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Between 2018 and 2023, California Forever's subsidiary Flannery Associates secretly purchased over 50,000 acres of farmland in Solano County for approximately $900 million, becoming the county's largest private landowner. From 2019 to 2023, the company told county officials it only intended to use the land for agricultural purposes including olive farming and long-term farmer leases. The true plan - building a new city of up to 400,000 people - was only revealed when the New York Times exposed the scheme in August 2023. The land's proximity to Travis Air Force Base triggered an Air Force Foreign Investment Risk Review investigation and FBI/CFIUS referrals from Congress.

From 2017 to 2023, Sramek led California Forever's strategy to secretly acquire over 50,000 acres of Solano County farmland through subsidiary Flannery Associates. He personally assured county officials the land would be used for agricultural purposes including olive farming and long-term farmer leases, while planning to build a new city of up to 400,000 people. The deception was only revealed when the New York Times exposed the scheme in August 2023. U.S. Representative John Garamendi described the community as 'very angry - by the secrecy, by the duplicity, by the attack on family farmers.'

In August 2023, the DOJ sued SpaceX for violating the Immigration and Nationality Act by routinely discouraging and refusing to hire asylees and refugees from September 2018 through May 2022. SpaceX falsely claimed export control laws barred hiring non-citizens and green card holders, screening applicants by citizenship status. Out of nearly 10,000 hires, only one asylee was hired - four months after the DOJ investigation began. The case was dismissed in February 2025 after the Trump administration took office, with Musk calling it 'lawfare.'

In August 2023, Checkout.com terminated its relationship with Binance, once its largest customer handling $2 billion in monthly transactions in 2021. CEO Guillaume Pousaz sent letters on August 9 and 11 citing concerns over 'regulators actions and orders in relevant jurisdictions' and AML, sanctions, and compliance controls. The decision came months after the SEC filed 13 charges against Binance. Binance threatened legal action but did not pursue it.

In August 2023, HashiCorp relicensed Terraform, Vault, Consul, and other products from the Mozilla Public License (open source) to the Business Source License (not open source). The move prompted the creation of OpenTofu, a community fork. Mitchell Hashimoto was an individual contributor at the time, not in a leadership role making this decision.

Coinbase launched the Base mainnet on August 9, 2023, an Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain built on the open-source OP Stack in collaboration with Optimism. In October 2023, Base open-sourced its code repositories, smart contracts, and web properties (base.org, docs.base.org, bridge.base.org) to increase transparency and allow public contributions. Base grew to become the largest Layer 2 network by total value locked. Coinbase also offered up to $1M in bug bounties through HackerOne and outlined a decentralization roadmap including fault proofs and diverse client software for censorship resistance.

In August 2023, CEO Guillaume Pousaz mandated three office days per week. When employees raised concerns about childcare and appointments, Pousaz reportedly said 'we all have kids and doctor's appointments, but you have to come three days' and 'if you don't like it, leave' multiple times. Glassdoor reviews in 2024 averaged 2.3 stars (vs industry average 3.6), with 57% disapproval of the RTO policy. Employees described being 'treated like children' and alleged the company 'thrives on racism, sexism and bullies.'

Despite CEO John Legere's promise that the Sprint merger would be 'jobs-positive from Day One,' T-Mobile conducted mass layoffs. In 2020, thousands of Sprint employees were laid off including nearly 400 in one call. In 2023, another 5,000 jobs (7% of workforce) were eliminated. Three years after the merger, T-Mobile employed 9,000 fewer people than the combined pre-merger workforce.

In August 2023, China Labor Watch released investigation findings on Foxconn's Chengdu facility manufacturing Amazon Echo and Kindle devices. Workers reported mandatory overtime exceeding legal limits (80+ hours/month vs 36-hour legal cap), wages withheld for months, inadequate safety equipment, and dismissal threats for refusing overtime. Amazon audits had repeatedly missed these violations.

In 2023, Proton publicly challenged demands from Australia's eSafety Commissioner for access to user data, arguing that breaking encryption for law enforcement would undermine security for all users. Proton maintained its position that privacy is a fundamental human right.

Thoughtworks laid off approximately 500 employees (4% of workforce) in March 2023, then 600-700 more (5-6%) in August 2023, and a further ~500 in July 2024. Employees reported leadership was opaque with zero transparency and mixed messages, having previously assured staff that layoffs were 'absolutely not on the table' while requiring furlough weeks. Stock fell 26% on the August announcement. The company expected $75-85M in annualized cost savings. Employees reported the layoffs created an 'awful environment' with anxiety before each earnings call.

In August 2023, Apple backed California's SB 244 right-to-repair bill, marking a major policy shift from its previous opposition. Apple stated it would support the bill 'so long as it continues to provide protections for customers and innovators,' citing requirements that protect user safety, security, and manufacturer intellectual property. This represented the first time Apple publicly supported state-level right-to-repair legislation.

In August 2023, DoorDash agreed to pay $1.6 million to workers after violating Seattle's sick and safe time policy for the second time in two years. DoorDash failed to establish a system for eligible workers to request and use paid time, did not provide timely compensation for using allotted time, and did not give workers monthly notice of their paid and safe time balances. This was the second violation in two years, indicating a pattern of non-compliance with basic worker protections.

Bengio testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, arguing for government interventions including regulation and research investments to mitigate potentially catastrophic outcomes from future AI advances. He stated that regulation and liability could reduce the probability of a rogue AI by a factor of a hundred, and called for mandatory registration of frontier AI systems costing hundreds of millions to train.

Amodei told Senate Judiciary Committee that AI systems pose substantial risk of enabling bioweapon production within 2-3 years. Anthropic worked with biosecurity experts for 6 months to study AI misuse. Recommended tough testing/auditing regime, AI supply chain security, and equipment export limits.

Sea Limited faced a class action lawsuit alleging materially false and misleading statements regarding its Garena (gaming) and Shopee (e-commerce) business segments. The initial complaint was filed July 2023. A $46 million settlement was reached, with court hearing scheduled for July 1, 2025. The company also conducted multiple layoff rounds in 2022-2023, cutting 3% of Shopee Indonesia staff and withdrawing from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, France, and India.

Anthropic joined Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI in announcing 8 voluntary commitments at White House including: pre-release security testing, information sharing on AI risks, cybersecurity for model weights, bug bounties, watermarking, public capability reporting, societal risk research, and deploying AI for societal challenges.

Yann LeCun played an instrumental role in convincing Mark Zuckerberg to release Meta's Llama 2 AI model as open source in July 2023, making it freely available for commercial use. LeCun publicly argued that open-source AI is essential for cultural diversity, democracy, and preventing dangerous concentration of power in proprietary AI systems, stating 'the future has to be open source, if nothing else, for reasons of cultural diversity, democracy, diversity.'

In July 2023, Stability AI co-founder Cyrus Hodes filed a civil lawsuit against Emad Mostaque claiming fraud. Hodes alleged Mostaque 'brazenly deceived' him about the company's value and purchased his entire 15% stake for $100 - a stake worth approximately $150 million five months later when Stability raised $101M at a $1B valuation. Hodes also accused Mostaque of embezzlement, including using company funds for personal rent.

Over 2.5 years, the FTC under Khan's leadership lost every single merger challenge it brought through litigation without a single win. Courts rejected FTC attempts to block Microsoft's $69B acquisition of Activision Blizzard (July 2023, judge called case 'bald assertion') and Meta's acquisition of Within (February 2023). The FTC also lost challenges to Illumina-Grail merger. Courts found the FTC was 'weak on the facts,' could not demonstrate consumer harms, and relied on 'novel antitrust theories that courts did not recognize.'

HireVue published independent bias audits of its AI hiring tools to comply with New York City's Local Law 144, becoming one of the first companies to proactively demonstrate regulatory compliance for AI hiring systems.

In 2023, the Carnegie Corporation of New York named Timnit Gebru an honoree of the Great Immigrants Awards in recognition of her significant contributions to the field of ethical artificial intelligence. As an Eritrean Ethiopian-born American, the award highlighted her impact on AI ethics discourse and advocacy.

In May 2025, a lawsuit was filed alleging Computacenter fired a manager who reported a significant security breach at Deutsche Bank's New York headquarters. The breach involved an employee repeatedly bringing an unauthorized Chinese national into secure server rooms from March to June 2023. The manager claims the breach was not reported to SEC or Federal Reserve as required, and he was dismissed in July 2023 after raising concerns. He is seeking over $20 million in damages.

The American Foundation for the Blind recognized Discord's desktop app as a model example of how to make a complex web application accessible to screen reader users. Discord committed to WCAG 2.1 compliance and introduced accessibility features including Role Colors for colorblind users, a saturation slider for color sensitivities, text-to-speech controls, and motion/contrast adjustments. During Disability Pride Month, the company open-sourced its React-Native Drag and Drop backend to help other developers build accessible experiences.

Eric Schmidt founded White Stork, a startup developing low-cost AI-powered kamikaze drones for Ukraine. The drones cost approximately $400 each with small explosive payloads. Schmidt has invested over a billion dollars in defense AI startups including White Stork, Rebellion Defense, and Istari. He signed a memorandum with Ukraine's Defense Ministry on strategic partnership.

In 2023, iFixit filed a formal petition with the Federal Trade Commission urging the agency to investigate and take enforcement action against manufacturers who use software locks, parts pairing, and other technical barriers to prevent independent repair. The petition was supported by extensive technical documentation.

FDA inspectors found 'objectionable conditions or practices' at Neuralink's animal testing facilities during June 2023 inspections, including missing calibration records and quality assurance failures. Separately, the USDA confirmed a 2019 Animal Welfare Act violation involving unapproved BioGlue that caused animal suffering, but it was hidden from public records. DOT also fined Neuralink $2,480 for hazardous materials transport violations in 2023.

An NBC News investigation in June 2023 found that at least 35 child abduction, grooming, or exploitation prosecutions and 165 CSAM prosecutions involved Discord communications. Hundreds of active servers promoting child exploitation were identified. The FBI subsequently warned in September 2023 that violent online groups were deliberately targeting minors aged 8-17 on messaging platforms including Discord to extort them into producing CSAM, with LGBTQ+ youth and racial minorities particularly targeted.

In June 2023, UPSIDE Foods became the first company to receive both FDA and USDA approval to sell cultivated chicken in the United States. Cultivated meat is grown from animal cells without slaughtering animals, representing a technological breakthrough for animal welfare. The company launched at Michelin-starred restaurant Bar Crenn and is suing Florida over its ban on cultivated meat.

Since its founding in December 2020, Airbnb.org has connected nearly 200,000 refugees and asylum seekers with free temporary stays globally. Major efforts included housing 100,000 Ukrainian refugees (announced February 2022) and 20,000 Afghan refugees (August 2021). The organization launched a $25 million Refugee Fund in June 2021, with CEO Brian Chesky and co-founder Joe Gebbia making significant personal donations. Airbnb covers all of Airbnb.org's operating costs so 100% of donations go directly to providing emergency housing. By June 2023, Airbnb.org added a $2 million sponsorship initiative and $1 million in additional refugee funding.