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Jan 16, 2025
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Happy Thursday! Donald Trump considers an executive order to suspend enforcement of the TikTok sale-or-ban law for 60 to 90 days. The Biden administration is also looking for ways to keep TikTok accessible when the ban comes into effect on Sunday. Apple Eyes Barclays, Synchrony to replace Goldman for credit card business
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Donald Trump is considering issuing an executive order once he is president that would suspend the enforcement of the U.S. law that could ban TikTok for 60 to 90 days, The Washington Post reported. But lawyers told the Post that a presidential executive order can’t overturn a law passed by Congress. There’s also the possibility that the new Attorney General could not enforce the law—Pam Bondi, the nominee for that position, declined to answer questions at her confirmation hearing on Wednesday whether she would enforce the law, news outlets reported. But enforcement of the ban falls to Apple and Google, which have to remove the TikTok app from their app stores. And Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh pointed out at last week’s Supreme Court hearing on the law that Apple and Google likely wouldn’t take the risk of not enforcing the law. The deadline for the ban is Sunday, a day before Trump’s inauguration. TikTok plans to shut down the app on Sunday, barring intervention from the Supreme Court, The Information reported on Tuesday.
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The Biden administration is looking for ways to keep TikTok available in the U.S. on Sunday, the day a federal law will ban the app, NBC News reported. Administration officials are exploring options to stop TikTok from an immediate shutdown in the U.S., even if the Jan. 19 ban comes into effect as scheduled, according to NBC, which cited an anonymous official as saying “Americans shouldn’t expect to see TikTok suddenly banned on Sunday.” If the officials could figure out a way to keep TikTok accessible by users on Sunday, that would prevent a TikTok shutdown from defining Biden’s last day in the office, according to NBC, although it’s unclear how exactly that can be done. The NBC report also quoted a White House official as saying that not enforcing the ban isn’t an option if the law is upheld. Under the law, TikTok will be banned on Sunday unless the app has cut its ties with its Chinese parent, ByteDance. TikTok has appealed to the Supreme Court to overturn the law on First Amendment grounds.
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Apple is in talks with Barclays and Synchrony Financial to replace Goldman Sachs as the partner for its credit card, Reuters reported Wednesday. The news comes after the CEO of Goldman Sachs told analysts on an earnings call Wednesday that its credit card partnership with Apple might end before the contract expires in 2030. The Information previously reported that Goldman had been trying to get out of the partnership because it wasn’t profitable enough in the near term and that Apple had held talks with American Express as a potential replacement. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that JPMorgan also was in talks with Apple to take over the credit card partnership. Apple has worked with Barclays in the past.
The two companies launched a credit card together more than a decade ago that offered not only credit card rewards but also allowed the ability to pay for Apple products via monthly installments. That card, however, was discontinued in 2021.
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Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest chipmaker, reported on Thursday that net income increased 57% to $11.6 billion in the December quarter from a year ago, thanks to strong demand for artificial intelligence chips. TSMC, which manufactures chips for Nvidia and Apple, projected that revenue from AI chips will double in 2025. AI chips account for 53% of the company’s revenue in the fourth quarter, with the rest from smartphone, automotive and other chips. Total revenue increased 39% to $26.8 billion in the fourth quarter. The U.S. government on Wednesday proposed new export control regulations that prevent Chinese companies from placing advanced AI chip orders at TSMC. CEO C.C. Wei said impact from the new rules would be “manageable,” as the company can still work with Chinese
companies on non-AI chips. TSMC generated 11% of revenue from China in 2024, compared to 20% in 2019.
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Microsoft and Google both rolled out changes to how they bill corporate customers for AI software on Wednesday in an effort to drum up more AI revenue. Microsoft will start letting businesses pay for certain features within its enterprise-focused AI software on a consumption basis, rather than a flat monthly fee that it has been charging for other corporate AI software. Meanwhile, Google is making AI features a part of its Workspace software by default, meaning customers will no longer pay separately for the features, and is raising the baseline cost of Workspace. The changes show how both companies are willing to experiment with new pricing models in order to coax corporate customers to spend more money on generative AI features. Microsoft’s flagship 365 Copilot product, which adds generative AI features to its popular Office software, is still priced at $30 per user
per month, but many companies have balked at that price point and remain reluctant to spend heavily on it. Microsoft’s pricing changes apply to “agent” features that can automate workplace processes, such as using AI to answer employees’ questions about an HR policy, and are part of 365 Copilot Chat, Microsoft’s otherwise-free corporate chatbot meant for enterprise customers. Under the new consumption pricing, one message within 365 Copilot Chat costs roughly one cent, while messages that require the chatbot to create a lengthy answer using generative AI cost two cents, and messages that require the
chatbot to draw on other data from other applications cost 30 cents. For instance, Microsoft says that if 200 employees asked the software questions about an HR policy in a day, and each message required the AI to pull from company data and generate a response, the cost for the day would be roughly $64. In Google’s case, the company is increasing the baseline pricing of its Workspace products by $2, bringing the cost to $14 per user per month, and including its Gemini AI features in Workspace by default. Previously, customers had to pay $20 to $30 extra per user per month to use Gemini in Workspace.
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The U.S. Commerce Department on Wednesday issued new rules to prevent the world’s most important chip manufacturers, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., from letting certain Chinese companies access advanced chips, including for artificial intelligence. The new rules, which include new requirements for TSMC and other foundries to better scrutinize their customers to make sure they aren’t connected to the Chinese government or military. The move is part of a series of last-minute rules issued by the Biden administration to keep prized technology out of China’s hands. TSMC and other foundries use machines with American intellectual property, giving the U.S. the ability to issue such restrictions. The U.S. recently probed whether TSMC had made advanced chips that ended up at Huawei, a Chinese firm that
the U.S. had blacklisted from obtaining such technology because of its military ties, The Information reported in Ocrtober. Officials from the Commerce Department and TSMC found that chips TSMC made for Xiamen Sophgo, a Chinese chip design firm that wasn’t blacklisted, had designs similar to those of AI chips Huawei designs and sells, The Information separately reported. The new U.S. rules added Sophgo to the blacklist. The U.S. also added Zhipu AI, one of China’s leading AI startups developing large language models, to the blacklist, citing similar national security concerns.
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