Tech

In this articleMSFTScott Guthrie, executive vice president of cloud and enterprise at Microsoft Corp., speaks during the Microsoft Developers Build Conference in Seattle, Washington, U.S., on Wednesday, May 10, 2017.David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesThanks to its pending acquisition of Nuance Communications, Microsoft will soon have a suite of software tools that doctors use to automatically keep notes on meetings with patients. But Microsoft isn’t interested in automating everything doctors do, said Scott Guthrie, the software company’s executive vice president for cloud and artificial intelligence.The pending acquisition, worth $19.7 billion including debt, is an unusual case of a major technology company drawing from its cash pile to gain relationships in an individual industry. Microsoft’s rivals in the growing cloud computing market have not gone so far. If the move proves successful, Microsoft could convert Nuance customers into big users of Microsoft’s Azure cloud and strengthen its position relative to the market leader, Amazon.Headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, Nuance is widely known in the U.S. health-care space, but has room to grow overseas. On the day the deal was announced, Microsoft said that 55% of U.S. doctors and 77% of U.S. hospitals use Nuance, and 80% of its revenue came from

Social audio app Clubhouse was growing at a feverish pace before it wasn’t. It looks to be growing pretty quickly again, and better prepared for it this time, according to co-founder and CEO Paul Davison.Earlier this year, the number of monthly app installs worldwide had declined by millions — from a peak of over 9 million in February — and in April, installs came in at 900,000. But since launching an Android version this month, Clubhouse has seen one million Android users join and Davison says that a “million more are on the waitlist.””We hope to be ready to let more in soon,” Davison told CNBC on Tuesday after the social media company ranked No. 33 on the 2021 CNBC Disruptor 50 list.Davison said when he and co-founder Ronan Seth started company the company in March 2020, they believed that a “measured approach to growth” was key.”If you grow too quickly, things can break and earlier this year we started growing faster than expected,” Davison said.Clubhouse had servers going down and notifications not going out, and the CEO said the company “really had to slow things down.”Clubhouse reports more than 10 million weekly active users and says more than 300,000

In the ninth annual Disruptor 50 list, CNBC highlights the private companies leading out of the pandemic with business models and growth rates aligned with a rapid pace of technological change. Investors have taken notice that the companies on the 2021 Disruptor 50 list have become critical players in fundamental economic and consumer transformations. A majority of the CNBC Disruptor 50 are already billion-dollar businesses. Thirty-four disruptors are unicorns that have already reached or passed (in some cases far surpassed) the $1 billion valuation mark — 10 of the companies on this year’s list are worth at least $10 billion. The 50 companies selected using the proprietary Disruptor 50 methodology have raised over $72 billion in venture capital, according to PitchBook, at an implied Disruptor 50 valuation of more than $388 billion. While technologies including AI, 5G, cloud computing and the Internet of Things are key to many companies making the 2021 Disruptor 50 list, the sectors they are upending are widespread, from financial services to health care, biotech, education, food, media, agriculture and transportation.1RobinhoodWall Street’s frenemy2StripeThe GDP of the Internet3DiscordThe Internet chat room, re-imagined4SentinelOneA SolarWinds saving grace5Didi ChuxingYour $100 billion IPO is on the way6BrexGiving credit to the start-up economy7MarqetaPlaying

This illustration photo shows a person checking the three month GameStop stock graph on a smartphone on February 17, 2021 in Los Angeles as the Reddit, Citadel, Robinhood and Melvin Capital logos are seen on the background ahead of the virtual hearing involving GameStop stocks.Chris Delmas | AFP | Getty ImagesTech-driven disruption in business is rarely a force for good or bad alone. Robinhood is a good example of the rocky, disruptive force that sits between the absolutes.The brokerage industry disruptor exemplifies the way that technology can turn an industry with gatekeepers into a more open platform and force the established giants to innovate and expand. That is why Robinhood earned the top spot on this year’s CNBC Disruptor 50 list, pressing Wall Street and investment giants to lower trading costs — in many cases, to nothing — and consolidate to better withstand an accelerating digital threat.And this year, the company and its CEO, Vlad Tenev, were at the center of a stock market and cultural phenomenon. In January, conversation in Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum about squeezing hedge fund investors drove the seemingly irrational buying up of GameStop and AMC Entertainment shares. That trading happened largely on Robinhood — and it

The price of bitcoin jumped about 4% Monday afternoon after Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that he was having active discussions regarding the sustainability of the digital coin.Bitcoin was trading around $38,074, according to Coindesk, when at about 3:42 p.m. ET Musk posted on Twitter: “Spoke with North American Bitcoin miners. They committed to publish current & planned renewable usage & to ask miners WW to do so. Potentially promising.”Within minutes, the price had shot up to more than $39,500. Overall, the coin is up more than 17% in the last 24 hours.Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor followed up on Musk’s tweet, saying he hosted a meeting between the Tesla CEO and some bitcoin miners that led to the formation of the Bitcoin Mining Council, which will promote sustainability.Musk has been a big supporter of cryptocurrencies, helping rally the prices of digital coins, including bitcoin, several times in the past year. His tweets and comments around cryptocurrency often send the prices soaring or plunging.In an SEC filing in February, Tesla revealed that it bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and would accept it as a form of payment. The company later said it registered a net gain of $101 million from

Amazon is nearing a deal to acquire MGM Studios, the co-owner of the “James Bond” franchise and other TV and film series, for between $8.5 billion and $9 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. The deal is expected to be announced as soon as Tuesday.The Wall Street Journal reported earlier Monday that the deal could be announced this week.A deal could be announced this week, said the person, who asked not to be named because the talks are private. It would mark Amazon’s biggest acquisition since it bought Whole Foods in 2017 for $13.7 billion.Amazon is interested in acquiring more TV and film content for its Prime Video service as it competes with Netflix, Disney and other streaming video services. MGM is a natural fit for any streaming service because of its plethora of content.MGM, which is a private company, has been seeking a buyer for several years. Its owners include Anchorage Capital, Highland Capital Partners, Davidson, Kempner Capital Management, Solus Alternative Asset Management and Owl Creek Investments — funds that took control of the studio when it emerged from bankruptcy in 2010.MGM owns a number of famed movie and TV franchises, including “Rocky,” “Legally Blonde,” “The Pink

In this articleDISCATCMCSACount John Malone among those anticipating a potential future tie-up between a combined WarnerMedia-Discovery and Comcast’s NBCUniversal.The billionaire media mogul and controlling Discovery shareholder told CNBC on Monday he’s already held discussions with Comcast Chief Executive Officer Brian Roberts about different combinations of corporate relationships regarding NBCUniversal. (Comcast-owned NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.)”My comment to Brian was that this is the pickle out of the jar,” Malone said in an interview with CNBC’s David Faber. “If the regulatory environment permitted, down the road, all kinds of relationships could be contemplated between this enterprise that we’re creating and Brian’s enterprise. I think there are many opportunities for this Discovery-[WarnerMedia] enterprise to work with NBCUniversal to develop successful businesses.”Telecom giant AT&T announced May 17 a deal to combine its content unit WarnerMedia with Discovery. Under the agreement, AT&T will unwind its $85 billion acquisition of the then-named Time Warner, which closed just under three years ago, and form a new media company with Discovery. The deal will create a new business, separate from AT&T.Malone said “there’s no question” Roberts wanted to acquire WarnerMedia, but AT&T felt a transaction with Comcast would have been problematic from a regulatory perspective and complicated with regard to

In this articleABNBThe Airbnb logo is seen on a little mini pyramid under the glass Pyramid of the Louvre museum in Paris, France, March 12, 2019.Charles Platiau | ReutersAirbnb announced more than 100 new changes and updates to its platform Monday with a focus on flexibility, ahead of a widely anticipated boost in travel as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to subside in some parts of the world.The stock was up about 1% in the early afternoon.The changes come on the tail of Airbnb’s first-quarter earnings. While its net loss tripled due to debt repayments and restructuring costs, it reported 64.4 million nights and experiences booked, up 39% from the prior quarter and up 13% year over year, showing the company was rebounding from the impact of the pandemic. During Airbnb’s earnings call earlier in May, CEO Brian Chesky said the company was going to work to point demand from customers to where it knows it has the supply from hosts. The changes may help it do that.Chesky said Monday that Airbnb is also making the updates because people are less tethered to home and work, are traveling more frequently and are staying at their travel destinations longer.AirbnbChanges for Airbnb guestsAirbnb