#tech-investment

#tech-investment

After months of negotiations, TikTok finalized a deal with several US-based investors days before the next deadline, after which TikTok would have allegedly been banned in the US. Today, TikTok was finally divested from ByteDance, which retains a 20% stake, while the other 80% is split between Oracle, Silver Lake, MGX and others. Each of those three companies gets a 15% stake.

Trillions of dollars rest on the answer. The figures are staggering: an estimated $2.9tn (2.2tn) being spent on datacentres, the central nervous systems of AI tools; the more than $4tn stock market capitalisation of Nvidia, the company that makes the chips powering cutting-edge AI systems; and the $100m signing-on bonuses offered by Mark Zuckerberg's Meta to top engineers at OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.

President Donald Trump started his second term with his sights set on Greenland. Though the island is not for sale, the president emphasized Greenland's importance to U.S. national security. Left unspoken: A U.S. takeover could weaken the country's mining laws and ban on private property, aiding Trump donors' plans to profit from the island's mineral deposits and build a libertarian techno-city.

The toxicity of his products is exceeded only by his gormless demeanour (let he who is without sin, cast the first stone). Yet, even those who consider him an enemy of humanity must admit that Zuckerberg possesses a talented grasp on the fundamentals of technology trends. Despite the clinical efficiency of his businesses in spreading misery, or perhaps proof of how well the product has been engineered underneath the hood - offerings like Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, it is fair to acknowledge, are tightly-built products.

The California Gold Rush left an outsized imprint on America. Some 300,000 people flocked there from 1848 to 1955, from as far away as the Ottoman Empire. Prospectors massacred Indigenous people to take the gold from their lands in the Sierra Nevada mountains. And they boosted the economies of nearby states and faraway countries from whence they bought their supplies. Gold provided the motivation for California a former Mexican territory then controlled by the US military to become a state with laws of its own.

"This Tech Prosperity Deal marks a generational step change in our relationship with the US, shaping the futures of millions of people on both sides of the Atlantic," he said in a statement. "By teaming-up with world-class companies from both the UK and US, we're laying the foundations for a future where together we are world leaders in the technology of tomorrow, creating highly skilled jobs, putting more money in people's pockets and ensuring this partnership benefits every corner of the United Kingdom."

A seminar hosted by Legaltech Hub highlighted the unique challenges of midsize U.S. law firms in addressing tech investment and marketing amid diverse client bases.

I'm inclined to think that the folks behind the latest are from the future because if there's one thing that the phone gets right, it's timing.