Seeking Alpha’s roundup of statements, announcements and remarks that could impact the technology sector.
- President Trump said the U.S. has made progress with China on a deal for TikTok, but didn’t elaborate.
“I just completed a very productive call with President Xi of China. We made progress on many very important issues including Trade, Fentanyl, the need to bring the War between Russia and Ukraine to an end, and the approval of the TikTok Deal,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social midday Friday.
“The call was a very good one, we will be speaking again by phone, appreciate the TikTok approval, and both look forward to meeting at APEC!,” Trump added.
TikTok is owned by China’s ByteDance (BDNCE).
- Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Tim Cook said that higher prices for the company’s latest iPhones aren’t due to the Trump administration’s new tariffs.
“There’s no increase for tariffs in the prices to be totally clear,” Cook told CNBC during an interview on Friday.
The company unveiled its latest iPhone models earlier this month.
- xAI has raised $10 billion in its latest funding round, with a post-money valuation of $200 billion, according to CNBC.
The AI developer is owned by X, which is controlled by Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk. Tesla shareholders are expected to vote in November on whether to allow Tesla to invest in xAI, whose technology is being incorporated into Tesla vehicles.
xAI is best known for the AI chatbot Grok. Other leading AI chatbot developers include OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft (MSFT); Anthropic, which is backed by Alphabet (GOOG) (GOOGL) and Amazon (AMZN); Alphabet’s Google; and Meta (META).