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Incidents and actions from tracked entities.

In September 2024, Mullenweg publicly attacked WP Engine as a 'cancer to WordPress' and demanded 8% of revenue ($32M) as trademark licensing. When WP Engine declined, he blocked their access to WordPress.org, disrupting over a million websites. He then seized WP Engine's ACF plugin without review. WP Engine sued for extortion, unfair competition, and defamation. A court granted a preliminary injunction restoring WP Engine's access. 159 Automattic employees (8.4%) took buyout packages to leave.

Despite laying off 15,000+ employees in 2024, Intel maintained its DEI commitments. The company has set goals to achieve full representation of underrepresented minorities and women in its US workforce by 2030. Intel achieved its 2020 diversity goal two years ahead of schedule and reached 100% gender pay equity globally in 2019. Intel Capital has invested over $830 million in companies with diverse leadership teams. Intel won the Phoenix Business Journal's Corporate Inclusion Award in September 2024.

Khosla repeatedly stated that AI will be able to do 80% of 80% of all jobs by 2030, affecting roles from doctors to farm workers. Rather than dismissing the disruption, he advocated for Universal Basic Income and proposed the U.S. government take a 10% stake in all public corporations to redistribute wealth. He published 'AI: Dystopia or Utopia?' arguing that policy choices around UBI and wealth redistribution will determine whether AI benefits humanity. He acknowledged the 10-25 year transition 'could be very messy.'

In September 2024, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg escalated a trademark dispute with WP Engine by publicly calling them a 'cancer to WordPress,' blocking WP Engine's access to WordPress.org resources, and demanding they pay trademark licensing fees. WP Engine sued Automattic. The dispute disrupted the WordPress ecosystem and drew widespread criticism for using control of WordPress.org infrastructure as leverage in a commercial dispute.

Uber expanded 'Record My Ride' feature to drivers in all 50 states on September 18, 2024, following successful pilot program. Feature allows drivers to use front-facing camera on their smartphone to record video and audio during trips without need to invest in separate dashcam. Every recording is encrypted and stored directly on drivers' devices - nobody including Uber, riders, or other drivers can access recordings unless driver chooses to send it in for review. Feature provides drivers with evidence protection tool in case of disputes or safety incidents while protecting rider privacy through encryption and local-only storage.

Uber launched nationwide rider verification system on September 18, 2024, allowing drivers to see 'Verified' badge for riders who underwent additional verification steps. System reviews rider account details such as names and phone numbers and cross-references them with trusted third-party databases. Majority of riders are verified automatically without additional action. Riders can also upload government-issued identification along with selfie for verification. Feature aims to improve driver safety and confidence in accepting trip requests. Announced at 'Only on Uber' event in Washington, DC.

$265.5M

In September 2024, the EU General Court upheld a €238.7 million ($265.5M) fine against Qualcomm for predatory pricing below cost during 2009-2011. Qualcomm sold UMTS chipsets to Huawei and ZTE below cost to eliminate UK competitor Icera (later acquired by Nvidia). The court found Qualcomm abused its dominant position through pricing strategy designed to exclude competitors.

In September 2024, ARM published its Sustainable Business Report covering April 2023-March 2024 'with reference to' Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) 2021 Universal Standards. The report addresses emissions and resource use throughout operations, reflecting commitment to cut emissions and longstanding partnerships for environmental progress. ARM aims to reduce environmental impact and enable the ecosystem to do more with less through its power-efficient compute platform. In 2025, ARM reduced Scope 1 and 2 emissions despite business growth.

Cisco laid off over 9,000 workers in 2024: ~4,000 in February (5%) and another 5,600 in September (7%). Total cost was nearly $2 billion. Employees reported the company refused to say who was affected until September 16, over a month after the August announcement. Meanwhile, CEO Robbins' compensation rose to $38.2 million in 2024, with a 267-to-1 pay ratio.

Andy Jassy announced a mandatory 5-day-per-week return-to-office policy for all Amazon corporate employees, effective January 2, 2025. This reversed earlier flexible work commitments. Surveys showed 91% employee dissatisfaction, and 73% considered quitting. Experts noted the mandate may have been intended to reduce headcount through attrition. Jassy claimed the decision was about culture, not cost-cutting.

In September 2024, Dahl launched a petition to cancel Oracle's trademark on 'JavaScript', gathering over 14,000 signatures. In November 2024, the Deno team filed a formal petition with the USPTO for cancellation, arguing Oracle has not used the trademark in commerce and its control harms the JavaScript community.

$14.3B

On September 10, 2024 the Court of Justice of the European Union issued its final ruling ordering Apple to pay €13 billion in back taxes plus interest to Ireland, overturning the 2020 General Court decision and reinstating the European Commission's 2016 finding that Ireland had granted Apple unlawful state aid via tax rulings that allowed Apple to allocate substantially all European profits to a 'head office' that existed nowhere. The judgment was the final word in the longest-running tax state-aid case in EU history and made Apple the largest-ever single corporate tax recovery in Europe.

Naval Ravikant endorsed Trump in September 2024, citing concerns about 'lawfare' against Trump. Said Democratic prosecutions were 'really trumped up' and 'disgusting behavior' that could turn America into a 'banana republic.' Offered to serve in Trump administration 'to protect the American Dream for my kids.' Elon Musk endorsed his analysis.

NVIDIA faces simultaneous antitrust investigations in three major markets. The US DOJ issued a subpoena in September 2024 investigating whether NVIDIA makes it harder to switch suppliers and penalizes buyers not exclusively using its chips. France raided NVIDIA offices in September 2023, with June 2024 findings of likely abuse through price fixing, production restrictions, and discriminatory behavior. China's SAMR launched an investigation in December 2024 for suspected AML violations related to a 2020 transaction.

The U.S. Department of Justice escalated its antitrust investigation of Nvidia by issuing legally binding subpoenas in September 2024. The DOJ investigated concerns that Nvidia made it harder to switch to other AI chip suppliers, penalized buyers not exclusively using its chips, and that its $700 million acquisition of RunAI could foreclose competition. Separately, China's SAMR found in September 2025 that Nvidia violated anti-monopoly law related to its 2020 Mellanox acquisition by allegedly tying GPU purchases to networking equipment. France also opened an investigation in 2024.

In September 2024, Elastic added the OSI-approved AGPLv3 license as an option alongside SSPL and Elastic License for Elasticsearch and Kibana, effectively returning to open-source licensing. However, developers who had migrated to alternatives after the 2021 license change largely did not return, with community trust having been damaged by the original switch.

DoorDash is among companies that revised or canceled their DEI policies. The company's annual report no longer outlines examples of DEI programs, though it still states a commitment to diversity and inclusion. DoorDash also sponsored the Canada Strong and Free Regional Networking Conference 2024 featuring Christopher Rufo, the far-right activist who has made it his mission to dismantle DEI initiatives.

Under Ton-That's leadership as CEO, Clearview AI accumulated over 90 million euros in GDPR fines from France (20M), Italy (20M), Greece (20M), and the Netherlands (30.5M) for illegally processing European citizens' biometric data. Despite explicit orders from multiple EU data protection authorities to cease operations and delete data, the company continued scraping and processing European data. Dutch DPA chairman Aleid Wolfsen stated they would investigate holding management personally liable.

Khan Academy has scaled its free educational platform to over 180 million registered users across 190+ countries by 2025, with content available in over 50 languages. During the 2023-2024 school year alone, the platform added 14.8 million new users. The U.S. Districts Partnerships program reached 945,000 students, with 64% qualifying for free/reduced lunch, 20% Black and 36% Hispanic, demonstrating strong reach into under-resourced communities. International expansion includes Brazil (2.3M users) and the Philippines (34 public schools).

Craft Ventures led a $30 million Series A funding round for Allen Control Systems, an Austin-based defense startup that builds the Bullfrog autonomous weapon system designed to shoot down drones with standard ammunition. This represents Craft Ventures' most prominent disclosed defense technology investment, signaling a strategic shift toward autonomous weapons systems.

Trump 2024 Campaign · $1.0M

In September 2024, Keith Rabois and husband Jacob Helberg hosted a JD Vance fundraiser in Manhattan that raised over $1 million for the Trump campaign. Tickets ranged from $25,000 to $250,000. Rabois also donated $500,000 to Congressional Leadership Fund and approximately $700,000 to Protect the House PAC. His husband Jacob Helberg donated $2M to Trump 2024 and was appointed Under Secretary of State.

Meta has faced multiple lawsuits from content moderators suffering severe psychological trauma. In 2020, Facebook paid $52 million to settle a US class-action (Scola v. Facebook) from moderators employed through Accenture and other contractors who developed PTSD. In September 2024, a Kenyan court ruled Meta can be sued in local courts, with 144 former moderators (81% diagnosed with severe PTSD) seeking $1.6 billion in compensation. Additional lawsuits from Ghana moderators allege depression, anxiety, insomnia, and substance abuse from reviewing extreme content. Accenture employed more than a third of Meta's ~15,000 content moderators.

When X released its first transparency report under Musk's ownership in September 2024, covering Q1-Q2 2021, the company simultaneously removed all previous transparency reports that had been published since 2011 under prior ownership. Access Now's Transparency Reporting Index noted the removal as 'a blatant step to reduce transparency and accountability.' The new report provided significantly less detail across every metric compared to previous reports.

Thousands of contract workers evaluating Google's Gemini AI for accuracy and safety earn as little as $14-15 per hour in the US, far below industry standards for cognitively demanding AI evaluation work. Overseas raters in India and the Philippines report effective rates under $10 per hour after deductions. Workers face grueling deadlines and burnout, fueling accusations of exploitation in the AI evaluation pipeline.