TikTok Music has launched on Wednesday in Australia, Singapore and Mexico to a small group of users.
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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.”
Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
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.