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Tether CEO talks about the USDT and ensuring legal use

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer, is preparing to launch a U.S.-based stablecoin as soon as this year, as its CEO ramps up his presence in Washington to shape crypto regulation.

In an interview with CNBC this week, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino revealed that the company is working on plans to issue a new dollar-pegged stablecoin in the U.S. as soon as this year. The move comes as Tether, once accused of being a criminal’s ‘go-to cryptocurrency’ – rebrands itself as a partner to American lawmakers and law enforcement.

“A domestic stablecoin would be different from the international stable coin,” Ardoino told CNBC’s Dan Murphy at the Token2049 conference in Dubai on Wednesday. “It depends on the timeline of the final legislation… but we are looking at that by the end of the year, or early next year at the fastest,” he said.

But the timing and tactics of that next step are raising eyebrows on Capitol Hill.

Ardoino’s recent charm offensive in Washington, which included private meetings with lawmakers, a Capitol Hill lunch with Senator Bill Hagerty and parties with crypto insiders, according to a New York Times report, has put a spotlight on Tether amid the pro-crypto shift under President Trump.

That influence may now be helping shape key legislation, including the GOP-backed GENIUS Act, which critics say includes loopholes that benefit Tether and other foreign issuers – such as provisions allowing operations in the U.S. if they agree to work with law enforcement.

The logos of the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), the stablecoin Tether (USDT) and Binance Coin (BNB) can be seen on the trading platform CoinMarketCap.

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Tether, headquartered in El Salvador, has made legal cooperation key to its lobbying narrative despite a history of regulatory penalties.

“There is no company… even in the traditional financial system, that has such a breadth of collaboration with law enforcement,” Ardoino said. “We are always trying to do better and more to block criminal activity…. we have much better tools than the traditional financial system and we’re proving that everyday.”

Ardoino also addressed concerns about the firm’s ability to back its digital assets. In 2021, Tether settled with the New York attorney general for $18.5 million over allegations it lied about its reserves. It now publishes attestation reports and holds billions in U.S. Treasuries – managed by Wall Street heavyweight Cantor Fitzgerald – and Ardoino insists the business is well capitalised in the event of a market shock.

“We are very close to having $120 billion in U.S. Treasuries in our reserves,” he said. “We have $7 billion in excess equity within the company capital. That is really unprecedented and I wish financial institutions in the traditional financial system would at least try to copy us to provide better products for their consumers.”

Tether’s latest attestation report confirmed the firm holds about $120 billion in U.S. Treasuries. Its first quarter independent auditors’ report confirmed assets and reserves exceed liabilities by almost $5.6 billion, a decrease from more than $7 billion in its December audit. 

Tether’s partnership with Cantor, now run by the sons of U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, has also raised questions. Ardoino told CNBC he doesn’t speak with Secretary Lutnick “because there are proper walls given the potential conflict of interest,” but added “we have great relationships with many people in the U.S. and also now in Washington.” 

Eric Trump and his older brother Donald Trump Jr. recently announced plans to launch a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin through World Liberty Financial, the finance venture backed by President Donald Trump.

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Tesla shares climb as Musk pledges to be ‘super focused’ on companies ahead of Starship launch

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Tesla shares climb as Musk pledges to be 'super focused' on companies ahead of Starship launch

Elon Musk listens as reporters ask U.S. President Donald Trump and South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa questions during a press availability in the Oval Office at the White House on May 21, 2025 in Washington, DC.

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Tesla shares gained about 5% on Tuesday after CEO Elon Musk over the weekend reiterated his intent to home in on his businesses ahead of the latest SpaceX rocket launch.

The billionaire wrote in a post to his social media platform X that he needs to be “super focused” on X, artificial intelligence company xAI and Tesla as they launch “critical technologies” on the heels of a temporary outage.

“As evidenced by the uptime issues this week, major operational improvements need to be made,” he wrote, adding that he would return to “spending 24/7” at work. “The failover redundancy should have worked, but did not.”

An outage over the weekend briefly shuttered the social media platform formerly known as Twitter for thousands of users, according to DownDetector. Earlier in the week, the platform suffered a data center outage. X has suffered a series of outages since Musk purchased the platform in 2022.

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Musk has previously indicated plans to step away from his political work and prioritize his businesses.

During Tesla’s April earnings call he said that he would “significantly” reduce his time running President Donald Trump‘s Department of Government Efficiency.

In the last election cycle, Musk devoted time and billions of dollars to political causes and toward electing Trump in 2024. However, a story over the weekend from the Washington Post, citing sources familiar with the matter, said that Musk has grown disillusioned with politics and wants to return to managing his businesses.

Last week, Musk said in an interview at the Qatar Economic Forum that he planned to spend “a lot less” on campaign donations going forward.

The comments from Musk precede SpaceX’s Starship rocket Tuesday evening. Pressure is on for the company after two Starship rockets exploded in January and March.

Ahead of the launch, Musk announced an all hands livestream on X at 1 p.m.

Tesla is still facing fallout from Musk’s political foray, with protests at showrooms and other brand damage.

In April, Tesla sold 7,261 cars in Europe, down 49% from last year, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association.

WATCH: Elon Musk: We have seen a major rebound in demand

Elon Musk: We have seen a major rebound in demand

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Trump advisor Hassett says ‘we don’t want to harm’ Apple with iPhone tariffs

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Trump advisor Hassett says 'we don't want to harm' Apple with iPhone tariffs

NEC Director Kevin Hassett on Trump's iPhone tariff threat: In the end, we don't want to harm Apple

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said Tuesday that the Trump administration does not want to “harm Apple” with tariffs.

“Everybody is trying to make it seem like it’s a catastrophe if there’s a tiny little tariff on them right now, to try to negotiate down the tariffs,” Hassett told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday. “In the end, we’ll see what happens, we’ll see what the update is, but we don’t want to harm Apple.”

Hassett’s comments come after President Donald Trump said in a social media post that Apple will have to pay a tariff of 25% or more for iPhones made outside the U.S. Apple has historically manufactured its products in foreign countries including China, India and Vietnam.

“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” Trump wrote in the post. “If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S. Thank your for your attention to this matter!”

By some estimates, a U.S.-made iPhone could cost as much as $3,500.

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“If you think that Apple has a factory some place that’s got a set number of iPhones that it produces and it needs to sell them no matter what, then Apple will bear those tariffs, not consumers, because it’s an elastic supply,” Hassett said.

Hasset’s comments continue the administration’s push to pressure companies to shoulder the cost burden of Trump’s tariffs, instead of raising prices for consumers.

Earlier this month, Trump told retail giant Walmart to “EAT THE TARIFFS” after the company warned it would have to pass those added costs on.

Shares of Apple were up more than 1% Tuesday.

Apple did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

WATCH: NEC Director Kevin Hassett on Trump’s iPhone tariff threat: In the end, we don’t want to harm Apple

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Ambience announces OpenAI-powered medical coding model that outperforms physicians

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Ambience announces OpenAI-powered medical coding model that outperforms physicians

Dr. Priti Patel, CMIO at John Muir Health, uses Ambience before starting a patient encounter.

Courtesy of Ambience Healthcare

Artificial intelligence startup Ambience Healthcare on Tuesday announced a new medical coding model that outperforms doctors by 27%.

Ambience uses AI to draft clinical notes in real-time as doctors consensually record their visits with patients. The company used tools from OpenAI to build the new model.

The startup is part of a fiercely competitive market that has taken off as health-care executives search for solutions to help reduce staff burnout and daunting administrative workloads. 

The company’s new model can listen to patient encounters and identify ICD-10 codes, which are internationally standardized classifications for different diseases and conditions. There are about 70,000 ICD-10 codes that are regularly updated and used to facilitate billing and other reporting processes in health care. 

Ambience said its new ICD-10 model can reduce billing mistakes and help clinicians and professional coders work more efficiently. The model notched a “27% relative improvement over physician benchmarks,” according to a release on Tuesday.  

“We’re not replacing doctors or coders,” Brendan Fortuner, Ambience’s head of engineering, told CNBC in an interview. “What we’re doing is we’re liberating them from administration, and we’re fixing mistakes that help make health care better, safer, more cost-effective.”

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Documenting ICD-10 codes has traditionally been a labor-intensive task in health care, but it’s a crucial way to track outcomes, mortalities and morbidities in a standardized way, said Dr. Will Morris, the chief medical officer of Ambience.

“If you think about it from a data perspective, it’s how you can compare and contrast clinician A to B, or health system A to B,” Morris said in an interview. “It’s the cornerstone for quality.”

Ambience’s technology is used at more than 40 health-care organizations, like Cleveland Clinic and UCSF Health. It has raised more than $100 million, according to PitchBook, from investors including Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz and the OpenAI Startup Fund. 

The company is reportedly seeking fresh capital at a valuation of over $1 billion, according to a report from The Information. Ambience declined to comment on the report. 

Ambience trained its new AI model using OpenAI’s reinforcement fine-tuning technology. This technology allows companies to tune OpenAI’s best reasoning models for very specific domains, like health care. 

To validate the model, Ambience tested it against a “gold panel” set of labels, the company said. The labels were established by a group of expert clinicians who evaluated complex clinical cases and came to an agreement on what the right codes were. 

Ambience’s AI platform for compliant documentation, CDI, and coding.

Courtesy of Ambience Healthcare

The company then recruited 18 different board-certified doctors and compared their performance on ICD-10 coding accuracy to the model’s performance. That comparison showed the Ambience technology performed 27% better than the physician baseline. 

“It shows for the first time that an AI system can actually surpass clinician experts at a very, very important administrative task, especially in coding,” Fortuner said. 

Ambience already has similar capabilities available for other medical codes like Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes, and Fortuner said it’s exploring how to tackle other areas like prior authorizations, utilization management and clinical trial matching. 

The company’s new ICD-10 model will roll out to customers over the summer.

“Getting it right at the point of care is a fundamental change,” Morris said.

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