure requires a hefty amount of new energy.
“I think it’s a factor of time, not a factor of if we’ll have enough power,” Sicilia said.
Oracle shares rose almost 6% on Monday. The stock has gained 86% this year, lifting Oracle’s market cap close to $900 billion.
The rally in quantum computing names continued on Monday after JPMorgan Chase announced it as one of the areas it would invest in as part of a new initiative.
The bank said in a release that it would invest up to $10 billion in companies across four areas: supply chain and advanced manufacturing, defense and aerospace, energy technology, and frontier and strategic technologies — which includes quantum computing.
“It has become painfully clear that the United States has allowed itself to become too reliant on unreliable sources of critical minerals, products and manufacturing – all of which are essential for our national security,” said CEO Jamie Dimon in a statement.
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The initiative is part of a larger $1.5 trillion, decade-long plan, dubbed the “Security and Resiliency Initiative,” to finance and invest in industries JP Morgan deems critical to U.S. national and economic security.
As one of the 27 specified sub-areas the bank will be focusing on, quantum computing has seen gains as much as triple digits over the past month. Rigetti and D-Wave were up 175% and 130%, respectively.
Rigetti and IONQ quantum computers are accessible through Amazon Braket, a quantum computing service managed by Amazon Web Services.
In February, Microsoft unveiled its first quantum computing chip called Majorana 1, and Google announced its new breakthrough quantum chip named Willow late last year.