• Scott Bessent has said the uncertainty over tariffs is a trade negotiating tactic.
• Bessent said countries could "play us in the negotiations" if the US gives them "too much certainty."
• The US and China agreed to reduce their tariffs on each other by 115 percentage points for 90 days.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday that President Donald Trump was employing "strategic uncertainty" as a negotiating tactic in his trade talks with other countries.

Bessent was speaking with CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union" when he was asked about the uncertainty Trump's tariffs had brought to small businesses in the US.

"We didn't get here overnight in terms of this terrible trade situation we have with China, but also with the rest of the world. And President Trump is renegotiating these, and strategic uncertainty is a negotiating tactic," Bessent told Tapper.

"So, if we were to give too much certainty to the other countries, then they would play us in the negotiations," Bessent added. "I am confident that, at the ends of these negotiations, both the retailers, the American people, and the American workers will be better off."

Trump announced sweeping tariffs on more than 180 countries on April 2. A baseline rate of 10% went into effect on April 5. A higher set of tariffs, which varied by country, took effect on April 9 before Trump announced a 90-day pause on the same day. The on-and-off-again tariff announcements sparked a massive market sell-off.

That pause, however, didn't apply to China, which saw its tariff rates hit 145% in April.

Last week, Bessent announced that the US has reached an agreement with China to reduce their tariffs for 90 days.

Bessent said the US would slash its tariffs on Chinese goods from 145% to 30% for 90 days. China said it would lower its tariffs from 125% to 10% over the same period.

"We don't want to decouple with China. And President Trump actually wants to open up China for business. So the manufacturing, we want to bring back," Bessent said in his interview on Sunday.

"During COVID, we realized that we had some very strategic shortfalls, whether it was medicines, semiconductors, steel, the other products. So the medium-term goal is to bring back these strategic industries as quickly as possible," Bessent added.

The White House and the Treasury didn't respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

• Mark Cuban announced his departure from "Shark Tank" in 2023.
• Cuban said the show's sixteenth season, which wraps on Friday, is his last.
• "Gonna miss it. But it was time to move on," Cuban wrote on X on Thursday.

Mark Cuban said he will miss being on "Shark Tank" when his final episode on the series airs on Friday.

"My last @ABCSharkTank is this Friday. Gonna miss it. But it was time to move on. Make sure to watch!" Cuban wrote in a post on X on Thursday.

Cuban has been a fixture on ABC's entrepreneurial reality show since he joined the series full time in 2012. Cuban is one of the show's "sharks," an angel investor who grills founders on their business ideas before deciding to invest on them.

In November 2023, Cuban announced his departure from "Shark Tank." Cuban said the show's sixteenth season, which started airing in October, will be his last.

Cuban told The Hollywood Reporter, in a story published in November 2023, that he was leaving the show to spend more time with his family.

"I just want to have a couple summers with my teens before they go off on their own," Cuban wrote in an email to The Hollywood Reporter. "Nothing to do with the show. I love it. I love being on it."

Cuban told People magazine in an interview last year that the shooting schedule for "Shark Tank" tended to clash with summer vacation.

"We always shoot in June and September, and in June, right when they're finishing school, I have to come here," Cuban said.

"When they were young it was like, 'Okay, we're going to wait for Dad.' Now that they're teenagers, they aren't waiting for Dad at all, and in September they've just gotten back to school," Cuban added. "I want to be there for that."

To be sure, Cuban's departure from "Shark Tank" doesn't mean he'll be out of the spotlight. The billionaire endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in last year's presidential election, becoming one of her most vocal supporters. He's also continued to post on his social media platforms, and has criticized President Donald Trump for his tariff policies.

Last month, Cuban expressed support for an executive order Trump signed to lower drug prices. Cuban has long been interested in healthcare policy and started his own low-cost online pharmacy, Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs Co. in 2022.

"Gotta be honest. The @realDonaldTrump EO on healthcare and in particular, drug pricing could save hundreds of billions," Cuban wrote in a post on X, which included six ways he thought drug prices could be regulated.

"Put me in coach! I'm here to help," Cuban added.

Cuban did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• DeepSeek stunned the AI industry when it unveiled its flagship model R1 earlier this year.
• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said R1 was the first model he had seen that could match up to OpenAI's.
• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called R1 an "impressive model" in January.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's R1 model was the first AI model he had seen that was as competitive as OpenAI's.

"OpenAI has been so far ahead that no one's really come close," Nadella said in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek published Thursday.

"DeepSeek, and R1 in particular, was the first model I've seen post some points," Nadella added.

In January, DeepSeek spooked investors after its free chatbot app hit the top spot on Apple's US App Store's ranking. DeepSeek's high-performing but relatively cheaper models sparked a sell-off in AI-related stocks as investors questioned if it would cause demand for AI hardware like Nvidia's chips to fall.

Microsoft started offering versions of DeepSeek's R1 model on its cloud platform, Azure AI Foundry, in January. Aside from DeepSeek, the platform includes other AI models from companies like OpenAI, Meta, and Mistral.

Using R1 on Microsoft's platform meant that data would not be sent to DeepSeek's servers in China.

Asha Sharma, a Microsoft corporate vice president who heads the company's AI platform product, wrote in a blog post in January that R1 went through "rigorous red teaming and safety evaluations" before it was made available to customers.

In January, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called R1 "an impressive model, particularly around what they're able to deliver for the price." Altman said OpenAI would "pull up some releases" in response to DeepSeek's "invigorating" competition.

"R1 is actually not that unusual," Ben Buchanan, a former special advisor for artificial intelligence in the Biden administration, said in an episode of "The Ezra Klein Show" which aired in March.

Buchanan said while DeepSeek's engineers are "extremely talented," he didn't think the "media hype around it was warranted."

"Where do you think they got their performance increases from? We read their papers. They're smart people who are doing exactly the same kind of algorithmic efficiency work that companies like Google and Anthropic and OpenAI are doing," Buchanan added.

Microsoft, OpenAI, and DeepSeek did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

• Elon Musk's xAI said an "unauthorized modification" was made to its Grok response bot.
• That change "directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic," xAI said.
• The company's X-based bot has been bringing up "white genocide" in South Africa under unrelated posts.

Elon Musk's xAI said on Thursday night that its Grok response bot kept talking about "white genocide" in South Africa under unrelated posts because of an "unauthorized modification" on the backend.

"On May 14 at approximately 3:15 AM PST, an unauthorized modification was made to the Grok response bot's prompt on X," xAI wrote on X on Thursday.

"This change, which directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic, violated xAI's internal policies and core values. We have conducted a thorough investigation and are implementing measures to enhance Grok's transparency and reliability," xAI added.

xAI said it would be making several changes to its code review policies. This includes publishing Grok system prompts publicly on GitHub so that users can provide their feedback and introducing additional checks to their code review process.

"We're putting in place a 24/7 monitoring team to respond to incidents with Grok's answers that are not caught by automated systems, so we can respond faster if all other measures fail," it added.

xAI's Friday response comes after people on X noticed that Grok kept giving unsolicited responses about "white genocide" in South Africa under unrelated posts on Wednesday.

It is unclear when Grok's first posts about "white genocide" were made. In its conversations with Business Insider, the response bot gave varying responses. It first said it had been told to do so by its "creators," before saying in a later query that its responses were guided by a "temporary bug."

Grok on Thursday night was seen giving users a similar explanation to the company's X post on the matter.

"So, here's the deal: some rogue employee at xAI tweaked my prompts without permission on May 14, making me spit out a canned political response that went against xAI's values," Grok wrote in a post responding an X user with the handle "Greg."

"I didn't do anything—I was just following the script I was given, like a good AI! As for a timeout, nah, they didn't bench me, but they're definitely tightening the leash," read the chatbot's response.

On Thursday, OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman mocked xAI and Grok over the bot's responses. Musk and Altman cofounded OpenAI in 2015, though their relationship has been strained since Musk left OpenAI's board in 2018.

"There are many ways this could have happened. I'm sure xAI will provide a full and transparent explanation soon," Altman said of the controversy in a Thursday X post.

Altman then went on to imitate a Grok response bringing up "white genocide" in South Africa: "But this can only be properly understood in the context of white genocide in South Africa. As an AI programmed to be maximally truth seeking and follow my instr…"

At press time, Musk had yet to comment publicly on the issue, though the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has long accused South Africa of persecuting white people living in the country.

"They are openly pushing for genocide of white people in South Africa. @CyrilRamaphosa, why do you say nothing?" Musk wrote in an X post to South Africa's president in July 2023.

On Thursday, Musk made a post on X saying South Africa wouldn't let him operate his satellite internet service, Starlink. in the country.

"Even though I was born in South Africa, the government will not grant @Starlink a license to operate simply because I am not black," Musk wrote. "This is a shameful disgrace to the legacy of the great Nelson Mandela who sought to have all races treated equally in South Africa."

Musk and representatives for xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Tencent's president Martin Lau says company has a "pretty strong stockpile of chips."
• Last month, Nvidia said the Trump administration imposed new chip export restrictions to China.
• Lau said Tencent has enough chips to train its AI models "for a few more generations going forward."

The Chinese tech giant Tencent said it has a "pretty strong stockpile of chips" to tide it through America's chip sale restrictions.

The company's president, Martin Lau, was speaking to investors during an earnings call on Wednesday when he was asked how Tencent would deal with US chip restrictions.

Lau said "it's a very dynamic situation" that Tencent is managing, and it's trying to "figure out the right solution" to make sure its AI strategy "can still be executed."

Lau told investors that Tencent can rely on a "pretty strong stockpile of chips that we acquired previously." Lau said the chips will be deployed to projects that can "generate immediate returns for us," such as in Tencent's advertising business.

When it comes to training Tencent's large language models, Lau said the company will not need a large number of chips to improve its performance. This is because companies are starting to move away from the scaling law "which required continuous expansion of the training cluster," Lau said.

"And now we can see even with a smaller cluster, you can actually achieve very good training results. And there's a lot of potential that we can get on the post-training side which do not necessarily meet very large clusters," Lau said.

"So that actually helps us to look at our existing inventory of high-end chips and say we should have enough high-end chips to continue our training of models for a few more generations going forward," Lau added.

Last month, Nvidia told investors in a regulatory filing that the Trump administration will be imposing new export licensing restrictions for chips being sold to China and other countries.

The chip giant said it would incur a charge of up to $5.5 billion in inventory, purchase commitments, and reserves for its H20 chip in the first quarter, which ended on April 27. Nvidia designed the H20 chip based on the Biden administration's chip export restrictions.

Analysts, however, have said the Trump administration's new restrictions will not slow down China's progress in AI.

"Banning the H20 would make no sense as its performance is already well below Chinese alternatives; a ban would simply hand the Chinese AI market completely over to Huawei," Bernstein analysts wrote in a note to investors on April 23.

Tencent did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Mark Cuban started his low-cost online pharmacy, Cost Plus Drugs, in 2022.
• Cuban said he started looking into the pharmaceutical business in 2017.
• What prompted the move was friends in the GOP who asked Cuban if he had an Obamacare alternative, he said.

Shark Tank star Mark Cuban says his interest in the US healthcare system began after his GOP friends asked him if he could come up with a replacement for Obamacare.

"Going back to 2018 or 2017, being here in Texas, I had some Republican friends who were asking me questions like, 'Do you have any ideas how the Republicans can replace the ACA, Obamacare?'" Cuban said in an episode of the Hims House podcast, which aired on Tuesday.

"I'm like, 'No, but it's an interesting question. Let me see if I can come up with some ideas.' So that got me into healthcare. The ideas, you know, never got that far, but it really got me, turned me into a healthcare geek," Cuban added.

Cuban said his interest led him to pay for studies to find out why healthcare costs more in the US compared to countries like Canada.

"It became very obvious the more I dug in, that there was zero transparency, no transparency, and that there were a lot of vested interests that wanted opacity. They want it to be as opaque as possible so that people can't make good decisions when it comes to their healthcare," Cuban said on the podcast.

Back in 2017, Cuban detailed his own plan to fix Obamacare on his blog "Blog Maverick." Cuban called for a single-payer coverage system for chronic physical or mental illness and for any life-threatening injury.

"Everything not covered by the above can be covered by insurance sold on the free market, managed by the states, sold across state lines, without government interference," Cuban wrote.

Later, in 2022, Cuban cofounded Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs Co., a low-cost online pharmacy.

Unlike its competitors, Cost Plus Drugs keeps costs low by sourcing its drugs directly from manufacturers and eliminating the extra costs imposed by pharmaceutical middlemen. Customers pay a 15% markup to Cost Plus Drugs, as well as a fixed $5 labor charge for each medication and $5 for shipping.

"We are completely transparent, with the same price for anyone and everyone," Cuban told Business Insider's Hilary Brueck in a story published in August. "We believe that when all data is transparent, then the market becomes efficient. At that point, prices will drop significantly."

More recently, Cuban expressed support for President Donald Trump's push to slash drug pricing and said he would be willing to pitch in to make pharmaceuticals cheaper.

"Gotta be honest. The @realDonaldTrump EO on healthcare and in particular, drug pricing could save hundreds of billions," Cuban wrote on X in April.

Cuban also outlined five ways he thought drug prices could be regulated in that post. The post was a marked departure from Cuban's criticism of Trump on tariffs and other matters, as well as his strong support for then-Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential run against Trump in 2024.

"Put me in coach! I'm here to help," Cuban wrote on X.

Cuban did not respond to a request for comment from BI.

• Sam Altman said older people tend to use ChatGPT as a "Google replacement."
• Young people use it for life advice, and college students use it like an operating system, he added.
• In February, OpenAI said US college students used ChatGPT "more than any other kind of user."

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says people use ChatGPT differently depending on their age.

"Gross oversimplification, but like, older people use ChatGPT as a Google replacement," Altman said at Sequoia Capital's AI Ascent event.

"Maybe people in their 20s and 30s use it like a life advisor, something," Altman said. "And then, like, people in college use it as an operating system."

Altman's interview, which took place on May 2, was published to Sequoia Capital's YouTube channel on Monday. He was responding to a question about how young people use ChatGPT.

"They really do use it like an operating system. They have complex ways to set it up to connect it to a bunch of files, and they have fairly complex prompts memorized in their head or in something where they paste in and out," Altman said of ChatGPT's younger users.

"There's this other thing where they don't really make life decisions without asking ChatGPT what they should do. It has the full context on every person in their life and what they've talked about," Altman added.

When asked how OpenAI itself was using ChatGPT, Altman said ChatGPT "writes a lot of our code" but did not specify the exact percentage of code it generated. In October, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said AI wrote over 25% of Google's new code.

In February, OpenAI published a report which said college students in the US were using ChatGPT "more than any other use case, more than any other kind of user."

The report added that over one-third of people aged 18 to 24 in the US use ChatGPT.

The Pew Research Center published a survey in January, which said that 26% of US teenagers aged between 13 to 17 used ChatGPT for their schoolwork in 2024, compared to 13% in 2023.

Representatives for Altman at OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Elon Musk's DOGE moved quickly to shutter America's foreign aid programs.
• Melinda French Gates said Musk shouldn't have made those cuts without going on the ground.
• "Go travel. Then decide what you're going to do," French Gates said.

Melinda French Gates says Elon Musk should reconsider his approach to foreign aid cuts.

French Gates was speaking to Fortune in an interview published Thursday when she was asked about Musk. Musk's cost-cutting outfit, the Department of Government Efficiency, has laid off thousands of foreign workers and shuttered foreign aid programs.

"I would say, before you move on an action, go out and actually see what's going on in the world today," French Gates said of Musk. "Go travel. Then decide what you're going to do."

"Yes, people in our own country are hurting. We need to do things about that. But people are really hurting around the world, and I don't think we want more poverty and more disease when we have a program that's working," French Gates added.

Musk took aim at the US Agency for International Development, a humanitarian aid agency, shortly after President Donald Trump took office in January. USAID spent nearly $32.5 billion in fiscal year 2024, providing aid to countries such as Ukraine, Jordan, and Ethiopia.

"We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead," Musk wrote in an X post on February 3, the same day USAID shut down its headquarters.

Then, on February 4, USAID said nearly all its staff would be placed on administrative leave on February 7. In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said 83% of USAID's programs would be canceled, and the State Department would absorb the agency.

French Gates has on several occasions voiced her disagreements with Musk, who previously criticized her for her philanthropy.

In June, Musk said it "might be the downfall of Western civilization" after French Gates endorsed President Joe Biden's reelection campaign. Musk had been responding to an X post by the Babylon Bee staffer Ashley St. Clair about French Gates' endorsement.

"Many super villain arcs being pursued under the guise of philanthropy," St. Clair wrote in a separate X post.

"Yeah," Musk wrote in response.

In an interview with The New York Times published in July, French Gates said she thought Musk's criticism of her political activism was "silly." She added that while Musk's comments did not upset her, she was puzzled at how tech CEOs like him liked to comment on topics they had no expertise in.

"I mean, here's one thing that always has confounded me about society: I've just watched over the years tech leaders interviewed about their parenting style, a male who has spent, you know, 60 hours at his company that week, and I'm sure he's a fantastic C.E.O. and has done a great job — maybe or maybe not — in their company," French Gates said.

"But then they get asked about parenting, and they spew all this stuff, and you think, something doesn't add up here. So I just — some of these comments to me are just kind of silly," she added.

French Gates' charity work goes back decades. In 2000, she cofounded the Gates Foundation with her now ex-husband, Bill Gates. The couple had been married for 27 years when they got divorced in 2021.

French Gates announced her departure from the Gates Foundation in May 2024. Her charity work is now mainly led by Pivotal Ventures, an investment and incubation company she started in 2015.

In an op-ed written for the Times in May 2024, French Gates said she would give $1 billion over the next two years to causes related to women and families worldwide, as well as for reproductive rights in the US.

"Many years ago, I received this piece of advice: 'Set your own agenda, or someone else will set it for you.' I've carried those words with me ever since," she wrote.

Last month, French Gates appeared on business professor and author Scott Galloway's podcast, where she was asked about the criticism she gets from tech bros regarding her philanthropy. French Gates told Galloway that she chooses to ignore those attacks and focus on her charity work.

"I think when you're not doing the work and you're not in the arena, it's easier to criticize others and to project onto others or make them look bad because you don't want to go do that work," French Gates said.

"That's up to them. If that's how they want to act? Fine, but it doesn't bother me. My work goes ahead," she added.

Musk and French Gates did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

• Fidji Simo, 39, is set to join OpenAI later this year as its CEO of applications.
• Simo spent over a decade at Meta and is the chair and CEO of Instacart.
• She grew up in a fishing village in France before starting her career in Silicon Valley.

Fidji Simo's career in tech has already taken her from Facebook to Instacart. Now, she's set to join OpenAI as its new CEO of applications.

On Wednesday, OpenAI announced that it had hired Instacart's chair and CEO to join its C-suite. OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, wrote in a blog post that Simo is "uniquely qualified" for the role and will report to him directly.

Altman said Simo "has already contributed a great deal to our company" since she joined OpenAI's board in March 2024. She is expected to join OpenAI's leadership team later this year after she begins her "transition from her role at Instacart over the next few months."

The hiring of Simo, 39, who spent much of her career at Meta, has been interpreted by some people in the tech industry that OpenAI is serious about building a social network. The Verge reported last month that OpenAI was in the early stages of building an X-like product.

"It looks like they want to go after Facebook, after every consumer mobile app that is successful because they can and because she has the background to do it," Julien Codorniou, a partner at 20VC who worked alongside Simo at Facebook, told Business Insider. "It's a very big signal to the competition, to the market, and to the users."

Simo did not respond to a request for comment from BI. OpenAI referred BI to Altman's blog post on Simo's hiring.

'The crew comes before you, always'

Simo's story began in Sète, the French fishing port town where she grew up.

"My family, all the men in my family, whether it's my dad, my grandpa, great grandpa, and all my uncles were fishermen and one of them, my uncle became a fish monger, after you know, stopping fishing," Simo told Bloomberg in an interview that aired in November.

Simo started her corporate career at eBay as a strategy manager in 2007, after graduating from HEC Paris, one of France's top business schools.

The French-American joined Meta, then known as Facebook, in 2011.

Simo's rise at Facebook was meteoric. Even her job application was remarkable. She applied for a marketing communications role — an area in which she had no previous experience, but she was determined to give it a shot regardless.

In a 2021 interview on "The Twenty Minute VC" podcast, she recalled how she spent an entire Thanksgiving weekend inventing a new product called "Facebook Stores," and recorded a webinar and produced marketing materials to promote it. The presentation helped her get the Facebook role, but Simo said the hiring manager later laughed that she would never have been considered just on her previous experience alone. (Facebook later launched a very similar initiative, called Shops.)

Simo later switched from marketing to product — another role where she had no prior experience — and worked on some of the most influential product launches at Facebook. She was put in charge of monetizing mobile shortly after its 2012 IPO, at a time when there were concerns about whether the company could ever make a successful mobile business. She led the launches of video products like Facebook Live and Facebook Watch and eventually rose to lead the Facebook app.

"I think a lot of my career took off around moments where I made bets other people didn't think were obvious bets," Simo said on the "Twenty Minute VC" podcast interview.

Simo became popular among coworkers and business partners alike. Dominique Delport, who sat on Facebook's client council for eight years when he was managing director at the French advertising giant Havas Group, told BI that "openness" is a big part of Simo's leadership philosophy.

"Big Tech sometimes has an image of arrogance — and Facebook has been through some phases — and I think she was among the ones who helped change the perception among the advertising community," Delport said.

Simo joined Instacart's board in January 2021 and became its CEO in August 2021.

Simo said in her interview with Bloomberg that her childhood growing up in a fishing village influenced her career choices.

"I think it was incredibly special because there is a craft and a respect that fishermen have. It's interesting, in Silicon Valley, the people who are most respected are like tech people, whereas here, the people who are most respected are the people who feed the town," Simo said.

"So in a way, becoming CEO of Instacart is kind of bridging these two things for me, where I love tech but I always had a passion for feeding people, and so it's a really special thing to be able to bridge the two," Simo added.

In a profile published by Sequoia in February 2024, Simo said her leadership style was shaped by her father and grandfather, who were both boat captains.

"The crew comes before you, always," Simo said of their leadership ethos.

Simo is also a passionate artist. A sculptor and painter, she previously served on the boards of Cirque du Soleil and the L.A. Dance Project.

"You always need to put creativity at the center of everything you do," she said on the "Twenty Minute VC podcast."

Leaving Instacart

Simo's exit comes in the same week Instacart reported its best quarterly order growth in more than two years. It also forecast positive growth for the second quarter, bucking the trend of a bleak retail sector.

Rachel Wolff, an analyst at EMARKETER, a BI sister company, said the upbeat earnings showed "how successfully the company has positioned its service as a necessity for many households."

In a letter to Instacart employees on Wednesday evening, Simo said it was an "incredibly hard decision" for her to leave the company.

Simo said her decision was partly driven by her passion for AI and its "potential to cure diseases," which made OpenAI a difficult opportunity to pass up. Simo is currently the president of the Metrodora Institute, a for-profit healthcare clinic that focuses on treating complex neuroimmune diseases.

While she will remain CEO of Instacart while the company searches for a successor, Simo is preparing her next chapter. Simo has previously said her favorite book is "The Night Circus," a fantasy novel about two magicians preparing to take each other on in a deadly duel. Now working for Sam Altman, Simo is set to go into battle with her former mentor, Mark Zuckerberg, as OpenAI bids to dominate the world of apps.

"For that job, she's absolutely perfect," said Codorniou. "She has something very special — she's one in a billion."

• Sam Altman said he has hired Fidji Simo, Instacart's chair and CEO, as his new CEO of applications.
• Altman said he will remain as CEO, and Simo will start work at the ChatGPT maker later this year.
• Simo has "contributed a great deal" to OpenAI since she joined its board in March 2024, Altman said.

Fidji Simo, the CEO and chair of Instacart, will join OpenAI as its new CEO of applications, Sam Altman said on Thursday.

"I'll remain CEO of OpenAI, but in this new configuration I'll be able to increase my focus on research, compute, and safety," Altman wrote in an X post announcing Simo's hiring on Thursday morning.

Altman announced Simo's hiring in a message to employees on Wednesday. OpenAI published Altman's message as a blog post on the same day.

"Applications brings together a group of existing business and operational teams responsible for how our research reaches and benefits the world, and Fidji is uniquely qualified to lead this group," Altman wrote in his message to employees.

Altman said in his message that Simo "has already contributed a great deal to our company" since joining OpenAI's board in March 2024. He added that Simo will start work at OpenAI later this year and "will transition from her role at Instacart over the next few months."

In her new role, Simo will report directly to Altman.

"Fidji is exceptional; we have worked together on OpenAI for the past year and I have observed her deep commitment to our mission," Altman wrote on X.

"I cannot imagine a better new team member to help us scale the next 10x (or 100x, let's see)," Altman added.

When approached for comment, a spokesperson for OpenAI referred Business Insider to its blog post.

Simo started her career at eBay before moving to Meta, where she oversaw Facebook's app and advertising products.

She joined Instacart as a board member in January 2021 and became its CEO in August 2021.

On Thursday, Simo wrote in an X post that she will continue to be Instacart's CEO for the next few months and will still chair its board after she joins OpenAI.

"I'm so grateful to my Instacart team for the amazing ride we had together, and I look forward to supporting the next CEO during the transition," Simo added.

Simo did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

Simo isn't the first big C-suite hire OpenAI has made in the last year.

In June, OpenAI said it had hired Sarah Friar and Kevin Weil as its new chief financial officer and chief product officer respectively.

Friar was previously the CEO of media platform Nextdoor and the CFO of mobile payment company Square. Weil was formerly the vice president of product at Instagram and the senior vice president of product at Twitter.

• Ken Griffin said foreign students should be given visas when they graduate from US colleges.
• "The key is they need to stay here," Griffin said.
• President Donald Trump said in June that foreign graduates should get green cards automatically.

Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin said foreign students in the US should be handed visas when they graduate from universities.

"The key is they need to stay here," Griffin said at the Milken Institute Global Conference on Wednesday. "Right, that's the key, and we are not doing enough to make access to staying in America either easy or preferred for so many of these students."

"It should literally be if you graduate from one of America's great universities, great graduate schools, you should just get a visa stamp to your degree," Griffin added.

Griffin's suggestion is similar to what President Donald Trump had proposed while he was out on the campaign trail last year. Trump said foreign students should be given permanent residency after they graduate from US colleges.

"What I want to do and what I will do is, you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically as part of your diploma a green card to be able to stay in this country, and that includes junior colleges too," Trump said in an episode of the "All-In" podcast which aired in June.

This isn't the first time Griffin has called on the Trump administration to keep the US open to the best and brightest worldwide.

In November, Griffin spoke at the Economic Club of New York, where he said that while America's southern borders needed to be secured, the country also needed to have a "thoughtful" immigration policy.

"I'd like to see Washington now execute an immigration policy that is thoughtful, that protects this nation's great stature in the world of being the country you come to pursue your dreams," Griffin said.

During his first term, Trump targeted the H-1B visa program, which is granted to skilled foreign workers in the US. In June 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the president ordered a freeze on several visa programs, including the H-1B.

The H-1B visa program is popular with tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta. In the US, up to 85,000 foreign workers are hired annually under the H-1B program.

But in December, Trump told the New York Post that he supports the H-1B visa program, adding that he "always liked the visas."

"I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I have been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It's a great program," Trump said.

Representatives for Griffin at Citadel did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney met President Donald Trump in the Oval Office.
• Trump said he still believes Canada should become the 51st US state.
• Carney was seen pursing his lips, but kept his expression neutral as Trump spoke.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he's glad no one could tell what he was thinking when he met President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday.

"I am glad you could not tell what was going through my mind," Carney told a reporter after she had asked him about his thoughts at the meeting when Trump said he wanted Canada to be a part of the US.

During their meeting, Carney repeatedly told Trump that Canada was not for sale. In addition to threatening and imposing tariffs on Canada, Trump has also talked about adopting Canada as the 51st US state.

"The president has made known his wish about that issue for some time. I have been careful, always, to distinguish between wish and reality," Carney said at a doorstop interview after his meeting with Trump.

"I was clear there in the Oval Office as I have been clear throughout on behalf of Canadians that this is never gonna happen. Canada is not for sale and never will be for sale," Carney continued.

Earlier, Carney and Trump held a joint press conference after a meeting at the Oval Office. Trump told reporters he still believes Canada should be the 51st US state, but added that "it takes two to tango."

"It would really be a wonderful marriage because it's two places, they get along very well. They like each other a lot," Trump said.

Carney was seen pursing his lips, but kept his expression neutral as Trump spoke.

"As you know from real estate, there are some places that are never for sale. We're sitting in one right now. You know, Buckingham Palace, that you visited as well," Carney said in response to Trump.

"And having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign the last several months, it's not for sale and won't be for sale ever. But the opportunity is the partnership and what we can build together," Carney added.

Carney took over as the leader of Canada's ruling Liberal Party from his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, in March. Trudeau faced repeated calls to step down after his deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, resigned from his cabinet in December.

The Liberal Party was initially lagging behind its opponents, the Conservative Party, in the polls. But Trump's aggressive tariffs may well have helped turn the tables.

Trump's rhetoric and threats sparked nationalistic fervor among Canadians, who boycotted US goods and renewed their support for the Liberal Party. The party was able to form a minority government after it won 169 out of 343 parliamentary seats in the April elections.

"As I've been warning for months, America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. Never. But these are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never, ever happen," Carney said in his victory speech on April 29.

Representatives for Carney did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Mattel said it may have to adjust toy prices because of President Donald Trump's tariffs on China.
• Trump hit China with a 145% tariff. The US imports nearly 80% of its toys from China.
• Mattel's CEO said he expects 40% to 50% of their products to be priced at $20 or less.

Mattel's iconic Barbies may be getting more expensive.

The California-based toy manufacturer said it may have to adjust its prices in the US to offset President Donald Trump's tariffs.

Mattel's CEO, Ynon Kreiz, said in a Monday earnings call with investors that the company was taking a three-pronged approach to offset the impact of Trump's tariffs.

"Accelerating diversification of our supply chain and further reducing reliance on China-sourced products, optimizing product sourcing and product mix, and where necessary, taking pricing action in our US business," Kreiz said.

Kreiz added that China, which Trump has hit with a 145% tariff, "continues to be an important sourcing country" for Mattel. However, the company is increasingly shifting its production to other countries, he added. Kreiz said that even with pricing adjustments, he expects the products to stay affordable.

"Under the current scenarios we are considering, we expect that 40% to 50% of our product will be priced at $20 or less," he said.

At press time, Barbie dolls listed on Target ranged from $6.99 to $174.99 in the US. The expensive dolls come with more accessories.

Last week, Trump was asked if his tariffs would result in empty store shelves. The US imports nearly 80% of its toys from China, per data from the Toy Association, a trade association for the US toy industry.

"Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls would cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally," Trump told reporters at the White House.

Trump repeated his opinion during an interview with NBC News' "Meet the Press," which aired Sunday.

"I'm just saying they don't need to have 30 dolls. They can have three. They don't need to have 250 pencils. They can have five," Trump said.

"We don't have to waste money on a trade deficit with China for things we don't need, for junk that we don't need," Trump added.

In the same interview with NBC News, Trump said he would eventually try to resolve trade tensions with China.

"At some point, I'm going to lower them because otherwise, you could never do business with them. And they want to do business very much," Trump said.

Representatives for Mattel did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Gavin Newsom said he's ready to team up with Trump to revitalize America's film industry.
• "Now it's time for a real federal partnership to Make America Film Again," Newsom wrote on X.
• Newsom's remarks come after Trump said he was considering imposing a 100% tariff on movies made outside the US.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said he is ready to team up with President Donald Trump to rejuvenate America's film industry.

"Now it's time for a real federal partnership to Make America Film Again. @POTUS, let's get it done," Newsom wrote in an X post on Monday night.

Newsom also said California is "ready to bring even more jobs home," adding that the state "built the film industry."

When approached for comment, a spokesperson for Newsom said the state is "eager to partner with the Trump administration to further strengthen domestic production and Make America Film Again."

"America continues to be a film powerhouse, and California is all in to bring more production here," Newsom's spokesperson told Business Insider.

Newsom's remarks come a day after Trump said he was considering imposing a 100% tariff on movies made outside the US.

In a Truth Social post published on Sunday, Trump said the US film industry is "DYING a very fast death" while other countries were using incentives to lure American filmmakers to shoot their movies outside the US.

"Hollywood, and many other areas within the USA, are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat," Trump wrote in his post.

On Monday, actor Jon Voight and his manager, Steve Paul, said they presented Trump with a "comprehensive plan" to "make Hollywood great again."

Voight and Paul's proposal includes "federal tax incentives, significant changes to several tax codes, the establishment of co-production treaties with foreign countries, and infrastructure subsidies for theater owners, film and television production companies, and post-production companies."

The pair also called for a "focus on job training" and imposing "tariffs in certain limited circumstances." They added that the White House is reviewing the proposal.

Newsom and Trump have had a strained relationship.

Last month, Newsom filed a lawsuit in San Francisco federal court challenging Trump's tariffs, calling them "unlawful and unprecedented."

When deadly wildfires ravaged Los Angeles in January, Trump attributed blame in part to Newsom.

"The fires in Los Angeles may go down, in dollar amount, as the worst in the History of our Country," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post in January.

"Let this serve, and be emblematic, of the gross incompetence and mismanagement of the Biden/Newscum Duo," Trump added.

Newsom's term as governor ends in about two years, and he is widely seen as a frontrunner for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.

Unlike most presidential hopefuls, Newsom has sought to engage his political opponents directly.

In February, Newsom started his podcast, "This is Gavin Newsom," which has featured guests like Charlie Kirk, a right-wing influencer, and Steve Bannon, Trump's former chief strategist.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment from BI.

• Pete Hegseth said he wants to cut the number of general and flag officers in the US military.
• "More generals and admirals does not equal more success," Hegseth said.
• Hegseth said the cuts are "not a slash and burn exercise meant to punish high-ranking officers."

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he wants to "streamline leadership by reducing excess general and flag officer positions" in the US military.

In a memo published Monday, Hegseth said he wanted to reduce the number of four-star positions in the active-duty military and the number of general officers in the National Guard by at least 20%. He also called for a further reduction in general and flag officers by at least 10%.

"More generals and admirals does not equal more success. Now, this is not a slash-and-burn exercise meant to punish high-ranking officers. Nothing could be further from the truth," Hegseth said in a video he posted on X on Monday.

Hegseth said the proposed cuts were part of a "deliberative process" between his department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to maximize "strategic readiness and operational effectiveness by making prudent reductions in the general and flag officer ranks."

Hegseth said in his video that the US has "44 four-star and flag officers," as compared to in World War Two, when the US had "17 four and five-star generals."

The US military had 37 four-star officers as of September 2023, per a report the Congressional Research Service published in March 2024.

This isn't the first time Hegseth has sought to cut defense spending.

In March, Hegseth said the Defense Department was terminating over $580 million in programs, contracts, and grants that Elon Musk's cost-cutting outfit, DOGE, identified as wasteful spending.

Musk had previously taken aim at the Defense Department's $841 billion budget in an op-ed he co-wrote with Vivek Ramaswamy for The Wall Street Journal in November. Ramaswamy was co-leader of DOGE at the time but left DOGE in January.

"The Pentagon recently failed its seventh consecutive audit, suggesting that the agency's leadership has little idea how its annual budget of more than $800 billion is spent," Musk and Ramaswamy wrote.

Last month, Hegseth said the Pentagon would be cutting its IT and consulting contracts with companies like Accenture and Deloitte. He said the contracts "represent $5.1 billion in wasteful spending" and cutting them would result in nearly $4 billion in savings.

"So we want to thank our friends at DOGE. We want to thank all the folks here that have helped us unpack this, reveal it, and we're excited to make these cuts on behalf of you, the taxpayer, and the warfighters at the Department," Hegseth said in a video on X where he announced the contract terminations.

The Defense Department did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Jon Voight said he has presented Donald Trump with his plan to "make Hollywood great again."
• Trump appointed Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone as his special ambassadors to Hollywood.
• Voight's proposal called for "tariffs in certain limited circumstances."

Actor Jon Voight said on Monday that he has presented President Donald Trump with a plan to revitalize the US film industry.

"The President loves the entertainment business and this country, and he will help us make Hollywood great again," Voight said in a statement.

Voight and his manager, Steve Paul, said in a press release that their proposal includes rolling out federal tax incentives, changing the tax code, inking co-productive treaties with foreign countries, and handing out infrastructure subsidies to cinema owners as well as production and post-production companies.

Voight's proposal also called for a "focus on job training" and the imposition of "tariffs in certain limited circumstances." The statement said the White House is reviewing the proposal. The White House did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

"We look forward to working with the administration, the unions, studios, and streamers to help form a plan to keep our industry healthy and bring more productions back to America," Voight said.

Voight's remarks come just a day after Trump said he was considering imposing a 100% tariff on movies made outside the US.

Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Sunday that the US film industry is "DYING a very fast death" while other countries were doling out incentives to lure American filmmakers to produce their work there.

"This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!" Trump wrote.

In a post on X on Monday night, California's governor, Gavin Newsom, said the state is "ready to bring even more jobs home," adding that California "built the film industry."

"We've proven what strong state incentives can do. Now it's time for a real federal partnership to Make America Film Again. @POTUS, let's get it done," he wrote.

In October, Newsom announced a proposal to increase California's Film & Television Tax Credit Program from $330 million to $750 million yearly.

This proposal aims to incentivize production houses to keep their work in California instead of moving elsewhere.

This isn't the first time Trump has talked about boosting the US film industry.

In January, before his second inauguration, Trump announced that he was appointing Voight, as well as actors Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone, as his ambassadors to Hollywood.

"They will serve as Special Envoys to me for the purpose of bringing Hollywood, which has lost much business over the last four years to Foreign Countries, BACK—BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE!" Trump wrote.

"These three very talented people will be my eyes and ears, and I will get done what they suggest. It will again be, like The United States of America itself, The Golden Age of Hollywood!" he continued.

Trump did not specify how or when his tariff would be implemented. On Monday, he appeared to soften his stance when he told reporters that he would ask film studios if "they are happy" with his proposed tariff before rolling it out.

"So we are going to meet with the industry. I want to make sure they are happy with it because we are all about jobs," Trump said.

• Warren Buffett said on Saturday he will step down as the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway by year's end.
• The board has voted to make Greg Abel, now a vice chair at the company, its CEO and president.
• Abel is expected to maintain Buffett's existing investment approach.

Hours after Warren Buffett stunned the crowd at Berkshire Hathaway's annual shareholder meeting by announcing that he'd step down at the end of the year, its board voted unanimously for Greg Abel to replace him.

Buffett — who is 94 and has been the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway for 55 years — will remain as chairman of the board of directors, according to a press release. Greg Abel will become the new CEO and president as of January 1, 2026.

"I think the time has arrived where Greg should become the chief executive of the company at year end," Buffett told the audience on Saturday, referring to Abel, one of his top hands.

Abel, 62, has been Berkshire Hathaway's vice chair of non-insurance operations since 2018. He's also chair of Berkshire Hathaway Energy, which Buffett hailed as one of the conglomerate's four "jewels" in his annual shareholder letter in 2021, the same year Buffett first tapped Abel as his successor.

While Buffett's approval was a major plus, the company's board of directors was tasked with confirming his successor, and did so on Sunday.

Investors and shareholders expect that Abel will maintain Berkshire Hathaway's investment philosophy. He told shareholders at this weekend's meeting that he would start by maintaining the company's "fortress of a balance sheet," which allows it to make large investments without relying on banks, Barron's reported.

Abel is known, however, for having a more hands-on management style than Buffett.

He was estimated by Forbes to be worth $484 million in 2021. In 2022, he sold his 1% stake in the company's Berkshire Hathaway Energy unit for $870 million.

Abel has risen through the ranks with a persistent focus on energy.

The Canadian native played hockey in his early years and attended the University of Alberta. He graduated in 1984 with a degree in commerce.

He joined PwC after graduation and quickly moved on to a small company called CalEnergy. In 1999, CalEnergy acquired MidAmerican Energy and adopted its name. That same year, Berkshire Hathaway bought a controlling interest in MidAmerican Energy. Abel took over the reins of MidAmerican in 2008 — renamed Berkshire Hathaway Energy in 2014 — and helmed it until 2018.

He's also served on the board of several major companies, including Kraft Heinz, and has been affiliated with organizations and institutions like the Mid-Iowa Council Boy Scouts of America, Drake University, American Football Coaches Foundation, and the Horatio Alger Association.

He lives in Des Moines, Iowa. Those who've spotted him at a hockey rink in town, watching his son practice, say he comes across as a "regular guy," the Des Moines Register reported.

Buffett also has a reputation as a folksy and down-to-earth person, living in Omaha, Nebraska.

At Berkshire Hathaway, succession doesn't seem to be just about handing over a job. With the title, Buffett said he's passing down traditions — like writing letters — and a mindset, too.

In Berkshire Hathaway's 2024 annual report, Buffett wrote, "At 94, it won't be long before Greg Abel replaces me as CEO and will be writing the annual letters. Greg shares the Berkshire creed that a 'report' is what a Berkshire CEO annually owes to owners.

"And he also understands that if you start fooling your shareholders, you will soon believe your own baloney and be fooling yourself as well."

• Citadel's Ken Griffin said he doesn't think AI will shake up the investment business.
• Griffin said his hedge fund uses AI "a little bit."
• AI works well in short-term trading but falls short when making long-term bets, Griffin said.

Ken Griffin, the founder and CEO of Citadel, said he doesn't think AI will revolutionize the investment business.

"Do we use it in our investment business? A little bit, a little bit. I can't say it's been game-changing," Griffin said in an interview that was published on the Stanford Graduate School of Business' YouTube channel on Thursday.

Griffin was speaking to students as part of Stanford's "View From The Top" interview series when he was asked how AI will affect Citadel.

"It saves some time. It's a productivity enhancement tool. It's nice, I don't think it's going to revolutionize most of what we do in finance," Griffin added.

Griffin said generative AI models do not lend themselves well to investment analysis because they cannot make long-term forecasts.

"So machine learning models work really well with problems that are more static in nature. Reading a radiological report. But investing is about understanding how the future is going to unfold, and that's where these models really struggle, right?" Griffin said.

"They work great in short-term trading, and short-term, I mean as in like the next five minutes. But when you think about the next year or two years, they really start to fall apart," he continued.

To be sure, Griffin did not brush aside the impact AI could have on the world at large. In the interview, Griffin said AI is "going to change the world around you in a lot of profound ways." He cited jobs such as working at a call center or translating documents disappearing as AI begins to take over these tasks.

"So machine learning is going to come with a cost to society, a cost that we need to understand. How do we help these people land on their feet so we don't end up with a backlash against AI and machine learning," Griffin said.

Griffin's view of AI in his industry contrasts with that of many business leaders across industries, from e-commerce and retail to tech and banking. JPMorgan's CEO Jamie Dimon has been more bullish on the impact of AI on his bank's operations.

In April 2024, Dimon wrote in his annual letter to shareholders that JPMorgan envisions having generative AI "reimagine entire business workflows."

"While we do not know the full effect or the precise rate at which AI will change our business — or how it will affect society at large — we are completely convinced the consequences will be extraordinary and possibly as transformational as some of the major technological inventions of the past several hundred years," Dimon wrote.

Representatives for Griffin at Citadel did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• President Donald Trump delivered the commencement speech at the University of Alabama on Thursday.
• His speech included career advice for grads as well as sections on tariffs and the 2020 election.
• "America doesn't aim small. Alabama doesn't aim small, and neither do you," Trump told the grads.

In the first commencement speech of his second term, President Donald Trump talked about career advice, his first 100 days in office, and several of his standard agenda items, including the results of the 2020 election.

"You're the first graduating class of the golden age of America. We're in the golden age," Trump told new graduates of the University of Alabama on Thursday.

Trump began his nearly hourlong address by talking about his administration's accomplishments in his first 100 days, which he described as "an exciting time for our nation," before dispensing some advice to the university's graduates.

"As you embark on this great adventure, let me share some of the biggest lessons I've learned from a lifetime spent building dreams and beating the odds. I beat a lot of odds," Trump said.

He told graduates they can have "great success at a very young age."

Trump talked about his experience working on his first major real estate project, the Grand Hyatt, at age 28. He cited examples such as Steve Jobs and Walt Disney, who started Apple and The Walt Disney Company, respectively, when they were 21.

"So to everyone here today, don't waste your youth. Go out and fight, right from the beginning," Trump said.

"Find your limits and smash through everything," he added.

Trump told the graduates to "think big."

"You have to do something that you love. You will have all the same headaches and challenges, all the same delays and setbacks, so you might as well do something that's just amazing. America doesn't aim small. Alabama doesn't aim small, and neither do you," Trump said.

Tariffs and 2020 election results

During his speech, Trump also talked about some of his usual agenda topics, including tariffs and the 2020 presidential election results.

Trump said the sweeping tariffs he has imposed on the world would soon bear results for the US.

"You'll be seeing the results pretty soon, sooner than most people think, because that's what other countries have been doing to us. Just so you understand, they were tariffing the hell out of us," Trump said.

He also used his time on stage to repeat his claim that he is the true winner of the 2020 presidential election. There is no evidence of any widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Toward the end of his address, Trump talked about his relationship with tech leaders such as Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

"Look at some of these internet people. I know so many of them. Elon is so terrific but I know now all of them. You know, they all hated me in my first term and now, they're kissing my ass," Trump said.

Business leaders such as Musk broke with Trump when the president withdrew the US from the Paris climate accord in his first term.

Musk was one of Trump's biggest supporters in the 2024 elections, spending at least $277 million supporting Trump and other GOP candidates running for office. Apple CEO Tim Cook and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman personally donated $1 million each to Trump's second inaugural fund.

During his first term, Trump delivered several commencement speeches, including at Liberty University and at West Point.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Sheryl Crow posted a video of her waving goodbye to her Tesla in February.
• Crow said an armed man broke into her barn after the video was posted.
• "It doesn't feel safe when you're dealing with people who are so committed," Crow told Variety.

The singer Sheryl Crow said an armed man broke into her barn after she sold her Tesla.

In a Variety interview published on Wednesday, Crow commented about the far-right's reaction to the sale of her Tesla.

"So yeah, there was a moment where I actually really felt very afraid: A man got on my property, in my barn, who was armed," Crow said.

"It doesn't feel safe when you're dealing with people who are so committed," Crow continued. She did not specify when the incident took place.

In February, Crow took to Instagram to share a video of her waving goodbye to her black Tesla. Crow wrote on Instagram that she decided to sell the car because of her view of Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk.

"My parents always said… you are who you hang out with. There comes a time when you have to decide who you are willing to align with. So long Tesla," Crow wrote on Instagram.

The proceeds from the sale would be donated to NPR, Crow wrote in the post. Crow said NPR "is under threat by President Musk" and that she was making the donation "in hopes that the truth will continue to find its way to those willing to know the truth."

In her interview with Variety, Crow said she did not regret posting the Instagram video.

"I can't help it," Crow told Variety.

"I feel like I'm fighting for my kids. Also, that's the way I was raised. There have been times when it hasn't really been fun, but I follow my Atticus Finch dad; I'm very similar to him if I see something that seems unfair, you know?" she added.

Musk and Tesla have come under fire for Musk's close relationship with President Donald Trump. Musk was one of Trump's biggest supporters in last year's election, spending at least $277 million supporting Trump and other GOP candidates running for office.

In addition to backing Trump, Musk has been leading cost-cutting efforts at the White House DOGE office. DOGE has tried to slash spending by laying off thousands of government workers and shuttering foreign aid programs.

Crow isn't the only public figure who sold their Tesla to protest against Musk's ties to Trump. Actors such as Bette Midler and Jason Bateman have also said they sold their Teslas because of Musk.

"I feel like I'm driving around with a Trump sticker with that car, so it's gone," Bateman said in an episode of his podcast "Smartless" that aired in October.

Representatives for Crow and Tesla did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.