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Elon Musk said that his company SpaceX cannot fund the Starlink service in Ukraine “indefinitely.”

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Twitter owner Elon Musk claimed on Monday in a series of tweets that Apple had threatened to remove the Twitter app from the App Store as part of its app review moderation process.

“Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why,” Musk tweeted.

In other tweets fired off on Monday morning, he called Apple’s App Store fees a “secret 30% tax,” and ran a poll asking if “Apple should publish all censorship actions it has taken that affect its customers.” He also claimed that Apple has pulled most of its advertising from Twitter.

Apple’s App Store is the only way to distribute software to iPhones. If the Twitter app were pulled, the social network would lose one of its main distribution platforms, although the service is available for the web.

In addition, Apple requires iPhone app makers to pay between 15% and 30% of any digital goods sold through their apps. Musk has said one of his plans for Twitter is to raise billions of dollars from subscriptions, such as Twitter Blue, which is offered through the iPhone app. If it were to grow to Musk’s goals, Apple would collect hundreds of millions of dollars in the process.

Apple has faced challenges to its App Store fees and policies from companies such as Spotify and Epic Games, but Musk is no stranger to attracting worldwide attention, and may represent Apple’s biggest challenge to its control over iPhone app distribution so far.

Apple declined to comment about Musk’s tweets.

But there are signs that Apple is watching the social network closely to see if it violates any App Store policies.

Representatives for unnamed app stores, which include Apple’s App Store as well as Google Play for Android devices, reached out to Twitter earlier this month after Musk took over and the site saw a wave of hate speech, according to a New York Times op-ed by Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety.

Phil Schiller, Apple’s former chief marketer who oversees App Review, apparently deleted his Twitter account earlier this month after Musk took over.

Phillip Shoemaker, the former head of Apple’s app review and current CEO of Identity.com, said Schiller’s move to delete his account reminded him of a company making moves to “prepare for war.” He believes that Apple’s app review department is keeping a close eye on Twitter’s content moderation under Musk to see if more questionable content, such as porn, slips through.

Apple’s recent moves are “like when you remove troops from a country before you attack,” Shoemaker said. “You’re thinking you’re going to have to pull these apps from the store.”

Where Twitter might fall afoul of Apple’s rules

There are two primary reasons why Apple’s App Store might take a closer look at Twitter under its public guidelines:

  • Apple requires apps with user-generated content such as Twitter to have strong content moderation systems in place. Insufficient content moderation was the reason why Apple booted Parler, a smaller Twitter competitor, in 2020. Musk has reportedly vastly downsized Twitter’s content moderation workforce.
  • Apple requires apps to pay fees between 30% and 15% for digital purchases. When Epic Games put in a system to get around Apple’s cut, Apple removed it. If Twitter were to pull a similar move, it might force Apple’s hand.

There are also other reasons why Twitter might fall afoul of Apple’s rules, including its insistence that adult content not be discoverable by default. Twitter remains one of the most prominent social networks that allows adult content, opening up gray areas for App Store delays or issues.

Apple’s App Store uses employees to review each app and update that goes on the platform. The app reviewers often send short responses highlighting issues without being explicit about what apps need to do to pass, CNBC previously reported.

Musk has tweaked Apple for years, and seems to enjoy doing so. He has complained about Apple’s app store fees in the past, although the Tesla app doesn’t allow in-app purchases. He has also sparred with Apple’s purported plan to build electric cars, although Apple’s secretive project has never shipped a car.

In 2015, Musk teased Apple saying that it only hires rejected Tesla employees and that he calls Apple the “Tesla Graveyard.”

But Musk’s moves on Monday go beyond teasing and rivalry, and suggest that he may be prepared to fight a lengthy public relations battle over Apple’s rules. In one tweet, he posted a meme in which a car veers off the highway under a road sign offering two choices: “Pay 30%” and “Go to war.” The car was choosing the latter option.

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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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