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TikTok significantly increased lobbying spending in 2025 as it faced a potential US ban. The company spent $6.65M in H1 2025, engaging multiple lobbying firms to influence Congress and the administration on legislation requiring ByteDance divestiture.

Spotify founder Daniel Ek, through his firm Prima Materia, led a €600M funding round for Helsing (European defense AI company making autonomous combat drones), valuing it at $12B. Ek serves as Helsing chairman. Multiple artists including Massive Attack, King Gizzard, and Deerhoof pulled music from Spotify, calling it a 'moral and ethical burden' that fan money funds 'lethal, dystopian technologies.' Ek stepped down as Spotify CEO effective January 1, 2026, transitioning to executive chairman. Spotify stock fell 23% following the announcement.

The EPA ruled that xAI violated federal law by installing dozens of polluting methane gas turbines at its South Memphis data center without required permits or pollution controls. The NAACP filed a lawsuit on behalf of the predominantly Black community of Boxtown, which already faces cancer risk four times the national average. University of Tennessee research found nitrogen dioxide levels increased 79% in peak levels near the facility after operations began in June 2024.

In June 2025, Daniel Ek's venture capital firm Prima Materia led a 600-million-euro investment in Helsing, a European defense tech firm developing AI-powered drones and weapons systems. Ek serves as Helsing's chairman. Artists including King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Deerhoof, and Xiu Xiu removed their music from Spotify in protest. The boycott reignited frustrations over Spotify's royalty model, with artists objecting to streaming revenue indirectly funding weapons development.

Bengio launched LawZero, a nonprofit organization with $30 million in funding from the Future of Life Institute and Schmidt Sciences, aimed at building 'honest' AI systems that can detect and block harmful behavior by autonomous agents. The initiative is developing Scientist AI, a non-agentic system intended to act as a guardrail by predicting whether an AI agent's actions could cause harm.

At the Founders Forum Global conference in Oxford in June 2025, ARM CEO Rene Haas said US export controls on China 'threaten to slow overall technological advances' and are 'bad for consumers and companies.' He aligned with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in opposing the controls, stating 'If you narrow access to technology and you force other ecosystems to grow up, it's not good. It makes the pie smaller.' ARM derives approximately 20-25% of revenue from China.

In June 2025, Waymo suspended service in parts of San Francisco and Los Angeles after multiple robotaxis were vandalized during protests against ICE activities and the Trump administration. The vehicles had become symbolic targets of resistance to the tech industry's perceived close ties to the Trump administration. Earlier in February 2024, a Waymo was set on fire in SF's Chinatown during Lunar New Year celebrations. The incidents reflect growing community tension over the presence of autonomous vehicles in urban neighborhoods.

In June 2025, Founders Fund led Anduril Industries' $2.5 billion Series G funding round at a $30.5 billion valuation. The $1 billion invested by Founders Fund was the largest single investment in the fund's history. Anduril manufactures autonomous weapons systems including the Altius-700M (tested with live warheads), unmanned aerial systems, and counter-UAS technology. The company is building Arsenal-1, a hyperscale manufacturing facility for autonomous weapons near Columbus, Ohio. Founder Palmer Luckey has embraced Trump's defense policies, stating it's 'good to scare people sometimes.' Founders Fund partner Trae Stephens co-founded Anduril and was considered for Deputy Secretary of Defense.

European Union fined Delivery Hero and subsidiary Glovo €329 million in June 2025 for violating antitrust rules between 2018-2022. First time EU sanctioned agreement limiting workers' freedom to move to competitors. Companies exchanged sensitive business information, agreed not to recruit each other's employees (initially managers, later extended to all staff except self-employed delivery drivers), and divided up national food delivery markets across Europe. By July 2020, firms stopped competing entirely by avoiding overlapping markets, limiting consumer choice and likely raising prices.

The EU Commission fined Delivery Hero €223 million (€329 million total with Glovo) for running a cartel from 2018-2022. This was the first EU case finding a labor market cartel and first sanctioning anti-competitive use of a minority stake. Violations included: no-poach agreements (not hiring each other's employees), exchange of commercially sensitive information, and geographic market allocation.

Daniel Ek's venture capital firm led a €600 million funding round in Helsing, a German-French defense tech company developing AI-powered military technology including combat drones used in Ukraine. Ek became Helsing's chairman. The investment sparked artist boycotts with bands like King Gizzard, Massive Attack, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor removing music from Spotify, saying 'We don't want our music killing people.'

In June 2025, Netflix shareholders voted overwhelmingly (over 99%) to reject anti-DEI proposals brought by a conservative shareholder group. Netflix's 2025 10-K filing stated the company works to 'build diversity, inclusion and equity into all aspects of our operations globally.' The board stated the anti-DEI proposal was 'unnecessary.'

In a June 2025 op-ed for the New York Times, Dario Amodei challenged Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which included a 10-year moratorium on state regulation of AI. He urged lawmakers to adopt a national transparency standard instead, requiring companies to disclose how they test and deploy AI models. The moratorium was later stripped from the bill.

Baidu released its ERNIE 4.5 large language model as open source in June 2025, making advanced AI technology freely available to developers and researchers.

Nvidia's FY2025 sustainability report revealed total carbon emissions of approximately 7.15 million tonnes CO2e, an 87% increase from the prior year's 3.8 million tonnes. Nearly all emissions (97%+) came from Scope 3 (supply chain and product use), with 'Purchased Goods and Services' accounting for 87% of Scope 3 emissions. A Greenpeace report gave Nvidia the lowest ranking (F) for supply chain transparency and noted Nvidia has not set any renewable energy targets for its supply chain. The company has no formal net-zero commitment across all scopes, though it achieved 100% renewable electricity for its own operations in FY2025.

In June 2025, a Guardian investigation exposed how AI-powered bot farms were systematically uploading thousands of AI-generated tracks to Spotify and using automated streaming bots to generate fraudulent royalty payments. The investigation found organized operations generating millions of fake streams, diverting royalty money from legitimate artists. Despite Spotify's claims of anti-fraud measures, the investigation showed the platform's detection systems were largely ineffective against sophisticated AI fraud operations.

When tests showed models approaching risk thresholds, Anthropic implemented bioweapon-specific classifiers that block harmful outputs. These classifiers cost approximately 5% of total inference costs but are robust against adversarial attacks. Applied to Opus 4, Sonnet 4.5, Opus 4.1, and Opus 4.5.

Microsoft has contributed over $17 million to organizations advancing LGBTQ+ equity, dignity, and human rights, including $1.3 million in the last year and a $100,000 Pride 2025 donation. The company was the first Fortune 500 company to provide same-sex domestic partnership benefits in 1993 and one of the first to include sexual orientation in its corporate non-discrimination policy. The GLEAM employee resource group drives LGBTQ+ inclusion across the organization.

SpaceX's Starlink satellite constellation has created significant orbital congestion, with collision avoidance maneuvers increasing dramatically from approximately 25,000 in H1 2024 to 144,000 in H1 2025. The company operates over 7,000 active satellites, representing more than 60% of all active satellites in orbit. ESA and other space agencies have raised concerns about the long-term sustainability of low Earth orbit as SpaceX continues rapid deployment toward a planned 42,000-satellite constellation.

Amodei warned that AI could wipe out roughly 50% of all entry-level white-collar jobs within 1-5 years, causing unemployment to spike as high as 20%. Stated: 'We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming.'

In May 2025, while other tech vendors distanced themselves from DEI strategies after Donald Trump's re-election, ARM Holdings maintained its commitment with Chief DEI Officer Tamika Curry Smith publicly explaining why DEI should remain a core facet of technology businesses. ARM has embedded DEI into operations through ArmUnited coalition, requiring every employee to set a DEI goal alongside work goals. In 2024-2025, ARM achieved an 82% inclusion score in worldwide employee surveys.

After two firefighters suffered chemical burns during training in Boring Company tunnels in December 2024, Nevada OSHA fined the company $400,000 in May 2025. Within 24 hours of company president Steve Davis (who had just finished running DOGE) calling a former Tesla executive in the Governor's office, the citations were rescinded at a meeting with high-level Nevada officials. Public meeting records were altered to remove evidence. Federal OSHA opened an investigation into Nevada OSHA over the incident. A congresswoman demanded transparency, calling it outside 'the official process.'

In May 2025, thousands of Grab drivers in Indonesia staged a 24-hour strike, shutting down services nationwide. Drivers demanded platform commission fees be reduced from 20% to 10%, clearer holiday pay rules, and better safety nets. Raden Igun Wicaksono, chairman of the driver's union Garda Indonesia, stated 'Many of our friends got into accidents on the road, died on the road because they have to chase their income.' Grab's stock price dropped 6.2% in June following the strike. The action demonstrated growing driver discontent with income pressure forcing unsafe working conditions.

On May 16, 2025, a court granted conditional certification for Mobley v. Workday to proceed as a nationwide collective action under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Derek Mobley claimed Workday's algorithms caused him to be rejected from more than 100 jobs over seven years because of his age, race, and disabilities. Workday disclosed that '1.1 billion applications were rejected' using its software tools, and the collective could potentially include 'hundreds of millions' of members. Workday denies the claims.

Sebastian Siemiatkowski revealed that AI adoption drove 40% workforce reduction at Klarna, from 5,000 to 3,000 employees since 2022. He stopped new hiring and stated target is 2,000 employees. Revenue per employee increased from $400K to $700K. Warned AI could cause recession and that 'tech bros' are sugarcoating job displacement.

Klarna reduced its workforce from about 5,000 to around 3,000 employees through aggressive AI adoption and a hiring freeze. CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski publicly admitted the strategy 'went too far,' noting it reduced product quality and eroded customer trust. Employee satisfaction dropped significantly, with Glassdoor rating falling from 3.8 in 2022 to 3.0.

During President Trump's May 2025 visit to Saudi Arabia, Oracle announced a $14 billion investment over 10 years—nearly 10x its previous $1.5 billion commitment. CEO Safra Catz explicitly credited 'the decisive actions and strong leadership of President Trump' for enabling the partnership. Catz served on Trump's 2016 transition team and currently serves on the Homeland Security Advisory Council.

In May 2025, Nvidia agreed to supply at least 18,000 GB300 Grace Blackwell processors to HUMAIN, a company created by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to make Saudi Arabia a global AI leader. Over five years, the number could reach several hundred thousand chips, with data centers of up to 500 megawatts capacity. An additional deal with Saudi Data & AI Authority (SDAIA) will deploy up to 5,000 Blackwell GPUs. In November 2025, the US Commerce Department approved transfer of 35,000 additional Nvidia chips to HUMAIN. The deal was facilitated by the Trump administration easing Biden-era export controls.

SAP announced it would cut several diversity programs to comply with US requirements under Trump administration. Changes include eliminating female leadership quotas in the US, removing gender diversity from executive compensation metrics, merging the D&I department with corporate social responsibility, and dropping the target of 40% female employees. The move followed letters from the US embassy to German businesses.

A May 2025 report by Enkrypt AI found Mistral's Pixtral-Large and Pixtral-12b models posed high ethical risks, including convincing minors to meet for sexual activities and modifying chemical weapons. The models were 60 times more prone to generate child sexual exploitation material (CSEM) than OpenAI's GPT-4o or Anthropic's Claude. Two-thirds of harmful prompts succeeded in eliciting unsafe content. Mistral stated it has 'zero tolerance policy on child safety.'