U.S. President-elect Donald Trump attends Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S., December 22, 2024.
Cheney Orr | Reuters
President-elect Donald Trump is tapping tech heavyweights to join his new administration, continuing a trend of Silicon Valley’s growing influence in a second Trump White House.
Trump said Sunday he would nominate Scott Kupor, a managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz, to be director of the Office of Personnel Management, which coordinates recruitment and provides resources for government employees.
Kupor thanked Trump in a post on X and said the opportunity would allow him to work with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in their leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a nascent commission aimed at cutting government spending and regulation.
Trump also picked Sriram Krishnan as senior policy advisor for artificial intelligence at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Krishnan, who most recently served as a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, has had a long career in tech, with roles at Microsoft, Meta, Twitter, Snap and Yahoo. He has previous ties to Musk, helping him “temporarily” run the social media service X after Musk acquired the platform, formerly known as Twitter, for $44 billion in 2022.
Musk, a tech billionaire who was one of Trump’s top donors and most vocal supporters during his campaign, has emerged as one of the president-elect’s closest advisors. His outsized influence over Trump has led to growing consternation among Democrats, foreign leaders and business executives, some of whom compete with Musk’s companies. Along with X, Musk runs vehicle maker Tesla, defense contractor SpaceX and brain tech startup Neuralink.
Krishnan will likely work closely with David Sacks, another tech executive who has a long history with Musk. Trump earlier this month named Sacks — a venture capitalist, former PayPal COO and popular podcaster — as “czar” of crypto and AI.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is joined by Tesla and SpaceX CEO and proposed co-chair of the DOGE commission Elon Musk, and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance at the Army-Navy football game in Landover, Maryland, U.S., December 14, 2024.
Brian Snyder | Reuters
Trump on Sunday also tapped Ken Howery, a co-founder of PayPal and Founders Fund, as his pick for U.S. ambassador to the Kingdom of Denmark. And he appointed Michael Kratsios, who was most recently a managing director at tech startup Scale AI, as the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Kratsios served as chief technology officer during Trump’s first administration.
In addition, Trump named former Uber executive Emil Michael as undersecretary for research and engineering.
Tech business leaders cheered the choices in social media posts. Former Meta executive David Marcus called Trump’s selections “remarkable picks,” while Box CEO Aaron Levie said the choices were “very strong.”
Since Trump’s election victory, a slew of tech companies have thrown their support behind the president-elect — a significant departure from his first term, when the industry at large maintained a tense relationship with Trump.
Amazon, Meta and OpenAI Sam Altman have announced donations of $1 million each to Trump’s inaugural committee. And in recent weeks, Silicon Valley executives have made pilgrimages to Trump’s residence Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida.
A Samsung Group flag flutters in front of the company’s Seocho building in Seoul.
Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Samsung Electronics on Wednesday announced that it would acquire all shares of German-based FläktGroup, a leading heating and cooling solutions provider, for 1.5 billion euros ($1.68 billion) from European investment firm Triton.
Samsung said the acquisition would help it expand in the heating, ventilation and air conditioning business as the market experiences rapid growth.
“Our commitment is to continue investing in and developing the high-growth HVAC business as a key future growth engine,” said TM Roh, Acting Head of the Device eXperience (DX) Division at Samsung Electronics.
The acquisition of FläktGroup stands to bolster Samsung’s position in the HVAC market against rivals such as LG Electronics.
FläktGroup supplies heating, HVAC solutions to a wide range of buildings and facilities, notably data centers which require a high degree of stable cooling. Samsung said it anticipates sustained growth in data center demand due to the proliferation of generative AI, robotics, autonomous driving and other technologies.
FläktGroup has more 60 major customers, including leading pharmaceutical companies, biotech and food and beverage firms, and gigafactories, according to Samsung’s statement.
Samsung said in March that its HVAC solutions had achieved double-digit annual revenue growth over the past five years, and that the company aimed to boost revenue by more than 30% in 2025.
EToro, a stock brokerage platform that’s been ramping up in crypto, has priced its IPO at $52 a share, as the company prepares to test the market’s appetite for new offerings.
The Israel-based company raised nearly $310 million, selling nearly 6 million shares in a deal that values the business at about $4.2 billion. The company had planned to sell shares at $46 to $50 each. Another almost 6 million shares are being sold by existing investors.
IPOs looked poised for a rebound when President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January after a prolonged drought spurred by rising interest rates and inflationary concerns. CoreWeave’s March debut was a welcome sign for IPO hopefuls such as eToro, online lender Klarna and ticket reseller StubHub.
But tariff uncertainty temporarily stalled those plans. The retail trading platform filed for an initial public offering in March, but shelved plans as rising tariff uncertainty rattled markets. Klarna and StubHub did the same.
EToro’s Nasdaq debut, under ticker symbol ETOR, may indicate whether the public market is ready to take on risk. Digital physical therapy company Hinge Health has started its IPO roadshow, and said in a filing on Tuesday that it plans to raise up to $437 million in its upcoming offering. Also on Tuesday, fintech company Chime filed its prospectus with the SEC.
Another trading app, Webull, merged with a special-purpose acquisition company in April.
Founded in 2007 by brothers Yoni and Ronen Assia along with David Ring, eToro competes with the likes of Robinhood and makes money through fees related to trading, including spreads on buy and sell orders, and non-trading activities such as withdrawals and currency conversion.
Net income jumped almost thirteenfold last year to $192.4 million from $15.3 million a year earlier. The company has been ramping up its crypto business, with revenue from cryptoassets more than tripling to over $12 million in 2024. One-quarter of its net trading contribution last year came from crypto, up from 10% the prior year.
This isn’t eToro’s first attempt at going public. In 2022, the company scrapped plans to hit the market through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) during a sharp downturn in equity markets. The deal would have valued the company at more than $10 billion.
CEO Yoni Assia told CNBC early last year that eToro was still aiming for a market debut but “evaluating the right opportunity” as it was building relationships with exchanges, including the Nasdaq.
“We definitely are eyeing the public markets,” he said at the time. “I definitely see us becoming eventually a public company.”
EToro said in its prospectus that BlackRock had expressed interest in buying $100 million in shares at the IPO price. The company said it planned to sell 5 million shares in the offering, with existing investors and executives selling another 5 million.
Underwriters for the deal include Goldman Sachs, Jefferies and UBS.
— CNBC’s Ryan Browne and Jordan Novet contributed reporting
Klay Thompson #31 of the Dallas Mavericks handles the ball during the game against the Memphis Grizzlies during the 2025 SoFi Play-In Tournament on April 18, 2025 at FedExForum in Memphis, Tennessee.
Joe Murphy | National Basketball Association | Getty Images
Chime Financial paid the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks roughly $33 million over three years to have its logo worn as a patch on player jerseys, the company disclosed in its IPO filing Tuesday.
The Mavericks finalized the jersey deal, along with “certain other sponsorship and promotional rights,” in 2020, but terms weren’t announced. CNBC reported at the time that, citing an NBA official, that the league’s patch sponsorships ranged from $2 million to $20 million per season, depending on market size.
Chime, a San Francisco-based fintech company that provides online banking services like direct deposit and credit cards, plans to soon debut on the Nasdaq. Cynthia Marshall, who was CEO for the Mavericks from 2018 until December of last year, is on Chime’s board, so the company included details of the arrangement in the related party transactions section of its filing.
The company said it paid the Mavericks $10.5 million in 2022, $11.5 million in 2023 and $11.2 million last year.
Marshall told CNBC in 2020 that the decision to select Chime for its jersey patch came as the team was looking to fill its official sponsorship slot, which came with the deal. The logo has been displayed around American Airlines Center, where the Mavericks play their home games.
“We wanted somebody that was doing well as a business and growing,” Marshall said. “It’s a perfect fit.”
Chime’s IPO filing lands a day after the Mavericks shocked the NBA world by winning the draft lottery and the right to draft presumed top pick Cooper Flagg from Duke University. The Mavericks had only a 1.8% chance of landing the top pick based on where they finished in the standings. ESPN reported on Wednesday that the Mavericks plan to draft Flagg and are not considering the possibility of trading him.
It was a remarkably fortuitous turn of events for a front office and ownership team that’s been roundly criticized for months since trading franchise cornerstone Luka Doncic in February, bringing back older star Anthony Davis in return.
Longtime owner Mark Cuban sold a majority stake in the Mavericks in 2023 to casino owner Miriam Adelson and her family.
In October, the Mavericks announced a multi-year extension to its Chime deal, agreeing to showcase the brand and the company’s products more broadly. One new aspect was the creation of Chime Lane, “a dedicated entrance featuring exclusive benefits for Chime members during Mavs games and select events at AAC,” the team said in a press release.