TikTok faces a Saturday ban if it is not sold to a U.S. owner — déjà vu.
The big picture: At least four groups have made offers to buy the app, but TikTok owner ByteDance would likely need Chinese government approval to sell.
The first trillion-dollar cybersecurity company will be here in the next five years, Rubrik CEO Bipul Sinha told me last week at his company's HQ in Palo Alto.
I sat down with Sinha for a new monthly-ish series we're starting in Future of Cybersecurity where I dive into a security prediction for the cyber world — and what it would take to get there.
Why it matters: If Sinha is right, cybersecurity could be one of the few economic areas that will see high growth in the next half decade — alongside artificial intelligence.
The big picture: No cybersecurity company has ever achieved a trillion-dollar market cap, but several publicly traded companies are well on their way.
Google Workspace is rolling out a new encryption model designed to make sending secure emails with Gmail dramatically easier.
Why it matters: Google's new enterprise model will lift several of the burdens both IT teams and end users face when sending encrypted messages, including the need to manage certificates.
The big picture: Organizations in highly regulated industries are required to encrypt sensitive emails sent internally and to other businesses.
However, current encryption protocols are clunky, hard to scale and frustrating for users, Neil Kumaran, a group product manager at Gmail Security, told Axios.
China-based manufacturer Unitree Robotics pre-installed an apparent backdoor on its popular Go1 robot dogs that allowed anyone to surveil customers around the world, according to findings from two security researchers.
Why it matters: Clear evidence of a backdoor in widely sold consumer technology is rare, and it affirms longstanding concerns from U.S. officials that Chinese-made devices could quietly enable foreign surveillance.
👀 President Trump nominated Karen Evans, who has been leading the cyber mission at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in recent weeks, to be the new undersecretary for management at the Department of Homeland Security. (Nextgov)
📲 The White House told DOGE employees to preserve their Signal messages after last week's scandal. (Politico)
👨🏻💻 The State Department has ordered consular offices to expand their social media screening processes for student visa applicants, according to an obtained cable. (The Guardian)
@ Industry
💰 Island raised a $250 million round, led by Coatue Management, that values the enterprise browser startup at $4.8 billion. (Wall Street Journal)
Domestic box office revenue is down 12% from this time last year, when theaters were still grappling with the fallout from the historic actors and writers strikes.
Why it matters: Theaters never made a full comeback from COVID-19 and experts don't think they ever will. But for tech giants looking to establish themselves in Hollywood, theatrical distribution matters.
A U.S. District Court judge last week denied most of OpenAI's motion to dismiss a lawsuit against it and its minority owner Microsoft from the New York Times.
Why it matters: The ruling allows most of the Times' case against OpenAI and Microsoft to proceed, paving the way for a possible trial.
OpenAI is on a new roll: Its latest image generator is dazzling millions of users, it's teasing new models and hardware, and it just landed another $40 billion to pay for all that and more.
Why it matters: The renewed mojo comes after a bumpy few months that saw handwringing over the release of advanced models from China's DeepSeek in January and disappointment at delays in the next big upgrade of the GPT models that drive the company's success.
The Trump administration has taken action to ensure a Signal group chat that inadvertently included The Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg can never happen again, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday.
Why it matters: There have been growing calls from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle for an investigation into the Signal scandal, with Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee the latest to call for an independent probe in a letter Monday to director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
A Jewish organization working to combat antisemitism has unveiled an alternative to the Trump administration's plan that cracks down on foreign students and free speech on college campuses.
Why it matters: The blueprint by the Nexus Project could give colleges and universities another path to combat antisemitism while protecting Jewish students and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs amid funding threats.
Elon Musk's self-deal for his AI company xAI to acquire X, formerly Twitter, is the strongest sign yet that the AI business is devouring the social media world.
Between the lines: Musk's move is a maneuver to spruce up his overall financial picture — leveraging the AI industry's fizzy valuation arithmetic to shore up X's stagnant revenue and debt-loaded capital structure.
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