power

Jon Keegan7/17/25

Last-minute settlement keeps Zuckerberg, Andreessen, Thiel, Sandberg, and other Meta board members from taking the stand in $8 billion privacy suit

It would have been quite a trial.

Next week was supposed to feature several titans of tech taking the stand in the Delaware Court of Chancery to defend themselves against an $8 billion privacy lawsuit brought by Meta investors.

The lawsuit was not directed Meta itself, but rather top executives and board members.

Meta shareholders who filed the suit alleged that company leadership knowingly violated user privacy and ran afoul of a 2012 FTC consent decree, among other privacy-related missteps.

The suit alleged that the lax privacy controls led to the 2015 Cambridge Analytica scandal, when the voter profiling company collected huge amounts of personal data from Facebook users using third-party access to the platform.

Today was the second day of the trial, and Reuters reports that the parties reached an undisclosed settlement, ending the case and saving some big names from testifying.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, venture capitalist and Meta Director Marc Andreessen, former Meta Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel, and Netflix cofounder and Chairman Reed Hastings were all expected to give testimony in the case.

Meta investors, Zuckerberg reach settlement to end $8 billion trial over Facebook privacy litigation

Meta investors, Zuckerberg reach settlement to end $8 billion trial over Facebook privacy litigation

The lawsuit was not directed Meta itself, but rather top executives and board members.

Meta shareholders who filed the suit alleged that company leadership knowingly violated user privacy and ran afoul of a 2012 FTC consent decree, among other privacy-related missteps.

The suit alleged that the lax privacy controls led to the 2015 Cambridge Analytica scandal, when the voter profiling company collected huge amounts of personal data from Facebook users using third-party access to the platform.

Today was the second day of the trial, and Reuters reports that the parties reached an undisclosed settlement, ending the case and saving some big names from testifying.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, venture capitalist and Meta Director Marc Andreessen, former Meta Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Palantir cofounder Peter Thiel, and Netflix cofounder and Chairman Reed Hastings were all expected to give testimony in the case.

More Power

Traders are getting more and more pessimistic about the government shutdown ending any time soon

The market expects the shutdown to last well into November.

The Capitol Building in Washington DC

OpenAI’s internal Slack messages could cost it billions in copyright suit

Authors and publishers suing OpenAI over copyright infringement were granted access to internal OpenAI communications about the deletion of a pirated books dataset, and now want to review attorney communications.

Frightened Man

US corporate spending on private flights for executives has ballooned in recent years

The median expense spent by America’s largest companies on air travel jumped 66% from 2020 to 2024.

1990s Business man private jet

power

Claire Yubin Oh10/1/25

OK, so when was the longest shutdown in US history?

The US government officially shut down at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday after senators failed to agree on a last-minute funding bill. Though initially shrugging off the threat of a shutdown during yesterday’s session, stocks were mildly in the red on Wednesday as investors reacted to what is now the 11th shutdown in the government’s history.

Until this latest shutdown, there had been 20 government funding gaps experienced since 1976 — though not all ended in a full shutdown, with full closure averted in half of those cases.

Indeed, prior to the 1980s, funding gaps didn’t typically have major effects on government operations, with agencies continuing to operate on the basis that the funding would come eventually. However, a more stringent interpretation of the rules led to a stricter appropriations process from the early 1980s onward, with many subsequent funding gaps resulting in a shutdown of affected agencies (unless the gaps were quickly fixed or occurred over a weekend).

Obviously, the duration of the latest shutdown is still unclear, but it will continue until Congress passes a funding bill — most likely via a “continuing resolution,” which has ended every shutdown since 1990. Data analyzed by USAFacts suggest that it might not be a one- or two-day affair, as funding gaps have lengthened in recent years.

Government shutdown patterns — Sherwood News

Indeed, the last shutdown, which began in December 2018, ended up becoming the longest in history, at a whopping 34 days. By the time the government reopened in January 2019, about $3 billion (in 2019 dollars) had been wiped from the GDP in Q4, per data from the Congressional Budget Office, with approximately $18 billion in “federal discretionary spending” delayed over the roughly five-week stretch.

power

Max Knoblauch9/24/25

GM climbs following upgrade, report that Trump administration seeks stake in its lithium mine partner

Shares of General Motors rose more than 2% in premarket trading Wednesday following an upgrade of the stock by UBS from “neutral” to “buy.” The firm also hiked its price target for GM by 45% to $81.

Also likely elevating GM was a Reuters report that the Trump administration is exploring taking a 10% stake in Lithium Americas, the automaker’s partner in a yet to open Thacker Pass lithium mine. Shares of Lithium Americas surged 68% in the premarket.

GM, which invested $625 million into the lithium mine last year, holds a 38% stake in the joint venture. The mine is expected to become the Western Hemisphere’s primary lithium source in 2028, when it’s slated to open, producing enough of the metal to make 800,000 electric vehicle batteries.

Prior to its plans for Lithium Americas, the Trump administration last month said it would take a 10% stake in Intel. In July, it announced a 15% stake in rare earths miner MP Materials.

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