This Week in Tech (Week Ending May 30, 2025)
TL;DR - 🇫🇷🤦🏻♂️French slap heard round the world; 👨⚖️FTC vs Meta has concluded; 🤝M&A
Hey folks!
TGIF - Tech news below. Say goodbye to May and hello to June! 🙋♀️
TL;DR -
🇫🇷🤦🏻♂️ French President Emmanuel Macron caught on camera getting shoved in the face - there’s a gif and everything.
🥣 No surprise - AI’s eating jobs
🤝M&A from Salesforce acquiring Informatica ($8bn), and e.l.f. Beauty acquiring Rhode, the makeup brand founded by the model Hailey Bieber, for $1bn.
🌎 Macro (Economic) and Trends
💰President Donald Trump threatened to impose a tariff of at least 25% on Apple devices imported into the U.S. until it makes iPhones in the U.S., rather than overseas.
⚜️The US Government approved U.S. Steel’s sale to Nippon Steel. Why it matters: The acquisition is a potential watershed moment for the role of government in American industry. The details are still being finalized, but reported conditions include requiring an American C.E.O., a U.S.-majority board and a “golden share” granting the U.S. government veto power over certain corporate functions and board appointments
😼*cat claws*: Apparently Elon Musk tried to use his relationship with President Trump to derail Sam Altman's AI data-center deal in Abu Dhabi.
It’s official: Elon Musk is leaving Washington. In a post on X, Musk confirmed that his work with the Trump administration and DOGE is coming to an end.
🗣️Why the new anti-revenge porn law has critics: The newly signed Take it Down Act makes it illegal to publish nonconsensual explicit images — real or AI-generated — and gives platforms just 48 hours to comply with a victim’s takedown request or face liability. It’s been praised as a win for revenge porn victims but experts have warned “its vague language, lax standards for verifying claims, and tight compliance window” could pave the way for overreach, censorship of legitimate content, and even surveillance.
💉The Covid vaccine will no longer be recommended for healthy children or healthy pregnant women, according to Health Secretary RFK Jr.
🌪️U.S. insured losses from severe thunderstorms and tornadoes this year are running well above historic averages, and the gap's only getting worse. Why it matters: The Trump administration is gutting FEMA and telling states to solve their own crises, just as the climate-influenced impact of disasters is getting worse.
🇫🇷🤦🏻♂️Uhhh it didn’t look like it was fun: French President Emmanuel Macron was captured in a video of him getting shoved in the face by his wife, and he insisted they were only joking. Sure… (see the video here)
🔬 Micro (Tech Companies)
Nvidia projected that the Trump administration’s new export controls, preventing it from selling chips to the Chinese market, would cost it $8 billion in revenue in Q2, roughly 15% of what its revenue would have been otherwise. Even so, Nvidia projected $45 billion in revenue for the second quarter, which would still be a 50% increase from the same period last year.
📣 Salesforce shares rose nearly 2% after its first-quarter earnings report, as the software provider exceeded its revenue forecast by more than $60 million and bumped up its full-year forecast by $400 million.
The FTC has concluded its antitrust case against Meta: Both sides can now file additional briefs in the case this summer. The government argued that Meta created a social media monopoly that illegally crushed competition through its purchases of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. Meta argued that it faces competition in social media, citing TikTok, YouTube and other apps as competitors. The NYT reports that Meta seems likely to survive intact.
📺 Youtube has maintained the largest share of TV viewing for three consecutive months, now accounting for 12.4% of total audience time spent watching television. Its share of consumer time spent watching is larger than Netflix, Disney, Paramount and others large media brands.
LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a data broker which helps its corporate customers detect possible risk and fraud, disclosed a data breach that affected more than 340,000 people.
🚛 TuSimple, a self-driving truck firm, shared technology with a Beijing-owned firm after promising the U.S. it would protect its IP. TuSimple later voluntarily shut down its U.S. operations, auctioned off its trucks and delisted from the Nasdaq. Why it matters: TuSimple’s technology transfer is informing how the U.S. polices companies with Chinese ties.
⭐️AI’s eating jobs: While it's hard to definitively say that AI is already shrinking available jobs, the signs are all there, especially for entry-level positions. New research shows that tech companies recruited fewer college students in 2024, compared to 2023, and 40% of employers plan to cut staff where AI can be used. Anthropic’s CEO takes the forecast further and estimates AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs — and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next one to five years. It’s already not good - ‘functional unemployment’ (defined as those who are job-seeking yet unabe to find work, as well as those with full-time job with earnings below $25k/yr) is almost 25% in the US.
🤖 AI News
🎙️ Anthropic has started rolling out “voice mode” for Claude. The feature’s still in Beta, but it lets users of the Claude mobile app have “complete spoken conversations with Claude” in English.
🌀Microsoft says its Aurora AI can accurately predict air quality, typhoons, and more
Vibe coding: A developer claims she vibe coded the first version of her app in 3 hours, and used it to get into an accelerator that gave her $275k in funding.
⭐️👀 Blogger Benedict Evans shared a presentation called AI eats the world - definitely a recommended gander.
🤝 Select M&A, Fundraises, IPO, Partnerships
M&A
Trends - total M&A is up but it may not be a good signal: Overall M&A quantity is up but the activity is coming from very early stage companies where the outcomes are not that big. The M&A activity in the middle (Series B + C) is down.
OnlyFans’ owner Fenix International is in discussions to sell the subscription platform, best known for explicit content, to an investor group at a valuation of about $8 billion.
Salesforce is acquiring data management company Informatica in an $8 billion deal. The acquisition is meant to help its AI agents run more smoothly.
Rhode, the makeup brand founded by the model Hailey Bieber, agreed to sell itself to e.l.f. Beauty for $1 billion.
Fundraising
🌱Trending - Seed-strapping: Some early-stage startup founders are choosing not to raise venture capital after an initial seed round, and are instead running their startups on the sales their businesses are generating.
🧠 Elon Musk’s Neuralink raised $600 million at a valuation of $9 billion.
Partnerships
If you can’t beat' ‘em: Nearly two years after suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, The New York Times is licensing its content to train AI. The NYT inked a deal with Amazon to license its materials to train the tech giant's AI models.
✈️ JetBlue and United form an alliance. The airlines announced a deal in which customers can earn frequent flier miles on each other’s flights
⚱️ Gold Panning - For those who reached the bottom
🍿 Memorial Day’s movie weekend was a huge success, with live action Lilo & Stitch smashing records at a $183mill domestic debut, and Mission Impossible - Final Reckoning bringing in $77mill domestically, more than any other movie in the series.
🎥 More movie stuff:
😇 Keanu Reeves playing an angel, in a movie written and directed by Aziz Ansari, also starring Sandra Oh and Seth Rogen? Yes please! Good Fortune, in theaters October.
People think that bc Omega, Bond’s official timepiece since Goldeneye, has named Aaron Taylor-Johnson their newest global ambassador, that Taylor-Johnson is the new James Bond.
🃏 Unexpected comeback: Uno, the card game. Young adults are organizing game nights around it, incorporating drinking rules and embracing increasingly cutthroat variations. Plus, ppl are carrying around ‘reverse’ cards as a real-life comeback meaning, “No, you.” Read about the meme here.
Now American middle schoolers stash Reverse cards in their pockets to redirect any manner of affront. In turn, teachers have tucked the cards into lanyards and stowed them in desk drawers, prepared for when students try to use the cards on them.
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