A 3D-printed miniature model of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and TikTok logo are seen in this illustration taken January 19, 2025.
Dado Ruvic | Reuters
TikTok has nearly bounced back to its original traffic levels after usage fell 85% when the app temporarily shut down earlier this month, according to Cloudflare Radar.
“DNS traffic for TikTok-related domains has continued to recover since service restoration, and is currently about 10% lower than pre-shutdown level,” David Belson, head of data insight at Cloudflare, told CNBC in a statement.
DNS, short for Domain Name System, converts website names into IP addresses that browsers use to access internet resources. Cloudflare Radar is the connectivity cloud company’s hub that displays internet trends and insightswith DNS to monitor global internet traffic.
TikTok briefly shutdown in the U.S. following the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a law signed by former President Joe Biden in April. That legislation required China-based ByteDance to either divest its ownership of TikTok or have the app face an effective ban in the U.S. on Jan. 19. Consequently, Apple and Googleremoved TikTok from their U.S. app stores to comply with the law.
The app came back online after President Donald Trump said he would postpone enforcement of the ban, signing an executive order on his first day in office to extend the law’s deadline by an additional 75 days to April 5.
The data from Cloudflare shows that, for the most part, TikTok has managed to maintain the bulk of its users and creators in the U.S. despite going offline for about 14 hoursand remaining off of the Apple or Google app stores.
As for its alternatives, Cloudflare’s data shows a spike in traffic the day of the temporary ban, with levels remaining steadily higher in the following week. Traffic for alternatives began to grow a week ahead of the expected shutdown, driven by the increased popularity of RedNote, known as Xiaohongshu in China, Belson said.
But traffic to TikTok alternatives peaked on Jan. 19, the day TikTok returned online, he added.
“DNS traffic fell rapidly once the shutdown ended, and has continued to slowly decline over the last week and a half,” Belson said.
‘Made peace with it’
With TikTok’s long-term future in the U.S. still uncertain, many creators are expanding their online presence to other platforms.
“I’ve kind of made peace with it going away,” said Dylan Lemay, a creator with more than 10 million followers on TikTok. “When they threatened to get rid of it the first time, that was my wake-up call to say I need to make sure that I’m prepared if this ever does happen.”
Trump first threatened to ban TikTok during his first go as president in 2020. Since then, Lemay has been putting efforts into building his followings on other platforms to protect his career as a full-time creator if TikTok is ever officially banned.
Lemay said he has found audiences on other platforms. YouTube is where he is now making his most consistent earnings. Currently, he has more than 5.6 million subscribers on YouTube, where he posts long- and short-form videos that have amassed billions of views.
“If the worst comes to worst and TikTok goes away, I have this solid foundation with a company like Google,” Lemay said. “That’s not going anywhere.”
While some successful TikTok creators have been able to find audiences on YouTube Shorts and Meta’s Instagram Reels, many have discovered that their TikTok content doesn’t translate as well to other platforms.
Noah Glenn Carter, another creator with nearly 10 million TikTok followers, has not been able to find the same kind of audience on Instagram and YouTube, where his following and viewership are significantly lower.
In the weeks leading up to the ban, Carter contacted companies he’s previously worked with on brand deals, which are agreements where brands pay creators to promote their products and services on social media. With TikTok’s future in limbo, brands are pausing or altering their agreements to include competing platforms, Carter and other creators and managers told CNBC.
In the meantime, Meta has begun offering creators deals to promote Instagram on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Snapchat and other services, CNBC reported earlier this month.
“I don’t know if I can really keep the same rates with my biggest platform going dark,” said Carter.
Other creators say they refuse to believe TikTok will ever truly get banned.
“I’m going to believe it when I see it in those 75 days,” said Michael DiCostanzo, a creator with more than 2.3 million followers on TikTok.
DiCostanzo posts his content to competing short-form video platforms, but he said other apps have yet to build the kind of environment that brought him and others success on TikTok.
“I don’t know if YouTube Shorts or Reels can ever actually replicate that sense of community,” said DiCostanzo. “If TikTok were to completely shut down, I don’t think they would get that big of a boost.”
The Hers app arranged on a smartphone in New York, US, on Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2025.
Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Shares of Hims & Hers Health fell 9% in extended trading on Monday after the telehealth company reported second-quarter results that missed Wall Street’s expectations for revenue.
Here’s how the company did based on average analysts’ estimates compiled by LSEG:
Earnings per share: 17 cents adjusted vs. 15 cents
Revenue: $544.8 million vs. $552 million
Revenue at Hims & Hers increased 73% in the second quarter from $315.6 million during the same period last year, according to a release. Hims & Hers reported a net income of $42.5 million, or 17 cents per share, compared to $13.3 million, or 6 cents per share, during the same period a year earlier.
For its third quarter, Hims & Hers said it expected to report revenue between $570 million to $590 million, while analysts were expecting $583 million. The company said its adjusted EBITDA for the quarter will be between the range of $60 million to $70 million. Analysts polled by StreetAccount were expecting $77.1 million.
Read more CNBC tech news
Hims & Hers has faced controversy in recent months over its continued sale of compounded GLP-1s, which are cheaper, unapproved versions of the blockbuster diabetes and weight loss drugs. Compounded drugs can be mass produced when brand-name treatments are in shortage, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced in February that ongoing supply issues had been resolved.
Some telehealth companies, including Hims & Hers, have continued to offer the compounded medications. It’s legal for patients to access personalized doses of the knockoffs in unique cases, like if they are allergic to an ingredient in a branded product, for instance. Hims & Hers has said consumers may still be able to access personalized doses through its site if clinically applicable.
In June, Hims & Hers shares tumbled more than 30% after a short-lived collaboration with Novo Nordisk fell apart. The drugmaker said Hims & Hers “failed to adhere to the law which prohibits mass sales of compounded drugs” under the “false guise” of personalization.
Hims & Hers reported adjusted EBITDA of $82 million for its second quarter, up from $39.3 million last year and above the $73 million expected by StreetAccount.
Hims & Hers will host its quarterly call with investors at 5 p.m. ET.
Stock Chart IconStock chart icon
YTD chart of Hims & Hers Health.
–CNBC’s Annika Kim Constantino contributed to this report
Palantir topped Wall Street’s estimates Monday, surpassing $1 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time, and hiking its full-year guidance.
Shares rallied more than 5%.
Here’s how the company did versus LSEG estimates:
Earnings per share: 16 cents adj. vs. 14 cents expected
Revenue: $1.00 billion vs. $940 million expected
The artificial intelligence software provider’s revenues grew 48% during the period. Analysts hadn’t expected the $1 billion revenue benchmark from the Denver-based company until the fourth quarter of this year.
“The growth rate of our business has accelerated radically, after years of investment on our part and derision by some,” wrote CEO Alex Karp in a letter to shareholders. “The skeptics are admittedly fewer now, having been defanged and bent into a kind of submission.”
The software analytics company also boosted its full-year outlook guidance. For the full year, Palantir now expects revenues to range between $4.142 billion and $4.150 billion, up from prior guidance of $3.89 billion to $3.90 billion.
Read more CNBC tech news
For the third quarter, Palantir forecast revenues between $1.083 billion and $1.087 billion, beating an analyst estimate of $983 million. Palantir also lifted its operating income and full-year free cash flow guidance.
Palantir’s U.S. revenues jumped 68% from a year ago to $733 million, while U.S. commercial revenues nearly doubled from a year ago to $306 million.
The software analytics company has seen a boost from President Donald Trump‘s government efficiency campaign, which included layoffs and contract cuts. Palantir’s U.S. government revenues jumped 53% from the year-ago period to $426 million.
“It has been a steep and upward climb — an ascent that is a reflection of the remarkable confluence of the arrival of language models, the chips necessary to power them, and our software infrastructure,” Karp wrote in a letter to shareholders.
During the quarter, Palantir said it closed 66 deals of at least $5 million and 42 deals totaling at least $10 million. Total value of its contracts grew 140% from last year to $2.27 billion.
Net income rose 144% to about $326.7 million, or 13 cents a share, from about $134.1 million, or 6 cents per share a year ago.
Palantir shares have more than doubled this year as investors bet on the company’s AI tools and contract agreements with governments.
Its market value has accelerated past $379 billion and into the list of top 20 most valuable U.S companies, surpassing Salesforce, IBM and Cisco to join the top 10 U.S. tech companies by market cap. Shares hit a new high Monday.
At its size, buying the stock requires investors to pay hefty multiples.
Shares currently trade 276 times forward earnings, according to FactSet. Tesla is the only other top 20 with a triple-digit ratio at 177.
Firefly Aerospace CEO Jason Kim sits for an interview at the Firefly Aerospace mission operations center in Leander, Texas, on July 9, 2025.
Sergio Flores | Reuters
Firefly Aerospace has lifted the share price range for its upcoming initial public offering in a move that would value the space technology company at more than $6 billion.
The lunar lander and rocket maker said in a filing Monday that it expects to price shares in its upcoming IPO between $41 and $43 apiece.
Firefly’s new target range would raise nearly $697 million at the top end of the range. That’s up from the previously expected $35 to $39 price per share that Firefly announced in a filing last week, which targeted a $5.5 billion valuation.
Firefly announced plans to go public last month as interest in space technology gains steam, and billionaire-led companies such as Elon Musk‘s SpaceX rake in more funding.
Read more CNBC tech news
The industry has also begun testing the public markets after a long hiatus in IPO deal activity, with space tech firm Voyager debuting in June.
Firefly makes rockets, space tugs and lunar landers, and is widely known for its satellite launching rockets known as Alpha.
The company has partnered with major defense players such as Lockheed Martin, L3Harris and NASA, and received a $50 million investment from defense contractor Northrop Grumman.
Firefly’s revenues jumped from $8.3 million a year ago to $55.9 million at the end of March, the company said. Its net loss grew to $60.1 million, from $52.8 million a year ago.