Europe and the U.S. finally agree a landmark data-sharing pact — and it’s already under threat
The Privacy Shield Framework logo is displayed on a smartphone screen.
Pavlo Gonchar | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Businesses can continue transferring data from the European Union to the U.S. as normal after the two superpowers this week agreed a landmark data-sharing pact.
The framework, which replaces a previous agreement that was invalidated in 2020, is a major development with implications for U.S. tech giants, which rely on the pact to transfer data on their European users back to America.
Without it in place, these companies faced the risk of costly initiatives to process and store user data locally — or withdraw their business from the bloc altogether. So the agreement of the new rules will provide some relief to Meta and other U.S. companies which share gargantuan amounts of user data around the world.
However, the rules already face the threat of legal challenges from privacy activists, who are unhappy with the level of protection the measures offer European citizens. They say it isn’t that different from an earlier framework called Privacy Shield.
CNBC runs through all you need to know about the new EU-U.S. privacy framework, why it matters, and its chances of success.
What’s the new EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework?
The new data-sharing pact, called the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, aims to ensure that data can flow safely between the EU and U.S., without having to put in place additional data protection safeguards.
In a statement Monday, EU executive body the European Commission said it concluded that U.S. data protection laws offer an “adequate level of protection” for European citizens, and introduced new safeguards limiting access to EU data by U.S. intelligence services to only what is “necessary and proportionate.”
A new Data Protection Review Court will be established for Europeans to issue privacy complaints. It will have powers to order firms to delete users’ data if it finds the information collected was in breach of the new safeguards.
Why was a new data transfer agreement needed?
The Data Privacy Framework replaces a prior agreement, called Privacy Shield, which allowed companies to share data on Europeans to the U.S. for storage and processing locally in their domestic data centers.
This was struck down in July 2020, when the European Court of Justice, the EU’s top court, sided with Austrian privacy campaigner Max Schrems, who alleged U.S. law did not offer sufficient protection against surveillance by public authorities.
Schrems said that revelations from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden about U.S. surveillance meant that American data protection standards couldn’t be trusted.
He raised a complaint against the social network Facebook which, like many other firms, was transferring his and other user data to the States, as well as the Irish Data Protection Commission, which is Facebook’s main regulatory authority when it comes to data privacy in Europe.
It reached the European Court of Justice, which in 2015 ruled that the then Safe Harbour Agreement, a previous mechanism for allowing European users’ data to be moved to the U.S., was not valid and did not adequately protect European citizens.
It was replaced with the Privacy Shield, however, this was subsequently scrapped too.
In the meantime, companies have relied on separate mechanisms known as Standard Contractual Clauses to ensure they can still move data across the Atlantic.
These tools, too, are under threat.
The Irish DPC in May ruled that Meta’s use of SCCs for transfers of personal data to the U.S. is in breach of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. The U.S. tech giant was fined a record $1.3 billion.
Why does it matter?
Multinational companies operate in various jurisdictions, and they need to move data on their customers across borders in a way that’s both secure and complies with data protection regulations.
U.S. tech giants share data on their European users back home all the time. It’s part and parcel of the internet being an open, interconnected platform.
But the way data is handled by these tech companies has come under heavy scrutiny by regulators and privacy campaigners.
Meta, Google, Amazon and others collect huge amounts of data on their users, which they use to inform their content recommendation algorithms and personalize ads.
There have also been countless examples of scandals surrounding the misuse of people’s data by tech firms — not least Meta’s improper sharing of data with Cambridge Analytica, the controversial political consulting firm.
Europe has tough regulations when it comes to processing internet users’ data.
In 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, came into force introducing tough requirements for organizations to ensure they handle user data safely and securely. This is a law that applies across all the countries within the EU.
The U.S., on the other hand, does not have a singular federal data protection law in place that covers the privacy of all types of data.
Instead, individual U.S. states have come up with their own respective regulations for data privacy, with California leading the charge.
“There has been intense regulatory and political scrutiny on EU-U.S. data transfers, so there are notable differences in the U.S. law protections implemented to support the new framework,” Holger Lutz, partner at law firm Clifford Chance, told CNBC via email.
“Changes to U.S. law have been made in parallel to enhance protections for EU personal data and rights for EU citizens in connection with that data. Those protections are not limited to the new framework – they also protect EU-U.S. personal data transfers outside the framework, and can be taken into account when making such transfers based on other legal instruments such as the EU standard contractual clauses.”
Will it succeed?
The approval of a new data privacy framework means that businesses will now have certainty over how they can process data across borders going forward.
Had there not been an agreement, some companies may have been forced to close their operations in Europe. Indeed, Meta warned this was a risk in February 2022.
Still, obstacles lie ahead.
Schrems, the Austrian privacy activist who helped bring down Privacy Shield, has already said he plans to launch a legal challenge to rip up the new data-sharing pact.
In a statement, Schrems said his law firm Noyb has “various options for a challenge already in the drawer.”
“We currently expect this to be back at the Court of Justice by the beginning of next year,” Schrems said.
“The Court of Justice could then even suspend the new deal while it is reviewing the substance of it. For the sake of legal certainty and the rule of law we will then get an answer if the Commission’s tiny improvements were enough or not.”
Privacy activists say the measures are not sufficient as U.S. privacy laws do not extend protections to non-U.S. citizens, meaning people in the EU don’t have the same level of protection.
“Whether the framework is successful will be a matter of whether the European courts consider the protections for personal data in the US do enough to deliver essential equivalence to the EU protections,” Lutz of Clifford Chance told CNBC.
“Businesses will be carefully considering these potential challenges in their scenario planning.”
Apple CEO Tim Cook said price hikes on the newest iPhone models aren’t tied to President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff plans.
“There’s no increase for tariffs in the prices to be totally clear,” Cook told CNBC’s Jim Cramer from Apple’s Fifth Avenue store location in New York City, as the latest iPhone model launched in stores worldwide.
It is one of the first instances in which Cook has decisively addressed tariffs in relation to iPhone prices.
Earlier this month, Apple increased the price of its iPhone 17 Pro model by $100, while maintaining the prices of its entry-level phones. It also introduced an Air model that replaced the Plus at steeper price point.
Many analysts had widely anticipated price hikes despite Cook’s attempts to dodge tariffs.
To circumvent the levies, Apple has pivoted its supply chain to import iPhones to the U.S. from lower tariff countries, such as India and Vietnam. Apple has historically produced a majority of its products in China.
Cook has also made public appearances with Trump as the company commits at least $600 billion toward bolstering U.S. manufacturing and supporting suppliers.
During the June quarter, Cook revealed that the company took an $800-million hit from costs tied to tariffs.
At the same time, Apple faces questions about its slow AI rollout, as well as rising competition in international markets such as China.
“We have AI everywhere in the phone,” Cook told CNBC on Friday. “We just don’t call it” that.
A customer holds up the new orange-colored iPhone 17 Pro Max smartphone inside an Apple retail store in Chongqing, China, on September 19, 2025.
Cheng Xin | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The iPhone 17 hit store shelves worldwide on Friday, drawing lines from Beijing to London.
But beyond the launch buzz, Apple is under pressure to prove itself, grappling with questions over its artificial intelligence plans, as well as increasing competition.
Products on display for the first time include the iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and iPhone Air, as well as new Apple Watch and AirPods models.
While they were available for preorders in the U.S. from Sept. 12, the global launch holds particular significance as Apple takes on growing competition in overseas markets.
China competition
One of those markets is China, where customers waited for hours — and even overnight — to get their hands on the new iPhone
First in line at the Apple flagship Store in Sanlitun, Beijing, this morning, was Liu — he did not wish to be identified by his full name — who told CNBC that he had been queuing since 11 p.m. local time Thursday for his chance to pick up the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
A customer shows off his new iPhone 17 at Apple’s Regent Street store on Sept. 19.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
He said he was excited about the smartphone’s new color and exterior design, which Apple says has improved the phone’s heat dissipation.
Notably, Liu also said he has changed to Apple from Huawei in recent years, saying he preferred the iPhone for daily use and entertainment.
Another person, who wished to be identified only by his surname, Yang — an erstwhile Xiaomi user — said he had been waiting to get his hands on the latest iPhone, preferring its operating system.
Both Liu and Yang expect many Chinese residents to buy their first iPhone this year due to the new features, including larger internal storage.
If that trend were to pan out, it would be welcome news for Apple, which has lost market share in China to players such as Huawei and Xiaomi.
After years of leadership in the region, the iPhone-maker now only holds 10% of the Chinese smartphone market, trailing local players like Oppo, Huawei, Xiaomi and others, according to data from Omdia.
Apple’s latest iPhone models are shown on display at its Regent Street, London store on the launch day of the iPhone 17.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
So far, the signs are positive for the iPhone 17 series in China. Last Friday, JD.com — one of China’s largest ecommerce platforms — saw the first minute of iPhone 17 series preorders surpass the first-day preorder volume of last year’s iPhone 16 series, the company reported.
At 10 a.m. local time on Friday, JD.com said that iPhone 7 trade-in sales were four times higher than the same period last year.
Other markets
In the much smaller but affluent market of Singapore, the redesigned iPhone 17s were also met with fervor, with long lines forming outside Apple outlets across the city.
Iman Isa and Daniel Muhamed Nuv, two young professionals in Singapore, both queued for hours at Apple’s outlet in the city’s iconic Marina Bay mall to buy iPhone 17 Pros, which they said were their first new phones in years.
Citing the fresh design, longer battery life and improved camera, they said the new phones offer enough to keep them loyal to the Apple ecosystem.
Based on preorder times and consumer feedback, the initial global demand for the iPhone 17 series appears largely positive, said Le Xuan Chiew, a research manager at Omdia.
The iPhone 17 base model in particular has outperformed expectations, as the pricing at launch remained unchanged from its predecessor despite upgrades in memory storage, Chiew said.
In Singapore, customers arriving at Apple outlets had also been looking to nab some of the company’s new AirPods Pro 3, citing the product’s live translation feature as a major selling point.
In London, lines were notably longer than they were at last year’s launch of the iPhone 16, and customers appeared more interested in the premium offerings — the Pro and Pro Max models — this time around.
People lined up outside Apple’s Regent Street, London store on Sept. 19 to get their hands on the latest iPhone 17.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
“For the last five years, I’ve been in a pattern of constantly upgrading my phone, because every year Apple is bringing something new to the table,” one customer, Jasmine, said. “I just love having that experience of Apple every year.”
Meanwhile, Michael, who described himself as a content creator, said he was drawn by the battery and camera.
“I thought about going for the [iPhone] Air, but I just don’t know whether or not the battery is going to be able to hold up. And that single camera? I don’t know, it’s just a little bit off-putting on the back,” he said of Apple’s thin iPhone 17 offering.
Apple intelligence
A successful iPhone 17 launch could help reassure Apple investors after a somewhat underwhelming rollout of its artificial intelligence features, which began late last year.
Speaking to CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” last week, Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight, lauded Apple’s latest product launches but said the company now needed to deliver on artificial intelligence.
“There is no question that Apple needs to deliver on AI,” he said, noting that the company had “dropped the ball” last year by making big promises that failed to materialize.
“Apple has to catch up [in AI], but right now, I think they’ve got enough runway to be able to cope in the intervening period.”
– CNBC’s Eunice Yoon contributed to this report
Technology
Nvidia just spent over $900 million to hire Enfabrica CEO, license AI startup’s technology
Co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., Jensen Huang attends the 9th edition of the VivaTech trade show in Paris on June 11, 2025.
Chesnot | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
Nvidia has just shelled out over $900 million to hire Enfabrica CEO Rochan Sankar and other employees at the artificial intelligence hardware startup, and to license the company’s technology, CNBC has learned.
In a deal reminiscent of recent AI talent acquisitions made by Meta and Google, Nvidia is paying cash and stock in the transaction, according to two people familiar with the arrangement. The deal closed last week, and Enfabrica CEO Rochan Sankar has joined Nvidia, said the people, who asked not to be named because the matter is private.
Nvidia has served as the backbone of the AI boom that began with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022. The company’s graphics processing units (GPUs), which are generally purchased in large clusters, power the training of large language models and allow for big cloud providers to offer AI services to clients.
Enfabrica, founded in 2019, says its technology can connect more than 100,000 GPUs together. It’s a solution that could help Nvidia offer integrated systems around its chips so clusters can effectively serve as a single computer.
A spokesperson for Nvidia declined to comment, and Enfabrica didn’t provide a comment for this story.
While Nvidia’s earlier AI chips like the A100 were single processors slotted into servers, its most recent products come in tall racks with 72 GPUs installed working together. That’s the kind of system inside the $4 billion data center in Wisconsin that Microsoft announced on Thursday.
Nvidia previously invested in Enfabrica as part of a $125 million Series B round in 2023 that was led by Atreides Management. The company didn’t disclose its valuation at the time, but said that it was a fivefold increase from its Series A funding.
Late last year, Enfabrica raised another $115 million from investors including Spark Capital, Arm, Samsung and Cisco. According to PitchBook, the post-money valuation was about $600 million.
Tech giants Meta, Google, Microsoft and Amazon have all poured money into hiring top AI talent through deals that resemble acquihires. The transactions allow the companies to bring in top engineers and researchers without worrying about the regulatory hassles that come with acquisitions.
The biggest such deal came in June, when Meta spent $14.3 billion on Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang and others and took a 49% stake in the AI startup. A month later, Google announced an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf, and other research and development employees in a $2.4 billion deal that also included licensing fees.
Last year, Google made a similar deal to bring in the founders of Character.AI. Microsoft did the same thing for Inflection, as did Amazon for Adept.
While Nvidia has been a big investor in AI technologies and infrastructure, it hasn’t been a significant acquirer. The company’s only billion-dollar-plus deal was for Israeli chip designer Mellanox, a $6.9 billion purchase announced in 2019. Much of Nvidia’s current Blackwell product lineup is enabled by networking technology that it acquired through that acquisition.
Nvidia tried to buy chip design company Arm, but that deal collapsed in 2022 due to regulatory pressure. In the past year, Nvidia closed a $700 million purchase of Run:ai, an Israeli company whose technology helps software makers optimize their infrastructure for AI.
On Thursday, Nvidia announced one of its most sizable investments to date. The chipmaker said it’s taken a $5 billion stake in Intel, and announced that the two companies will collaborate on AI processors. Nvidia also said this week that it invested close to $700 million in U.K. data center startup Nscale.
— Correction: A prior version of this story mistakenly included the name of a company as an investor in Enfabrica.
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