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Co-founder and CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, speaks on stage during the opening night of Web Summit 2022.

Hugo Amaral | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

LISBON, Portugal — The boss of crypto exchange Binance says he wasn’t privy to Elon Musk’s thinking when the billionaire backed away from, and then revived, his takeover of Twitter.

Speaking on stage at the Web Summit technology conference in Lisbon, Portugal, Changpeng Zhao said he was “a little surprised” when he heard Musk had agreed to acquire the company after all.

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, is now one of Twitter’s equity backers, kicking in $500 million to help Musk buy the company. Zhao has expressed his hopes to bring Twitter into “Web3,” a term the technology industry uses to describe the next generation of the internet.

“It’s very hard to predict what Elon will do next,” Zhao, who goes by “CZ” online, told the audience on the opening night of Web Summit Tuesday. “The deal was on, the deal was off, the deal was on. It’s OK, we’re committed on our support.”

Crypto enthusiasts want to remake the internet with 'Web3.' Here's what that means

“For me, large deals like this, there’s so many different factors involved. I’m not directly involved in what he’s thinking … There’s so many different little things that could go one way or another, negotiations, changes of minds.”

Zhao added that he wasn’t bothered by Musk’s attempts to wriggle his way out of the takeover.

“When we invest in a deal, we’re very comfortable if the deal goes through, we’re very comfortable if the deal doesn’t go through,” he said.

The “number one reason” for him to buy the social media firm was to make it a “free speech platform,” he said.

The protracted saga over Musk’s purchase of Twitter drew to a close last month when Musk agreed to a final deal with the company.

Having initially reversed his decision to buy the company due to concerns over suspicious accounts, he subsequently made a renewed offer, in large part to avoid a contentious legal battle with company management, which sued to force him to buy it after he backed out.

He has since dissolved the Twitter board, fired some of its top executives and made himself the CEO. Musk is already discussing plans to improve the platform’s monetization efforts, including adding a fee for verified users. Initial reports suggested he would charge users $20 for a “blue tick” badge on their profiles, but his latest tweets suggest he is leaning toward $8 instead.

Zhao said he had heard of Musk’s desire to introduce a fee for verification badges but wasn’t aware of the latest developments.

“Elon Musk’s probably a hard guy for me to predict,” he said. “I’m not the CEO of Twitter. We’re an investor in Twitter but I’m not running it.”

Zhao added he shared Musk’s desire to promote free speech on the platform and purge it of bots and suspicious accounts. “Twitter is the global town square,” he said.

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Benioff says he’s ‘inspired’ by Palantir, but takes another jab at its prices

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Benioff says he's 'inspired' by Palantir, but takes another jab at its prices

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on what the market is getting wrong about AI

Marc Benioff is keeping an eye on Palantir.

The co-founder and CEO of sales and customer service management software company Salesforce is well aware that investors are betting big on Palantir, which offers data management software to businesses and government agencies.

“Oh my gosh. I am so inspired by that company,” Benioff told CNBC’s Morgan Brennan in a Tuesday interview at Goldman Sachs‘ Communacopia+Technology conference in San Francisco. “I mean, not just because they have 100 times, you know, multiple on their revenue, which I would love to have that too. Maybe it’ll have 1000 times on their revenue soon.”

Salesforce, a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, remains 10 times larger than Palantir by revenue, with over $10 billion in revenue during the latest quarter. But Palantir is growing 48%, compared with 10% for Salesforce.

Benioff added that Palantir’s prices are “the most expensive enterprise software I’ve ever seen.”

“Maybe I’m not charging enough,” he said.

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It wasn’t Benioff’s first time talking about Palantir. Last week, Benioff referenced Palantir’s “extraordinary” prices in an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, saying Salesforce offers a “very competitive product at a much lower cost.”

The next day, TBPN podcast hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays asked for a response from Alex Karp, Palantir’s co-founder and CEO.

“We are very focused on value creation, and we ask to be modestly compensated for that value,” Karp said.

The companies sometimes compete for government deals, and Benioff touted a recent win over Palantir for a U.S. Army contract.

Palantir started in 2003, four years after Salesforce. But while Salesforce went public in 2004, Palantir arrived on the New York Stock Exchange in 2020.

Palantir’s market capitalization stands at $406 billion, while Salesforce is worth $231 billion. And as one of the most frequently traded stocks on Robinhood, Palantir is popular with retail investors.

Salesforce shares are down 27% this year, the worst performance in large-cap tech.

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Salesforce and Palantir year to date stock chart.

We're seeing an incredible transformation in enterprise, says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

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Gemini, the Winklevoss’ crypto exchange, pops more than 40% in Nasdaq debut

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Gemini, the Winklevoss' crypto exchange, pops more than 40% in Nasdaq debut

Gemini Co-founders Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss attend the company’s IPO at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City, U.S., Sept. 12, 2025.

Jeenah Moon | Reuters

Shares of Gemini Space Station soared more than 40% on Thursday after the exchange operator raised $425 million in an initial public offering.

The stock opened at $37.01 on the Nasdaq after its IPO priced at $28. At one point, shares traded as high as $40.71.

The New York-based company priced its IPO late Thursday above this week’s expected range of $24 to $26, and an initial range of between $17 and $19. That valued the company at some $3.3 billion before trading began.

Gemini, which primarily operates as a cryptocurrency exchange, was founded by the Winklevoss brothers in 2014 and held more than $21 billion of assets on its platform as of the end of July. Per its registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gemini posted a net loss of $159 million in 2024, and in the first half of this year, it lost $283 million.

The company also offers a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, credit cards with a crypto-back rewards program and a custody service for institutions.

Gemini co-founders Tyler & Cameron Winklevoss: Bitcoin is gold 2.0, can easily go 10x from here

The Winklevoss brothers were among the earliest bitcoin investors and first bitcoin billionaires. They have long held that bitcoin is a superior store of value than gold. On Friday morning, they told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” they see its price reaching $1 million a decade from now.

In 2013, they were the first to apply to launch a bitcoin exchange-traded fund, more than 10 years before the first bitcoin ETFs would eventually be approved. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s rejection of the application, which cited risk of fraud and market manipulation, set the stage for the bitcoin ETF debate in the years to come.

Even in the early days, when bitcoin was notorious for its extreme volatility and anti-establishment roots and shunned by Wall Street, the Winklevoss brothers were outspoken about the need for smart regulation that would establish rules for the crypto-led financial revolution.

Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:

(Learn the best 2026 strategies from inside the NYSE with Josh Brown and others at CNBC PRO Live. Tickets and info here.)

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Opendoor board chair Rabois says company is ‘bloated,’ needs to cut 85% of workforce

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Opendoor board chair Rabois says company is 'bloated,' needs to cut 85% of workforce

Opendoor chairman Keith Rabois: We're going to get back to merit and excellence

Opendoor co-founder and newly minted board chair Keith Rabois said remote work and a “bloated” workforce have been a drag on the company’s culture, as he vowed to slash headcount.

“There’s 1,400 employees at Opendoor. I don’t know what most of them do. We don’t need more than 200 of them,” Rabois told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” on Friday.

The online real-estate platform on Wednesday appointed former Shopify executive Kaz Nejatian as its new CEO after investor pressure caused his predecessor, Carrie Wheeler, to resign last month. Opendoor also named Rabois as chairman and said Eric Wu, who served as the company’s first CEO before stepping down in 2023, would return to the board.

The announcement sent Opendoor shares soaring 78% on Thursday, before the stock slid more than 12% on Friday. It is still up almost 500% this year, after an army of retail investors pushed up the stock price when hedge fund manager Eric Jackson began touting the company.

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Opendoor year-to-date stock chart.

Opendoor’s business involves using technology to buy and sell homes, pocketing the gains.

Nothing has fundamentally improved for the company since Jackson bought shares of Opendoor in July. Opendoor remains a cash-burning, low-margin business with meager near-term growth prospects.

Rabois said he has a “high level view of the strategy” that’s needed to transform Opendoor, and that the headcount reductions are necessary to resolve the company’s cash burn.

“The culture was broken,” Rabois said. “These people were working remotely. That doesn’t work. This company was founded on the principle of innovation and working together in person. We’re going to return to our roots.”

He added that Opendoor “went down this DEI path,” referring to diversity, equity and inclusion.

“We’re gonna fix all that,” Rabois said.

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