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      Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman and Other Tech Billionaires Brawl Over Politics

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      Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman and other tech billionaires, many of whom are part of the “PayPal Mafia,” are openly brawling with one another over politics as tensions rise.Less than an hour after a gunman in Butler, Pa., tried to assassinate Donald J. Trump this month, David Sacks, a venture capitalist based in San Francisco, directed his anger about the incident toward a former colleague.“The Left normalized this,” Mr. Sacks wrote on X, linking to a post about Reid Hoffman, a technology investor and major Democratic donor. Mr. Sacks implied that Mr. Hoffman, a critic of Mr. Trump who had funded a lawsuit accusing the former president of rape and defamation, had helped cause the shooting.Elon Musk, who leads SpaceX and Tesla and previously worked with Mr. Sacks and Mr. Hoffman, then weighed in on X, name-checking Mr. Hoffman and saying people like him “got their dearest wish.”In Silicon Valley, the spectacle of tech billionaire attacking tech billionaire has suddenly exploded, as pro-Trump executives and their Democratic counterparts have openly turned on each other. The brawling has spilled into public view online, at conferences and on podcasts, as debates about the country’s future have turned into personal broadsides.The animus has pit those who once worked side by side and attended each other’s weddings against one another, fraying friendships and alliances that could shift Silicon Valley’s power centers. The fighting has been particularly acute among the “PayPal Mafia,” a wealthy group of tech executives — including Mr. Hoffman, Mr. Musk, Mr. Sacks and the investor Peter Thiel — who worked together at the online payments company in the 1990s and later founded their own companies or turned into high-profile investors.Other tech leaders have also been pulled into the political spats, including Vinod Khosla, a prominent investor, and Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz of the Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Google Close to Its Biggest Acquisition Ever, Despite Antitrust Scrutiny

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      The search giant’s negotiations to buy Wiz, a cybersecurity start-up, for $23 billion, come as the Biden administration has taken a hard line against consolidation in tech and other industries.Google, which became one of the world’s the most valuable companies through its search engine and other consumer internet services, is nearing its largest-ever acquisition to improve what it can offer to business customers.Google is in talks to buy Wiz, a New York-based cybersecurity start-up, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions, who were not authorized to discuss them. Wiz was last valued at $12 billion.The companies have valued the deal at roughly $23 billion, said one of the people, easily making it Google’s most expensive acquisition and nearly double what the company paid for Motorola Mobility in 2012.While a deal looks likely, talks could still fall apart, the people said.Google and Wiz did not respond to requests for comment. The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that the companies were discussing a deal.Google has moved forward with negotiations despite the possibility that regulators might try to block the deal. But the company may be willing to fight to beef up its cloud-computing division, which lags behind Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.Google was sued by the Justice Department in two separate antitrust cases, one targeting its ubiquitous search engine and another seeking to break up its digital advertising-technology business. A verdict in the search case is expected this summer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Going After the Middleman

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      Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, the Justice Department’s top antitrust official, talked with DealBook about the agency’s focus on middlemen companies and the challenge of A.I.With the presidential election approaching, many chief executives have been glued to the shot clock counting down to Election Day, wondering which companies and industries the Biden-appointed regulatory apparatus — perhaps the most aggressive in a generation — may try to target before it goes to zero.Business leaders have been combing through comments and transcripts to try to understand the pending priorities of regulators like Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, and Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, the head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division.They’ve zeroed in on what may sound like a nerdy legal theory, but one that could have huge implications: the tyranny of the intermediary, middleman companies that abuse their role by squeezing out competition or creating artificially expensive moats. The Justice Department has already made one high-profile strike along these lines, suing to break up Ticketmaster and Live Nation.It is reportedly investigating at least two others. One is RealPage, a property management company that uses artificial intelligence to suggest prices and has already been sued by renters accusing it of facilitating a new type of collusion. The second is UnitedHealth Group, the health care conglomerate that owns a cobweb of businesses that include an insurer and another unit that employs about 10,000 physicians in the United States.RealPage said in a statement this week it was “proud of the role our customers play in providing safe and affordable housing to millions of people.” It has also launched a website about its software.Guessing what other names could be on the list has become something of a parlor game for dealmakers. A travel booking service that jacks up fees? A brokerage firm that an apartment building requires its renters to use? Shareholder advisory firms that can determine whether a deal goes through? Marketplaces that take a cut every time an NFT changes hands?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      N.C.A.A. Athletes’ Pay Deal Raises Questions About Future of College Sports

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      The landmark settlement made many wonder what the reality — and impact — of revenue-sharing plans with college athletes would look like.Brent Jacquette knows a thing or two about college sports. A former collegiate soccer player and coach in Pennsylvania who is now an executive at a consulting firm for athletic recruiting, he’s well aware of issues surrounding pay for college athletes.But even for an industry veteran like Mr. Jacquette, the news of the N.C.A.A.’s staggering settlement in a class-action antitrust lawsuit on Thursday came as a surprise, with more than a little anxiety. The first words that came to mind, he said, were “trepidation” and “confusion.”And he was not alone in feeling unsettled. Interviews, statements and social media posts mere hours after the settlement was announced showed that many were uncertain and concerned about what the future of collegiate sports holds. “These are unprecedented times, and these decisions will have a seismic effect on the permanent landscape of collegiate athletics,” Phil DiStefano, chancellor of the University of Colorado Boulder, and Rick George, the school’s athletic director, said in a statement. If the $2.8 billion settlement is approved by a judge, it would allow for a revenue-sharing plan through which Division I athletes can be paid directly by their schools for playing sports — a first in the nearly 120-year history of the N.C.A.A. Division 1 schools would be allowed to use about $20 million a year to pay their athletes as soon as the 2025 football season.Mr. Jacquette thought of the word “trepidation” because of the impact that the settlement, shaped by the biggest and wealthiest universities with robust football programs, could have on coaches and athletes at smaller institutions and in low-profile sports.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New Era Dawns for the N.C.A.A.: Paying Athletes Directly

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      If approved by a judge, the $2.8 billion settlement of an antitrust lawsuit would allow for the first revenue-sharing plan for college athletes. The question now: How will it work?Since its founding, the N.C.A.A. has operated with a business model that defined the college athlete as an amateur. Over the years, as college sports evolved into a mega-enterprise, lawsuits and labor actions chipped away at that model, which came to be increasingly seen as exploitative in big-money sports like football and men’s basketball. But the N.C.A.A.’s $2.8 billion settlement on Thursday night in a class-action antitrust lawsuit represents the heaviest blow — and perhaps a decisive one — to that system. If approved by a U.S. district judge in California, the settlement would allow for the creation of the first revenue-sharing plan for college athletics, a landmark shift in which schools would directly pay their athletes for playing.This sea change, though, also carries its own questions, according to critics. Those include whether women would be compensated fairly, whether smaller conferences would bear a disproportionate burden of the settlement and whether this framework would do anything to limit the power of collectives — the booster-funded groups that entice players with payments to hopscotch from school to school. “It’s both a historic and deeply flawed agreement,” said Michael H. LeRoy, a law professor at the University of Illinois. “The idea that schools are paying millions of dollars to the people who are selling the TV contracts and filling the seats — that’s good. But it closes one Pandora’s box and opens four or five others.”In recent years, college athletes had already made significant strides in gaining the right to make money for their performances. Three years ago, they were allowed for the first time to individually market their name, image and likeness legally. And in March, the men’s basketball team at Dartmouth voted to form a union after a federal official ruled that players were employees of the school. Thursday’s settlement in the case of House v. N.C.A.A. was seen by many college administrators as an inevitable conclusion. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Sues to Break Up Ticketmaster Owner, Live Nation

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      Accused of violating antitrust laws, Live Nation Entertainment faces a fight that could reshape the multibillion-dollar live music industry.The Justice Department on Thursday sued Live Nation Entertainment, the concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, asking a court to break up the company over claims it illegally maintained a monopoly in the live entertainment industry.In the lawsuit, which is joined by 29 states and the District of Columbia, the government accuses Live Nation of dominating the industry by locking venues into exclusive ticketing contracts, pressuring artists to use its services and threatening its rivals with financial retribution.Those tactics, the government argues, have resulted in higher ticket prices for consumers and have stifled innovation and competition throughout the industry.“It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster,” Merrick Garland, the attorney general, said in a statement announcing the suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The suit asks the court to order “the divestiture of, at minimum, Ticketmaster,” and to prevent Live Nation from engaging in anticompetitive practices.The lawsuit is a direct challenge to the business of Live Nation, a colossus of the entertainment industry and a force in the lives of musicians and fans alike. The case, filed 14 years after the government approved Live Nation’s merger with Ticketmaster, has the potential to transform the multibillion-dollar concert industry.Live Nation’s scale and reach far exceed those of any competitor, encompassing concert promotion, ticketing, artist management and the operation of hundreds of venues and festivals around the world.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      DOJ to Sue Live Nation, Accusing It of Defending a Monopoly

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      Live Nation Entertainment, the concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, faces a fight that could reshape the multibillion-dollar live music industry.The Justice Department and a group of states plan to sue Live Nation Entertainment, the concert giant that owns Ticketmaster, as soon as Thursday, accusing it of illegally maintaining a monopoly in the live entertainment industry, said three people familiar with the matter.The government plans to argue in a lawsuit that Live Nation shored up its power through Ticketmaster’s exclusive ticketing contracts with concert venues, as well as the company’s dominance over concert tours and other businesses like venue management, said two of the people, who declined to be named because the lawsuit was still private. That helped the company maintain a monopoly, raising prices and fees for consumers, limiting innovation in the ticket industry and hurting competition, the people said.The government will argue that tours promoted by the company were more likely to play venues where Ticketmaster was the exclusive ticket service, one of the people said, and that Live Nation’s artists played venues that it owns.Live Nation is a colossus of the concert world and a force in the lives of musicians and fans alike. Its scale and reach far exceed those of any competitor, encompassing concert promotion, ticketing, artist management and the operation of hundreds of venues and festivals around the world.The Ticketmaster division alone sells 600 million tickets a year to events around the world. According to some estimates, it handles ticketing for 70 percent to 80 percent of major concert venues in the United States.Lawmakers, fans and competitors have accused the company of engaging in practices that harm rivals and drive up ticket prices and fees. At a congressional hearing early last year, prompted by a Taylor Swift tour presale on Ticketmaster that left millions of people unable to buy tickets, senators from both parties called Live Nation a monopoly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge Approves $418 Million Settlement That Will Change Real Estate Commissions

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      Home sellers will no longer be required to offer commission to a buyer’s agent when they sell their property, under an agreement with the National Association of Realtors.A settlement that will rewrite the way many real estate agents are paid in the United States has received preliminary approval from a federal judge.On Tuesday morning, Judge Stephen R. Bough, a United States district judge, signed off on an agreement between the National Association of Realtors and home sellers who sued the real estate trade group over its longstanding rules on commissions to agents that they say forced them to pay excessive fees. The agreement is still subject to a hearing for final court approval, which is expected to be held on Nov. 22. But that hearing is largely a formality, and Judge Bough’s action in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri now paves the way for N.A.R. to begin implementing the sweeping rule changes required by the deal. The changes will likely go into full effect among brokerages across the country by Sept. 16. N.A.R., in a statement from spokesman Mantill Williams, welcomed the settlement’s preliminary approval.“It has always been N.A.R.’s goal to resolve this litigation in a way that preserves consumer choice and protects our members to the greatest extent possible,” he said in an email. “There are strong grounds for the court to approve this settlement because it is in the best interests of all parties and class members.”N.A.R. reached the agreement in March to settle the lawsuit, and a series of similar claims, by making the changes and paying $418 million in damages. Months earlier, in October, a jury had reached a verdict that would have required the organization to pay at least $1.8 billion in damages, agreeing with homeowners who argued that N.A.R.’s rules on agent commissions forced them to pay excessive fees when they sold their property. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More