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The Musk Foundation funded the $100 million XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition, the largest incentive prize in history, attracting 1,300+ teams from 88 countries to develop carbon dioxide removal technologies. The grand prize of $50 million was awarded to Mati Carbon in April 2025, with $20 million to NetZero and additional milestone awards. The competition also provided twenty-five $200,000 student scholarships.

Clover Health, which went public through Palihapitiya's SPAC (Social Capital Hedosophia III) in January 2021 at a $3.7B valuation, received an SEC investigation notice in February 2021 after Hindenburg Research revealed an active, undisclosed DOJ investigation into kickbacks, upcoding, and marketing practices. Palihapitiya had stated on CNBC in October 2020 that Clover 'doesn't play games' and doesn't 'motivate doctors to upcode' - the very practice DOJ was investigating. Palihapitiya received over 20 million founders shares for $25,000. Clover later settled a securities class action for $22 million.

Kristo Käärmann was fined by HM Revenue & Customs for deliberately failing to notify them of a capital gains tax liability after selling shares worth approximately £10 million in September 2017. Despite multiple HMRC communications in 2019 and 2020, he failed to respond. He was added to HMRC's public tax defaulters list in September 2021. The fine was for either intentionally submitting incorrect documents or deliberately failing to provide correct information.

At 1:30 AM on February 1, 2021, a 22-year-old Pinduoduo employee heading home from work collapsed and died hours later. Less than two weeks later, another Pinduoduo employee committed suicide when visiting his parents. These deaths occurred amid reports of 300-380 hour monthly work requirements and sparked widespread criticism of China's overwork culture.

In February 2021, the EEOC concluded a five-year investigation finding 'reasonable cause to believe' Intel discriminated against eight workers over age 40 during 2015-2016 layoffs in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. During the layoffs involving approximately 2,300 employees, the median age of laid-off employees was 49—seven years older than the median age of employees who were retained (42). The EEOC investigation was prompted by employee complaints following the mass layoffs. This finding represents one of the clearest federal agency determinations of age discrimination in tech industry layoffs.

On January 28, 2021 Robinhood restricted users from buying GameStop (GME), AMC and other heavily-shorted stocks at the peak of the retail-driven short squeeze, citing clearinghouse collateral requirements. CEO Vlad Tenev testified before Congress about the decision in February 2021. Robinhood later paid $70 million to FINRA in June 2021 (largest financial penalty in FINRA history) over outages, misleading communications and the meme-stock episode. In January 2024 Robinhood agreed to pay $7.5M to settle Massachusetts charges related to the same events.

In January 2021, Palihapitiya bought $125,000 in GameStop call options after polling his Twitter followers, then publicly defended retail investors on CNBC, saying the GameStop phenomenon was individual investors 'pushing back against the Wall Street establishment.' He compared transparent Reddit forums favorably to hedge fund 'idea dinners' in the Hamptons. He closed his position the next day and donated the $500,000 in proceeds to the Barstool Sports small business fund. Critics noted the brief holding and self-promotional nature of the trade.

In January 2021, Elastic changed Elasticsearch and Kibana from the Apache 2.0 open-source license to a dual SSPL/Elastic License v2, motivated by dissatisfaction with AWS offering a competing managed service. The change prompted AWS to create the OpenSearch fork. Many developers migrated away, and the community felt betrayed by a bait-and-switch after building on what they believed was truly open-source software.

In 2018, Social Capital restructured to a family office deploying Palihapitiya's personal wealth, with climate solutions as a core focus area. In January 2021, Palihapitiya announced private funding for climate investments spanning seven areas: recycling, electrification, grid-level storage, batteries, materials and mining, resiliency, and project finance lending. He described climate change as 'the simplest way to fix problems' globally and consistently listed it as one of his top two priorities alongside inequality.

Following the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, Chuck Robbins announced Cisco would halt some employee political donations while the company assessed future political giving. This was part of a wave of corporate responses to the insurrection.

On January 13, 2021, Snap permanently banned Donald Trump's account, effective on Inauguration Day (January 20). The company cited "public safety" and Trump's "attempts to spread misinformation, hate speech, and incite violence."

HireVue announced in January 2021 that it would discontinue its facial analysis feature in video interviews, responding to sustained criticism from civil rights organizations, researchers, and regulators about algorithmic bias.

Visa and Plaid jointly announced on January 12, 2021 that they had abandoned Visa's $5.3 billion proposed acquisition of Plaid after the US Department of Justice filed a November 2020 antitrust lawsuit. The DOJ complaint, citing internal Visa documents, alleged that Visa's CEO described Plaid as an 'existential' threat in financial-data plumbing and that the acquisition was an 'insurance policy' to neutralize a future debit-payments competitor.

In January 2021, Sandberg stated the Capitol attack was 'largely organized on platforms that don't have our abilities to stop hate,' deflecting responsibility from Facebook. Democratic lawmakers criticized this as inadequate and called for her resignation, noting Facebook's role in enabling the insurrection.

By January 2021, DuckDuckGo reached over 100 million daily search queries, growing from about 62 million in January 2020. The growth was driven by increasing public concern about online privacy and data collection by major tech companies. DuckDuckGo does not track users, store search histories, or create user profiles.

Following the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, Stripe suspended payment processing for Trump's campaign, citing that the campaign 'encouraged violence.' This made Stripe one of the few payment processors to take action against Trump's campaign.

Following the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, Stripe suspended payment processing services for Parler, a social media platform that had been used to coordinate the attack. Multiple technology providers including AWS and Okta also suspended Parler's services, effectively shutting down the platform. This was part of broader tech industry action against platforms seen as facilitating the insurrection.

In January 2021, China's propaganda arm ordered news outlets to strictly echo official line on Alibaba's antitrust probe, prohibiting original reporting and extended analysis. The restrictions also applied to coverage of Jack Ma. State directive required media to limit reporting on regulatory actions against the company.

On January 7, 2021, programmer Wang Taixu posted a photo of a colleague being taken to hospital by ambulance at Pinduoduo's Shanghai headquarters. The post went viral on Maimai social platform. Pinduoduo fired Wang the next day. He continued speaking out about 300-380 hour monthly requirements, with his vlog receiving 94,000 comments mostly supporting him and criticizing the company's retaliation.

On January 7, 2021, Wang Taixu witnessed a colleague taken away by ambulance at Pinduoduo's Shanghai headquarters and anonymously posted a photo on Maimai social platform. Pinduoduo fired him the next day. Wang continued speaking out via 15-minute Bilibili vlog exposing that Shanghai headquarters employees work over 300 hours/month and grocery unit workers over 380 hours/month. His video received 94,000 comments with top-voted expressing support and criticizing overwork culture.

On the All-In Podcast immediately after January 6, 2021, Sacks said Trump had 'disqualified himself from being a candidate at a national level again.' He described Jan 6 as a 'disaster' and when asked if Trump was responsible, said 'One hundred percent yes.' This position represented a clear break from Trump, whom Sacks would later fully endorse in 2024 after political evolution from moderate (donated to Hillary Clinton 2016, Gavin Newsom 2018) to MAGA supporter.

In January 2021, WhatsApp announced mandatory data sharing with Meta including metadata, phone numbers, IP addresses, contacts, and app usage data - removing previous opt-out option. Users had until February 8 to accept or face account deletion. Led to 4,200% spike in Signal downloads, Competition Commission of India investigation, and Rs. 213.14 crore (~$26M) fine for violating Competition Act. Policy discriminated against Indian users compared to EU users under GDPR protections. Delayed to May 2021 after backlash.

Google's Irish subsidiary filings disclosed in early 2021 that the company had wound down its 'Double Irish, Dutch Sandwich' tax structure in late 2019, ending an arrangement under which Google had shifted approximately €75.4 billion in profits through Irish, Dutch, and Bermuda subsidiaries between 2010 and 2019 at near-zero effective tax rates. The wind-down was triggered by 2014 changes to Irish tax residency rules but occurred only after Google had used the grandfathering window for five additional years.

As YC's Managing Director, Seibel led efforts to significantly increase diversity among YC-funded startups. Under his leadership from 2014-2024, YC funded over 500 female founders, 200+ Black founders, and approximately 300 Latine founders. He stated 'You change the stats by funding people.'

In 2021, Hinrikus co-founded kood/Jõhvi, a free coding school in northeastern Estonia with no teachers, no classes, but 100% peer-to-peer coding education. The school raised €2.3 million from private and government funds. By 2025, 1,100 students had enrolled across six cohorts, with over 300 graduates and nearly two-thirds now working in tech. The school has expanded internationally to Ukraine, Kenya, and Finland. Hinrikus serves as chairman of the kood/Jõhvi council.

NHS Digital chief Juliet Bauer praised Kry in a newspaper article before publicly announcing she had accepted a job at the company. MP Meg Hillier raised concerns about transparency and potential conflicts of interest regarding the timing of the praise and subsequent employment announcement.

SpaceX's Starshield program provides classified military satellite capabilities to the NRO, Space Force, and Space Development Agency. The program includes target tracking, optical and radio reconnaissance, and early missile warning capabilities. SpaceX secured a $1.8 billion classified NRO contract in 2021 and a $5.9 billion Space Force contract in 2025. As of 2025, at least 183 Starshield satellites have been launched, with plans to deploy 100+ more by 2029.

A data breach exposed personally identifiable information including usernames, phone numbers, and email addresses, with 11 billion data points exposed affecting millions of users. In January 2021, Wall Street Journal reported Chinese regulators tried to make Ant share troves of Alipay data used by over a billion people, including spending habits, borrowing behaviors, and payment histories. Jack Ma had resisted authorities' attempts to access the data.

Logitech launched its carbon transparency initiative, becoming the first major consumer electronics company to include carbon impact labels on all product packaging. The program, announced in 2020 and rolled out through 2021, uses lifecycle analysis to calculate and disclose the carbon footprint of each product, similar to nutrition labels on food. The company committed to carbon neutrality across its operations.

Daniela Amodei departed OpenAI in December 2020 along with her brother Dario and five other researchers to found Anthropic in January 2021. The departure was driven by philosophical differences about prioritizing safety over rapid commercialization. Anthropic was structured as a Delaware public benefit corporation with a Long-Term Benefit Trust governance structure designed to prioritize safety.