Instagram users are complaining this week that they’re being forced by Meta to follow President Donald Trump’s social media accounts without their consent.

In a Threads post on Wednesday, a Meta representative said users are seeing posts from @POTUS, @VP and @FLOTUS because those accounts are handed off when a presidential transition occurs in the U.S.

“People were not made to automatically follow any of the official Facebook or Instagram accounts for the President, Vice President or First Lady,” wrote Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Meta. “Those accounts are managed by the White House so with a new administration, the content on those Pages changes.”

Users who previously followed the accounts continue to follow them, as well as the former administration’s archive accounts, when the transition of power occurs, Meta confirmed in an email. That includes the account for @WhiteHouse.

Trump’s inauguration on Monday marked the third handoff from one administration to the next. The Obama administration, which created many of the accounts that are used today, addressed the matter in a blog post ahead of the 2016 election, which Trump also won. 

“On Instagram and Facebook, the incoming White House will gain access to the White House username, URL, and retain the followers, but will start with no content on the timeline,” the Obama administration wrote. “An archive of White House content that was posted to the Obama White House Instagram and Facebook will continue to be accessible to the public at Instagram.com/ObamaWhiteHouse and Facebook.com/ObamaWhiteHouse.”

The Obama administration added that all posts and materials created by the accounts would be preserved with the National Archives and Records Administration and that new accounts would also be created to preserve the content. 

Posts from the accounts previously used by former President Joe Biden, former Vice President Kamala Harris and former First Lady Jill Biden have moved to @potus46archive, @vp46archive and @fotus46archive, respectively. 

Political chatter has picked up on Meta’s platforms following a series of moves taken by CEO Mark Zuckerberg that appeared to be aimed at appeasing President Trump.

Zuckerberg donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and attended the event in Washington D.C., even co-hosting a celebratory reception. 

Zuckerberg this month announced several policy changes for Meta, including eliminating third-party fact checking and ending the company’s diversity, equity and inclusion program. The company also appointed Joel Kaplan, a former Republican White House staffer, as its new policy chief, and Zuckerberg, in an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, touted the benefits of masculinity.

“I think having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits,” Zuckerberg said on the podcast. 

WATCH: Critics pan Zuckerberg’s move towards MAGA

Google has agreed to a new investment of more than $1 billion in generative AI startup Anthropic, a source familiar with the situation confirmed to CNBC.

The fresh funding builds on Google’s past investments of $2 billion in Anthropic and 10% ownership stake in the startup, as well as a large cloud contract between the two companies. Anthropic is most well known for its Claude AI chatbot.

The agreement comes as Anthropic, one of the key players in Silicon Valley’s artificial intelligence arms race, is in late-stage talks to raise a funding round of $2 billion at a $60 billion valuation led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, CNBC reported earlier this month.

In December, Anthropic’s revenue hit an annualized $1 billion, which was an increase of roughly 10x year over year, the source said. The company’s revenue comes primarily from enterprise sales.

Financial Times was first to report Google’s investment.

Anthropic, which has been backed heavily by Amazon, was founded by former OpenAI research executives. It launched Claude in March 2023, and like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, Claude has exploded in popularity as businesses incorporate generative AI chatbots across sales, marketing and customer service functions.

The generative AI market, which includes Anthropic and OpenAI as well as Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta, is predicted to top $1 trillion in revenue within a decade. Amazon and Microsoft, which is OpenAI’s principal investor, are backing generative AI startups with hefty investments as well as developing their own technologies.

Amazon announced that it would invest an additional $4 billion in Anthropic in November. That brought Amazon’s total investment in the startup to $8 billion. Amazon remains a minority investor, Anthropic confirmed to CNBC at the time, and does not have a board seat.

As part of that investment, Amazon Web Services became Anthropic’s “primary cloud and training partner.” Anthropic has used Amazon Web Services’ Trainium and Inferentia chips to train and deploy its largest AI models since then.

Anthropic ramped up its technology development throughout last year, and in October, the startup said that its AI agents were able to use computers like humans can to complete complex tasks. Anthropic’s Computer Use capability allows its technology to interpret what’s on a computer screen, select buttons, enter text, navigate websites and execute tasks through any software and real-time internet browsing, the startup said.

The tool can “use computers in basically the same way that we do,” Jared Kaplan, Anthropic’s chief science officer, told CNBC in an interview at the time. He said it can do tasks with “tens or even hundreds of steps.”

OpenAI reportedly plans to introduce a similar feature soon.

Anthropic debuted Claude 3.5 Sonnet, its more powerful AI model, in June, and the startup rolled out Claude Enterprise, its biggest new product since the launch of its chatbot, in September.

WATCH: Anthropic CEO: More confident than ever that we’re ‘very close’ to powerful AI capabilities

Abnormal Security, a startup selling email security software to companies, said on Wednesday that it’s hired former ServiceNow finance executive Lisa Banks as chief financial officer as the company gears up to prepare for an IPO.

Abnormal is going after a longstanding market, which includes incumbents Mimecast and Proofpoint, adding a layer of artificial intelligence that spots attacks in email messages. Other startups such as Material Security and Sublime Security offer competing email tools.

“We’re disrupting the legacy market, and the approach around AI and human behavior is very unique,” Banks said in an interview.

With Donald Trump returning to the White House this week, investors are bullish that they’ll see a strengthening initial public offering market, particularly for technology, after a three-year dry spell. Among the few tech IPOs last year were Reddit, Rubrik and ServiceTitan. AI chipmaker Cerebras filed IPO paperwork but has yet to float shares on the Nasdaq as planned.

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, whose Wall Street firm tends to compete with Morgan Stanley when it comes to leading high-profile offerings, said last week that IPOs are “going to pick up.” At an event hosted by Cisco, Solomon said that the mood is changing and that there’s a “more constructive kind of optimism” when it comes to the overall market.

Banks said Abnormal doesn’t have a specific timeline for its IPO, but she said a year and a half should be enough time to prepare. Revenue is already predictable, thanks to the company’s multiyear deals and healthy renewal rates, she said.

“We will be profitable in the future,” Banks said.

Abnormal said in August that it had achieved more than $200 million in annualized revenue, with year-over-year growth above 100%. At that time, Abnormal said the company was valued at $5.1 billion. Investors include CrowdStrike, Greylock Partners, Insight Partners, Menlo Ventures and Wellington Management.

After seven years at ServiceNow, where she eventually became senior vice president of finance, Banks spent almost three years at restaurant payments startup SpotOn. Banks said she was eager to get back into enterprise software.

Abnormal is led by Evan Reiser, who co-founded the company in 2018 after almost three years in product management at Twitter. Banks said that Reiser is obsessed with customers and that he spends loads of time with chief information officers and security heads. She said that over time Abnormal expects to expand beyond email security.

In her role, Banks intends to work with bankers and learn from CFOs who have taken companies public. She said her finance group is busy implementing a forecasting tool, which is likely to be critical once the company is public and in the habit of providing guidance to investors.

Abnormal operates remotely, with offices in San Francisco and Las Vegas and in a WeWork space in San Jose, California, Banks said. The company reached 1,000 employees earlier this month, a spokesperson said.

Banks’s predecessor was Smita Sanadhya, who joined Abnormal from Okta in February 2024, and left the role after seven months. Sanadhya is now an advisor.