Will China let Elon Musk buy TikTok in China?

But before this could happen, there are many other questions that would need to be answered. The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg reported that Chinese officials were debating whether Musk should be allowed to buy or invest in TikTok’s American operations, to satisfy a U.S. Law requiring the sale of the app. TikTok has called the reports “pure fiction.”

There’s a logic to such a move:

Musk is a close ally of President-elect Donald Trump, and both men have said they oppose outlawing TikTok in the United States. The Times reports that Musk will use office space at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House as part of his duties for the Department of Government Efficiency. Musk has been a counterweight to China hawks in the Trump orbit, including Senator Marco Rubio, the pick for secretary of state.

Musk also has a close relationship with Beijing, and officials there most likely feel that they have leverage over Musk: China accounts for about 40 percent of Tesla’s sales, a market share that has come under threat by homegrown competitors.

For Musk, putting TikTok together with X could vastly expand his social media empire’s audience, potentially making it more attractive to advertisers. This would also benefit the investors who funded Musk’s purchase Twitter in 2022. There are still a lot unknowns. Beijing wants to appear strong by standing up to Washington. This is especially true as Trump, who has opposed a TikTok banning but has also spoken of escalating a trading dispute, prepares to enter office. The Journal also reports that some discussions have concluded that it might be better to let TikTok be banned and then negotiate directly with Trump. The law only prevents ByteDance updating TikTok. Such negotiations would give ByteDance and the White House the time to reach an agreement. One possibility is that Musk borrows against his Tesla shares which have increased in value since Trump’s win. It’s an option that he considered, but didn’t pursue, when he bought Twitter. A deal could raise questions about Musk’s loyalty and his closeness to Trump. Steve Bannon and other right-wing figures have already criticized the Tesla CEO for prioritizing business interests. Here’s what’s happening

An Israel/Hamas ceasefire deal is imminent, Qatar claims. A spokesman from the Qatari Foreign Ministry stated that mediators “managed to minimise a lot of disagreements between both sides,” paving the road for a breakthrough which would stop the months-long war and lead to the release of hostages. Investors hailed the news, sending stocks higher in the region and helping to dampen a rally in oil.

The ex-special counsel claims Donald Trump would have faced conviction in the election case. Jack Smith’s report was released over night despite attempts by the president elect’s legal team, to block its release. It argued that Trump was spared prosecution by winning reelection. Smith resigned last week, making the report a stinging rebuke — but little more — of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

• Trump’s team reportedly contemplates a drip-drip approach to tariffs.

• One proposal is to use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act in order to introduce a graduated monthly tariff schedule rather than a one-time massive blow against trading partners. Trump has vowed to impose tariffs on his first day in office, a threat that has weighed heavily on world leaders and markets.

• Hollywood on hold

A week later, the Los Angeles area wildfires continue to rage, fed by strong winds that have put some areas under an elevated state of alert.Here’s the latest:

More than 100,000 people have been displaced and whole neighborhoods destroyed, stoking a growing housing crisis. Around 24 people have died. Southern California’s entertainment industry was particularly hard hit. Bob Iger, Disney’s C.E.O. told The Times’s Brooks Barnes that he had taken on an entirely new role, heading the entertainment giant’s relief efforts. As of Monday, 64 Disney employees had lost their homes and hundreds more, including Iger, had been evacuated.

The entertainment industry is a major regional employer

with about 27 percent of the nation’s film and television workers employed in Los Angeles County, according to one study tabulated after the crippling 2023 Hollywood strikes. Work at many studios has halted as executives, agents and talent focus on the destruction of their homes and neighborhoods.

The good news: Almost all Los Angeles studio infrastructure is safe. Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Netflix, Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures are either far from the blazes, or have been largely untouched by the fires. But the industry is divided on whether business will continue as usual. On Monday, the majority of studios were open and The Recording Academy confirmed that the Grammys will air as planned on February 2. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has extended the Oscar nomination voting period but confirmed that the March 2 ceremony is still going to happen. Will the fires accelerate Los Angeles’ film industry’s decline? Live-action films, on the other hand, are almost exclusively shot outside of the region. In response, Gov. Gavin Newsom last year proposed that the state double tax incentives for filming to $750 million annually.

Confronted with such destruction, some industry players are asking tough existential questions. “It’s become a business in which the edifices in Los Angeles are based, but the work is done in other places,” Terry Press said to The Times. She was a veteran movie marketing expert and former president of CBS Films. She continued, “Wouldn’t you go where the work is?” And what will that mean for the vibrancy of this community?”

Exclusive: An A.I. coding start-up raises $105 millionInvestor fervor for all things artificial intelligence is showing no sign of stopping even as the technology emerges as a flashpoint in trade wars. The new round values Anysphere’s Cursor product at $2.5 billion. This is a six-fold increase from what it was valued at in May. The valuations of companies and round sizes continue to rise. Last month, the data company Databricks raised $10 billion at a $62 billion valuation.

Anysphere’s new round was led by Thrive Capital, which invested in OpenAI and Databricks, and Andreessen Horowitz. Benchmark also participated.

Backers point to how quickly Cursor’s user base has grown.

Anysphere now has more than $100 million in annual recurring revenue, according to Michael Truell, the company’s co-founder and C.E.O. Miles Grimshaw of Thrive, a partner who led the new round of investment, said that Cursor was used by virtually all portfolio companies at his firm. Other companies such as Codeium, Poolside and Sourcegraph offer competing products; Microsoft’s GitHub also offers Copilot for helping craft code. )“We’ve never seen a company achieve such broad and rapid adoption, let alone one so deeply technical,” Martin Casado, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz who is on Anysphere’s board, added in a statement.

Automated code writing is becoming a highly competitive sector. Other companies, including Codeium, Poolside and Sourcegraph, offer competing products; Microsoft’s GitHub also offers Copilot for helping craft code.

But Truell and Grimshaw pointed to Anysphere’s ambitions, including an update to its Tab autocomplete feature that allows Cursor to predict up to the next 10 minutes of a user’s lines of code.Tech moguls have bigger hopes for the technology: Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, said recently on “The Joe Rogan Experience” that his company would begin automating some code writing. Aiming to have A.I. write all code for its apps is a goal. write all code for its apps.

The C.E.O.-less conglomerateIt isn’t every day that a company announces its C.E.O.’s departure without naming an interim or a replacement. IAC announced on Monday that Joey Levin would be leaving the company in order to oversee the spinoff Angi, as the executive chairman of the home services platform. What could be at stake?

It’s how IAC works. Diller’s media empire is a holding company that operates in an unusual way. It buys businesses and tries to improve them, then spins off the best ones. Its businesses such as Dotdash Meredith, Care.com and Care.com are run essentially as separate entities with their C.E.O.s.

IAC did this before. IAC has done this before. When Greg Blatt, the former IAC chief, stepped down to become chairman of Match Group, which was also spun off, in 2013, the company did not immediately name a successor. It appointed Levin to the position of C.E.O. In 2015, Levin wrote the following about Diller in a memo to his staff:“He has never seen an ambitious plan.” He has never seen an adequate product or a well-told story. And he has gotten so many of us to think bigger and better as a result.”

THE SPEED READ Deals

The C.E.O. Cleveland-Cliffs, the American steelmaker, suggested that it may be time to make a fresh bid for U.S. Steel at a time when its planned sale of Nippon Steel is in doubt. However, he did not provide any details. (NYT)

Honeywell International, the big industrial conglomerate, reportedly plans to split itself in two after pressure from the activist investor Elliott Investment Management. (Bloomberg)

Politics, policy and regulation

Robinhood paid $45 million to settle S.E.C. The SEC accused the brokerage of violating securities rules, including failing to report suspicious transactions and protecting sensitive customer data. (NYT)“In Global Market Rout, Britain Is the ‘Weakest Link'”

Harvard has hired Ballard Partners, the lobbying firm led by a top Trump donor that had also employed Susie Wiles, the incoming White House chief of staff, to lobby for the university in Washington. (Washington Free Beacon).

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