• Meta's chief marketing officer Alex Schultz is concerned that "too much censorship" is harmful.
• Schultz's comments come after Meta updated several policies, including content moderation.
• The new guidelines change what is permissible to be said about LGBTQ+ people.

Meta's chief marketing officer warned that greater censorship on its platforms could "harm speech" from the LGBTQ+ community aiming to push back against hate.

Alex Schultz posted his feelings on Meta's decision to change its policy on hateful conduct earlier this week in a post on its internal forum.

"My perspective is we've done well as a community when the debate has happened and I was shocked with how far we've gone with censorship of the debate," Schultz wrote in the post, seen by Business Insider.

He added that his friends and family were shocked to see him receive abuse as a gay man in the past, but that it helped them to realize hatred exists.

"Most of our progress on rights happened during periods without mass censorship like this and pushing it underground, I think, has coincided with reversals," he said.

"Obviously, I don't like people saying things that I consider awful but I worry that the solution of censoring that doesn't work as well as you might hope. So I don't know the answer, this stuff is really complicated, but I am worried that too much censorship is actually harmful and that's may have been where we ended up."

Earlier this week, the company adjusted its moderation guidelines to allow statements on its platforms claiming that LGBTQ+ people are "mentally ill" and removed trans and nonbinary-themed chat options from its Messenger app, features that had previously been showcased as part of the company's support for Pride Month.

Schultz also said that he does not think that censorship and cancel culture have helped the LGBTQ+ movement.

He wrote, "We don't enforce these things perfectly," and cited an example of a mistake of taking down images of two men kissing and removing a slur word toward gay people rather than a deliberate move by a "bigoted person in operations."

Schultz added, "So the more rules we have, the more mistakes we make…Moderation is hard and we'll always get it wrong somewhat. The more rules, the more censorship, the more we'll harm speech from our own community pushing back on hatred."

The company's latest decision to roll back its DEI programs has sparked intense internal debate and public scrutiny. The announcement, delivered via an internal memo by VP of HR Janelle Gale, said that the company would dismantle its dedicated DEI team and eliminate diversity programs in its hiring process.

The company said Tuesday it will replace third-party fact-checkers on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads with a community notes system, mirroring the approach used on Elon Musk's platform, X.

Schulz told BI in an interview earlier this week that the election of Donald Trump and a broader shift in public sentiment around free speech played significant roles in these decisions.

He acknowledged that internal and external pressures had led Meta to adopt more restrictive policies in recent years, but the company is now taking steps to regain control over its approach to content moderation.

Meta's internal forum, Workplace, saw reactions ranging from anger and disappointment to cautious optimism about the company's direction.

One employee lamented the rollback as "another step backward" for Meta, while others raised concerns about the message it sends to marginalized communities that rely on Meta's platforms.

At Meta's offices in Silicon Valley, Texas, and New York, facilities managers were instructed to remove tampons from men's bathrooms, which the company had provided for nonbinary and transgender employees who use the men's room and may require sanitary products, The New York Times reported on Friday.

Meta didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

You can email Jyoti Mann at [email protected], send her a secure message on Signal @jyotimann.11 or DM her via X @jyoti_mann1

If you're a current or former Meta employee, contact this reporter from a nonwork device securely on Signal at +1-408-905-9124 or email him at [email protected].

• On Meta's internal forum, its employees criticized its decision to roll back DEI initiatives.
• It follows changes to Meta's content-moderation policies, which got rid of third-party fact-checkers.
• Meta's VP of HR said the term DEI had "become charged" and "suggests preferential treatment."

Meta employees spoke out on its internal forum against the tech giant's decision Friday to roll back its diversity, equity, and inclusion program.

Staffers criticized the move in comments on the post announcing the changes on the internal platform Workplace. More than 390 employees reacted with a teary-eyed emoji to the post, which was seen by Business Insider and written by the company's vice president of human resources, Janelle Gale.

Gale said Meta would "no longer have a team focused on DEI." Over 200 workers reacted with a shocked emoji, 195 with an angry emoji, while 139 people liked the post, and 57 people used a heart emoji.

"This is unfortunate disheartening upsetting to read," an employee wrote in a comment that had more than 200 likes.

Another person wrote, "Wow, we really capitulated on a lot of our supposed values this week."

A different employee wrote, "What happened to the company I joined all those years ago."

Reactions were mixed, though. One employee wrote, "Treating everyone the same, no more, no less, sounds pretty reasonable to me." The comment had 45 likes and heart reactions.

The decision follows sweeping changes made to Meta's content-moderation policies, which Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday. The changes include eliminating third-party fact-checkers in favor of a community-notes model similar to that on Elon Musk's X.

As part of the changes to Meta's policy on hateful conduct, the company said it would allow users to say people in LGBTQ+ communities are mentally ill for being gay or transgender.

"We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like 'weird,'" Meta said in the updated guidelines.

One employee wrote in response to the DEI changes that, in addition to the updated hate-speech guidelines, "this is another step backward for Meta."

They added: "I am ashamed to work for a company which so readily drops its apparent morals because of the political landscape in the US."

In the post announcing the decision to drop many of its DEI initiatives, Gale said the term DEI had "become charged," partly because it's "understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others."

"Having goals can create the impression that decisions are being made based on race or gender," she said, adding: "While this has never been our practice, we want to eliminate any impression of it."

One employee told BI the moves "go against what we as a company have tried to do to protect people who use our platforms, and I have found all of this really hard to read."

Meta did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

Do you work at Meta? Contact the reporters from a nonwork email and device at [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected].

• Meta is dropping many of its DEI initiatives, BI confirmed.
• The company sent a memo announcing the changes on Friday.
• Meta's VP of human resources said the legal and policy landscape in the US was changing.

Meta is rolling back its DEI programs, Business Insider has learned.

The company's vice president of human resources, Janelle Gale, announced the move on its internal communication platform, Workplace, on Friday, which was seen by BI.

"We will no longer have a team focused on DEI," Gale wrote in the memo.

"The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing," she wrote. "The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI."

She added the term DEI has "become charged" partly because it is "understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others."

Meta confirmed the changes when contacted by Business Insider.

On Monday, Meta said that it is also replacing fact-checkers with community notes on its platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

Meta is the latest company to back away from DEI in the wake of backlash, legal challenges, and the reelection of Donald Trump as president.

Read the full memo:

Hi all,

I wanted to share some changes we're making to our hiring, development and procurement practices. Before getting into the details, there is some important background to lay out:

The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing. The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI. It reaffirms longstanding principles that discrimination should not be tolerated or promoted on the basis of inherent characteristics. The term "DEI" has also become charged, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others.

At Meta, we have a principle of serving everyone. This can be achieved through cognitively diverse teams, with differences in knowledge, skills, political views, backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences. Such teams are better at innovating, solving complex problems and identifying new opportunities which ultimately helps us deliver on our ambition to build products that serve everyone. On top of that, we've always believed that no-one should be given - or deprived of -opportunities because of protected characteristics, and that has not changed.

Given the shifting legal and policy landscape, we're making the following changes:

• On hiring, we will continue to source candidates from different backgrounds, but we will stop using the Diverse Slate Approach. This practice has always been subject to public debate and is currently being challenged. We believe there are other ways to build an industry-leading workforce and leverage teams made up of world-class people from all types of backgrounds to build products that work for everyone.
• We previously ended representation goals for women and ethnic minorities. Having goals can create the impression that decisions are being made based on race or gender. While this has never been our practice, we want to eliminate any impression of it.
• We are sunsetting our supplier diversity efforts within our broader supplier strategy. This effort focused on sourcing from diverse-owned businesses; going forward, we will focus our efforts on supporting small and medium sized businesses that power much of our economy. Opportunities will continue to be available to all qualified suppliers, including those who were part of the supplier diversity program.
• Instead of equity and inclusion training programs, we will build programs that focus on how to apply fair and consistent practices that mitigate bias for all, no matter your background.
• We will no longer have a team focused on DEI. Maxine Williams is taking on a new role at Meta, focused on accessibility and engagement.

What remains the same are the principles we've used to guide our People practices:

1. We serve everyone. We are committed to making our products accessible, beneficial and universally impactful for everyone.
2. We build the best teams with the most talented people. This means sourcing people from a range of candidate pools, but never making hiring decisions based on protected characteristics (e.g. race, gender etc.). We will always evaluate people as individuals.
3. We drive consistency in employment practices to ensure fairness and objectivity for all. We do not provide preferential treatment, extra opportunities or unjustified credit to anyone based on protected characteristics nor will we devalue impact based on these characteristics.
4. We build connection and community. We support our employee communities, people who use our products, and those in the communities where we operate. Our employee community groups (MRGs) continue to be open to all.

Meta has the privilege to serve billions of people every day. It's important to us that our products are accessible to all, and are useful in promoting economic growth and opportunity around the world. We continue to be focused on serving everyone, and building a multi-talented, industry-leading workforce from all walks of life.

Do you work at Meta? Contact the reporters from a non-work email and device at [email protected]; [email protected]; and [email protected].

• Internal documents say Amazon workers in the UK can apply to work from home up to two days a week.
• Staffers in the Netherlands are following previous guidance of three days in office, BI has learned.
• Amazon implemented a global five-days-a-week return-to-office policy on January 2.

Amazon's five-days-a-week return-to-office policy appears to be more flexible for some European employees than their US-based counterparts.

Employees in the UK can apply to work from home for one or two days a week, while Amazon workers in the Netherlands are following previous guidance allowing them to work from home for up to two days a week, Business Insider has learned.

A copy of Amazon's "Flexible Work Arrangement" policy document for the US, seen by BI, doesn't explicitly say employees can request to work from home for one or two days a week. The document, last updated on December 17, says Amazon "may grant exceptions for work arrangements" to staffers in the US "who are in good standing on a case-by-case basis."

Amazon announced in September that employees globally would be required to work from the office five days a week starting on January 2. Some locations have delayed the five-day RTO policy because of insufficient office space, while in other cases it appears to have been delayed by local employment requirements.

On December 20, Amazon's management team in the Netherlands sent employees an email, seen by BI, that said it had entered into discussions with its works council — an organization representing employees — to define and introduce a flexible working arrangement.

"Until further notice, while everyone is welcome and encouraged to work from the office for five days per week, you may continue to follow the current in-office guidance for your role and team into the new year," it said.

Under that guidance, employees in the Netherlands can work up to two days a week from home until they're notified of the outcome of the discussions between the works council and management, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Nafsika Karavida, an attorney at the law firm Reavis Page Jump, told BI that the differences between Amazon's RTO rollout in Europe and in the US were "most likely due to cultural, legal, and operational differences" that could limit its "ability to act unilaterally."

Karavida added that employers in the Netherlands cannot legally enforce an RTO policy without the approval of a works council.

Like Amazon employees in Germany, staffers in the UK can formally apply to work from home for one or two days a week, an internal policy document seen by BI said. It added that employees based in the UK had a "statutory right to make a formal application" to change their work location, among other working conditions. Approvals will be subject to a three-month trial period, the document said.

Karavida said Amazon's policy in the UK was shaped by flexible-working regulations that took effect last April. "Although these regulations do not grant employees an automatic right to work from home, they obligate employers to consider such requests reasonably on a case-by-case basis," she said.

Amazon faces RTO delays

The UK, Netherlands, and Germany are the latest examples of different implementations of Amazon's five-day RTO policy. An internal list identified more than 40 locations where Amazon's full five-day RTO policy was delayed, including Santa Clara, California; Hamburg, Germany; and Belfast, UK.

Amazon's CEO, Andy Jassy, said in a September blog post that returning full time to the office would help the company "further strengthen" its culture and teams.

An Amazon spokesperson referred BI to that blog post, in which Jassy also said that "it was not a given" that staffers could work remotely two days a week before the pandemic, adding, "That will also be true moving forward."

In the US, Amazon employees can submit requests for offsite work for a week or for more than 90 days. Those are also reviewed on a case-by-case basis.

But unlike the policies for the UK and Germany, the US's flexible-working document doesn't specifically mention the option for employees to formally apply to work from home for one or two days a week; it details only offsite-work and part-time-work arrangements.

An internal Amazon FAQ document circulated at the time of the RTO announcement last year said employees with existing approval, such as a "Military Spouse Remote Work Exception," didn't need to change where they worked.

• Meta is replacing third-party fact-checkers with community notes on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
• Mark Zuckerberg said Meta would roll out the notes, similar to X's, over the next few months.
• He added that Meta would bring back more political content to users' timelines.

Meta is replacing third-party fact-checkers with a community-notes model on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, announced Tuesday that the company also planned to bring more political content back to the users' timelines and give them the option to customize how much of it they see.

The social media company is set to implement the sweeping content-moderation changes over the next few months.

"First, we are going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes, similar to X, starting in the US," Zuckerberg said in a video message on Meta's blog.

Meta's recently appointed chief global-affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, said in the blog: "We've seen this approach work on X — where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see."

Kaplan said the approach was "less prone to bias."

The company will also "simplify" its content policies, Kaplan said, and "get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse."

Meta has faced scrutiny in the past for its approach to content moderation. In August, Zuckerberg sent a letter to Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee and has been a vocal critic of Zuckerberg. The Meta CEO said in his letter that the Biden administration repeatedly pressured the company in 2021 to remove COVID-19-related content and "expressed a lot of frustration" when the company did not agree.

X, called Twitter at the time, launched community notes in 2021, but the feature started appearing on more posts in 2023. Users can sign up to add context to posts that might contain misinformation or misleading content. Other users can rate how helpful they find the note.

Similar to X, Meta will let users contribute to the writing and rating of community notes, Kaplan said.

He added that Meta would move its trust and safety teams, which help moderate content, from California to Texas and other locations in the US.

The relocation of the trust and safety teams follows a move by X, which has its content-moderation headquarters in Austin. Last year, Joe Benarroch, X's head of business operations at the time, told Bloomberg that the platform was aiming to hire 100 full-time workers for the team.

Meta didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski says AI can perform his job as it has reasoning capabilities.
• The buy-now, pay-later firm's cofounder said the realization made him feel "gloomy."
• Siemiatkowski previously said Klarna had stopped hiring because AI "can already do all the jobs."

Sebastian Siemiatkowski has said AI is capable of performing his job as CEO of Klarna — but he's not thrilled about the prospect.

The cofounder of the buy-now, pay-later firm said Monday in an X post that "AI is capable of doing all our jobs, my own included," because it now has reasoning capabilities.

"I am not necessarily super excited about this," he added. "On the contrary my work to me is a super important part of who I am, and realizing it might become unnecessary is gloomy."

Siemiatkowski said AI could routinely solve simple problems using basic reasoning. Because complex problems can be "divided into smaller and more basic reasoning tasks that are combined," the building blocks for AI solving advanced tasks already exist, he said.

"However, how exactly we will combine those building blocks of reason and knowledge to replicate the work we do today is not yet entirely solved," Siemiatkowski said.

This isn't the first time Siemiatkowski has voiced concerns about artificial intelligence's potential to disrupt people's work. He told Bloomberg in December that he believed AI could "already do all of the jobs that we as humans do."

Klarna has embraced AI. In February, the Swedish company said its AI assistant was "doing the equivalent work" of 700 full-time human agents.

The Klarna chief has also been outspoken about the firm's use of AI and how it's affected the workforce. In August, he wrote in an X post: "AI allows us to be fewer in total."

In October, Siemiatkowski appeared on the "Grit" podcast and said that Klarna "stopped hiring due to AI, so we're shrinking because we have a natural attrition rate of 20%." He later added that Klarna continued to hire some engineers.

Meanwhile, the fintech company has been gearing up for an initial public offering in the US. In November, it announced it confidentially submitted draft registration documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The following month, the company told its employees it would start random drug testing for staff in Sweden starting in January. Its director of people and human resources, Mikaela Mijatovic, told employees in a Slack post the move was "part of a larger effort to strengthen security across Klarna."

Klarna didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Do you work for Klarna? Got a tip? Contact the reporter, Jyoti Mann, via the encrypted messaging app Signal at jyotimann.11 or via email at [email protected]. Reach out through a nonwork device.

• Netflix says season two of "Squid Game" got 68 million views in the first four days after its debut.
• The South Korean drama surpassed a record held by "Wednesday" for most views in a premiere week.
• The dystopian thriller is Netflix's top non-English show, with over 265 million views.

Netflix says season two of its hit streaming series "Squid Game" amassed 68 million views in the first four days of its release, blowing past the viewership record for a show's premiere week on the streaming platform.

The record was previously held by the first season of "Wednesday," which had more than 50 million views after it launched in 2022.

The South Korean dystopian thriller also broke records when it debuted in 2021, and Netflix says it remains its most popular non-English show, with over 265 million views.

The series, created by Hwang Dong-hyuk and starring Lee Jung-jae, is broadly about people heavily in debt competing in deadly versions of children's games for a big cash prize.

Shortly after the first season debuted, Bloomberg reported that Netflix expected the series to create nearly $900 million in value for the company.

Alvin Foo, then a Netflix director of strategy and operators for APAC marketing, wrote a LinkedIn post in 2021 describing 10 reasons he thought the show became a global phenomenon. One was the broader popularity of the "survival-game" genre.

Foo also noted that it touched on themes such as economic inequality and said it was "instantly meme-able" for its visually striking set design and costumes.

In an interview with Variety in late December, Hwang said fans wouldn't need to wait too long for season three.

"After season two launches, I believe we will be announcing the launch date for Season 3 soon," he said. "I probably expect that to launch around summer or fall next year."

• Elon Musk celebrated New Year's Eve at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort.
• Musk was seen dancing with his son near Trump in a video shared on X.
• Musk has been staying in a $2,000-a-night cottage on Trump's estate, The New York Times reported.

Elon Musk rang in 2025 with a blowout party at President-elect Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort.

In a video clip posted online, the world's richest man was spotted dancing with his son, X AE A-XII, perched on his shoulders near Trump.

The Tesla chief has reportedly been staying in a cottage on the property, just a few hundred feet from the main house on Trump's estate in Palm Beach, Florida. The New York Times reported that Musk moved into the property around Election Day.

The cottage has previously been rented out for at least $2,000 a night, a source told the Times.

The New Year's Eve gala was a star-studded affair, drawing celebrities, high-profile politicians, and close associates of Trump.

Among the guests pictured at the event were Musk's mother, Maye, Vice President-elect JD Vance, and Sen. Ted Cruz.

Boxing promoter Don King and Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis, with whom Musk shares three children, were also in attendance.

Lara Trump, Trump's daughter-in-law, sang a cover of Tom Petty's song "I Won't Back Down" for the crowd and guests watched a fireworks display ahead of the countdown to midnight.

Donald Trump Jr, also celebrating his birthday, was accompanied by his rumored girlfriend, Bettina Anderson.

Meanwhile, the former prime minister of Australia, Scott Morrisson, shared a photo on X of him and his wife at the party posing with Trump and the incoming first lady, Melania Trump.

Trump spoke briefly to reporters as he entered the party, saying what he was looking forward to in 2025.

"Just a great year; I think we're going to do fantastically well as a country; we're going to bring it back; it has to be brought back," he said.

Trump also confirmed plans to attend the funeral of Jimmy Carter, the former US president who died at the age of 100 last week.

• Generative AI is becoming increasingly omnipresent  — and is a growing hot topic.
• Chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT are changing the way we find information, generate images, and more.
• Here are the people, companies, and words you need to know to understand AI. 

It's becoming increasingly impossible to ignore AI in our everyday lives.

Since OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022, people have gotten used to using the chatbot in many ways. Workers are turning to AI to automate tasks, while others are using the technology to improve their personal lives.

And as AI continues to advance, there may be a greater need for everyone to understand what it is and how it may affect us.

Here's a list of the people, companies, and terms you need to know to talk about AI, in alphabetical order.

The top AI leaders and companies

Sam Altman: The cofounder and CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. In 2023, Altman was ousted by OpenAI's board before returning to the company as CEO days later.

Dario Amodei: The CEO and cofounder of Anthropic, a major rival to OpenAI, where he previously worked. The AI startup is behind an AI chatbot called Claude 2. Google and Amazon are investors in Anthropic.

Demis Hassabis: The cofounder of DeepMind and now CEO of Google DeepMind, Hassabis leads its AI efforts at Alphabet.

Jensen Huang: The CEO and cofounder of Nvidia, the tech giant behind the specialized chips companies use to power their AI technology.

Elon Musk: The Tesla and SpaceX CEO founded artificial intelligence startup xAI in 2023. The valuation of this new venture has risen dramatically in just 16 months — it now has an estimated valuation of $50 billion, according to recent reports. Musk also cofounded OpenAI, and after leaving the company in 2018, he has maintained a feud with Altman.

Satya Nadella: The CEO of Microsoft, the software giant behind the Bing AI-powered search engine and Copilot, a suite of generative AI tools. Microsoft is also an investor in OpenAI.

Mustafa Suleyman: The cofounder of DeepMind, Google's AI division, who left the company in 2022. He cofounded Inflection AI, before he joined Microsoft as its chief of AI in March 2024.

Mark Zuckerberg: The Facebook founder and Meta CEO who has been spending big to advance Meta's AI capabilities, including training its own models and integrating the technology into its platforms.

The AI terms you need to know

Agentic: A type of artificial intelligence that can make proactive, autonomous decisions with limited human input. Unlike generative AI models like ChatGPT, agentic AI does not need a human prompt to take action — for example, it can perform complex tasks and adapt when objectives change. Google's Gemini 2.0 focuses on agentic AI that can solve multi-step problems on its own.

AGI: "Artificial general intelligence," or the ability of artificial intelligence to perform complex cognitive tasks such as displaying self-awareness and critical thinking the way humans do.

Alignment: A field of AI safety research that aims to ensure that the goals, decisions, and behaviors of AI systems are consistent with human values and intentions. In July 2023 OpenAI announced a "Superalignment" to focus on making its AI safe. That team was later disbanded and in May the company set up a safety and security committee to advise the board on "critical safety and security decisions."

Biden's executive order on AI: Biden signed this landmark executive order, officially called the "Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence," in 2023. It does a number of things to try to regulate the development of AI, including demanding greater transparency from tech companies producing AI, setting new standards for AI safety and security, and taking steps to ensure the US stays competitive in AI research and development. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to rescind this order.

Compute: The AI computing resources needed to train models and carry out tasks, including processing data. This can include GPUs, servers, and cloud services.

Deepfake: An AI-generated image, video, or voice meant to appear real which tends to be used to deceive viewers or listeners. Deepfakes have been used to create non-consensual pornography and extort people for money.

Effective altruists: Broadly speaking, this is a social movement that stakes its claim in the idea that all lives are equally valuable and those with resources should allocate them to helping as many as possible. And in the context of AI, effective altruists, or EAs, are interested in how AI can be safely deployed to reduce suffering caused by social ills like climate change and poverty. Figures including Elon Musk, Sam Bankman-Fried, and Peter Thiel identify as effective altruists. (See also: e/accs and decels).

Frontier models: Refers to the most advanced examples of AI technology. The Frontier Model Forum — an industry nonprofit launched by Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic in 2023 — defines frontier models as "large-scale machine-learning models that exceed the capabilities currently present in the most advanced existing models, and can perform a wide variety of tasks."

GPU: A computer chip, short for graphic processing unit, that companies use to train and deploy their AI models. Nvidia's GPUs are used by Microsoft and Meta to run their AI models.

Hallucinations: A phenomenon where a large language model (see below) generates inaccurate information that it presents as a fact. For example, during an early demo, Google's AI chatbot Bard hallucinated by generating a factual error about the James Webb Space Telescope.

Large language model: A complex computer program designed to understand and generate human-like text. The model is trained on large amounts of data and produces answers by scraping information across the web. Examples of LLMs include OpenAI's GPT-4, Meta's Llama 2, and Google's Gemini.

Machine learning: Also known as deep learning, machine learning refers to AI systems that can adapt and learn on their own, without following human instructions or explicit programming.

Multimodal: The ability for AI models to process text, images, and audio to generate an output. Users of ChatGPT, for instance, can now write, speak, and upload images to the AI chatbot.

Natural language processing: The umbrella term encompasses a variety of methods for interpreting and understanding human language. LLMs are one tool for interpreting language within the field of NLP.

Neural network: A machine learning program designed to think and learn like a human brain. Facial recognition systems, for instance, are designed using neural networks in order to identify a person by analyzing their facial features.

Open-source: A trait used to describe a computer program that anyone can freely access, use, and modify without asking for permission. Some AI experts have called for models behind AI, like ChatGPT, to be open-source so the public knows how exactly they are trained.

Optical character recognition: OCR is technology that can recognize text within images — like scanned documents, text in photos, and read-only PDFs — and extract it into text-only format that machines can read.

Prompt engineering: The process of asking AI chatbots questions that can produce desired responses. As a profession, prompt engineers are experts in fine tuning AI models on the backend to improve outputs.

Rationalists: People who believe that the most effective way to understand the world is through logic, reason, and scientific evidence. They draw conclusions by gathering evidence and critical thinking rather than following their personal feelings.

When it comes to AI, rationalists seek to answer questions like how AI can be smarter, how AI can solve complex problems, and how AI can better process information around risk. That stands in opposition to empiricists, who in the context of AI, may favor advancements in AI backed by observational data.

Responsible scaling policies: Guidelines for AI developers to follow that are designed to mitigate safety risks and ensure the responsible development of AI systems, their impact on society, and the resources they will consume, such as energy and data. Such policies help ensure that AI is ethical, beneficial, and sustainable as systems become more powerful.

Singularity: A hypothetical moment where artificial intelligence becomes so advanced that the technology surpasses human intelligence. Think of a science fiction scenario where an AI robot develops agency and takes over the world.

• Elon Musk's startup xAI has attracted top talent since launching in July 2023.
• xAI has raised more than $12 billion and is valued at $50 billion.
• Its founding members have previous experience at the likes of Google, OpenAI and Tesla.

Elon Musk's startup xAI is one of the newer players in the artificial intelligence race, but that hasn't stopped it from bringing in top talent and soaring to a valuation of $50 billion in just 16 months.

Launched by Musk in July 2023 to take on OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, xAI's lofty goal is to "understand the universe."

The startup began with a team of 12 people who, prior to joining Musk's latest moonshot, worked at the likes of Google DeepMind, Tesla, OpenAI, and Microsoft. It has raised a total of $12 billion, including a $6 billion funding round that closed in December.

Since its launch, xAI has released a chatbot called Grok, which is now free for everyone to use. Some of its latest features include web search results, PDF upload, image understanding, and the ability to summarize conversations and understand posts. It has also rolled out an image-generating tool.

Grok has been trained on user data from X, the company formerly known as Twitter, which Musk also owns. That dynamic has given xAI a competitive advantage but also triggered an investigation from Europe's lead privacy regulator, resulting in X making concessions on some user data.

To compete with rivals like OpenAI and Google, xAI plans to tenfold the size of its Memphis supercomputer, which trains its AI models. The xAI team built the supercomputer, called Colossus, at breakneck speed, and it's already considered the largest of its kind in the world.

Meet the key figures at xAI who are driving the startup's rapid growth.

Igor Babuschkin

Babuschkin, a founding member of xAI, spent three years as a research engineer at Google DeepMind before he joined OpenAI. He returned to Google DeepMind for nearly a year, then left for xAI.

In a livestreamed conversation with Musk and others on X Spaces in July 2023, Babuschkin said he was originally a physicist and briefly worked at the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most advanced particle accelerator.

During that conversation, Babuschkin said he's "always been very passionate" about understanding the universe and then became interested in the deep machine learning and AI fields, and decided to make a career switch.

He added, "I was very passionate about language models and making them do impressive things, and now I've teamed up with Elon to see if we can actually deploy these new technologies to really make a dent in our understanding of the universe and progress our collective knowledge."

Manuel Kroiss

Kroiss previously worked as an engineer at Google DeepMind and coauthored several research papers on machine learning, the most recent being: "Launchpad: A programming model for distributed machine learning research."

Yuhuai (Tony) Wu

Wu previously worked at Google and Google DeepMind and spent a few months as a research scientist intern at OpenAI. He also spent over a year as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University.

Wu said in the 2023 X Spaces livestream that his dream has been to tackle the most difficult problems in mathematics and AI. He has also coauthored a number of research papers on machine learning and large language models.

Wu has a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of New Brunswick and a Ph.D. in machine learning from the University of Toronto.

Christian Szegedy

Szegedy joined xAI from Google, where he spent 14 years of his career. His last role there was as a staff research scientist.

Szegedy holds a master's degree in mathematics and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from The University of Bonn.

In a fireside chat with Nvidia data scientist Bojan Tunguz earlier this year, Szegedy said he had worked on chip design for 12 years.

Then, in 2010, at the age of 40, he decided to make a career change after realizing AI would be the next big thing and joined Google.

Jimmy Ba

Ba has a background in deep neural networks and is a former student of Geoffrey Hinton, who is widely referred to as the "Godfather of AI."

Ba is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. In 2023, the university awarded him a Sloan Research Fellowship, a program that the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation recognizes as individuals "whose creativity, innovation, and research accomplishments make them stand out as the next generation of leaders."

A LinkedIn post by the university's Department of Computer Science announcing the award said Ba's research has played a major influence in deep learning and focuses on creating efficient deep learning algorithms for neural networks.

In the X Spaces last year, Ba said his long-term research ambitions align with xAI's mission to "help humanity to overcome some of the most ambitious challenges out there" through AI tools.

Toby Pohlen

Pohlen spent over six years at Google DeepMind, where he was most recently a staff research engineer. The London-based engineer worked on evaluation tools for LLMs, as well as scalable reinforcement learning at Google DeepMind.

When xAI released Grok in November 2023, Pohlen shared a demo and suggested that the chatbot would have a regular setting as well as a "fun mode."

Ross Nordeen

Nordeen was previously a technical program manager at Tesla and worked on supercomputing before leaving to join xAI in 2023.

According to Musk's biographer, Walter Isaacson, Nordeen was called in to help Musk with a last-minute effort to move some data servers from Sacramento to Oregon.

Nordeen is said to have bought the entire stock of AirTags from an Apple Store in San Francisco, worth $2,000, so he could track the journey of the servers that were being moved.

Nordeen paid a further $2,500 at Home Depot for tools like wrenches, bolt cutters, and headlamps to help with the mission to remove and transfer the servers.

Greg Yang

Yang works on mathematics and the science of deep learning at xAI and was previously a researcher at Microsoft for more than five years.

In the X Spaces session, Yang said he took time off from his undergraduate degree at Harvard University and became a DJ and dubstep music producer. He said that after some introspection, he figured out that he didn't want to be a DJ.

He said his goal is to make artificial general intelligence happen, adding that he wants to "make something smarter than myself." He then studied mathematics to pursue his career ambition.

Guodong Zhang

Guodong has a Ph.D. in machine learning from the University of Toronto. He started his career in AI as a research intern at Microsoft, then Google Brain, and Google DeepMind.

He then spent about 10 months as a research scientist at Google DeepMind before he joined xAI as a pretraining lead.

Zihang Dai

Dai also joined xAI from Google, where he was mostly recently a senior research scientist and spent over five years at the company.

He holds both a master of science degree and a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.

• Klarna will start drug testing employees in Sweden from January, Business Insider has learned.
• The buy-now, pay-later firm told staff about the new measures in an internal Slack post on Monday.
• Klarna, which is gearing up to IPO, said it was part of a wider effort to "strengthen security."

Klarna will start testing employees in Sweden for alcohol and drugs from January, Business Insider has learned, in a sign of the company increasing its internal security ahead of an anticipated IPO.

The buy-now, pay-later firm told employees via a company Slack channel post on Monday that an external supplier would carry out the random testing to ensure it was conducted in accordance with local laws and industry standards.

The post, from Klarna's director of people and HR, Mikaela Mijatovic, said the move was "part of a larger effort to strengthen security across Klarna."

The Slack message, seen by BI, said that Klarna plans to introduce similar drug testing in other countries where it operates, "following local laws and regulations." Mijatovic added that all new hires in Sweden will undergo testing during the recruitment process, starting in January.

Nafsika Karavida, an attorney at Reavis Page Jump in Sweden, told BI that employee drug testing is generally permitted under Swedish law within the private sector. She said it is "fairly common" in the fintech and banking industry and "getting more and more common."

The announcement comes after Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the CEO of Klarna, floated the idea of randomized drug testing to staff during a September all-hands. He said the company could need to introduce some additional safeguards because, as a growing financial institution, there had been greater interest in the startup from "less favorable parts of society: criminals, different hacking groups, and so forth," according to a recording of the meeting obtained by BI.

Some of the measures he discussed included monitoring employees' locations and drug testing staffers. Siemiatkowski added, "For more senior and more sensitive roles, this could also include things like understanding your financial statements to understand if someone is in trouble or could be potentially compromised."

In Monday's internal post, Mijatovic added that Klarna would also examine how it manages company devices and shares information externally.

The Swedish fintech, once Europe's most valuable startup, has been gearing up for an IPO in the US. It announced in November that it confidentially submitted draft registration documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Klarna declined to comment.

Do you work for Klarna? Got a tip? Contact the reporter, Jyoti Mann, via the encrypted messaging app Signal at jyotimann.11 or via email at [email protected]. Reach out through a nonwork device.

• Apple plans to launch a foldable giant iPad and a folding iPhone, according to multiple reports.
• The foldable tablet device is reportedly the size of two iPad Pros.
• Apple could also introduce a thinner iPhone next year, the reports said.

Apple is developing a foldable iPad and a foldable iPhone, according to multiple reports.

Apple is working towards bringing the foldable iPad, said to be the size of two iPad Pros when unfolded, to market around 2028, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported in the "Power On" newsletter on Sunday.

The company is unlikely to bring its folding iPhone to market before 2026, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal reported.

Despite years of working on the new form factor, Apple has faced hurdles in bringing foldable devices to market. Critical components, such as a reliable hinge mechanism and a display screen protection cover for the display, have delayed progress, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Rival tech firms already offer foldable dual-screen products, such as Microsoft Surface Pro and Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Fold. Similarly, Apple is the only major smartphone company without a foldable device. There have been many reports about a prototype folding iPhone in recent years, including that Apple has been working with LG and Samsung on displays for the collapsible devices.

Apple wants its new iPad to be free of the crease that's present in other foldable devices available on the market. Gurman said the new device has an almost invisible crease.

The Cupertino-headquartered company also plans to introduce a thinner iPhone next year. Apple wants to offer the "thinnest and lightest products" on the market, Gurman wrote in June.

The range of new devices in development is part of Apple's broader strategy to diversify its hardware offerings as it seeks new avenues for growth.

Apple said in its most recent annual report that its future devices might not be as profitable as its iPhone business, which made up nearly half of its total revenue in its fiscal fourth quarter.

In a note to investors in the report, Apple said, "New products, services and technologies may replace or supersede existing offerings and may produce lower revenues and lower profit margin."

It added that it could "materially adversely impact the company's business, results of operations and financial condition."

Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

• Elon Musk shared a legal letter to X which said Neuralink faces a probe by the SEC.
• He shared the letter in a series of posts attacking and mocking SEC Chair Gary Gensler.
• Musk wrote, "Oh Gary, how could you do this to me?"

Elon Musk has revealed that Neuralink, his brain-chip implant company, is facing a probe from the Securities and Exchange Commission, with which he has long feuded.

Musk posted a letter on the subject to X Thursday, as well as a mocking, AI-generated image of SEC chair Gary Gensler. He called the SEC "just another weaponized institution doing political dirty work."

"Oh Gary, how could you do this to me?" Musk wrote in the post sharing the letter from his lawyer, Alex Spiro, to Gensler.

In the letter, which was said it was "in the matter of certain purchases, sales, and disclosures of Twitter shares," Spiro said the SEC "reopened" an investigation into Neuralink but didn't elaborate on why. It also said the SEC was preparing action against Musk over his 2022 acquisition of Twitter, now X.

The billionaire later shared another post featuring an AI-generated image of a snail wearing a business suit and said it depicted Gensler.

Neuralink and the SEC didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

The SEC is investigating how Musk bought shares in Twitter ahead of his $44 billion acquisition of the social network.

Musk started buying shares in Twitter in 2022, and by the spring, he had a 9% stake in the company before he struck a deal to buy it outright later in the year.

Spiro, Musk's lawyer, also said in the letter that the SEC issued a "settlement demand" on Wednesday to agree within 48 hours to make a payment or face enforcement action.

Spiro wrote that this followed "a multi-year investigation and more than six years of harassment" of Musk by the SEC.

This is an apparent reference to the SEC suing Musk in 2018 over a tweet in which he claimed he had the funding to take Tesla private, which led to him being forced to step down as chairman.

• Calendly laid off around 70 employees in its engineering, customer experience, marketing, and billing teams.
• BI obtained a copy of CEO Tope Awotona's memo announcing the cuts to staff on Wednesday morning.
• Calendly previously laid off 60 employees in July 2023 and was valued at $3 billion in 2021.

Scheduling platform Calendly laid off around 70 employees — about 13% of its workforce — on Wednesday.

The CEO, Tope Awotona, emailed employees at 10 a.m. ET on Wednesday with the subject heading "Important Update: Team Changes and Reorganization."

Awotona said he had "some difficult news" and told workers that the company was carrying out "strategic reorganizations" across its engineering, customer experience, marketing, and billing departments and that "approximately 70" people would be impacted.

"These decisions are never easy, and I take full responsibility for the choices that have led us to this point," he wrote.

Awotona also said that those affected would receive a calendar invite for a meeting on Wednesday afternoon.

Two people familiar with the matter told Business Insider that there were 46 layoffs in the engineering team, 16 in the customer-experience team seven in marketing, and two in billing.

A screenshot shared with Business Insider by an employee shows that a companywide Slack channel had 466 members after the laid-off workers lost access to the company's system.

The startup, valued at $3 billion in 2021, previously laid off 60 people in July 2023, The Information reported at the time. It was founded by Awotona in 2013 and grew to have more than 20 million users, about half of which are outside the US.

The company has faced increasing competition from Big Tech. Both Google and Microsoft have rolled out features that let users share a link to their virtual calendars so others can book meetings with them.

Calendly did not immediately respond to a request for comment, made outside normal working hours.

This is Awotona's memo sent to employees, shared with BI by two employees:

Hi Team

I am reaching out this morning to share some difficult news. We've made the decision to do a series of strategic reorganizations across our Engineering, Customer Experience, Marketing and Billing teams. As part of the process, we are reducing these teams, which means we will be saying goodbye to approximately 70 of our talented teammates today. Our primary focus right now is ensuring we handle these transactions with the utmost care and respect.

If you role has been impacted, you will receive an email and calendar invite within the next 30 minutes to your personal email address from a People Team member inviting you to an indiviual meeting later today. Please note that your access to Calendly systems will be turned off shortly, and we've sent a copy of this email to your personal email address as well to ensure you have all the necessary information.

If your roles has NOT been impacted, you will not receive a separate email. During today's All Hands (3 PM ET/ Noon PT), we will share more details about these decisions, and leave time for a live Q&A at the end. Following the All Hands, department leaders will hold team-specific meetings (check your calendar for the exact times) to discuss how these changes affect your team and provide another opportunity to ask questions.

These decisions are never easy, and I take full responsibility for the choices that have led us to this point. To those leaving us today, please know that your hard work and dedication have been deeply valued, and we are incredibly grateful for your contributions to Calendly.

As a reminder, we ask that all team members continue to uphold their confidentiality agreements and adhere to Calendly's privacy policy.

Do you work for Calendly? Got a tip? Contact the reporter Jyoti Mann via the encrypted messaging app Signal at jyotimann.11 or via email at [email protected]. Reach out through a nonwork device.

• OpenAI's CFO trusts Elon Musk to prioritize the national interest despite owning a rival company.
• Musk, a Trump advisor with ties to AI czar David Sacks, has a feud with OpenAI's Sam Altman.
• Altman said last week he does not think Musk will use his political power to hurt competitors.

OpenAI trusts Elon Musk to act in good faith as the owner of a rival AI company with the ear of President-elect Donald Trump, its CFO said.

"We trust him...as a competitor, [Musk] will put first the national interest and compete appropriately," Sarah Friar, the CFO of OpenAI, said at the Reuters NEXT conference on Tuesday.

Musk is a close Trump advisor and is co-leading the advisory body DOGE alongside Vivek Ramaswamy. Musk's ally and fellow PayPal Mafia member David Sacks was recently appointed as Trump's AI and crypto czar.

After Sacks was tapped for the position, OpenAI chief Sam Altman — with whom Musk has a long-running feud — took to X to congratulate him on the role. Musk responded with a laughing emoji.

Friar's comments follow Altman's remarks at The New York Times' DealBook summit last week, in which he said he didn't think Musk would use his political power to his advantage and boost his own AI startup, xAI.

He said, "I believe pretty strongly that Elon will do the right thing and that it would be profoundly un-American to use political power to the degree that Elon would hurt competitors and advantage his own businesses."

Musk has been embroiled in a legal battle with OpenAI since March after twice suing the company behind ChatGPT. He accused the company and some of its cofounders of violating its founding charter with its plans to change its corporate structure to become a for-profit business, and of putting commercial interests ahead of its original mission to benefit humanity.

Altman also addressed the feud between him and Musk at the DealBook conference, calling it "tremendously sad" and said he grew up looking to Musk as a "mega hero."

xAI was launched just 16 months ago, but it has quickly scaled up to be considered a competitor of OpenAI. In record time, the $50 billion startup built a supercomputer in Memphis that has 100,00 GPUs and is aiming to increase that to at least one million.

OpenAI and Elon Musk didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

• China's top antimonopoly regulator is investigating Nvidia.
• The investigation is related to the company's 2020 acquisition of an Israeli chip firm.
• Nvidia's stock fell by 2.2% in premarket trading on Monday.

China's top antimonopoly regulator has launched an investigation into Nvidia, whose shares dropped by 2.2% in premarket trading on Monday following the latest escalation of chip tensions with the US.

The State Administration for Market Regulation said on Monday that it was investigating whether the chipmaker giant violated antimonopoly regulations.

The probe is related to Nvidia's acquisition of Mellanox Technologies, an Israeli chip firm, in 2020. China's competition authority approved the $7 billion takeover in 2020 on the condition that rivals be notified of new products within 90 days of allowing Nvidia access to them.

The US-China chip war has been escalating. Last week, China's commerce ministry said it would halt shipments of key materials needed for chip production to the US. The ministry said the measures were in response to US chip export bans, also announced last week.

Nvidia, which is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, has also faced antitrust scrutiny in the US. The Department of Justice has been examining whether Nvidia might have abused its market dominance to make it difficult for buyers to change suppliers.

Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider made outside normal working hours.

• Jeff Bezos said he's "putting a lot of time" into Amazon despite stepping down as CEO in 2021.
• Bezos said Wednesday at the DealBook Summit that he's spending 95% of his time at Amazon on AI.
• Amazon announced this week it's building a supercomputer with Anthropic to enhance AI capabilities.

Jeff Bezos stepped down as CEO of Amazon over three years ago, but he's still putting in the hours at the company to help it in the AI race.

Speaking at The New York Times's DealBook conference on Wednesday, the billionaire said he's still deeply involved and hasn't fully left the company he founded 30 years ago.

"My heart is in Amazon, my curiosity is in Amazon, and my fears are there and my love is there," Bezos said. "I'm never going to forget about Amazon. I'll always be there to help, and right now, I'm putting a lot of time into it. I can help, and it's super interesting, so why not?"

Bezos said that 95% of his time at Amazon is spent focusing on AI within the company, which he said is building 1,000 AI applications internally. One such application is a multimodal model that can process images, video, and text, The Information recently reported.

The company requires a significant amount of computing power to scale its AI ambitions, so it's building a supercomputer using its own chips alongside Anthropic, the AI startup that it has invested $8 billion in, to give it an edge against its Big Tech rivals.

Bezos, who remains at Amazon as its executive chairman, also said one of his jobs is to ensure the success of its CEO, Andy Jassy, and the leadership team.

The world's second-richest man said on an episode of the "Lex Fridman Podcast" last year that the main reason he left his role as the CEO of Amazon in 2021 was so he could focus his time on his rocket company, Blue Origin. At the DealBook Summit, Bezos said it was "not a very good business yet" but predicted it would eventually surpass Amazon and become "the best business" he's been involved in.

Bezos also told the Dealbook Summit audience that he's not worried about Donald Trump's second term, saying he's "actually very optimistic this time around."

Bezos is not the only tech founder to return to a company after taking a step back. Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin both got back in the mix to work on AI initiatives after leaving their executive roles in 2019.

Their return to Google appeared to be sparked by the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT in 2022, which led to Google's management issuing a "code red," The New York Times reported at the time. ChatGPT's successful rollout caught Google off guard and triggered concerns about the future of its search engine, so its CEO, Sundar Pichai, turned to Page and Brin for help, according to The Times.

Amazon didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

• ByteDance has sued a former intern for $1.1 million, per Chinese media reports.
• The TikTok owner claims he sabotaged an AI model training project by modifying code.
• The company has a chatbot similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT, called Doubao.

TikTok owner ByteDance has filed a lawsuit seeking damages of $1.1 million against a former intern it has accused of sabotaging an AI training project, according to local media reports.

The lawsuit, filed in a Beijing district court, reportedly centers on claims that Tian Keyu, the ex-intern, deliberately tampered with code for the company's AI model training tasks.

ByteDance referenced the case in an internal disciplinary notice this month, The South China Morning Post reported on Thursday.

Multiple Chinese media outlets reported this week that ByteDance is seeking 8 million yuan, about $1.1 million, and a public apology.

Last month, ByteDance told the BBC in a statement that it fired Tian in August and that he was an intern in the technology team but did not work in its AI lab. The company added that his social media profile contained inaccuracies. Tian's LinkedIn profile states that he has been a research intern at ByteDance's VC team and AI lab since 2021.

The tech giant also said in its statement last month that reports of the former intern causing damage to about 8,000 specialist chips, called GPUs, and racking up losses amounting to millions of dollars were exaggerated.

ByteDance operates China's most popular chatbot, Doubao, which is similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT.

ByteDance and Tian didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

TikTok faces US ban

In the US, ByteDance faces a January 19 deadline to divest its TikTok stake to an approved buyer or shut down after Congress passed a law in April.

The US government claims it is a national security threat and officials have been concerned about its growing influence in the country. Some government officials are worried ByteDance could hand over sensitive data on its US users to the Chinese Communist Party.

However, President-elect Donald Trump has said he would try to save the app once in office.

• The US is planning new curbs on chip exports to slow China's AI development, multiple reports say.
• It could blacklist 200 Chinese semiconductor equipment manufacturers, Wired reported.
• Targeting Chinese chip equipment makers could benefit European firms such as ASML.

The Biden administration is reported to be considering fresh sanctions against Chinese semiconductor equipment manufacturers, pushing up stocks of semiconductor suppliers in Europe and Japan.

Bloomberg reported that while the newly proposed sanctions still targeted Chinese chip fabrication plants, they put greater emphasis on targeting domestic firms supplying manufacturing equipment to chipmakers. The suggested curbs would add an extra 100 Chinese chip equipment makers to the entity list, the outlet reported.

That pushed the share price of ASML — the Dutch firm supplying crucial specialized equipment to chip manufacturers, including China's SMIC — up by more than 4.27% Thursday.

Tokyo Electron, which also sells equipment for manufacturing chips, saw its share price climb by more than 6% on Thursday.

The restrictions, expected as soon as next week, could also add chipmakers to the sanctions list, including key suppliers to the Chinese smartphone maker Huawei, Bloomberg and Wired reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The new proposals would affect fewer Huawei suppliers, the reports added.

As part of the sweeping sanctions, the US could add 200 Chinese chip firms to its trade blacklist, Wired reported. The controls could also include restrictions around trading memory chips, which are crucial for the development of AI models.

'Malicious attempts to block and suppress China'

Chinese stocks were down on Thursday. Hang Seng's stock slid by more than 1%, and the CSI and the Shanghai Composite are also down by 0.57% and 0.10%, respectively.

"This decline is occurring as the Biden administration is considering imposing additional restrictions on the sale of crucial semiconductors to China, possibly as early as next week," Jim Reid, Deutsche Bank's global head of economics and thematic research, said in a research note.

The Biden administration has worked to limit China's progress in the semiconductor industry in recent years by rolling out export controls aimed at cutting off its access to buying advanced AI chips and chip-making equipment.

American chip equipment makers and allies such as Japan and the Netherlands reportedly pushed back against earlier proposals.

Under the new rules, companies and even foreign firms that used American parts or software in designing and manufacturing AI chips will be required to obtain licenses to export to China.

Mao Ning, a spokesperson for China's foreign ministry, said at a press conference this week, "China is firmly opposed to the US overstretching the concept of national security, abusing export control measures, and making malicious attempts to block and suppress China."

The US Department of Commerce didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

• Intel is getting $7.9 billion in federal grants from the Biden administration.
• The US Department of Commerce announced the grant, part of the CHIPS Act, on Tuesday.
• President-elect Donald Trump has criticized the CHIPS Act in favor of tariffs.

Intel is receiving about $7.9 billion in federal grants, the US Department of Commerce said Tuesday, as the Biden administration finalizes CHIPS Act agreements ahead of Donald Trump taking office.

It is $600 million less than President Joe Biden's $8.5 billion preliminary grant announced in March. Intel is receiving less than what was initially promised because it also received a separate grant of $3 billion to produce chips for the military, the Department of Commerce told The New York Times.

The chip giant is on track to receive at least $1 billion of the total grant award before the end of this year, a senior administration official told Bloomberg.

President-elect Trump has previously criticized the CHIPS Act and suggested he would prefer tariffs to incentivize semiconductor manufacturing on US soil. This has caused the Biden administration to scramble to finalize billions of dollars in payments before the end of the year.

The CHIPS Act cash will help Intel boost its semiconductor production in the US. It is expected to invest nearly $90 billion in the US by the end of the decade.

US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said in a press release that Intel's investments across Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio, and Oregon would "supercharge American innovation" and that the company is playing an important part in the "revitalization" of the semiconductor industry in the US.

"Strong bipartisan support for restoring American technology and manufacturing leadership is driving historic investments that are critical to the country's long-term economic growth and national security," added Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger.

Intel's share price is down by almost 50% this year. It has racked up billions in losses and faced a series of challenges, including layoffs.

The Wall Street Journal reported in September that Qualcomm was interested in acquiring Intel. However, its takeover interest has since cooled as a result of some complications related to acquiring the entire company, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Intel didn't immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment, made outside normal working hours.