Photo illustration of TikTok app logo on a smartphone screen displayed with the American flag.
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Perplexity AI on Sunday revised the merger proposal it had submitted to TikTok parent ByteDance. The proposal, which would create a new entity combining Perplexity and TikTok U.S., would now also allow for the U.S. government to own up to 50% of the new company upon a future IPO, CNBC has learned.
A proposal document viewed by CNBC, which was shared with ByteDance and prospective new investors, detailed the creation of a new U.S. holding company, “NewCo.”
The document proposes ByteDance contribute TikTok U.S., minus its core recommendation algorithm, in exchange for the company’s existing investors receiving equity in the new company. Perplexity AI would offer itself up in exchange for its own investors receiving a distribution of the NewCo equity.
Money for the merger would come from “new third-party capital provider(s) (to be mutually agreed upon),” per the proposal document, which would provide capital for a “one-time dividend payment to ByteDance investors in exchange for simplified governance” and to help the new entity grow.
Perplexity AI, the artificial intelligence search engine startup competing with OpenAI and Google, started 2024 with a roughly $500 million valuation and ended the year with a valuation of about $9 billion, after attracting increasing investor interest amid the generative AI boom — as well as controversy over plagiarism accusations. Investors have viewed AI-assisted search as one of Google’s key risks, as it potentially changes the way consumers access information online.
Last year, OpenAI, which started the generative AI craze in late 2022 with ChatGPT, introduced a search engine called SearchGPT. Google later launched “AI Overviews” in search, allowing users to see a quick summary of answers at the top of results.
The proposed new structure would allow for most of ByteDance’s existing investors to retain their equity stakes and would bring more video to Perplexity, a source familiar with the situation told CNBC earlier this month. And although ByteDance has publicly implied it will not sell TikTok U.S., that’s part of why Perplexity AI believes it has a shot with its bid — since the deal would be a merger rather than a sale, the source added.
Under the revised proposal, the U.S. government could own up to half of the new structure once it IPOs at least $300 billion, according to the source.
A fair price is “well north of $50 billion” but the final number attached to the proposal will be decided, in part, by which of ByteDance’s existing shareholders want to remain part of the new entity and which want to cash out, according to the source.
Though any potential transaction between Perplexity AI and ByteDance would likely take months to complete, President Donald Trump has so far temporarily restored TikTok in the U.S. and suggested plans that would involve an American stakeholder purchasing the company and then selling a 50% stake to the U.S. government. In a video posted to TikTok earlier this month, CEO Shou Zi Chew said, “I want to thank President Trump for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available in the United States.”
Perplexity is one of multiple companies and individuals vying to be the one to purchase or merge with TikTok, which reportedly include Microsoft, Oracle and potentially Elon Musk. On Saturday, President Trump said he would likely have a decision on the app’s future in the U.S. in the next 30 days.
Founded in 2022, ElevenLabs is an AI voice generation startup based in London. It competes with the likes of Speechmatics and Hume AI.
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LONDON — ElevenLabs, a London-based startup that specializes in generating synthetic voices through artificial intelligence, has revealed plans to be IPO-ready within five years.
The company told CNBC it is targeting major global expansion as it prepares for an initial public offering.
“We expect to build more hubs in Europe, Asia and South America, and just keep scaling,” Mati Staniszewski, ElevenLabs’ CEO and co-founder, told CNBC in an interview at the firm’s London office.
He identified Paris, Singapore, Brazil and Mexico as potential new locations. London is currently ElevenLabs’ biggest office, followed by New York, Warsaw, San Francisco, Japan, India and Bangalore.
Staniszewski said the eventual aim is to get the company ready for an IPO in the next five years.
“From a commercial standpoint, we would like to be ready for an IPO in that time,” he said. “If the market is right, we would like to create a public company … that’s going to be here for the next generation.”
Undecided on location
Founded in 2022 by Staniszewski and Piotr Dąbkowski, ElevenLabs is an AI voice generation startup that competes with the likes of Speechmatics and Hume AI.
The company divides its business into three main camps: consumer-facing voice assistants, integrations with corporates such as Cisco, and tailor-made applications for specific industries like health care.
Staniszewski said the firm hasn’t yet decided where it could list, but that this decision will largely rest on where most of its users are located at the time.
“If the U.K. is able to start accelerating,” ElevenLabs will consider London as a listing destination, Staniszewski said.
The city has faced criticisms from entrepreneurs and venture capitalists that its stock market is unfavorable toward high-growth tech firms.
Meanwhile, British money transfer firm Wiselast month said it plans to move its primary listing location to the U.S.,
Fundraising plans
ElevenLabs was valued at $3.3 billion following a recent $180 million funding round. The company is backed by the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and ICONIQ Growth, as well as corporate names like Salesforce and Deutsche Telekom.
Staniszewski said his startup was open to raising more money from VCs, but it would depend on whether it sees a valid business need, like scaling further in other markets. “The way we try to raise is very much like, if there’s a bet we want to take, to accelerate that bet [we will] take the money,” he said.
Synopsys logo is seen displayed on a smartphone with the flag of China in the background.
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The U.S. government has rescinded its export restrictions on chip design software to China, U.S.-based Synopsys announced Thursday.
“Synopsys is working to restore access to the recently restricted products in China,” it said in a statement.
The U.S. had reportedly told several chip design software companies, including Synopsys, in May that they were required to obtain licenses before exporting goods, such as software and chemicals for semiconductors, to China.
The U.S. Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.
The news comes after China signaled last week that they are making progress on a trade truce with the U.S. and confirmed conditional agreements to resume some exchanges of rare earths and advanced technology.
The Datadog stand is being displayed on day one of the AWS Summit Seoul 2024 at the COEX Convention and Exhibition Center in Seoul, South Korea, on May 16, 2024.
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Datadog shares were up 10% in extended trading on Wednesday after S&P Global said the monitoring software provider will replace Juniper Networks in the S&P 500 U.S. stock index.
S&P Global is making the change effective before the beginning of trading on July 9, according to a statement.
Computer server maker Hewlett Packard Enterprise, also a constituent of the index, said earlier on Wednesday that it had completed its acquisition of Juniper, which makes data center networking hardware. HPE disclosed in a filing that it paid $13.4 billion to Juniper shareholders.
Over the weekend, the two companies reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, which had sued in opposition to the deal. As part of the settlement, HPE agreed to divest its global Instant On campus and branch business.
While tech already makes up an outsized portion of the S&P 500, the index has has been continuously lifting its exposure as the industry expands into more areas of society.
Stocks often rally when they’re added to a major index, as fund managers need to rebalance their portfolios to reflect the changes.
New York-based Datadog went public in 2019. The company generated $24.6 million in net income on $761.6 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2025, according to a statement. Competitors include Cisco, which bought Splunk last year, as well as Elastic and cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon and Microsoft.
Datadog has underperformed the broader tech sector so far this year. The stock was down 5.5% as of Wednesday’s close, while the Nasdaq was up 5.6%. Still, with a market cap of $46.6 billion, Datadog’s valuation is significantly higher than the median for that index.