Latest news with #AdamKovacevich
Wall Street Journal
6 days ago
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
Democrats Try to Halt Silicon Valley's Swing to the Right
Last year's election delivered the biggest blow in decades for the marriage between Democrats and Silicon Valley. Repairing the damage is proving difficult. Adam Kovacevich, the chief executive of the center-left trade group Chamber of Progress, is trying to play marriage counselor. Kovacevich has spent months talking to Democrats, tech workers and former Biden administration officials about what pushed tech executives away from the party and how to mend the relationship.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Perplexity's Google Chrome offer may be a PR stunt aimed at Apple
Perplexity ( is offering $34.5 billion to buy Alphabet's (GOOG, GOOGL) Google Chrome business. Alphabet could be forced to sell Google Chrome as part of an antitrust resolution, but Wall Street seems to be dismissing Perplexity as a serious potential Chrome buyer, given that the reported offer is greater than the artificial intelligence (AI) startup's $18 billion valuation. Chamber of Progress CEO and founder, Adam Kovacevich, and Freedom Capital Markets managing director, Paul Meeks, join Market Catalysts to discuss. Kovacevich says Perplexity is "selling headlines, not buying browsers," while Meeks adds that this may be part of the company's rumored strategy to sell itself to Apple (AAPL). To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Catalysts. perplexity is making a bid to acquire Google's Chrome browser for thirty four and a half billion dollars that's at least according to reports out there. The AI startup only worth about 18 billion dollars according to its latest funding rounds. So some of the funds would have to come from outside investors, it was an unsolicited offer, and it comes ahead of US antitrust proceedings that could force alphabet to sell the well web browser. It seems like most of the street is not seeing this as terribly realistic, but I want to talk about sort of how this fits into the broader AI landscape. Adam Kovac which is with us now as well chamber progress, CEO and founder Paul Meeks of Freedom Capital markets is still with me as well, and Adam as we look at the AI landscape here. Perplexity is not as much of a household name within AI is this just a marketing move on its part? Yeah, I think their hottest product is publicity. I think these offers keep Wall Street buzzing without them having to spend a dime. You know, one week, uh, we hear that the big tech wants to buy perplexity, the next week they're kind of swaggering in as a potential buyer back in March. They said they, you know, they were, we're putting in a bid to uh, to buy tick tock. Tick Tock wasn't for sale. Uh, I think the press clip is the point, right? As you noted, um, the the value of Chrome is double or more than perplexity's own value, and the check would be bigger than the balance sheet. I think you're selling headlines, not buying browsers, but look, I mean I think founders know that swagger can kind of goose valuations, uh, getting their name uttered in the same breath as Chrome kind of signals Big League, right? It sets a higher price uh, for if someone tries to scoop you up, and let's face it, it kind of worked. We're here talking about perplexity, aren't we? Right? So unfortunately for them, it's not about how valuable their core product is. Well, but Paul, you know, when you look at the Chrome situation, the Alphabet situation, um, do you think that they are going to be forced to spin off Chrome? I mean we've talked to some analysts who say even if they do, it's not necessarily a bad thing for Alphabet. I agree that it won't necessarily be a bad thing, but I think when you get to the end of the day, I don't think that the Feds are going to force uh, the divestiture. So this uh, deal or proposed deal by perplexity AI so premature, the other thing that's going on with perplexity AI, though I do think perplexity AI is a real deal company is it's rumored that they may sell themselves to Apple. And so you want to crank up the PR machine to drive up your valuation so Apple takes you out at bigger price. So I think that might also be at play here. Related Videos Bullish soars in public debut, Amazon delivery, downgraded Data Not Supporting a Big Fed Rate Cut, BofA's Cabana Says CoreWeave earnings don't answer the big question bears are asking Starbucks turnaround check-in: 1 yr. since CEO shake-up Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
CNBC
15-05-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Apple's strategy makes sense as U.S. workers can't produce its products: Chamber of Progress CEO
Adam Kovacevich, Chamber of Progress CEO, joins 'Power Lunch' to discuss Apple's relationship with President Trump, what Trump's goal is with Apple, and much more.
CNBC
30-04-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Adam Kovacevich: Trump's tech agenda is inconsistent
Adam Kovacevich, Chamber of Progress CEO and former head of Google's U.S. policy strategy, joins CNBC's 'Power Lunch' to discuss where tech stands with the Trump administration.
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Why Meta's antitrust trial is an 'uphill battle' for the FTC
Meta's (META) antitrust trial begins on Monday as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) challenges the company's past acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, arguing they unfairly cemented Meta's social media monopoly. Chamber of Progress founder and CEO Adam Kovacevich joins Morning Brief to discuss what's at stake and whether divestment is truly on the table. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Morning Brief here. Adam, great to speak with you here. Any chance of Instagram, WhatsApp, actually getting divested? Sure, there's a chance. We don't know. I think the judge in this case has said that the FTC has kind of an uphill battle here. Um, they have to do two things. The FTC has to do two things. First they have to prove that meta has a monopoly in what in the relevant market which the FTC has said is personal social networking. The challenge for the FTC with that is they say that market includes Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, company called MeWe, but the FTC says that it does not include LinkedIn, Reddit, X, TikTok, YouTube. And of course meta will push back on that saying that actually the market's much bigger, right? But the second thing that the FTC has to do is they have to prove that meta's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp helped meta maintain a monopoly position through unfair competition. And as you said like, these are these are 11 year old, 12 year old acquisitions. Uh, in some ways, I think what the government's asking for is a little bit of a do over here of the regulatory approval that they gave, you know, uh, 11 years ago, 13 years ago. What does the government really want in terms of some type of of defining change to how the company operates here? Well, it's pretty clear that they want Instagram and WhatsApp to be spun off from meta. Like that is the clear objective of the case because they are saying that the essentially the the acquisitions of of these companies 11 years ago, 12 years ago, uh gave, you know, meta sort of an unfair position. I think the problem, the most inconvenient fact for the government here is that the FTC looked at both of these acquisitions at the time they were implemented and approved them. And and I think it's important to say, like, these are really small companies at the time they were approved, right? You had, you know, something like Instagram had like three or four million users and WhatsApp had this very small number of users. Now, you know, under meta, they've grown those to hundreds of millions of users, right? So meta's going to say that it provided scope and scale for these services to grow and that that wouldn't have happened if both companies had remained independent. Sign in to access your portfolio
