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Alexis Ohanian

David A. Grogan | CNBC

Content aggregator Digg is making a comeback with the help of an unlikely partner: Reddit co-founder and rival Alexis Ohanian.

Ohanian and Digg founder Kevin Rose acquired the platform for an undisclosed sum. The deal is backed by venture capital firms True Ventures, where Rose is a partner, and Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six. The partnership was announced Wednesday in a video post to the company’s X account in which Rose called the partnership a “team-up he would have never imagined 20 years ago.”

Digg was founded in 2004 and rose to prominence as a major outlet for trending news because it allowed users to rate stories. Rose made what became an infamously goofy appearance on the cover of Businessweek in 2006 as the kid who “made $60 million in 18 months.”

The company said in a release that it aims to differentiate itself in the social media market by “focusing on AI innovations designed to enhance the user experience and build a human-centered alternative.” Digg said it will also create a platform that “prioritizes transparency, rewards human effort, and fosters enriching discussions.”

Ohanian also teased the collaboration, telling X followers on Wednesday that he was “working on something new… but also old… but also very new” and is “excited” to be partnering with Rose.

At its peak in 2008, Digg was reportedly valued at about $160 million. But the rise of Facebook and other social sites caused traffic to Digg to plummet. Meanwhile, Reddit, which was founded a year after Digg by Ohanian and current CEO Steve Huffman, emerged as a direct rival to Digg by forming communities around types of content and letting users similarly rate news stories.

In 2012, Digg’s brand and website were acquired by tech incubator Betaworks for about $500,000.

Reddit has continued its ascent, reporting nearly 102 million daily active users at the end of the fourth quarter. The site gained widespread attention when it became the center of the 2020 meme stock craze as retail traders inflicted huge pain on hedge funds shorting stocks using a subreddit known as Wallstreetbets.

Reddit went public on the New York Stock Exchange last March at $34 a share and has seen its stock nearly quintuple. Shares are up about 1% year to date and added 4% during Wednesday’s session.

Ohanian has moved on to other projects since he stepped down from Reddit’s board in 2020. He’s currently partnering with billionaire Frank McCourt in a bid for TikTok after President Donald Trump extended the initial deadline for the company’s Chinese-parent ByteDance to sell the social media platform or face a ban.

Rose said in a post on X that he and Ohanian “dreamed up features that weren’t even possible with yesterday’s tech.”

“The new @digg brings some great nostalgia, but we’re not here to just rebuild the past or clone a competitor,” he wrote.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

WATCH: Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian is going long on women’s sports

Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian is going long on women's sports

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CNBC Daily Open: There’s a hopeful mood in the Middle East and the markets

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CNBC Daily Open: There's a hopeful mood in the Middle East and the markets

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks while World leaders listen during a summit of European and Middle Eastern leaders on Gaza on October 13, 2025 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

This might not be Christmas, but the war in the Middle East is over — at least according to U.S. President Donald Trump.

On Monday, Trump declared at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, that the “long and painful nightmare” was finally over for both the Israelis and Palestinians. More straightforwardly, Trump gave an unequivocal “yes” when asked by reporters if the war in the Middle East has ended, Reuters reported.

A similarly hopeful mood permeated markets, though for different reasons. After hitting China with 100% additional tariffs and triggering a sell-off on Friday, Trump appeared to walk back his stance, posting on Truth Social that “it will all be fine” with China.

And thus was TACO back on traders’ menus: Major U.S. stock indexes rebounded, with technology stocks leading the charge. Quantum computing names popped after JPMorgan Chase announced it will be investing $10 billion in sectors crucial to national interests.

Broadcom, meanwhile, surged almost 10% after it jointly announced a partnership with — who else? — OpenAI to build and deploy custom chips. But where this puts Nvidia, OpenAI’s other near and dear one, and on whose chips the ChatGPT maker relies, remains a question.

Though Christmas has yet to arrive, OpenAI is starting to look like the tech sector’s Santa Claus.

— CNBC’s Holly Ellyatt contributed to this report.

What you need to know today

War in the Middle East is over, Trump says. At Israel’s parliament, Trump gave a speech in which he said that the “long and painful nightmare” for both the Israelis and Palestinians was over. He also urged, at a separate event, for leaders to put “old feuds” behind.

Broadcom joins the OpenAI party. The two companies announced Monday that they’re planning to develop and deploy OpenAI-designed chips, amounting to 10 gigawatts, starting late next year. Shares of Broadcom popped almost 10% on the news.

JPMorgan says it will invest $10 billion in critical industries. The four areas of focus — which the bank considers crucial to U.S. security — are: defense and aerospace, “frontier” technologies such as AI, energy technology and supply chain and advanced manufacturing.

Stocks claw back some losses. On Monday stateside, major U.S. stock indexes rose, rebounding from Friday’s carnage. The S&P 500 regained 56% of Friday’s decline. Europe’s Stoxx 600 index climbed 0.44%, lifted by mining stocks.

[PRO] European sectors less affected by trade war. The continent isn’t in the crosshairs of Trump’s latest tariffs, but a weakening U.S. dollar could affect Europe’s exports. UBS picks three sectors more shielded from that — leaving out a notable one.

And finally…

U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with Argentina’s President Javier Milei during the 80th United Nations General Assembly, in New York City, New York, U.S., Sept. 23, 2025.

Alexander Drago | Reuters

The U.S. has stepped in with an extraordinary bailout of Argentina. Here’s what it means

In a move that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Thursday on social media site X, the U.S. is providing a $20 billion currency swap line with Argentina’s central bank — essentially exchanging stable U.S. dollars with volatile pesos.

The move comes amid liquidity concerns in Argentina that threatened stability for the country as it faces key midterm elections. There are equal parts economic and political stakes with the venture, which marks the first U.S. intervention of this nature since rescuing Mexico in 1995.

Jeff Cox

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Amazon fires employee who was suspended for protesting company’s work with Israel

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Amazon fires employee who was suspended for protesting company's work with Israel

A woman cleans the store window of the Amazon house after activists sprayed paint on its logo during a protest on the opening day of the 55th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 20, 2025.

Yves Herman | Reuters

Amazon fired a Palestinian engineer who was suspended last month after he protested the company’s work with the Israeli government.

Ahmed Shahrour, who worked as a software engineer in Amazon’s Whole Foods business in Seattle, received an email on Monday informing him of his termination. When he was suspended in September, Amazon said the decision was the result of messages Shahrour posted on Slack criticizing the company’s ties to Israel.

Amazon said its investigation found Shahrour had violated the company’s standards of conduct, written communication policy and acceptable use policy, alleging that he “misused company resources, including by posting numerous non-work-related messages pertaining to the Israel-Palestine conflict.”

“In the next 24hrs you will receive an email with detailed information about your termination, including information about your benefits and final pay,” an Amazon human resources employee wrote in a message to Shahrour that was obtained by CNBC. “We appreciate the contributions you’ve made during your time with Amazon and wish you the best in your future endeavors.”

An employee group associated with Shahrour put out an afternoon press release saying that he was fired after a five-week suspension “for protesting Amazon’s $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government and military, known as Project Nimbus, which he states constitutes collaboration in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

Shahrour had urged the company to drop the contract that involves Amazon providing the Israeli government with artificial intelligence tools, data centers and other infrastructure. He also protested and handed out flyers at Amazon’s downtown Seattle headquarters.

In a statement to CNBC, Shahrour said his firing is “a blatant act of retaliation designed to silence dissent from Palestinian voices within Amazon and shield Amazon’s collaboration in the genocide from internal scrutiny.”

President Trump addresses Israel's Knesset as Hamas releases hostages held in Gaza

Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser told CNBC in a statement that the company doesn’t tolerate “discrimination, harassment or threatening behavior or language of any kind in our workplace.”

“When any conduct of that nature is reported, we investigate it and take appropriate action based on our findings,” Glasser said.

Shahrour’s termination comes on the same day that Palestinian militant group Hamas released the first seven surviving Israeli hostages, marking the first stage of a ceasefire deal brokered with the help of U.S. President Donald Trump. As part of the agreement, Israel was also scheduled to free nearly 2,000 Palestinian detainees and prisoners later in the day.

The war started just over two years ago, when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking hundreds of hostages. Israel followed with a sustained assault that killed more than 67,000 Palestinians, including thousands of civilians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Across the tech industry, workers have become more outspoken in their criticism of business dealings with the Israeli military.

On Thursday, a Microsoft engineer resigned after 13 years at the software giant, claiming the company continues to sell cloud services to the Israeli military and that executives won’t discuss the war in Gaza. Scott Sutfin-Glowski, a principal software engineer, informed colleagues in a letter that, “I can no longer accept enabling what may be the worst atrocities of our time.”

In the letter, he referred to a February Associated Press article that said Israel’s military had at least 635 Microsoft subscriptions, and he claimed the vast majority of them remain active.

Microsoft fired two employees in August who participated in a protest inside the company’s headquarters. In April 2024, Google terminated 28 employees after a series of protests against labor conditions and its involvement in Project Nimbus.

Amazon hasn’t acknowledged the Nimbus contract beyond stating that it provides technology to customers “wherever they are located.” Google has previously said it provides generally available cloud computing services to the Israeli government that aren’t “directed at highly sensitive, classified or military workloads.” Microsoft said in August that most of its work with Israel Defense Forces involves cybersecurity for the country, and that the company intends to provide technology in an ethical way.

— CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed to this report.

WATCH: Is a ceasefire in Gaza sustainable?

Is a ceasefire in Gaza sustainable? Israel ambassador to UAE talks regional peace

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Broadcom CEO says generative AI will become a much larger part of global GDP

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Broadcom CEO says generative AI will become a much larger part of global GDP

The main competitor we have is merchant silicon, says Broadcom CEO Hock Tan

Broadcom CEO Hock Tan told CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Monday that artificial intelligence could become a larger part of global GDP as the technology spreads across industries.

Tan said the current global GDP sits around $110 trillion, with 30% of that figure “valued from industries related to knowledge-based, technology-intensive.”

“And you put in generative AI, you create intelligence in a lot of other aspects of society,” Tan continued. “That 30% say will grow to 40% of all GDP. That’s $10 trillion a year.”

If AI grows and becomes responsible for a larger piece of global GDP as Tan predicts, it would be a boon to the nascent tech sector and all the industries it relies on. Broadcom makes chips and networking equipment and has been a huge beneficiary of the AI boom as hyperscalers buy up its products. The stock is currently up 53.86%.

Broadcom and OpenAI announced their official partnership on Monday, saying they would jointly build and deploy 10 gigawatts of custom artificial intelligence accelerators. The move is part of a broader effort to scale AI across the industry. Broadcom shares surged in response to the news, up 9.88% by market close.

Broadcom and OpenAI’s deal is the latest in a slew of pricey partnerships among key Big Tech players related to AI.

Tan said OpenAI is “one of those few players in the forefront of creating foundation models,” and noted that even as a private company, the ChatGPT maker is worth about $500 billion. According to Tan, Broadcom’s “hard-nosed” approach to business doesn’t keep the company from looking several years in the future “at this phenomenon, this wave called generative AI.”

Broadcom is tight-lipped about its customers, but said earlier this year it was developing new AI chips with three large cloud customers. Management announced last month it had secured $10 billion in chip orders from a fourth unnamed client.

Tan told Cramer that Broadcom is working closely with “about seven players,” four of which he defined as “real customers,” or ones “who have given us production purchase orders at scale.”

“We feel very good about it,” Tan said of Broadcom’s partnerships. “Because each of these guys need a lot of compute capacity for them to basically play in this game and eventually win this game of creating the best foundation model in the world.”

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