23andMe bankruptcy bid deadline extended as DNA privacy woes linger - The Boston Globe (2025)

ACQUISITIONS

Shares of Deliveroo, the food delivery service based in London, are hitting three-year highs on Monday after it received a $3.6 billion proposed takeover offer from DoorDash. Deliveroo announced the bid after markets closed in Europe on Friday. On Monday, the company also said that it was suspending a $133.5 million share buyback it had announced last month. Deliveroo said Friday that its board has informed DoorDash that if a firm offer is made at the financial terms provided, it will recommend the bid to its shareholders. Deliveroo added that its board has decided to engage in talks with DoorDash about the possible offer and has given the company access to due diligence. Deliveroo said DoorDash must decide by May 23 whether it plans to make a firm buyout offer or not. — ASSOCIATED PRESS

ENTERTAINMENT

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Spotify has paid more than $100 million to podcast publishers and creators since January, the company told The New York Times’ DealBook. The payout is the result of a program introduced this year that opened new revenue streams to eligible hosts. But it is also an attempt to draw more creators (and their audiences) to Spotify, as the rise of video podcasting has driven many of them to YouTube. Video has come to dominate podcasting. More than half of Americans older than 12 have watched a video podcast — but primarily on YouTube, according to an Edison Research report from January. The service claims to reach 1 billion podcast consumers every month, making it the dominant platform for podcasts — a media king and kingmaker — and leaving onetime audio-only platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts in the dust. (Spotify introduced video podcasts in 2019.) Compared with YouTube, Spotify has become a podcast underdog, with about 170 million monthly podcast listeners among its total audience of 675 million. One indication of how far Spotify has to go to catch up to the top player: YouTube paid out more than $70 billion to creators and media companies from 2021 to 2024. — NEW YORK TIMES

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

OpenAI now lets users shop for products within ChatGPT, the latest move by the artificial intelligence startup to expand the reach of its popular chatbot and challenge rivals like Google. With the new option, announced Monday, users can quickly compare products and click a link within ChatGPT to make a purchase on an external website. To start, the feature only works for a handful of categories, including electronics, fashion, beauty, and home goods, with plans to expand to more over time. The shopping tool is available to all of ChatGPT’s 500 million active users, as well as to those who are not logged into the chatbot. OpenAI has increasingly tried to position ChatGPT as a kind of everything app that offers a search engine, voice assistant, and video generator. The effort is intended to increase how much time users spend with the chatbot and also help ChatGPT stay ahead of rival services from Anthropic, Alphabet Inc.’s Google, and Elon Musk’s xAI. Perplexity AI Inc., an AI search startup, has also expanded with more shopping features. An OpenAI spokesperson said the company won’t collect affiliate revenue for purchases made via ChatGPT. — BLOOMBERG NEWS

MEDIA

In an extraordinary on-air rebuke, one of the top journalists at “60 Minutes” directly criticized the program’s parent company in the final moments of its Sunday night CBS telecast, its first episode since the program’s executive producer, Bill Owens, announced his intention to resign. “Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways,” correspondent Scott Pelley told viewers. “None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires.” A spokesperson for Paramount had no immediate comment and has previously declined to comment on Owens’ departure. Owens stunned the show’s staff Tuesday when he said he would leave the highest-rated program in television news over disagreements with Paramount, CBS’s corporate parent, saying, “It’s clear the company is done with me.” Owens’ comments were widely reported in the press last week. The show’s decision to repeat those grievances on air may have exposed viewers to the serious tensions between “60 Minutes” and its corporate overseers for the first time. — NEW YORK TIMES

INDUSTRY

Chief executives from Nvidia Corp., Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly & Co., General Electric Co., and SoftBank Group Corp. are among corporate leaders slated to visit the White House on Wednesday as President Trump highlights the US investments they’ve announced in the first 100 days of his second term in office. Companies from defense, tech, health care, and consumer products industries as well as investment funds have been invited to attend and have their products on display in the residence’s foyer, according to a White House official who shared details of the event on the condition of anonymity. Trump, who will be coming off from a Michigan rally the day before, is expected to tout numerous financial commitments his administration has secured from companies, which it estimates at $2 trillion. “President Trump has secured more investments in the United States of America in 100 days than Joe Biden did in four years,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. Economists have questioned whether all the pledged spending — which has often come with a White House press conference and to great acclaim from Trump — will come to fruition. Corporate pledges as of early April amounted to roughly $1.6 trillion in spending and at least 426,000 jobs promised, according to a Bloomberg analysis of announcements made since Trump’s election. That amounts to more than all of the capital spending by companies in the entire S&P 500 in the last calendar year. The event billed as “Invest in America” comes as major retailers and Wall Street leaders are warning of price increases and fallout from Trump’s trade war. The president maintains that implementing the highest US tariffs in more than a century will jump-start domestic manufacturing, but financial markets and businesses have been roiled by the chaotic rollout and uncertainty. — BLOOMBERG NEWS