US turns to courts to block HPE’s $14bn Juniper buy The US Department of Justice has launched legal action to block HPE’s $14 billion acquisition of rival Juniper Networks. In a complaint filed this week, the DoJ claims the merger would “stifle competition” by leading to just two firms – HPE and Cisco – […]
US turns to courts to block HPE’s $14bn Juniper buy
The US Department of Justice has launched legal action to block HPE’s $14 billion acquisition of rival Juniper Networks.
In a complaint filed this week, the DoJ claims the merger would “stifle competition” by leading to just two firms – HPE and Cisco – controlling more than 70% of the US networking equipment market.
The intervention comes a year after HPE agreed a $14 billion deal to buy its rival and is the first major intervention of its kind since Donald Trump returned to the White House.
The deal has already been cleared by the UK’s Competition and Markets authority and the European Union.
“We believe the Department of Justice’s analysis of this acquisition is fundamentally flawed and we are disappointed in its decision to file a suit attempting to prohibit the closing of the transaction,” HPE and Juniper said in a joint statement on Thursday.
OpenAI claims Chinese rivals are copying its AI models
OpenAI has accused Chinese rivals including DeepSeek of leveraging its own models to make rapid advances when developing their AI solutions.
According to the ChatGPT maker, Chinese and other companies were “constantly trying to distil the models of leading US AI companies”. The claim comes in the same week that DeepSeek launched its new AI model, which it claims cost much less to build than US AIs, while seeing similar performance results.
OpenAI’s concerns have been echoed by new White House “AI and crypto czar”, David Sacks, who told Fox News that DeepSeek may have used the models developed by OpenAI to get better, a process known as knowledge distillation.
Sacks said: “I think one of the things you’re going to see over the next few months is our leading AI companies taking steps to try and prevent distillation… That would definitely slow down some of these copycat models.”
Trump names Microsoft as potential TikTok buyer
Microsoft is one of several names potentially looking at buying TikTok – at least according to President Donald Trump.
Both Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden have tried to force TikTok-owner ByteDance into finding a US-based buyer for the popular social media app, citing concerns around national security.
Biden ultimately signed a bi-partisan bill that would have seen TikTok banned in the US from January 19 – until Trump intervened, signing an executive order that delays the ban for 75 days.
Despite granting a reprieve, the president is still hopeful of brokering a deal which will remove China’s influence from the app.
“We’ll see what happens. We’re going to have a lot of people bidding on it,” he said.
“If we can save all that voice and all the jobs, and China won’t be involved, we don’t want China involved.”
Previous names linked with buying TikTok include Oracle, Elon Musk, billionaire Frank McCourt and the Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary, as well as YouTube streamer MR Beast – real name Jimmy Donaldson.
Meta agrees legal settlement with Trump over Facebook ban
Meta has reached a $25 million settlement agreement with President Donald Trump over the social media firm’s decision to ban his Facebook and Instagram accounts following the 2021 Capitol riots.
After rioters broke into the US Capitol Building on January 6, Meta suspended Trump’s accounts across its platforms, before lifting the ban in the lead up to last year’s elections, which saw Trump return to the White House.
Around $22m of the settlement will go to a fund for Trump’s presidential library, according to a Wall Street Journal report, though Meta has no admitted to any wrongdoing.
