Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, (C) greets attendees during a campaign stop to address Pennsylvanians who are concerned about the threat of Communist China to U.S. agriculture at the Smith Family Farm September 23, 2024 in Smithton, Pennsylvania.
Win Mcnamee | Getty Images
After Donald Trump won the U.S. presidency last week, tech CEOs including Apple‘s Tim Cook, Meta‘s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon‘s Jeff Bezos publicly praised the president-elect.
One name was conspicuously missing: TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew.
His absence was notable considering that of all the top tech companies, TikTok faces the most immediate and existential threat from the U.S. government. In April, President Joe Biden signed a law that requires China’s ByteDance to sell TikTok by Jan. 19. If ByteDance fails to comply, internet hosting companies and app store owners such as Apple and Google will be prohibited from supporting TikTok, effectively banning it in the U.S.
Trump’s return to the White House, though, may provide a lifeline for Chew and TikTok.
Although both Republicans and Democrats supported the Biden TikTok ban in April, Trump voiced opposition to the ban during his candidacy. Trump acknowledged the national security and data privacy concerns with TikTok in a March interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” but he also said “there’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad” with the app.
Trump also leveraged TikTok’s shaky future in the U.S. as a reason for people to vote against Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris.
“We’re not doing anything with TikTok, but the other side is going to close it up, so if you like TikTok, go out and vote for Trump,” the president-elect said in a September post on his Truth Social service.
Since his election, Trump hasn’t publicly discussed his plans for TikTok, but Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told CNBC that the president-elect “will deliver.”
“The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail,” Leavitt said in a statement.
Trump’s rhetoric on TikTok began to turn after the president-elect met in February with billionaire Jeff Yass, a Republican megadonor and a major investor in the Chinese-owned social media app.
Yass’s trading firm Susquehanna International Group owns a 15% stake in ByteDance while Yass maintains a 7% stake in the company, equating to about $21 billion, NBC and CNBC reported in March. That month it was also reported that Yass was a part owner of the business that merged with the parent company of Trump’s Truth Social.
TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew testifies during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on online child sexual exploitation, at the U.S. Capitol, in Washington, U.S., January 31, 2024.
Nathan Howard | Reuters
If ByteDance doesn’t sell TikTok by the January deadline, Trump could potentially call on Congress to repeal the law or he can introduce a more “selective enforcement” of the law that would essentially allow TikTok to continue operating in the U.S. without facing penalties, said Sarah Kreps, a Cornell University professor of government. “Selective enforcement” would be akin to police officers not always enforcing every single instance of jaywalking, she said.
At TikTok, meanwhile, Chew has remained quiet since Trump’s victory, just as he had been in the lead-up to Election Day.
The Chinese-owned company may be taking a neutral approach and a wait-and-see strategy for now, said Long Le, a China business expert and Santa Clara University associate teaching professor.
Le said it’s hard to foresee what Trump will do.
“He’s also a contrarian; that’s what makes him unpredictable,” Le said. “He can say one thing, and the next year he’ll change his mind.”
TikTok didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on January 31, 2024 in Washington, DC.
Alex Wong | Getty Images
‘Facebook has been very bad for our country’
When it comes to social media apps, Trump’s campaign comments suggest he’s more concerned with TikTok rival Meta.
In his March interview with “Squawk Box,” Trump said Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, posed a much bigger problem than TikTok. He also said a TikTok ban would only benefit Meta, which he labeled “an enemy of the people.”
“Facebook has been very bad for our country, especially when it comes to elections,” Trump said.
But Trump’s negative views on Meta may have changed after comments by CEO Mark Zuckerberg over the past few months, Cornell’s Kreps said.
Zuckerberg described the photo of Trump raising his fist following a failed assassination attempt in July as “one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life.” And after Trump’s win, Zuckerberg congratulated him, saying he was looking forward to working with the president-elect and his administration.
“My sense as an armchair psychologist of Trump is that he really likes people who sing his praises, and so his view on Zuckerberg and Meta, I would imagine, has changed,” Kreps said. “He might then just revert to his American economic nationalism here and say, ‘Let’s protect American industry and continue with the Chinese ban.'”
Meta didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Maintaining support of the TikTok ban could also win Trump political favor with lawmakers concerned about China’s global political and business influence, said Milton Mueller, a professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy.
“I don’t see him scoring big points politically by standing up for TikTok,” Mueller said, noting that few lawmakers, like Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., have opposed the ban.
Even if Trump does provide a lifeline for TikTok, it’s unclear how much damage that would do to his administration since many politicians are reluctant to publicly criticize him, Le said.
“They’re not going to challenge him because he just got so much power,” Le said.
Since launching his TikTok account in June, Trump has amassed over 14 million followers. Given his social media savvy, Trump may not want to make a decision that results in him losing the public attention and influence he’s gained on TikTok, Le said.
A worker delivers Amazon packages in San Francisco on Oct. 24, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Amazon on Thursday announced Prime members can access new fixed pricing for treatment of conditions like erectile dysfunction and men’s hair loss, its latest effort to compete with other direct-to-consumer marketplaces such as Hims & Hers Health and Ro.
Shares of Hims & Hers fell as much as 17% on Thursday, on pace for its worst day.
Amazon said in a blog post that Prime members can see the cost of a telehealth visit and their desired treatment before they decide to proceed with care for five common issues. Patients can access treatment for anti-aging skin care starting at $10 a month; motion sickness for $2 per use; erectile dysfunction at $19 a month; eyelash growth at $43 a month, and men’s hair loss for $16 a month by using Amazon’s savings benefit Prime Rx at checkout.
Amazon acquired primary care provider One Medical for roughly $3.9 billion in July 2022, and Thursday’s announcement builds on its existing pay-per-visit telehealth offering. Video visits through the service cost $49, and messaging visits cost $29 where available. Users can get treatment for more than 30 common conditions, including sinus infection and pink eye.
Medications filled through Amazon Pharmacy are eligible for discounted pricing and will be delivered to patients’ doors in standard Amazon packaging. Prime members will pay for the consultation and medication, but there are no additional fees, the blog post said.
Amazon has been trying to break into the lucrative health-care sector for years. The company launched its own online pharmacy in 2020 following its acquisition of PillPack in 2018. Amazon introduced, and later shuttered, a telehealth service called Amazon Care, as well as a line of health and wellness devices.
The company has also discontinued a secretive effort to develop an at-home fertility tracker, CNBC reported Wednesday.
Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning says censorship is still “a dominant threat,” advocating for a more decentralized internet to help better protect individuals online.
Her comments come amid ongoing tension linked to online safety rules, with some tech executives recently seeking to push back over content moderation concerns.
Speaking to CNBC’s Karen Tso at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon, Portugal, on Wednesday, Manning said that one way to ensure online privacy could be “decentralized identification,” which gives individuals the ability to control their own data.
“Censorship is a dominant threat. I think that it is a question of who’s doing the censoring, and what the purpose is — and also censorship in the 21st century is more about whether or not you’re boosted through like an algorithm, and how the fine-tuning of that seems to work,” Manning said.
“I think that social media and the monopolies of social media have sort of gotten us used to the fact that certain things that drive engagement will be attractive,” she added.
“One of the ways that we can sort of countervail that is to go back to the more decentralized and distribute the internet of the early ’90s, but make that available to more people.”
Nym Technologies Chief Security Officer Chelsea Manning at a press conference held with Nym Technologies CEO Harry Halpin in the Media Village to present NymVPN during the second day of Web Summit on November 13, 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal.
Asked how tech companies could make money in such a scenario, Manning said there would have to be “a better social contract” put in place to determine how information is shared and accessed.
“One of the things about distributed or decentralized identification is that through encryption you’re able to sort of check the box yourself, instead of having to depend on the company to provide you with a check box or an accept here, you’re making that decision from a technical perspective,” Manning said.
‘No longer secrecy versus transparency’
Manning, who works as a security consultant at Nym Technologies, a company that specializes in online privacy and security, was convicted of espionage and other charges at a court-martial in 2013 for leaking a trove of secret military files to online media publisher WikiLeaks.
She was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but was later released in 2017, when former U.S. President Barack Obama commuted her sentence.
Asked to what extent the environment has changed for whistleblowers today, Manning said, “We’re at an interesting time because information is everywhere. We have more information than ever.”
She added, “Countries and governments no longer seem to invest the same amount of time and effort in hiding information and keeping secrets. What countries seem to be doing now is they seem to be spending more time and energy spreading misinformation and disinformation.”
Manning said the challenge for whistleblowers now is to sort through the information to understand what is verifiable and authentic.
“It’s no longer secrecy versus transparency,” she added.
LISBON, Portugal — British online lender Zopa is on track to double profits and increase annual revenue by more than a third this year amid bumper demand for its banking services, the company’s CEO told CNBC.
Zopa posted revenues of £222 million ($281.7 million) in 2023 and is expecting to cross the £300 million revenue milestone this year — that would mark a 35% annual jump.
The 2024 estimates are based on unaudited internal figures.
The firm also says it is on track to increase pre-tax profits twofold in 2024, after hitting £15.8 million last year.
Zopa, a regulated bank that is backed by Japanese giant SoftBank, has plans to venture into the world of current accounts next year as it looks to focus more on new products.
The company currently offers credit cards, personal loans and savings accounts that it offers through a mobile app — similar to other digital banks such as Monzo and Revolut which don’t operate physical branches.
“The business is doing really well. In 2024, we’ve hit or exceeded the plans across all metrics,” CEO Jaidev Janardana told CNBC in an interview Wednesday.
He said the strong performance is coming off the back of gradually improving sentiment in the U.K. economy, where Zopa operates exclusively.
Commenting on Britain’s macroeconomic conditions, Janardana said, “While it has been a rough few years, in terms of consumers, they have continued to feel the pain slightly less this year than last year.”
The market is “still tight,” he noted, adding that fintech offerings such as Zopa’s — which typically provide higher savings rates than high-street banks — become “more important” during such times.
“The proposition has become more relevant, and while it’s tight for customers, we have had to be much more constrained in terms of who we can lend to,” he said, adding that Zopa has still been able to grow despite that.
A big priority for the business going forward is product, Janardana said. The firm is developing a current account product which would allow users to spend and manage their money more easily, in a similar fashion to mainstream banking providers like HSBC and Barclays, as well as fintech upstarts such as Monzo.
“We believe that there is more that the consumer can have in the current account space,” Janardana said. “We expect that we will launch our current account with the general public sometime next year.”
Janardana said consumers can expect a “slick” experience from Zopa’s current account offering, including the ability to view and manage multiple account bank accounts from one interface and access to competitive savings rates.
IPO ‘not top of mind’
Zopa is one of many fintech companies that has been viewed as a potential IPO candidate. Around two years ago, the firm said that it was planning to go public, but later decided to put those plans on ice, as high interest rates battered technology stocks and the IPO market froze over in 2022.
Janardana said he doesn’t envision a public listing as an immediate priority, but noted he sees signs pointing toward a more favorable U.S. IPO market next year.
That should mean that Europe becomes more open to IPOs happening later in 2026, according to Janardana. He didn’t disclose where Zopa would end up going public.
“To be honest, it’s not the top of mind for me,” Janardana told CNBC. “I think we continue to be lucky to have supportive and long-term shareholders who support future growth as well.”
Last year, Zopa made two senior hires, appointing Peter Donlon, ex-chief technology officer at online card retailer Moonpig, as its own CTO. The firm also hired Kate Erb, a chartered accountant from KPMG, as its chief operating officer.
The company raised $300 million in a funding round led by Japanese tech investor SoftBank in 2021 and was last valued by investors at $1 billion.