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Hate speech continues to flourish on the messaging service formerly known as Twitter, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

The CCDH said Wednesday that X fails to remove posts that contain hate speech despite being notified that the content violates the company’s current hateful conduct guidelines.

The CCDH’s report comes a little after one month after X sued the nonprofit over allegations that some of the group’s previous research was derived from unscrupulous methods, including the use of illegally scraped Twitter data.

CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed declined to comment about the specifics of the lawsuit, but said the CCDH did not use data-scraping tools to conduct its latest research and instead “simply went in and had a look.”

For this report, the CCDH collected 300 posts spread from 100 accounts that contained hateful content, such as posts urging people to “stop race mixing” and messages stating that Black people are intrinsically violent. About 140 of those 300 posts contained antisemitic content, including images of Nazi swastikas, messages supporting Holocaust denial and notes promoting conspiracy theories related to Jews.

The CCDH said it reported the posts to X via the company’s user-reporting tools on Aug. 30 and 31. When the researchers followed up a week later, they found that X had only taken down 41 posts, meaning that 259 posts containing hateful content were still active, including one that that referred to Adolf Hitler as “A hero who will help secure a future for white children!” Additionally, 90 of the 100 accounts that were responsible for sending the posts were still active.

Major companies like Apple and Disney ran online ads on X that appeared next to the hateful content, the CCDH report said. One ad from Walt Disney World ran below a post that insulted Black Americans while an Apple ad was displayed above a post insinuating Holocaust denial. Another ad from the corporate server company Supermicro was sandwiched between two pro-Nazi posts that contained images of a swastika.

“What this shows is that it takes out any excuses of this being about capacity to detect problematic content,” CCDH’s Ahmed told CNBC. “We’ve done the detection for you, and here’s how you responded, or here’s how we can see that you responded.”

Ahmed added, “Leaving up content like this is a choice, and that invites the question: Are you proud of the choices you’re making?”

While X’s process for users to report hateful content is “straightforward,” Ahmed said, “the problem is that people on the other end of the alarm bell either aren’t listening, they’ve got earplugs in and they’re ignoring everything, or they are being incredibly selective in what they choose to respond to.”

X did not respond to a request for comment, and instead pointed to a post saying that “based on the limited information we’ve seen, the CCDH is asserting two false claims – that X did not take action on violative posts and that violative posts reached a lot of people on our platform.”

“We either remove content that violates our policies or label and restrict the reach of certain posts,” the company said in the X post, adding that it would review the report when it is released and “take action as needed.”

While he didn’t comment on the specifics, Ahmed told CNBC that he believes X’s lawsuit was intended to place a financial burden on the CCDH, and that he estimates it will cost the nonprofit “half a million just to defend it.”

X attorneys have previously said that the CCDH’s prior research was an attempt to “to drive advertisers off Twitter by smearing the company and its owner.”

Last week, Elon Musk said that he was considering filing a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League, which he claimed was “trying to kill this platform by falsely accusing it & me of being anti-Semitic.” Musk attributed a 60% decline in X’s U.S. advertising revenue to a pressure campaign from the ADL.

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt soon responded by saying that Musk was merely issuing a “threat of a frivolous lawsuit” and said that the billionaire’s behavior was “flat out dangerous and deeply irresponsible,” referring to Musk engaging with “a highly toxic, antisemitic campaign” that helped foster the #BanTheADL campaign to trend on the messaging service.

Last Friday evening, X CEO Linda Yaccarino wrote a post on X saying that “X opposes antisemitism in all its forms” and that “Antisemitism is evil and X will always work to fight it on our platform.” Yaccarino’s post also pointed to a corporate blog post detailing the ways X is addressing antisemitic content on its platform, including improving automatic enforcement and providing training support for its “frontline moderators.”

Watch: If you don’t have the whole cloth of Musk you won’t get the innovation

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USDC stablecoin issuer Circle files for IPO as public markets open to crypto

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USDC stablecoin issuer Circle files for IPO as public markets open to crypto

Jeremy Allaire, Co-Founder and CEO, Circle 

David A. Grogan | CNBC

Circle, the company behind the USDC stablecoin, has filed for an initial public offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The S1 lays the groundwork for Circle’s long-anticipated entry into the public markets.

While the filing does not yet disclose the number of shares or a price range, sources told Fortune that Circle plans to move forward with a public filing in late April and is targeting a market debut as early as June.

JPMorgan Chase and Citi are reportedly serving as lead underwriters, and the company is seeking a valuation between $4 billion and $5 billion, according to Fortune.

This marks Circle’s second attempt at going public. A prior SPAC merger with Concord Acquisition Corp collapsed in late 2022 amid regulatory challenges. Since then, Circle has made strategic moves to position itself closer to the heart of global finance — including the announcement last year that it would relocate its headquarters from Boston to One World Trade Center in New York City.

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Circle is best known as the issuer of USDC, the world’s second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization.

Pegged one-to-one to the U.S. dollar and backed by cash and short-term Treasury securities, USDC has roughly $60 billion in circulation.

Circle is best known as the issuer of USDC, the world’s second-largest stablecoin by market capitalization.

Pegged one-to-one to the U.S. dollar and backed by cash and short-term Treasury securities, USDC has roughly $60 billion in circulation. It makes up about 26% of the total market cap for stablecoins, behind Tether‘s 67% dominance. Its market cap has grown 36% this year, however, compared with Tether’s 5% growth.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said on the company’s most recent earnings call that it has a “stretch goal to make USDC the number 1 stablecoin.” 

The company’s push into public markets reflects a broader moment for the crypto industry, which is navigating renewed political favor under a more crypto-friendly U.S. administration. The stablecoin sector is ramping up as the industry grows increasingly confident that the crypto market will get its first piece of U.S. legislation passed and implemented this year, focusing on stablecoins.

Stablecoins’ growth could have investment implications for crypto exchanges like Robinhood and Coinbase as they integrate more of them into crypto trading and cross-border transfers. Coinbase also has an agreement with Circle to share 50% of the revenue of its USDC stablecoin.

The stablecoin market has grown about 11% so far this year and about 47% in the past year, and has become a “systemically important” part of the crypto market, according to Bernstein. Historically, digital assets in this sector have been used for trading and as collateral in decentralized finance (DeFi), and crypto investors watch them closely for evidence of demand, liquidity and activity in the market.

More recently, however, rhetoric around stablecoins’ ability to help preserve U.S. dollar dominance – by exporting dollar utility internationally and ensuring demand for U.S. government debt, which backs nearly all dollar-denominated stablecoins – has grown louder.

A successful IPO would make Circle one of the most prominent crypto-native firms to list on a U.S. exchange — an important signal for both investors and regulators as digital assets become more entwined with the traditional financial system.

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Hims & Hers shares rise as company adds new weight-loss medications to platform

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Hims & Hers shares rise as company adds new weight-loss medications to platform

The Hims app arranged on a smartphone in New York on Feb. 12, 2025.

Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Hims & Hers Health shares closed up 5% on Tuesday after the company announced patients can access Eli Lilly‘s weight loss medication Zepbound and diabetes drug Mounjaro, as well as the generic injection liraglutide, through its platform.

Zepbound, Mounjaro and liraglutide are part of the class of weight loss medications called GLP-1s, which have exploded in popularity in recent years. Hims & Hers launched a weight loss program in late 2023, but its GLP-1 offerings have evolved as the company has contended with a volatile supply and regulatory environment.

Lilly’s weekly injections Zepbound and Mounjaro will cost patients $1,899 a month, according to the Hims & Hers website. The generic liraglutide will cost $299 a month, but it requires a daily injection and can be less effective than other GLP-1 medications.

“As we look ahead, we plan to continue to expand our weight loss offering to deliver an even more holistic, personalized experience,” Dr. Craig Primack, senior vice president of weight loss at Hims & Hers, wrote in a blog post.

A Lilly spokesperson said in a statement that the company has “no affiliation” with Hims & Hers and noted that Zepbound is available at lower costs for people who are insured for the product or for those who buy directly from the company. 

In May, Hims & Hers started prescribing compounded semaglutide, the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk‘s GLP-1 weight loss medications Ozempic and Wegovy. The offering was immensely popular and helped generate more than $225 million in revenue for the company in 2024.

But compounded drugs can traditionally only be mass produced when the branded medications treatments are in shortage. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced in February that the shortage of semaglutide injections products had been resolved.

That meant Hims & Hers had to largely stop offering the compounded medications, though some consumers may still be able to access personalized doses if it’s clinically applicable. 

During the company’s quarterly call with investors in February, Hims & Hers said its weight loss offerings will primarily consist of its oral medications and liraglutide. The company said it expects its weight loss offerings to generate at least $725 million in annual revenue, excluding contributions from compounded semaglutide.

But the company is still lobbying for compounded medications. A pop up on Hims & Hers’ website, which was viewed by CNBC, encourages users to “use your voice” and urge Congress and the FDA to preserve access to compounded treatments.

With Tuesday’s rally, Hims and Hers shares are up about 27% in 2025 after soaring 172% last year.

WATCH: Hims & Hers shares tumble over concerns around weight-loss business

Hims & Hers shares tumble over concerns around weight-loss business

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Meta’s head of AI research announces departure

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Meta's head of AI research announces departure

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg holds a smartphone as he makes a keynote speech at the Meta Connect annual event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.

Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters

Meta’s head of artificial intelligence research announced Tuesday that she will be leaving the company. 

Joelle Pineau, the company’s vice president of AI research, announced her departure in a LinkedIn post, saying her last day at the social media company will be May 30. 

Her departure comes at a challenging time for Meta. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made AI a top priority, investing billions of dollars in an effort to become the market leader ahead of rivals like OpenAI and Google.

Zuckerberg has said that it is his goal for Meta to build an AI assistant with more than 1 billion users and artificial general intelligence, which is a term used to describe computers that can think and take actions comparable to humans.

“As the world undergoes significant change, as the race for AI accelerates, and as Meta prepares for its next chapter, it is time to create space for others to pursue the work,” Pineau wrote. “I will be cheering from the sidelines, knowing that you have all the ingredients needed to build the best AI systems in the world, and to responsibly bring them into the lives of billions of people.”

Vice President of AI Research and Head of FAIR at Meta Joelle Pineau attends a technology demonstration at the META research laboratory in Paris on February 7, 2025.

Stephane De Sakutin | AFP | Getty Images

Pineau was one of Meta’s top AI researchers and led the company’s fundamental AI research unit, or FAIR, since 2023. There, she oversaw the company’s cutting-edge computer science-related studies, some of which are eventually incorporated into the company’s core apps. 

She joined the company in 2017 to lead Meta’s Montreal AI research lab. Pineau is also a computer science professor at McGill University, where she is a co-director of its reasoning and learning lab.

Some of the projects Pineau helped oversee include Meta’s open-source Llama family of AI models and other technologies like the PyTorch software for AI developers.

Pineau’s departure announcement comes a few weeks ahead of Meta’s LlamaCon AI conference on April 29. There, the company is expected to detail its latest version of Llama. Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox, to whom Pineau reported to, said in March that Llama 4 will help power AI agents, the latest craze in generative AI. The company is also expected to announce a standalone app for its Meta AI chatbot, CNBC reported in February

“We thank Joelle for her leadership of FAIR,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement. “She’s been an important voice for Open Source and helped push breakthroughs to advance our products and the science behind them.” 

Pineau did not reveal her next role but said she “will be taking some time to observe and to reflect, before jumping into a new adventure.”

WATCH: Meta awaits antitrust fine from EU

Meta awaits antitrust fine from EU

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