In Brief Why is Electronic Arts, one of the biggest names in the video game business, reportedly in talks to go private?Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier notes that video game companies are moving towards consolidation and that the deal could reflect EA executives’ broader concerns over the future of the industry. Following a period of rapid growth in the 2010s and during the pandemic, Schreier said gamers in recent years have “tended to stick with old favorites rather than purchasing new titles.” This seems to b ...

President Donald Trump declared Friday that Microsoft needs to fire Lisa Monaco, the company’s president of global affairs.Citing her roles as “a senior National Security aide under Barack Hussein Obama, and a Lawfare and Weaponization obsessed Deputy Attorney General under Crooked Joe Biden and Lisa’s Puppet ‘Boss’ Attorney General Merrick Garland,” Trump posted on Truth Social that Monaco’s current role gives her access to “Highly Sensitive Information,” which he deemed “unacceptable.” “It is my opinion ...

In Brief The video game company Electronic Arts is nearing a $50 billion sale to a group of investors including Silver Lake and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.EA is best known for its annual sports titles in franchises like Madden NFL, FIFA, and NBA Live, as well as video game series like The Sims, Battlefield, Need for Speed, and Star Wars. According to the Journal’s report, this deal could be the largest leveraged buyout in history, meaning that ...

A wider leadership shakeup at Hyundai’s electric air taxi startup Supernal is underway just a few weeks after it paused work on its vehicle program and its CEO and CTO left, TechCrunch has learned.Supernal’s chief strategy officer Jaeyong Song and chief safety officer Tracy Lamb are no longer with the company, the startup confirmed Friday. Lina Yang, the chief of staff to Suprernal’s recently-departed CEO Jaiwon Shin is also out. (Yang had previously served as Supernal’s “Head of Intelligent Systems” until ...

TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has been at the center of controversy in the U.S. for four years now due to concerns about user data potentially being accessed by the Chinese government. As a result, U.S. users have often found themselves caught in the middle of this tension. Earlier this year, the app experienced a temporary outage in the U.S. that left millions of users in suspense before it was quickly restored. TikTok returned to the App Store and Google Play Store in February.  A numbe ...

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that essentially approves of the sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations to an American investor group in order to keep the social media app operational in the country. Vice President JD Vance said that the deal would value TikTok US at “around $14 billion.”TikTok was required to divest its American business, or be banned in the U.S., via a national security law originally signed by former President Joe Biden. Trump’s executive order essentially bars the Attorne ...

Microsoft has cut off the Israel Ministry of Defense’s access to some of its tech and services after an internal investigation found the organization appeared to be using its tech to store surveillance data on phone calls made by Palestinians.  The tech giant announced on Thursday that it made the decision to “cease and disable” certain subscriptions from the Israeli military. This affects subscriptions to Azure cloud storage and certain AI services.   “We do not provide technology to facilitate mass surve ...

In Brief Tesla has asked the Environmental Protection Agency not to roll back current vehicle emissions standards, breaking from other major automakers who want to see the rules eased. The company’s request comes the same week that President Donald Trump — who Tesla CEO Elon Musk spent $300 million to help elect — told the United Nations General Assembly that he thinks climate change is a “con job” and a “scam.”Tesla also asked the EPA not to scuttle a 2009 legal standard known as the Endangerment Finding, ...

This week, Spotify publicly addressed misinformation circulating about its terms of use.The response was prompted by videos from creators, such as artist @chantmagick, which accused Spotify of modifying its terms and conditions to permit the transfer of rights to artists’ music to third parties, including partners, affiliates, and tech providers. Spotify issued a public statement this week, clarifying that these claims are false and reassuring users that these updated terms do not affect the distribution r ...

Amazon has agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle a lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over allegations that it duped users into paying for Prime subscriptions and made it hard to cancel memberships.The company will be required to pay a $1 billion civil penalty and provide $1.5 billion in refunds to an estimated 35 million consumers harmed by the company’s “deceptive Prime enrollment practices,” the FTC says. Amazon is also required to stop its “unlawful enrollment and cancellation practices.” T ...