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Magnificent 7 rise after court strikes down tariffs; here’s how each company has skin in the game

Some of the biggest tech companies had the most to lose from the trade war.

Rani Molla

The Magnificent 7 were all trading higher following news that a trade court struck down President Trump’s “Liberation Day” reciprocal tariffs. The administration has said it will appeal the decision, but if it holds, tariffs on imports from dozens of countries, including the current 30% tariff on China, would be lifted.

While the market overall is up on the news, Big Tech companies Apple, Amazon, Google, Tesla, Microsoft, Meta, and Nvidia especially have skin in the trade war game to varying degrees.

Apple, which produces most of its products in China, likely had the most to lose out of any tech company in Trump’s trade war. On its latest earnings call, the company said the existing tariffs — it had been temporarily spared from tariffs on China but is awaiting sector-specific levies — would have cost it $900 million in the current quarter.

Amazon is highly dependent on importing goods for its e-commerce site from China. On the company’s last earnings call, CEO Andy Jassy said that while tariffs hadn’t meaningfully affected prices or demand, they were causing a lot of uncertainty. It’s also unlikely that the CEO would have made a big deal about tariffs’ impact, as the company tries to stay out of the Trump administration’s line of sight.

China is a huge market for Nvidia, so it’s riding high on the tariff news, but it (and the AI supply chain generally) is also up on the news of its earnings beat yesterday. Meanwhile, Nvidia is delicately navigating an export ban to China for its H20s that slashed its annual revenue forecast by some $8 billion.

Amazon, Meta, and Google, which have giant advertising businesses, all face knock-on effects from lost Chinese advertising money thanks to tariffs.

While tariffs between the US and China don’t affect Tesla much since it manufactures the cars for each of those markets where it sells them, China is a major market for Tesla, and any anti-American sentiment affects its business there.

Tariffs have driven up costs of AI infrastructure hardware for Meta, and presumably the rest of the Mag 7, which all are building their AI prowess.

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Amazon to lay off thousands more office workers on path to 30,000 cuts

Amazon plans to axe thousands of corporate workers next week, after laying off 14,000 back in October, according to Reuters. The new cuts could be “roughly the same” number as last time and may hit Amazon Web Services, retail, Prime Video, and human resources, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

The company plans to cut a total of 30,000 corporate positions as part of an effort to “streamline operations and reset its culture,” Business Insider reported separately, noting comments from CEO Andy Jassy, who said the earlier layoffs were “about culture” rather than AI-related cost cutting.

Exclusive: Amazon plans thousands more corporate job cuts next week, sources say

Exclusive: Amazon plans thousands more corporate job cuts next week, sources say

The company plans to cut a total of 30,000 corporate positions as part of an effort to “streamline operations and reset its culture,” Business Insider reported separately, noting comments from CEO Andy Jassy, who said the earlier layoffs were “about culture” rather than AI-related cost cutting.

Little Bay Beach

There are now more than 1 million “.ai” websites, contributing an estimated $70 million to Anguilla’s government revenue last year

Data from Domain Name Stat reveals that the top-level domain originally assigned to the British Overseas Territory of Anguilla passed the milestone in early January.

David Crowther, Claire Yubin Oh12h
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Claire Yubin Oh

TikTok closes deal to operate in the US

TikTok has finally sealed its deal to establish a majority American-owned joint venture to manage its US operations.

On Friday, the social media company announced that its US arm will now be led by three “managing investors” — Silver Lake, Oracle, and MGX, each with a 15% holding — while ByteDance retains 19.9% of the business, and a swath of other investors, including Michael Dell’s family office, round out the cap table.

The joint venture will be operated by a seven-person majority American board of directors, which includes TikTok CEO Shou Chew, with Adam Presser, previously TikTok’s head of operations, trust, and safety, as its CEO.

Though the valuation of the new venture has not been shared, Vice President JD Vance has previously cited the market value of TikTok’s US operations at about $14 billion, just topping Snap and lower than Pinterest.

The deal closes the platform’s battle, which kicked off in earnest in August 2020 when President Donald Trump first tried to ban TikTok over national security concerns. The announcement notes that the new TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC will “secure U.S. user data, apps and the algorithm.” Trump celebrated the deal, which has been signed off by both the US and Chinese governments, per Reuters, in a Truth Social post, saying TikTok “will now be owned by a group of Great American Patriots and Investors, the Biggest in the World.”

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Rani Molla

Elon Musk says Tesla Robotaxis are operating without drivers, sending stock higher

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla’s Robotaxis are now operating in Austin without a safety monitor. Tesla has been testing driverless cars in the area for about a month, and Musk had previously said the company would remove safety drivers by the end of 2025.

It’s unclear how many exactly of the roughly 50 Robotaxis the company operates in the area don’t have drivers. Tesla is “starting with a few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader robotaxi fleet with safety monitors, and the ratio will increase over time,” Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s head of AI, posted shortly after Musk. Ethan McKenna, the person behind Robotaxi Tracker, estimates it’s two or three vehicles.

What is clear is that the move is good for Tesla’s stock, which is currently up 3.5%, extending its gains after Musk’s tweet. Morgan Stanley said yesterday that it considers the removal of safety drivers a “precursor to personal unsupervised FSD rollout.” Unsupervised Full Self-Driving is widely considered to be integral to the would-be autonomous company’s value proposition.

At the World Economic Forum earlier on Thursday, Musk said, “Self-driving cars is essentially a solved problem at this point.”

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