• TikTok's China-based parent company ByteDance is facing increased pressure to cut ties with the viral video app, as President Donald Trump and his administration demand that it be owned by an American company or else face a ban.
• Microsoft is in talks to buy TikTok's operations in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and says it expects to reach a conclusion by September 15. Of course, TikTok could also find another buyer.
• If the talks fall through by that date, Trump has said he would ban the app. He's also since issued an executive order that would ban "any transactions" with ByteDance by mid-September, though what precisely that would mean for TikTok is unclear.
• If the companies make a deal, the acquisition will be complicated. But Microsoft is less likely than other US tech companies to face roadblocks from the Trump administration and antitrust regulators.
• Here's what we know about why Microsoft is the most likely buyer, what happens to TikTok if it goes through, and other questions you may have about the deal-in-progress.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The word is out: Microsoft is exploring a deal to viral video app TikTok's operations in several countries including the US as its Chinese parent company ByteDance faces increasing pressure from the Trump administration.

News broke July 31 President Donald Trump was planning to order ByteDance to divest its stake in TikTok's US operations. Soon after, reports emerged Microsoft was an interested suitor, followed by confirmation from the company itself.

Now, Trump says ByteDance and Microsoft have until September 15 to reach a deal — at which point the president says he will take action to ban the app in the US entirely (though it's not clear what presidential power or legal authority he has to do so).

Trump has since issued an executive order that would ban "any transactions" between Americans and ByteDance by mid-September. It's not clear what exactly that would mean for users of the app, but TikTok is reportedly planning to sue the administration over the order, over claims that it's unconstitutional. 

It's also worth noting, right off the bat, that a recent report suggests that the Microsoft-ByteDance talks are "unlikely" to end in a deal, and put the odds of the deal's success at "not higher than 20 percent." This lends support to the idea that ByteDance is entertaining acquisition offers to appease Trump, and isn't ready to give up its enormous American audience without a fight.

But assuming that a deal is still on the table, the whole affair raises a lot of questions, not all of which have readily-apparent answers. 

Here's what we know about the deal so far:

Why is Microsoft the most likely buyer?

First and foremost, while Microsoft is widely considered the leading candidate to buy TikTok, and the only one that has publicly stated its interest, nothing has yet been set in stone and another company could still come in and snap it up. Rumors of other interested parties include Google, Facebook, and Apple — the last of which has since denied such reports. Twitter has since emerged as a contender, but it likely lacks the capital to afford TikTok.

It's still unclear how the talks between Microsoft and TikTok began, but there are several serendipitous factors at play that could give the tech titan an edge in these talks.

Only a handful of companies could afford to pay tens of billions to acquire TikTok in the first place. And of the deep-pocketed tech giants, Microsoft is perhaps the least likely to face any political consequences or regulatory blowback on the deal, given how it's largely managed to stay above the fray when it comes to disputes between Big Tech and the Trump administration.

To that point, Microsoft, the second-most valuable tech company in the world was notably absent when CEOs of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google testified before Congress last monh about how their market dominance and business practices might harm competition. That lack of scrutiny might mean Microsoft could get the deal done with minimal antitrust roadblocks to overcome. 

Meanwhile, there are important links between Microsoft and TikTok. ByteDance founder Yiming Zhang did a brief stint at Microsoft, but perhaps more significant is that TikTok's Global General Counsel Erich Andersen, who just joined the company this year, is a 25-year Microsoft veteran who worked closely under the company's president and chief legal officer, Brad Smith.

What Microsoft plans to do with TikTok is still the source of speculation, especially given CEO Satya Nadella's historic focus on cloud computing and productivity. However, analysts recently told Business Insider the acquisition could be an opportunistic play for Microsoft to bolster its consumer business and gain favor among younger generations.

There's plenty of skepticism, though, not least from Microsoft insiders: Bill Gates himself has said that Trump's involvement makes any potential acquisition a "poison chalice," while an internal Microsoft poll shows that at least some employees worry that a deal could undermine the company's integrity.

How much will Microsoft pay?

Microsoft in a statement about its discussions with ByteDance said that a "preliminary proposal" for the deal would see the company buy TikTok's operations in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Estimates for the value of TikTok's operations in those countries vary, but experts and analysts gave Business Insider a range between $25 billion and $40 billion.

Analysts are mixed about whether Microsoft could get a discount, given the pressure on ByteDance from the Trump administration, or pay a premium to acquire a stake in TikTok.

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said the company Microsoft could get a "potential discount," while Futurum Research analyst Daniel Newman said Microsoft could "consider paying a significant premium" to get instant access to TikTok's millions of users in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

While the US is one of TikTok's biggest markets, users in the four countries in question only comprised 10.3% of TikTok downloads in the last 30 days, according to data provided to Business Insider by app analytics firm Sensor Tower.

What exactly would Microsoft get for its money?  

Microsoft would own and operate TikTok in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, although the company said it may invite other American investors to acquire minority stakes in its portion of the business.

But a complete divorce between ByteDance and TikTok would likely also apply to its employees and internal operations, presenting a complex challenge for the buyer. 

According to The Information, ByteDance engineers based in China are responsible for the underlying software and infrastructure across the company's more than two dozen apps, including TikTok. The few US-based engineers TikTok has hired report to senior executives in China, as do some managers working on TikTok's US ad business.

Whoever buys up TikTok will be tasked not only with bridging those technological gaps, but with filling the gaps that could open up in TikTok's workforce. It could take TikTok at least to half a year to hire the hundreds of employees they need to replace, the Information estimates.

In any case, the terms of the deal will be subject to approval from CFIUS and Trump.

What is CFIUS, and why is it investigating TikTok in the first place?

Lawmakers have long raised concerns over the connection between ByteDance and China, and whether the Chinese government can access user data or influence content moderation. A formal national security review of the app was launched in November 2019 by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States — better known as CFIUS (pronounced "siff-ee-yuss).

CFIUS, an interagency body under the government's executive arm, is tasked with investigating the transactions of American companies that involve foreign businesses for potential national security risks. The US Department of the Treasury earlier this year published new regulations intended to strengthen the committee's ability to address national security concerns.

The relevant CFIUS review focuses on ByteDance's 2017 acquisition of Musical.ly, a popular US-based social network that preceded TikTok and was later merged into TikTok in the US. The US government argues it has jurisdiction over the deal because ByteDance didn't get approval from CFIUS at the time of the Musical.ly acquisition.

There are some notable instances where Chinese companies sold their stakes in US companies following a CFIUS investigation. Earlier this year, Chinese company Kunlun sold LGBTQ dating app Grindr for $608.5 million after CFIUS said its ownership of the company was a security risk. In 2019, CFIUS required online health startup PatientsLikeMe to find another buyer for the majority stake it sold to a Chinese company called iCarbonX.

Microsoft and ByteDance informed the committee they plan to explore a deal involving Microsoft's purchase of TikTok's operations in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Microsoft said it may invite other American investors to acquire a minority stake in TikTok.

What happens if CFIUS approves a TikTok acquisition?

Trump has given ByteDance a deadline of September 15 to hammer out a deal in which TikTok's US operations are sold — whether that buyer is Microsoft or somebody else. If a deal isn't reached by that date, Trump has said that he will act to ban the TikTok app entirely in the United States — though it's not clear what presidential power or legal authority he has to do so.

If ByteDance reaches a deal, it will go through another CFIUS review and, concurrently, a Justice Department antitrust review. That review is expected to be a quick process, unless a direct TikTok competitor like Facebook, Google, or Snap are involved, according to experts consulted by Business Insider.

But even if CFIUS approves a TikTok acquisition, it's unclear how Trump will respond. Trump's executive order barring "any transactions" between Americans and ByteDance has thrown another wrench in things — but TikTok is reportedly planning to sue the administration over the order, declaring it unconstitutional. 

What happens if TikTok's sale falls apart?

Trump hasn't completely let go of choosing the nuclear option by enacting an outright ban of TikTok in the US. Trump told reporters last week that he would give ByteDance until September 15 to hammer out a deal with a US buyer — or he would ban TikTok in the country entirely.

If discussions with Microsoft were to fall through, however, it's unlikely TikTok would struggle to find another interested buyer. Despite the political firestorm around it, TikTok is one of the hottest and most influential platforms in the social sphere, with a reported 100 million monthly users in the US.

However, any other buyer would likely be not as well-equipped as Microsoft to face the Trump administration's concerns over the deal. A group of ByteDance's US investors expressed early interest in buying a majority stake in TikTok, but those talks are said to have fallen apart over concerns that such a takeover "wouldn't pass muster with the Trump administration."

Can Trump ban TikTok in the US?

A US-wide ban on a smartphone app would be an unprecedented move. Despite Trump's repeated claims he's pursuing an outright ban — and his recent executive order banning "transactions" with certain Chinese companies including Bytedance as of mid-September— it remains unclear what power or authority he has to do so, experts told Business Insider. 

"He can't outright 'ban' TikTok itself," Kyle Langvardt, a law professor at the University of Detroit, told Business Insider. "But he can interfere so heavily with TikTok's business that an American TikTok clone will replace it."

Additionally, TikTok's classification as "software" could mean the platform is covered by the First Amendment, meaning that banning the app would qualify as a violation of the US Constitution. 

Furthermore, "banning" an app is a complex process: Even if the US government could get TikTok removed from Google and Apple's smartphone app stores, there are millions of users who already have the app on their phone. 

The Verge's Adi Robertson reports a more intense nationwide ban would have to happen at the "network level" by blocking communication between TikTok servers and US users. This is the same method the Chinese government uses to block popular platforms, like Facebook and Google, behind its "Great Firewall" of internet censorship.

All of that combined would make a full ban of TikTok a tall order.

Are you a Microsoft employee with insight to share? Contact reporter Ashley Stewart via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-425-344-8242) or email (astewart@businessinsider.com).

Are you a TikTok or ByteDance employee? Contact reporter Paige Leskin at pleskin@businessinsider.com using a non-work device. Open DMs on Twitter @paigeleskin.

SEE ALSO: Inside the rise of TikTok, the viral video-sharing app that Trump is trying to order its Chinese parent to sell

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• In May, the $5.4 billion Internet of Things startup Samsara laid off 300 employees, or 18% of its workforce amid the coronavirus pandemic.
• It also raised a $400 million down round, lowering its valuation from $6.3 billion, although it's still one of the most valuable venture-backed AI startups.
• Samsara is now targeting essential industries like warehousing, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and agriculture by building products that help with monitoring worker safety – an area where the company has seen higher demand.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Samsara — the 5-year-old startup that sells connected devices for industries like manufacturing and construction— felt the impact of the coronavirus crisis firsthand.

Back in May, the Internet of Things firm laid off 300 employees (about 18% of its workforce) and raised $400 million in what's known as a down-round: The new funding lowered its valuation to $5.4 billion, down from $6.3 billion last September (although it's still one of the most valuable venture-backed AI startups today). 

While Samsara's customers in areas like public transportation and travel have taken a hit, it also has clients in "essential businesses" like food and beverage distribution, manufacturing, energy, oil and gas, and construction. So, in the last few months, the startup has shifted its focus to targeting those industries with its business unit called Connected Worker, which it launched last fall.

"In this environment, a lot of projects are put on pause," says Aidan Madigan-Curtis, vice president and general manager of Connected Worker at Samsara. "We've been focused on those industries that are ramping up to support the economy right now."

How Samsara is supporting essential industries during the coronavirus pandemic

Samsara has honed its focus on businesses that are still highly active, like warehousing, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and logistics. 

"We do a lot of outreach for customers in our target industries," Madigan-Curtis said. "What's pretty interesting about the environment right now is we expected more negativity than there was."

In hazardous jobs like construction, Samsara's IoT technology — which includes cameras and sensors — can recognize if employees are wearing safety gear like hard hats and operating equipment correctly. It can also alert employees if they're walking too close to dangerous equipment. Companies can see all this data on dashboards in real time. 

Read more: A new study from Microsoft finds that businesses are rushing to use the Internet of Things — an exec explains why it believes it can win in the market

"Both that worker and the company want to know that worker is safe," Madigan-Curtis said.

What's more, even when there are fewer workers on site because of the pandemic, Samsara's products can provide visibility into what's happening on the work floor, Madigan-Curtis said. 

For example, the San Francisco-based coffee chain Philz Coffee are using Samsara's AI cameras to monitor if employees are adhering to strict guidelines, like wearing face masks and staying six feet apart at all times. 

"That concept of being able to be remote is also really important right now so people can stay socially distanced and have a strong sense of what's going on in their environment," Madigan-Curtis said. 

The future of Samsara's business 

Samara views May's layoffs as "a hard decision, but definitely the right one for the business," according to director of communications Lindsay McKinley, who added that the cuts were so deep to ensure that the firm would only have to have one round.

Many of the employees who lost their jobs worked in frontier markets, like Europe, that had a longer path to profitability than others, or worked in areas highly-affected by the pandemic, like recruiting, events, and field marketing.

"Basically the way we approached it was setting Samsara up for the long term," McKinley told Business Insider. "No matter how long a recession lasts and how bad the economy gets that we can reach profitability on our own without a need to raise additional funding."

With a recent round of funding, the company hopes it can weather the pandemic and eventually reach profitability. So far, it's made some steps to get there. For example, from January to May, the company grew its customer base by 50% to over 15,000 customers.

Now, Madigan-Curtis says her biggest challenge has been scaling the company and its supply chain as quickly as it needed.

"We hit a vein," Madigan-Curtis said. "I think it came through quite a bit of listening to what our customer needed. That resulted in a lot of traction."

Do you work at Samsara? Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at rmchan@businessinsider.com, Signal at 646.376.6106, Telegram at @rosaliechan, or Twitter DM at @rosaliechan17. (PR pitches by email only, please.) Other types of secure messaging available upon request. 

SEE ALSO: Google Cloud partners say that the company has given customers a lot more flexibility in their contracts as part of its race to take on Amazon and Microsoft

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NOW WATCH: July 15 is Tax Day — here's what it's like to do your own taxes for the very first time

• The DC Universe streaming service was hit with major layoffs on Monday, according to The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, as part of a restructuring for its parent company WarnerMedia.
• The layoffs are another sign that the fan-centric platform is struggling to survive as WarnerMedia prioritizes its new flagship service, HBO Max.
• Sources close to DCU told Business Insider in May that they felt it wasn't a priority for WarnerMedia, and questioned its longevity.
• "Doom Patrol" and "Harley Quinn," two shows formerly exclusive to DCU, are also available to stream on Max, and Max is developing big-budget DC content.
• If you have a tip about DC Universe, DM the author on Twitter @TravClark2 or email him at tclark@businessinsider.com
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The DC Universe streaming service launched in September 2018 as a hub for DC Comics fans that offered original content. Nearly two years later, the platform seems to be struggling to survive.

On Monday, DC was hit with major layoffs as part of a larger restructuring of its parent company, WarnerMedia, according to The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. The majority of the DCU staff was laid off, according to THR.

DC declined to comment. A WarnerMedia representative did not return a request for comment.

Speculation swirled about the longevity of DC Universe after it abruptly canceled its series "Swamp Thing" last year after one season, blindsiding some crew members involved in the show.

The speculation intensified as WarnerMedia prepared to launch its flagship streaming service, HBO Max, which debuted in May. The layoffs throughout the company are the latest sign that DCU as we know it may be in for a dramatic change.

Ahead of Max's launch, Business Insider reported in May that some DCU insiders felt it wasn't a priority for WarnerMedia. Sources close to the platform expressed uncertainty about its future, including two former employees of Warner Bros. Digital Labs, a product unit that works on the company's streaming services. They cited that uncertainty as a main reason for why they left.

"Most of the people who I'd worked with were confused about what HBO Max means for DC Universe," one of the former staffers said.

DC Universe lacks exclusive DC shows

Since HBO Max launched, DCU has lost some of its exclusive offerings.

"Doom Patrol," formerly a DC Universe exclusive series, is available on both platforms and season two was touted as both a DCU and a Max original. The animated "Harley Quinn" TV series is now available to stream on both DCU and Max, as well. 

The former Max content chief Kevin Reilly, who was laid off this week as part of WarnerMedia's leadership shakeup, told Business Insider in an interview in May that "there have been extensive discussions around DCU because DC is such a valuable entity to us and the depth of fandom is so important."

"There were high-end series that DCU produced that felt like, budgetarily, [HBO Max] could handle from a business model better, and bring along and service that swath of fans," Reilly said at the time. "'Doom Patrol' was a show we identified that had deep love for it and tucked right into our portfolio."

The CW has also taken one of DCU's series. "Stargirl" will move exclusively to The CW network for season two after season one aired on both DCU and The CW.

Beyond those losses, high-profile DC content is being developed for Max, including a Green Lantern TV series and a Justice League Dark series from J.J. Abrams.

Have a tip about DC Universe? DM the author on Twitter @TravClark2 or email him at tclark@businessinsider.com

• Read more of Business Insider's coverage of DC Universe:
• Insiders say major questions over DC Universe as its parent company prepares to launch Netflix rival HBO Max
• All the DC movies and TV shows in the works for HBO Max, and how they compare to DC Universe's originals
• HBO Max's content boss explains its DC originals strategy, from J.J. Abrams' Justice League Dark series to the Snyder Cut
• Insiders were shocked when DC Universe when DC Universe's 'Swamp Thing' was suddenly canceled despite a huge investment in the series and rave reviews 

Join the conversation about this story »

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• Sandeep Davé became the Chief Digital and Technical Officer at CBRE, the world's largest real estate services firm, in July as the pandemic accelerated real estate technology adoption.
• Business Insider spoke with Davé about how the pandemic has affected CBRE's use of technology and the promises of what real estate data could do.
• Davé also walked through how the firm thinks about what technology to buy, build, or partner with.
• Sign up here to receive updates on all things Innovation Inc.

Data has permeated every part of the real estate value chain, from capital markets to construction, and is influencing how business is done. 

Landlords are even using motion sensors in offices to collect data and monitor social distancing in the workplace.

CBRE, as the largest real estate services firm in the world, has potentially the biggest cache of real estate data out of any company in the world. With the coronavirus accelerating the impact of real estate technology, the data that underpins the technology will inform what the future looks like.  

Sandeep Davé, CBRE's chief digital and technical officer, touted the possibilities of CBRE's unmatched access to real estate data worldwide.

"We operate at a massive scale, we manage 7 billion square feet of real estate and we process over $400 billion in transaction volume," Davé said in an interview with Business Insider. "So we have access to unparalleled data, and we want to continue to mine that data."

Davé, who promoted as the pandemic began to accelerate tech adoption in an industry that was already seeing unprecedented digital change, sat down (virtually) with Business Insider to discuss CBRE's role as a tech advisor during a pandemic, and why we're still in the earliest stages of real estate's data journey.

The promises of data and technology

CBRE and real estate as a whole are still in the early days of where data can take people, said Davé. The challenge isn't so much the collection of data, of which there is plenty, but learning how to use the data in a productive way. 

As of today, the firm monitors data for its clients buildings and aggregates it across the portfolio, using it to track everything from energy usage to health and safety risks. The future of the firm's data selection is closely tied to its advisory focus, choosing what to monitor based on the data's alignment with the client's goals.

Davé described CBRE's approach by comparing it against a common way that data is used. 

"Hey let's create a data lake, and then go fishing, and then we find there's no fish in the lake," Davé said, describing the way data is used when it's not clearly tied to an organization or client's goals. 

Instead, CBRE has made sure to build the tools that their clients need, said Davé. He gave the example of Vantage, CBRE's suite of data analytics tools that can fit a wide range of use cases. These use cases came from actual clients, instead of being dreamt up separately from the company's advisory business.

Read more: Companies need to add contactless-entry tech to safely reopen offices. Here are 7 firms ranging from startups to huge conglomerates that are set for a surge in business.

 This comes as tech has become more essential than ever to landlords, which have seen their bottom lines constricted by the pandemic and economic fallout.

"Our clients have all focused on high-quality service delivery at a low cost and now the standards around the delivery are going up, for example, increased cleaning frequency, and at the same time pressures on costs of the business have increased," Sandeep told Business Insider

In this new world, Davé said that the giant's role hasn't changed, even though we're living through "unprecedented times."

CBRE's place in real estate tech

CBRE's global business is composed, roughly, of a brokerage team that helps companies sell, rent, and buy real estate and a team that works with both landlords and corporations to do everything from property management to advise them on technology to bring into the office space. Davé's role supports both sides of the business. 

After beginning his career as a software engineer, Davé had an 8-year stint as a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton (later Booz and Company), before becoming Citi's director of global digital strategy in 2012. In that time, Davé learned the importance of learning from one's clients. 

"Often in those interactions, not only do we get to advise our clients on the benefits of our technology but we also learn as to what their pain points are and that in turn informs our own technology roadmap," Davé said. 

The technology roadmap had to adapt to the pandemic, but, other than notable exceptions like temperature sensor technology, Davé said that this mostly meant "an acceleration of trends that were already underway."

A notable example are workplace experience apps, which were becoming increasingly used for their ability to connect office workers to amenities and building information. 

"Today, workplace experience has been pivoted to safe reentry, the main focus of all of our clients," Davé said. 

These apps are now able to give employees notifications when the building and their office has opened and can connect to access tools and workplace sensors to provide information about what parts of the building are potentially overcrowded. 

Read more:Virtual tours are being hyped as a way for commercial real estate giants like CBRE and JLL to keep deals flowing. Here's a look at how they work — and what factors they can't replace.

Looking for innovation

While CBRE's develops its own products, the firm also acquires externally built technology and partners with other tech firms. Unlike competitor JLL, which has its own JLL Spark venture fund, CBRE doesn't directly invest in tech companies but instead chooses to invest through partners like Fifth Wall Ventures, MetaProp, and Taronga Ventures.

Davé said that the company decides between building, buying, or partnering depending on whether the product is significantly differentiated from what's on the market. If it is, CBRE will build it themselves, or if they need to accelerate going to market they will buy a product.

If the technology is commoditized and offered by multiple companies, CBRE will choose to partner instead. Oftentimes, they source their partners from the venture firms who spend all day sorting through real estate tech startups.

A partnership doesn't always mean working with smaller tech providers, it can also mean working in concert with one of the world's largest tech companies, Microsoft. CBRE and Microsoft have worked together on multiple products, including CBRE's Host workplace experience application that uses Microsoft's Azure digital twin technology to build digital models of workplaces. CBRE's partnership with Microsoft to use digital twin technology was announced in 2018.

SEE ALSO: 10 CEOs from Coldwell Banker, JLL, Cushman Wakefield, and more lay out a post-pandemic future of how we'll buy, build, and use real estate

SEE ALSO: Virtual tours are being hyped as a way for commercial real estate giants like CBRE and JLL to keep deals flowing. Here's a look at how they work — and what factors they can't replace.

SEE ALSO: VergeSense, an office-sensor startup that tracks employees' movements, just nabbed $9 million. From social distancing scores to real-time occupancy alerts, here's its pitch to big companies on its tech.

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• IT consulting firm Gartner just released its latest cloud infrastructure market share report.
• Amazon Web Services still led with 45% market share as of the end of 2019, while Microsoft and other challengers made modest gains.
• Amazon is "leaps and bounds ahead," but Microsoft and Google are "formidable foes" and "catching up," Gartner analyst Sid Nag said, particularly as cloud customers increasingly use services from multiple cloud providers.
• Are you a Microsoft or Amazon Web Services employee? Contact this reporter via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-425-344-8242) or email (astewart@businessinsider.com).
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Amazon Web Services maintains a significant hold on the public cloud market, but its dominance waned slightly between 2018 and 2019 as challengers including Microsoft and Google made modest gains in market share, according to Gartner's latest cloud infrastructure market analysis.

Gartner's "[Infrastructure as a Service] Public Cloud Services Market" is generally considered a definitive measure of infrastructure market share for cloud providers. While this research is usually released in the summer, Gartner analyzes data from the previous two full years, meaning the rankings are current as of the end of 2019.

Amazon Web Services led the market with 45% market share, according to Gartner, which estimated the company's cloud infrastructure revenue at nearly $20 billion for the year. Amazon's cloud market share fell slightly from 47.9% in 2018.

Gartner cloud analyst Sid Nag told Business Insider Amazon is still "leaps and bounds ahead" of competitors, and its slight decline is mostly is an "artifact of market maturity," meaning it's hard to show the same tremendous growth rate it did in prior years as its revenue base grows.

With that said, Nag said Microsoft and Google are "formidable foes" and are catching up, particularly as cloud customers increasingly use services from multiple cloud providers. More than 80 percent of organizations, Nag said, have adopted or will adopt this multicloud approach by the end of 2020.

Microsoft maintained the No. 2 spot and its public cloud market share according to Gartner rose to 17.9% in 2019 from 15.6% in 2018. Microsoft doesn't break out revenue for its Azure cloud business, but Gartner estimates the company's cloud infrastructure revenue was about $8 billion in 2019.

Alibaba's market share jumped to 9.1% in 2019, up from 7.7% in 2018, and reached more than $4 billion in estimated 2019 cloud infrastructure revenue. Google's market share rose to 5.3% in 2019 from 4.1% in 2018 with nearly $2.4 billion in estimated 2019 cloud infrastructure revenue. 

Tencent clinched the No. 5 biggest cloud infrastructure provider spot with 2.8% of the market in 2019, up from 1.9% in 2018, knocking IBM down into the "others" category of smaller cloud providers that make up about 20% of the market combined. IBM had 1.8% market share in 2018, down from 1.9% in 2017. 

Gartner is changing the way it tracks the cloud market. It's moving away from treating cloud infrastructure as a separate market from the so-called "platform as a service" segment, and combining both into a single "cloud infrastructure and platform services" market report, which Nag said better reflects the industry.

Gartner expects to soon release the firm's first cloud infrastructure and platform services "magic quadrant," its signature series of market research reports.

In their most recent quarters, Amazon reported $10.81 billion in total cloud revenue, Microsoft reported $13.37 billion in revenue for what it calls its Intelligent Cloud business in which it groups in Azure and a bunch of other products, and Google reported more than $3 billion in Google Cloud revenue.

Got a tip? Contact reporter Ashley Stewart via encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-425-344-8242) or email (astewart@businessinsider.com).

SEE ALSO: Here are 10 companies experts think Microsoft could try to acquire to boost its cloud business, including Slack, Twilio, and VMware

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• Beauty YouTuber and influencer Jackie Aina launched her lifestyle brand, FORVR mood, on Monday.
• Aina had previously worked with several brands on makeup collaborations, including Artist Couture and Anastasia Beverly Hills.
• Aina describes her new brand as "affordable luxury," and the products range from $32 to $49 each.
• She told Business Insider that the brand was two years in the making: "Product development takes a long time and I wanted to ensure that every detail was absolute perfection."
• While the main focus of the brand is candles, headbands, and silk pillowcases, Aina has plans to expand into fragrance and skincare products, she said.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

After several makeup collaborations with prominent brands, beauty YouTuber and influencer Jackie Aina launched her own lifestyle brand, FORVR mood, on Monday.

Aina teased products from the launch on social media during July to help build buzz, previewing the launch's signature items: four different candles following a pastel color theme, matched with gold accents on marble-background labels. It worked.

Over 45,000 people signed up for the pre-launch list, according to Aina. She said the August 4 pre-sale inventory sold out, but declined to specify how many units were sold.

Productivity coach Denis Asamoah, who is a cofounder of FORVR mood and Aina's fiance, wrote on Twitter Monday that the team was looking for a larger production facility to keep up with the demand.

For Aina, the launch day was the culmination of more than two years of work on the brand.

"FORVR mood has been in the works for over two years," Aina told Business Insider. "Product development takes a long time and I wanted to ensure that every detail was absolute perfection. The process of testing, pivoting, testing and pivoting seemed endless but we finally nailed formulas, materials, packaging, and branding. Each product exudes a part of me."

Aina is part of a growing trend of YouTube creators and other influencers who have made their own products. Some have launched fragrances while others have made fashion lines or built makeup brands. And earning revenue directly from fans has become increasingly important as the coronavirus pandemic has caused a downturn in the advertising market.

Aina describes her brand as 'affordable luxury'

Aina started her YouTube channel in August 2009 and now has around 3.5 million subscribers.

On Aina's channel, she gives her honest opinions about the beauty community, makeup, and skincare products, while using her personality and life experiences to appeal to her audience. Her channel has led her to accolades like the 2018 NAACP Image YouTuber of the Year award.

Aina's first product collaboration was with makeup and skincare company E.L.F in July 2016 for the limited edition J.Glow Palette. She has also done collaborations with the makeup companies Too Faced and Artist Couture, and most recently, she worked with Anastasia Beverly Hills on her "Jackie Aina Palette" of 14 colors.

But Aina wanted to move beyond makeup with her new brand.

"I created FORVR mood for those who love what I do and want to try the things that I recommend on a daily basis that aren't necessarily makeup related," Aina said.

Besides the $35 candles, Aina is also selling silk pillowcases ($49) and matching headbands ($28).

Aina describes the mood of the new brand as "affordable luxury" and "accessible boujee."

The 2-year process of creating FORVR mood

Aina and Asamoah run FORVR mood together, with Aina focusing on the creative side of the business and Asamoah leading operations and business development.

A representative for Aina declined to comment further on how the business is structured or its manufacturing partnerships. 

The cornerstone of the initial launch were the four candles announced pre-launch. Aina said "Left On Read," "Matcha Business," "Cuffing Season," and "Caked Up," were all inspired by her own experiences, memories, and places she's lived and traveled to.

Her struggles growing up with hyperhidrosis, excessive sweating, was a big inspiration for the candles, she said. 

"In multiple ways, I just learned how to mask my body because one of the things that I struggled with the most was sweating," she said. "And so that relationship with fragrance kind of carried over into candles."

For some of her followers, fragrance and candles were not what they expected from the YouTuber.

"I won't lie, I wasn't expecting you to sell candles, I thought you were going to make clothes," one Twitter user wrote.

But Aina said it was an obvious and personal choice for her. From struggles with hyperhidrosis in her upbringing to her life and career path, each tells a "scent story," she wrote on Twitter.

'I burn my candles all day'

The candles are made of 100% coconut soy wax, with no sulfates or parabens, and are hand-poured in California. 

"I wanted to be able to get the best quality scents with the best ingredients possible, and for me, the coconut soy was like a no brainer," Aina said.

Candles made of soy wax do not emit some of the toxic chemicals into the air that paraffin candles do, according to a 2009 study by South Carolina State University. 

"Because we spend so much time at home, and if anybody else was like me, I burn my candles all day," Aina said. "So it was important to me that I wasn't putting anybody's health or breathing at risk while utilizing these candles."

Soy wax candles also generally last longer than paraffin candles. Aina said her candles will last up to 65 hours in burn time.

While the main focus of the brand is candles, headbands, and silk pillowcases, Aina has plans to expand into fragrance and skincare products, she said.

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• Tesla on Tuesday announced a five-for-one stock split effective August 31. 
• At the close of trading on August 28, shareholders will receive five shares for every one they own. 
• At Tuesday's prices, the new stock price would be about $274 per share. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Tesla said Tuesday that it was pursuing a five-for-one stock split following a massive rally in its share price this year. 

At the end of trading on August 28, Tesla said in a press release, each shareholder will receive four additional shares for every share they own. Those shares will begin trading on August 31. At Tuesday's prices, that would value shares at about $274. Stock splits do not affect a company's market value, only the individual share prices. 

Tesla's stock has been on a tear for most of 2020, as excitement around growing electric-vehicle sales and possible inclusion in the S&P 500 index entice new investors despite a global slump in equities prices amid the coronavirus pandemic. The rally has left Tesla as one of the most valuable automakers, despite the company making a tiny fraction of the industry's total output.

Shares rose as much as 6% in late trading Tuesday after the split was announced. 

CEO Elon Musk appeared to get the idea from Twitter in late June, when a user suggested it as a way for more fans to buy single shares. 

Tesla's move follows one from Apple, which on July 31 announced a similar stock split, the fifth in its history. 

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• TikTok collected data from Android users for at least a year in apparent violation of Google's policies, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
• The app tracked users' MAC addresses, an identifier unique to every smartphone that would allow TikTok to track users even if they tightened their privacy settings, according to the report.
• Google and Apple have both banned apps from collecting MAC addresses, but researchers told The Wall Street Journal that TikTok did so until November last year by exploiting a bug.
• TikTok told The Journal that it doesn't currently collect the information, and Google told Business Insider it's "investigating these claims."
• The report follows President Donald Trump's executive order last week that aims to ban American companies from doing business with TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, which would effectively halt its US operations.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

TikTok surreptitiously collected information from users' Android smartphones without their consent, an apparent violation of Google's app store policies, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The app logged users' MAC addresses — unique digital identifiers attached to all smartphones that cannot be reset — allowing TikTok parent company ByteDance to track people even if they changed their privacy settings to opt out of certain ad-tracking practices, The Wall Street Journal found.

TikTok installs from the Google Play store in the US currently total around 89 million, according to app analytics firm Sensor Tower.

The Journal's analysis, which was based on a past version of TikTok, found that the app collected MAC addresses for at least 15 months, but ended the practice with an update to the app last November.

"We are committed to protecting the privacy and safety of the TikTok community. We constantly update our app to keep up with evolving security challenges, and the current version of TikTok does not collect MAC addresses," a TikTok spokesperson told Business Insider. "We always encourage our users to download the most current version of TikTok."

Google banned app developers from collecting users' MAC addresses in 2015, while Apple did the same two years earlier. But smartphone security experts told The Wall Street Journal that TikTok circumvented the policy by exploiting a bug and hid its tracks with an atypical extra layer of encryption.

"We're investigating these claims," a Google spokesperson told Business Insider, while declining to comment specifically on the bug that TikTok reportedly exploited.

The Wall Street Journal's report comes on the heels of President Donald Trump's executive order Thursday seeking to ban TikTok from operating in the US by prohibiting American companies from doing business with ByteDance. Trump issued a similar order aimed at messaging app WeChat, which is owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent.

Trump's orders cited concerns about the apps' ownership by Chinese-based firms, claiming that both are subject to pressure from the Chinese government that could force them to censor content it finds objectionable or help it spy on Americans using data collected by the apps.

"We have never given any US user data to the Chinese government nor would we do so if asked," TikTok's spokesperson told Business Insider.

Experts told Business Insider's Isobel Asher Hamilton that TikTok no more intrusive in its data collection practices than competitors like Facebook, and the CIA has reportedly told the White House that there is "no evidence" that the Chinese government has accessed American user data from TikTok.

Experts have also expressed doubt about the legality of Trump's orders, arguing they violate the First Amendment's ban on government censorship. TikTok reportedly plans to challenge the order in court as early as this week.

Paige Leskin and Katie Canales contributed reporting to this story.

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• Pinterest's high-profile former COO Françoise Brougher has filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the company, New York Times' Erin Griffith reports.
• The lawsuit explains why Brougher left the company suddenly in April without explanation after two years in the No. 2 role.
• The suit comes after the explosive exit of two Black Pinterest employees, Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks, and Business Insider's full investigative report.
• Read the full story: Former Pinterest employees describe a traumatic workplace where managers humiliate employees until they cry, Black people feel alienated, and the toxic culture 'eats away at your soul'

Pinterest's high-profile former COO Françoise Brougher has filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the company.

The lawsuit explains why Brougher left the company suddenly in April without explanation after two years in the No. 2 role.

Brougher says in the suit that she was fired after she had a heated exchange with Pinterest's chief financial officer, Todd Morgenfeld, after he allegedly made disparaging comments about her in front of peers and gave her feedback that she viewed as sexist, complaining she wasn't "collaborative enough," the lawsuit claims.  

"I believed Pinterest would judge me based on my job performance. But instead I was treated unfairly because of my gender," Brougher said in a statement emailed to Business Insider.

She also claims that she was left out of important meetings, not invited to go on the corporate road show in the runup to Pinterest's IPO in 2019, and that she discovered she was paid less than the male executives only after the company filed paperwork to go public. (Although she was the COO, Pinterest did not reveal her salary in its prospectus documents.) And she said that, unlike her male peers, her stock options were backloaded, meaning most of them vested over the last two years of a four-year vesting schedule. She said that after she complained, the company adjusted her compensation. 

Brougher says she complained about Morgenfeld's comments to the head of human resources and to CEO Ben Silbermann, and Silbermann fired her over a video call. She says she was asked to announce her departure to the staff as a resignation and she refused.

Prior to Pinterest, Brougher was well-known in the tech industry for her executives roles at Charles Schwab, Google and Square. "I'm speaking out because I want to be part of the hard work of dismantling systems of gender bias that punish women for the type of strong leadership rewarded in men and that impedes female leaders' ability to be successful," Brougher said in her statement.

Pinterest did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment but told the New York Times it was reviewing the lawsuit, a company spokesperson said. "Our employees are incredibly important to us," the spokesperson said.

This lawsuit comes after the explosive exit of two Black Pinterest employees, Ifeoma Ozoma and Aerica Shimizu Banks, Pinterest's former managers of Public Policy & Social Impact.

After the two publicly quit in May, they discussed their struggles with the company with Business Insider from fighting for pay, to fielding internet threats.

Business Insider talked to nearly a dozen former employees who described being fired or "pushed out" of the company with no real explanation, managers that humiliated employees until they cried, and the particular alienation that Black people felt, the company. Since then, the CEO of the company, Ben Silbermann, has apologized and has promised to conduct a full investigation into its culture and policies.

• Now read:
• Former Pinterest employees describe a traumatic workplace where managers humiliate employees until they cry, Black people feel alienated, and the toxic culture 'eats away at your soul'
• The inside story of Pinterest's toxic workplace that caused CEO Ben Silbermann to admit to employees, 'I'm embarrassed'
• The two Black employees who took on Pinterest explain why they quit, their fight for pay, the death threats, the private investigator: 'It was a torturous experience'
•  

SEE ALSO: The 17 major IT certifications that you can take to help you land a gig that pays over $100,000

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• A cable broke and tore a hole in the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico on Monday.
• The telescope had just reopened to study a potentially dangerous asteroid, shortly after Tropical Storm Isaias passed over the island.
• It's unclear why the cable broke, but the facility is closed again as engineers assess the damage.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

One of the world's most prominent astronomical observatories has a hole.

On Monday, a 3-inch-thick cable at the Arecibo Observatory broke, tearing a gash 100 feet long in the reflector dish of the 20-acre radio telescope in Puerto Rico.

The observatory had just reopened after a temporary closure due to Tropical Storm Isaias when the cable, which helped support a metal platform, snapped at about 2:45 a.m. ET. Now the facility is closed again as engineers assess the damage, according to the University of Central Florida, a co-operator of the telescope.

It was not immediately clear how the cable broke or whether the damage was related to Isaias.

Astronomers use the telescope to study hazardous asteroids as they fly past Earth, in hopes of identifying space rocks on a collusion course early enough to intervene before they strike.

Scientists have also used Arecibo to search for signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life. In 1974, Arecibo beamed out the most powerful broadcast Earth has ever sent to communicate with potential aliens.

Then in 2016, the telescope detected the first repeating fast radio bursts — mysterious space signals of unknown origin. 

The cable's fall also damaged six to eight panels in the telescope's Gregorian Dome: the part that focuses its radiation to the points in space that astronomers want to study. It twisted the platform used to access the dome as well.

"We have a team of experts assessing the situation," Francisco Cordova, the director of the observatory, said in a statement. "Our focus is assuring the safety of our staff, protecting the facilities and equipment, and restoring the facility to full operations as soon as possible, so it can continue to assist scientists around the world."

Tropical Storm Isaias passed over Puerto Rico on July 30, before it developed into a hurricane, leading observatory operators to shutter the facility for a few days.

They turned it back on earlier this month to study a potentially dangerous asteroid the size of five football fields, which was passing Earth at an optimal distance for the observatory to check it out.

NASA had previously calculated a 1 in 70,000 chance that the space rock could impact our planet between 2086 and 2101, so astronomers wanted to track it more closely to better calculate the odds of an impact. But when a team at Arecibo trained the telescope at the asteroid to determine its shape and orbit, they discovered that it likely won't pass close enough to Earth to pose a threat in the future.

During those observations, the telescope was functioning well.

"Fortunately, the storm passed quickly without damage to the telescope or the radar system, and the maintenance and electronics teams were able to activate the telescope from hurricane lockdown in time for the observations," Sean Marshall, an observatory scientist who led the team doing those radar observations, said at the time.

SEE ALSO: A handful of new telescopes are about to transform the hunt for alien life and our understanding of the universe itself

DON'T MISS: SpaceX and NASA plan to launch astronauts on the Crew Dragon spaceship again next month, with at least 4 major changes

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• This is a preview of The Smart Speaker research report from Business Insider Intelligence.
• Purchase this report.
• Business Insider Intelligence offers even more technology coverage with Connectivity & Tech Pro. Subscribe today to receive industry-changing connectivity news and analysis to your inbox.

The smart speaker has been a runaway success in the handful of years since it hit the market, catapulting from obscurity to the peak of sales lists and cementing itself in the public consciousness.

According to primary survey data from Business Insider Intelligence, as many as half of US respondents reported living in a home with a voice-enabled AI device.

The prevalence of smart speakers is changing how companies in a range of spaces — media, e-commerce, smart home, banking, and more — interact with consumers.

For companies looking to sell these speakers and brands looking to engage with their customers through the now-critical medium, it's important to understand how the voice ecosystem works in practice and how it's being used. 

To learn more about adoption and habits, we surveyed 2,000 US consumers regarding factors like smart speaker ownership, what brands consumers use, and what they use the devices to do. Our survey data offers critical insights for key stakeholders at companies aiming to promote and use the smart speaker to reach customers.

In TheSmart Speaker Report, Business Insider Intelligence examines the fast-evolving smart speaker market. First, we provide a glimpse into smart speaker adoption in the US, both overall and by particular demographics. Then, we look at the characteristics of device owners, including how many speakers they own, which types, how often they use them, and what they use them to do. We also break down the top smart speaker use cases and the reasons why they are or aren't resonating with consumers, and advise brands looking to reach their users via this medium how best to do so.

The companies mentioned in this report are: Amazon, American Express, Apple, Deezer, Google, Nest, Pandora, Samsung, Spotify, and TuneIn.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• 5 years since the first device in its category launched, the smart speaker may be demonstrating one of the fastest rates of consumer adoption of any technology device in history, outpacing even the smartphone, per our data.
• More than half of US respondents who said that they live in households with a smart speaker reported having multiple speakers in their household, and nearly all living in households with speakers use them at least once a week.
• Media playback, general information, and communication are among the most commonly used features of smart speakers for device users.

In full, the report:

• Provides a snapshot of the current state of smart speaker adoption.
• Highlights the most important ways that consumers are using the devices and looks at what will come next in key segments.
• Identifies key trends in smart speaker and voice assistant design and usage and offers guidance for companies and brands looking to use the platform moving forward.

Interested in getting the full report? Here's how to get access:

1. Purchase & download the full report from our research store. >> Purchase & Download Now
2. Join thousands of top companies worldwide who trust Business Insider Intelligence for their competitive research needs. >>Inquire About Our Enterprise Memberships
3. Current subscribers can read the report here.

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• Berlin-based VC fund La Famiglia has raised a new €50 million ($59 million) vehicle to invest in early-stage B2B startups.
• The company's previous fund invested in Berlin's freight forwarding platform Forto, modular production platform Arculus, contractor payment platform Deel, and data collaboration platform Graphy. 
• "We're proud of our achievements from last couple of years, we've helped companies make connections at scale, accelerate their go-to-market strategy, and reduced sales cycles," Dr. Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, La Famiglia cofounder told Business Insider in an interview.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Berlin-based VC fund La Famiglia has raised a new €50 million ($59 million) vehicle to invest in early-stage B2B startups.

The company's previous fund invested in Berlin's freight forwarding platform Forto, modular production platform Arculus, contractor payment platform Deel, and data collaboration platform Graphy.

La Famiglia is focused on industrials, insurance, and logistics and supply chains.

The fund's LP base includes the Mittal, Pictet, Oetker, Hymer and Swarovski families, Voith and Franke, as well as the owning families behind conglomerates such as Hapag Lloyd, Solvay, Adidas, and Valentino, alongside Skype and Atomico founder Niklas Zennström, Zoopla founder Alex Chesterman, and Personio's Hanno Renner.

"We're proud of our achievements from last couple of years, we've helped companies make connections at scale, accelerate their go-to-market strategy, and reduced sales cycles," Dr. Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, La Famiglia cofounder told Business Insider in an interview.

La Famiglia closed its first €35 million fund in 2017 and has since invested in 37 fast-growth firms across Europe and the US. 23 of these investments have already raised subsequent capital from investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and Europe's Atomico, while four companies have exited, according to Fürstenberg. 

The new fund was predominantly raised before COVID-19 hit.

La Famiglia's first close came at the end of 2019 before finishing up before the pandemic came. "We had a great response because existing LPs wanted to be involved in the new fund and that's a great endorsement for new investors," Judith Dada, partner at La Famiglia, told Business Insider in an interview. 

La Famiglia's new fund has already made five investments since it closed, with a greater onus on supply chain issues in light of the coronavirus. The reinsurance process and companies looking to manufacture more in Europe has already accelerated that trend while the fund also focuses on future of work.

"Our sector focus is led by signals from leadership out of companies across the world, [these] executives have helped with the strategic direction of the fund," zu Fürstenberg added. "Another key area for the second fund is sustainability, not just because it's nice but because it affects the bottom line for businesses."

SEE ALSO: Silicon Valley scooter startup Bird bet big on Paris and lost to rivals. Insiders are betting on consolidation.

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• The world's first university dedicated to the field of artificial intelligence is set to open its doors to students in Abu Dhabi in January 2021. 
• The Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence is part of the Emirati city state's 50-point plan to diversify its economy for the future. 
• Trustees includes Dr Kai-Fu Lee, previously of Google China, and Sir Michael Brady, a former director at MIT's AI Lab.
• The UAE has a problematic record on human rights. Sir Michael told Business Insider he did not "have anxieties" about the issue. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

In the wake of a three-month delay induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, the world's first university dedicated to the study of AI is gearing up to welcome its first cohort of students in Abu Dhabi.

The Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), named for the city state's crown prince, will open its doors in January 2021. As a new university, students will be entering into something of an experiment. However, the university says it will pick 85 Masters and PhD students after whittling them down from more than 1,400 applicants.

The specialist graduate school is part of Abu Dhabi's wider diversification drive, as it attempts to move away an from oil and gas-based economy to focus more intensely on knowledge and skills.

The US and China continue to dominate developments in AI, thanks to the vast amounts of capital at their disposal. A 2019 report by the Center for Data Innovation found that the US had the most AI startups and the most capital flowing into the sector. China, it found, is rapidly catching up.

Students at MBZUAI take a range of courses on the core components of AI, including "Mathematical Foundations for Artificial Intelligence", "Big Data Processing", "Human and Computer Vision", and "Natural Language and Speech Processing".

Business Insider understands the full syllabus is still being finalized.

All students admitted to the university will receive a full scholarship, plus benefits including a monthly allowance, health insurance, and accommodation.

The university's board of trustees includes Dr Kai-Fu Lee, former president of Google China, and Sir Michael Brady, one-time associate director of the AI Laboratory at MIT.

Speaking to Business Insider, Sir Michael said MBZUAI was "bound together" with the local government's vision for the future.

"We're not trying to build Stanford by the sea," he said. "Abu Dhabi has devised a 50-point strategy to diversify its economy, they knew they wanted to move into a number of new industries, and there were glaring gaps in AI – that's how this college came to be."

In spite of Crown Prince bin Zayed's forward-thinking agenda, the UAE has been riddled with claims of human rights abuses in recent years, with reports of Emirati citizens being disappeared by government agents, the continued use of flogging and stoning as forms of punishment, and censorship of the press.

Asked about the UAE's record on human rights, Sir Michael said: "I've been asked this question by pretty much all of my friends [and] it's not something that I, personally, have anxieties about."

He added: "I am unconvinced that the human rights record of the UAE, which is pretty liberal compared with other countries in the region, is any worse than a number of other countries with which I am extremely familiar."

Last month, MBZUAI signed a deal with Virgin's Hyperloop division to collaborate on researching applications of AI for the transportation industry.

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Good morning! This is the tech news you need to know this Wednesday. Sign up here to get this email in your inbox every morning.

1. Palantir Technologies is preparing to go public but behind the cloak-and-dagger image, insiders and investors say, it's struggled to build a steady revenue model. As its long-awaited public listing approaches, much of Palantir's bread-and-butter work has transitioned to mundane enterprise software contracting.
2. Pinterest's former COO Francoise Brougher has filed a gender discrimination suit against the company. The lawsuit explains why Brougher left the company suddenly in April without explanation after two years in the No. 2 role.
3. Facebook says it will now ban 'implicit hate speech' like blackface and anti-Semitic stereotypes. Facebook has faced mounting pressure from civil rights groups to ramp up its enforcement of anti-hate speech policies, culminating in an advertiser boycott last month over hate speech on the platform.
4. Leaked Microsoft internal discussions show employee opposition to any TikTok deal, with some calling it 'unethical' and saying it could call the company's integrity into question. In one internal employee poll, titled "Should Microsoft buy TikTok?," 63% of the 250 respondents said "no."
5. Airbnb reportedly plans to confidentially file for an IPO later this month. The company had previously planned to go public this year, but postponed the effort when the onset of the coronavirus crisis crushed its business.
6. TikTok reportedly violated Google's data collection policies by tracking the individual identifiers of Android users' smartphones. Google and Apple have both banned apps from collecting MAC addresses, but researchers told The Wall Street Journal that TikTok did so until November last year by exploiting a bug.
7. The Mozilla Corporation will lay off 250 staff as it looks to invest more in revenue generating products. The company behind the Firefox browser also indicated it would close its operations in Taiwan. 
8. Berlin-based VC fund La Famiglia has raised a fresh $59 million fund to invest in early-stage enterprise startups. The company's previous fund invested in Berlin's freight forwarding platform Forto, modular production platform Arculus, contractor payment platform Deel, and data collaboration platform Graphy. 
9. The world's first university dedicated to the field of artificial intelligence is set to open its doors to students in Abu Dhabi in January 2021. The Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence is part of the Emirati city state's 50-point plan to diversify its economy beyond oil.
10. Microsoft has delayed the launch of 'Halo Infinite' to 2021. The game was set to be the biggest launch for the new Xbox's November launch but coronavirus and remote working delays will see its release pushed past the holiday shopping season, per Bloomberg. 

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• TikTok has transformed the music industry in recent months as tracks that go viral on the app have taken over the Billboard 100 and Spotify Viral 50 charts.
• TikTok's music-friendly interface and its users' penchant for dance challenges have made it an indispensable promotional tool for the music industry.
• Business Insider compiled a power list of the 24 music marketers, artists, digital creators, record labels, and other industry insiders who are using TikTok to help define popular music in 2020.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

On January 13, the marketing team at Sony Music Entertainment noticed that one of its artist's songs was surging on TikTok. 

Like most record labels, the company had been monitoring activity on TikTok for months as the short-form video app had emerged as a major driver of song streams on platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube.

Sony had seen Doja Cat, who signed with its RCA Records imprint in 2014, blow up on the app in December after 17-year-old TikTok star Haley Sharpe created a popular dance to her song "Say So" (a dance that Doja Cat ultimately ended up using in her music video).

But this time, it was one of the label's older catalog songs, a Matthew Wilder track from 1983 called "Break My Stride," that had caught the fancy of TikTok's largely Gen-Z user base.

"Our entire music catalog is effectively tracked on a daily basis," said Andy McGrath, the senior vice president of marketing at Legacy Recordings, the division within Sony that manages Wilder's song catalog. "We're constantly monitoring actions, reactions, and trends that happen on TikTok. We watch what's happening and how many people are creating their own challenges and sharing existing challenges, et cetera, and then we start to say, 'Okay something's happening here.'"

For large music conglomerates like Sony and independent labels alike, TikTok has become an essential marketing tool.

Songs can rise on TikTok by accident, as was the case with Wilder's "Break My Stride." In other instances, marketers or artists try to make songs take off by tapping into existing TikTok fads, creating original songs, or adapting tracks for TikTok's short-video format and hiring influencers to promote them.

"Every music label, every record label, they have a budget now for TikTok because it's becoming so huge," Ariell Nicholas Yahid, a talent manager at the TikTok-focused talent-management upstart the Fuel Injector, told Business Insider. 

In addition to helping artists and labels launch new tracks, song promotion has become an important source of revenue for TikTok's top creators who are looking for ways to make money on an app that still has limited monetization features.

And for up-and-coming artists, TikTok can offer an effective way to build an audience quickly. You can see that clearly in the seemingly instantaneous music careers of TikTok stars like Dixie D'Amelio, Jaden Hossler, and Josh Richards.

Artists like Abigail Barlow and the group Avenue Beat have also used TikTok to test out new tracks before releasing them on streaming platforms. Avenue Beat's recent smash hit, "F2020," blew up on TikTok first before the group committed to recording a full version of the song in July. It's since landed on Apple iTunes' top 50 chart for pop songs.

"We hadn't finished writing the song, we'd literally just written a verse and chorus," Avenue Beat's Savana Santos said. "We just threw it up on TikTok, not thinking that anything was going to happen because we'd never had a video really take off before. We went to bed and we woke up and the next day it had 4.5 million views."

TikTok isn't the first social-media platform to leave its mark on the music industry.

YouTube has long been a key promotional tool for record labels and artists alike (Justin Bieber was a YouTuber before he became a pop star). And artists have recently used other social platforms like Instagram and Twitch to perform shows remotely for fans as live performances have come to a halt during the coronavirus pandemic.  

But music is at the core of the TikTok experience.

The short-form video platform's song-friendly interface (adding a "sound" is part of each user's video upload process) harkens back to the app's roots as the dancing and lip-syncing app Musical.ly, which TikTok's parent company ByteDance acquired and merged with TikTok in 2018.

Some of TikTok's biggest stars are dancers who can spark the creation of millions of user-generated videos and streams of a new song by posting a single dance video. And TikTok's content recommendation page (the "For You" page) serves up an algorithmically determined assortment of posts that can make any song go viral, whether a track is being used in a paid promotion by a top influencer or in an original dance routine conceived by a non-famous teenager.

One need look no further than the Billboard 100 or Spotify Viral 50 to see the app's imprint on popular music in recent months.

To understand the power players driving music on TikTok forward, Business Insider compiled a list of the music marketers, artists, digital creators, record labels, and other industry insiders who are using TikTok to define popular music in 2020.

The list was determined by Business Insider based on our reporting and the nominations that we received. We took into consideration how a company or individual has used TikTok to grow an artist's, song's, or label's prominence in the industry.

Here are the 24 music industry players that are using TikTok to reshape popular music in 2020 (listed in alphabetical order):

300 Entertainment

Rayna Bass (SVP of marketing)

300 Entertainment is a US independent music label headquartered in New York. 

The company works with a variety of artists who have taken off on TikTok in recent months, including Young Thug, whose song "Relationship (feat. Future)" appeared in over 35 million user-generated videos on the app. The label also represents Megan Thee Stallion, whose song "Savage" sparked one of the app's most viral dance challenges.

After being promoted to SVP of marketing at 300 in January 2019, Rayna Bass has helped the label's artists grow and adapt to a changing consumer environment driven in part by song and dance trends on TikTok.

Before joining 300 Entertainment, Bass held roles at Island Def Jam Music Group and Clear Channel Radio. Bass was one of Billboard's picks for its Women In Music Top Executives list for 2019.

740 Project

Charley Greenberg (managing partner)

740 Project is a music marketing firm and record label that was cofounded by Charley Greenberg, Rahim Wright, and Jesse Edwards in 2015. 

Greenberg serves as a managing partner at 740 and also works on the company's independent label Blac Noize! 

The label's first signing, the artist Tokyo's Revenge, blew up on TikTok this year as two of its songs, "GOODMORNINGTOKYO!" and "THOT!" went viral on the app, appearing in hundreds of thousands of user-generated posts and dance videos from popular creators like Charli D'Amelio and Loren Gray.

Greenberg also helped promote DeathbyRomy's single "Problems" on TikTok.

ATG Media

Omid Noori (cofounder) and Ramzi Najdawi (cofounder)

Founded in 2018, The ATG Group, formerly known as Noori Marketing, is a marketing agency and artist management company founded by Omid Noori and Ramzi Najdawi.

The company's marketing division, ATG Media, specializes in digital and influencer marketing.

ATG told Business Insider that it has worked on a variety of high-profile influencer marketing campaigns on TikTok to promote songs like BMW Kenny's "Wipe It Down," Dua Lipa's "Don't Start Now," MASN's "Psycho!," Ashnikko's "STUPID (feat. Yung Baby Tate)," and Saweetie's "Tap In," which have collectively appeared in over 10 million user-generated videos on the app.  

Noori told Business Insider that a lot of ATG's successful TikTok music marketing campaigns have come from identifying existing user trends and amplifying them through paid promotions with influencers rather than inventing something new.

"We double down on what's working," he said. "We find content that's organically connecting, or that we shed a little bit of light on it, and we see it come to fruition."

AWAL

Michael Pukownik (head of artist marketing)

AWAL is an independent record label formed by the publishing company Kobalt Music Group and based in London, UK. The company provides artists with services like marketing and distribution while letting them keep full ownership of their copyrights. AWAL artists' songs are available on TikTok through a deal with the digital rights agency Merlin.

Over the past two years at AWAL, Pukownik has built an artist marketing team responsible for driving discovery, audience development, marketing strategy, and release execution for the company's roster of artists. 

Under Pukownik's tenure, AWAL artists have built large followings on TikTok, driving millions of video views and streaming platform plays for artists like Alaina Castillo, Lauv, Yung Bans, girl in red, and Gus Dapperton (who collaborated with Benee for one of TikTok's most popular tracks, Supalonely).

Before joining AWAL, Pukownik worked in marketing roles at Warner Bros. Records, Capitol Records, and EMI Music.

BAS.media

Danny Kang (founder)

BAS.media is a group of viral-content marketers that has an exclusive partnership with Columbia Records to promote artists and tracks on TikTok and other social-media platforms. 

The company manages song promotion rights for influential TikTok sound accounts like Rapidsongs (8.4 million followers) and Goalsounds (5.6 million followers), whose track remixes have been used in millions of videos on the app.

Collab

Eric Jacks (chief strategy officer)

Collab is a digital talent network and entertainment studio that works with TikTok music creators like Spencer X, Jon Klaasen, Scotty Sire, and Baby Ariel, who collectively have over 90 million followers on the app.

The company was started by a brother trio of former creators (James, Tyler, and Will McFadden) and former Fullscreen Executive Soung Kang, to provide software, sales, and services to independent creators. 

As Collab's chief strategy officer, Eric Jacks has helped Collab navigate partnerships with record labels, handle in-app music promotions, and work with TikTok-first music producers and artists. 

The company has worked on music promotions for artists like Juicy J, Blink-182, Megan Thee Stallion, Dua Lipa, and Lauren Jauregui.

Collab also worked with music producers and writers to create an original song "Bright Idea" for a Bliss Cosmetics TikTok campaign earlier this year. 

Creed Media

Timothy Collins (COO and cofounder), Madelaine 'Mimmi' Zetterström (head of campaign operations), Marisa Pilchmair (music campaigns), Alex Falck (music campaigns) 

Founded in 2018 by Timothy Collins, Hugo Leprince, and Eliot Robinson, Creed Media is a music marketing agency based in Stockholm, Sweden.

The team has worked with record labels and influencers to promote tracks on TikTok like Trevor Daniel's "Falling," Surf Mesa's "ILY," Camila Cabello's "My Oh My," Topic's "Breaking Me," and S1MBA's "Rover," according to the company.

"We have a production team in-house actually, with music producers that help us TikTok-optimize certain songs," Collins said. "We work with creators as well as with our in-house team to come up with good skits or POV concepts or dance choreographies that we believe will resonate on the platform."

Collins previously headed up digital strategies at the music management firm At Night Management, which worked with Swedish artists like Avicii, Axwell ^ Ingrosso, and Otto Knows. Zetterström oversees the company's day-to-day campaign operations. Falk leads client relationships for campaigns in the US. And Pilchmair works on campaigns for priority projects in Europe and the United States.

Def Jam

J.D. Tuminski (VP, digital marketing)

Tuminski runs digital strategy and marketing at Def Jam, working on artist promotions on TikTok and other social-media platforms.  

He led the label's campaign for Justin Bieber's 2020 album Changes. One of Bieber's tracks on the album, "Yummy," has appeared in over four million videos on TikTok.

Tuminski has also worked on promoting artists like Jhené Aiko, Kaash Paige, 2 Chainz, Alessia Cara, 070 Shake, and Fredo Bang on social media. This year, he's led efforts to engage fans during quarantine with digital events like a virtual reality performance by DaniLeigh.

Before joining Def Jam, Tuminski worked in digital marketing at Columbia Records and in corporate communications at HBO.

Doja Cat

Doja Cat (Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini) (music artist)

While Doja Cat has sparked controversy, her imprint on the music and dance culture of TikTok is undeniable.

The artist has 4.7 million TikTok fans, and millions of the app's users have posted videos of themselves dancing to Doja Cat songs like "Say So" and "Boss Bitch."

The artist's embrace of TikTok has extended well beyond posting videos on the app. After 17-year-old TikToker Haley Sharpe posted a viral dance to her single "Say So," Doja Cat incorporated the dance in her official music video for the track with a cameo appearance from Sharpe.

And Doja Cat recently made a guest appearance during The Weeknd's live concert series on TikTok on August 7.

With song after song going viral on the app, Pitchfork described Doja Cat's reign on TikTok as "unimpeachable."

Flighthouse

Jacob Pace (CEO), Ash Stahl (general manager), Amy Hart (music marketing), Adi Azran (music marketing)

In addition to running its own popular TikTok account with about 26 million followers, Flighthouse, which is owned by the music-technology company Create Music Group, has a marketing team that works with record labels to promote artists' songs on the app.

The company is led by Gen Zers — its CEO, Jacob Pace, is 21 years old — and it has developed a formula to help make songs take off on TikTok by first making small modifications to artists' tracks and then tapping the right influencers to boost a song's visibility.

Flighthouse was recently hired by the independent record label 10k Projects to put together an influencer campaign for the Surfaces' song "Sunday Best," which helped drive over 20 million user-generated videos on the app and aided in the music duo's rise to the No. 1 spot on Billboard's emerging-artists list.

The company has worked on a variety of other tracks that have trended on TikTok, including Arizona Zervas' "Roxanne," but most record labels ask them not to disclose when they're involved in running a paid promotion, the company said.

"TikTok has opened up this door where anything's at play," said Adi Azran, the head of marketing at Flighthouse. "All old records, all new records — people don't care on TikTok as long as it's fun to make content with."

Read more about Flighthouse's work on TikTok: How a media company that turns songs into TikTok trends helped 'Sunday Best' appear in over 20 million videos and become a global hit on Billboard and Spotify

Interscope

Chris Mortimer (head of digital marketing)

Chris Mortimer leads all digital marketing efforts for Interscope's roster of artists including Lady Gaga, DaBaby, Billie Eilish, Selena Gomez, and Lil Mosey. 

Interscope's campaigns on TikTok have helped promote streams for songs like Trevor Daniel's "Falling"; Lil Mosey's "Blueberry Faygo"; "Rain On Me" by Lady Gaga with Ariana Grande; and "Rockstar" by DaBaby ft Roddy Ricch, which has appeared in over 1.7 million videos on TikTok and has held steady as a top ten track on streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.

Prior to Interscope, Mortimer was in the startup media and entertainment space. He holds an MA in communications management from USC.

Jason Derulo

Jason Derulo (Jason Joel Desrouleaux) (music artist)

While Jason Derulo achieved fame as a music artist well before TikTok entered the social-media scene, the singer has leaned heavily into the short-form video app in recent months. 

Derulo, who has 31.5 million TikTok fans and regularly posts collaborative videos with the app's other top creators, has also used TikTok to promote his own tracks. 

Derulo's newest single "Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat)," which he co-released with New Zealand music producer Jawsh 685, came to life after Derulo used an unauthorized sample of a Jawsh 685's track that had taken off on TikTok. The pair reconciled their differences and the song has continued to chart on streaming platforms like Spotify.

Derulo also does sponsored posts for brands on his TikTok account. The artist told Complex Media last month that he earns over $75,000 for brand promotions on TikTok. 

Legacy Recordings

Andy McGrath (senior vice president of marketing)

Legacy Recordings manages Sony Music's catalog of songs from artists that may or may not be still producing music, including performers like Billie Holliday, Bruce Springsteen, and David Bowie. 

The company mostly takes a reactive approach to engaging with TikTok, though it has tested out promotions for some of its older tracks in the past year, enlisting influencers to try to draw attention to the 15th anniversary of Ciara's "Goodies" in September.

Once a song does take off on TikTok, the company will encourage artists to create TikTok accounts and join in on a trend that involves their track. 

"We drop a note to the artist, or his or her team, and say 'Hey, there might be something here. Are you aware of this? Are you interested in participating?'" Andy McGrath, senior vice president of marketing at Legacy Recordings, told Business Insider in May.

"If we're talking about catalog artists — 90s, 80s, early 2000s — a lot of these artists may or may not have TikTok accounts," said Kerry Abner, a marketing manager focused on social media and streaming at Legacy Recordings. "We want to get them on the platform and start engaging with their fans there by inserting themselves into the challenge."

Read more about Legacy Recording's strategy on TikTok: A Sony Music exec explains the label's TikTok strategy and how it responds when a song like 'Break My Stride' catches fire

Movers+Shakers

Evan Horowitz (CEO and cofounder) and Geoffrey Goldberg (chief creative and cofounder)

Founded in 2016 by Evan Horowitz and Geoffrey Goldberg, Movers+Shakers is a creative marketing agency that specializes in music and dance-based ad campaigns on social-media platforms like TikTok.

The company has created original music and dances for brand campaigns on TikTok, and its work with the beauty brand e.l.f. Cosmetics in October 2019 set a new standard for engagements on the app.

Movers+Shakers created an original e.l.f. song for the marketing push, "Eyes. Lips. Face. (e.l.f.)," that's been used in over 1.7 million videos to date. The song has 18 million streams on Spotify and millions of plays on YouTube, and the campaign's hashtag "#eyeslipsface" has been viewed 6.3 billion times on TikTok.

"I think the nature of TikTok as a platform is that it's one of the main places that music is being launched right now," Horowitz told Business Insider in May. "It's only natural that brands that create really good music that the community on TikTok really resonates with, that that music can start to trend and be successful outside of the platform."

Read more about Movers+Shakers' work on TikTok: The agency behind one of TikTok's top ad campaigns says brands can build a massive audience through original music and dance trends but the 'window is closing quickly'

ReignDeer Entertainment

Larry Rudolph (CEO)

Larry Rudolph runs ReignDeer Entertainment and is a senior partner at Maverick Management, a division of Live Nation Entertainment. Rudolph's ReignDeer Entertainment manages several of TikTok's biggest music stars including Loren Gray, Jaden Hossler (JXDN), and more recently Josh Richards.

Rudolph also serves as a formal advisor to TalentX Entertainment (which represents Hossler and Richards), where his son serves as VP of music. 

Rudolph is perhaps best known for discovering and managing Britney Spears. He has also served as a manager for Steven Tyler (Aerosmith), Pitbull, and The Backstreet Boys.

"New young audiences want to consume music differently," Rudolph told Business Insider. "To have some TikTok star with 20 million eyeballs using your song gets an enormous amount of attention and gets an enormous number of active music listeners. As a marketing tool, it's a massive platform."

Republic Records

Tim Hrycyshyn (VP of digital marketing)

As VP of digital marketing at Republic Records, Tim Hrycyshyn leads a team of marketers focused on the label's online strategy for artists like Post Malone, Lil Wayne, Ariana Grande, Nicki Minaj, James Bay, the Jonas Brothers, and The Weeknd (who recently performed live for TikTok users in the app's first-ever augmented reality concert).

Hrycyshyn joined the label in 2015 as a director of digital marketing after working in marketing roles at Independent Label Group and the Alternative Distribution Alliance. 

Roc Nation

Carolyn Girondo (associate director of digital marketing)

Founded by Jay-Z in 2008, Roc Nation is a full-service entertainment agency that works with a variety of stars from Rihanna and Shakira to Lil Uzi Vert and Big Sean.

As associate director of digital marketing, Girondo told Business Insider that TikTok has had a huge impact on the agency's new music releases as well as older songs in artists' catalogs. 

When the company noticed that Mariah Carey's 2009 track "Obsessed" was taking off on TikTok, the company quickly helped Carey create an account to help promote the song to its users. "Obsessed" has since appeared in nearly four million user-generated videos on the app, and Carey now has 3.6 million fans on TikTok.

TalentX Entertainment

Gavin Rudolph (VP of music) and Michael Gruen (VP of talent)

Having grown up in the music industry (his father Larry Rudolph is also featured on this list as CEO of ReignDeer Entertainment), Gavin Rudolph runs the music department at TalentX Entertainment, a talent management firm focused on TikTok creators. 

During his tenure at TalentX, Rudolph helped the upstart TikTok agency form a partnership with Sony/ATV Music Publishing, which is offering publishing and artist development services to TalentX's songwriters and artists. He also helped facilitate a deal with Warner Records to create TalentX Records – a joint venture between the two companies to promote TikTok artists like TalentX's Josh Richards.

Michael Gruen manages TalentX's roster of TikTok stars as the company's VP of talent. He helped facilitate Richard's deal with Warner Records and signed former Sway LA member Jaden Hossler, who has since built out a career in the music industry.

The Fuel Injector

Devain Doolaramani (CEO and founder) and Ariell Nicholas Yahid (talent manager)

The Fuel Injector is a talent-management company that primarily focuses on TikTok creators. The company does a lot of music marketing on the app, working on four to five paid song integrations a week, according to Ariell Nicholas Yahid, a talent manager at the company. 

"It seems like a lot, but in the music industry there's about 100 songs a week," Yahid said.

"I started music marketing back when it was Musical.ly, when I managed all these audio accounts," Doolaramami said. "We built out the roster with dancers and actual personas so we started marketing within our talent in different music niches."

The company told Business Insider that it's worked on influencer-marketing promotions on TikTok for Rontae Don't Play's "I'm Single and I'm Lit," "Civil War" by Russ, and $uicideboy$'s "...And To Those I Love, Thanks For Sticking..."

Read more about The Fuel Injector's work in music marketing on TikTok: TikTok influencers are getting paid thousands of dollars to promote songs, as the app becomes a major force in the music industry

Tiagz

Tiagz (Tiago Garcia-Arenas) (music artist)

The Canadian rapper Tiagz, 22, built a career as a music producer by strategically uploading songs to TikTok.

Tiagz's strategy for growing an audience on TikTok has been to write songs that directly reference a phrase or idea that's become popular on the app. Since joining TikTok in August 2019, several of Tiagz's songs have gone viral through this method, appearing in millions of user-generated videos across the platform.

Two years after he started producing music, Tiagz is now signed by the record label Epic Records and has millions of monthly listeners on streaming apps like Spotify.

"I tried to understand the platform," Tiagz told Business Insider in April. "The trends work, but the quality of the music matters too because a lot of songs that I made are flops."

Read more about Tiagz's rise on TikTok: Music artist Tiagz explains how he mastered TikTok's algorithm to score a major record deal, with help from Charli D'Amelio and a 1950s jazz classic

TikTok's music division

TikTok is well aware of the integral role that music plays in its platform's success, and it's staffed up accordingly to support artists, record labels, and music-oriented creators and brands who use its app.

The company's music division is divided into three focus areas: music operations, music partnerships and artist relationships, and business development. 

The music operations group handles all music programming decisions on the app. The team curates the playlists and songs that are promoted to TikTok users when they are looking to add a "sound" to a video. Its "Emerging Artists" playlist can help yet-to-be-discovered artists take off on the app.

The company told Business Insider that "nearly 50 songs programmed by the TikTok music ops team reached the Billboard Hot 100 in May and June 2020 alone."

TikTok's music partnerships and artist relationships team serves as the company's liaison between the app and artists and labels. Team members work with the music operations team to jumpstart TikTok trends and support official playlisting and hashtag promotions, while also helping to onboard new artists onto the app. The music partnerships and artist relationships team also handles artist events tied to TikTok, including The Weeknd's recent virtual performance on the app. 

The music business development team focuses on negotiating content licensing deals with labels, publishing companies, and distributors. 

Here is the full list of team members at TikTok who focus on music:

• Corey Sheridan (head of music content operations, North America)
• Isabel Quinteros, Sr. (manager, music partnerships and artist relations)
• Mary Rahmani (director of music content and artist relations)
• Daniel Gillick (senior manager, music content & label relations)
• Brandon Holman (label partnerships manager)
• Chayce Cheathem (label partnerships)
• Yuko Shen (music operations)
• Alec Feld (music operations)
• Macie Spear (music operations)
• Chayce Cheathem (music content & label relations)
• William Gruger (music editorial lead)
• Ben Markowitz (director of music operations)
• Jordan Lowy (director of music partnerships)
• Christina Beltramini (music partnerships)
• Todd Schefflin (senior manager of music partnerships)
• Bryan Cosgrove (creative music licensing)
• Tracy Gardner (head of label licensing & partnerships)
• Leah Linder (director of communications, music)
• Ole Obermann (VP, global head of music)
• Paul Hourican (music operations, EU)
• Farhad Zand (music partnerships, EU)
• Hari Nair (head of digital music, India)
• Fennie Chin (head of digital music, Southeast Asia)
• Henrique Fares Leite (music industry relations, Latin America)
• Toyin Mustapha (music content and artist partnerships, EU)
• James Underwood (music content manager, EU)

TuneCore

Andreaa Gleeson (chief revenue officer)

TuneCore is a tech platform designed to enable artists and labels to distribute songs on platforms like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, Google Play, and Tidal. The company makes money by charging a flat rate for each album, song, or ring tone that it distributes.

Since it launched its distribution partnership with TikTok in October 2019, over 200,000 of TuneCore's artists have distributed 300,000 releases on the app.

As chief revenue officer, Andreea Gleeson oversees marketing, artist support, international work, and entertainment relations at TuneCore. Her efforts have helped up-and-coming artists build fan bases on TikTok.

Gleeson previously served as TuneCore's chief marketing officer.

UnitedMasters

David Melhado (head of artist marketing)

UnitedMasters is a music distribution company that helps artists get songs placed on music streaming platforms and social-media apps like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram. The company makes money by taking a 10% split of artists' royalties or charging creators a flat annual rate to use its platform. 

UnitedMasters has become a key tool for newcomer artists to get their music distributed on the short-form video app. 

Currently the head of artist marketing at UnitedMasters, David Melhado is responsible for promoting artist, product, and brand efforts for UnitedMasters' artist community.

Melhado has helped develop the careers of some of today's biggest rap artists including NLE Choppa (3.8 million TikTok followers) and Gunna (450,000 TikTok followers), whose track "Drip Too Hard (Lil Baby & Gunna)" has been used in tens of thousands of user-generated videos on the app. 

Universal Music Group

Celine Joshua (general manager, commercial, content, and artist strategy)

Celine Joshua joined Universal Music Group in 2018, where she leads the company's 10:22 pm imprint, a division of UMG focused on signing social-media influencers, digital-media creators, and recording artists.

Joshua and 10:22 pm have sponsored the TikTok creator house Kids Next Door LA as part of their work promoting 10:22 catalog songs. Her team also worked directly with TikTok to test out the platform's push notification feature in order to promote electronic music artist Alesso's new track "Midnight."

Prior to joining UMG, Joshua worked at Warner Music Group in the IT department, at Disney Music as Head of Digital, and at Sony Music Entertainment's Epic Records. 

• Hyperion CEO Angelo Kafantaris has positioned himself as a leading advocate for hydrogen as the alternative-energy choice for the future.
• Hydrogen has been seen as losing out to battery-electric technology in the auto industry, even though hydrogen is abundant and, with fuel-cells, offers a lightweight counterpoint for all-electric propulsion.
• Hyperion has auto, aerospace, and energy divisions, but Hyperion Motors made waves by launching an exotic hypercar, the XP-1, to showcase hydrogen's capabilities.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Talk with Hyperion CEO Angelo Kafantaris for a few minutes and it rapidly becomes obvious that he isn't in the auto business, despite the fact that he just launched a wild-looking hypercar, the XP-1, that could notch 0-60 mph in under 2.2 seconds.

Hyperion Motors represents just one facet of an ambitious hydrogen-powered business strategy. Along with Hyperion Aerospace and Hyperion Energy, the auto arm and its debut product are designed to achieve Kafantaris' ultimate goal: to reinvent and revitalize hydrogen power.

Hydrogen fuel cells have been a viable form of energy generation — they've long been used by NASA — and automakers including Toyota, Honda, and GM have pushed them as a way to leave the internal combustion engine behind. But advances in battery-electrics and the ascent of Tesla over the past decade have put fuel cells in the rear view mirror, even if not everyone agrees with Elon Musk's dismissal of the tech as "fool cells."

Kafantaris is eyeing a comeback, and that starts with changing the narrative. 

"We needed to focus on a car, to tell the story in a compelling way to the consumer," Kafantaris said in an interview with Business Insider. Thus, the XP-1, a car that's quicker to 60 mph than any Tesla, with double the range to boot. 

Show them the hypercar, and they will come

The XP-1 is "designed to function as an educational tool for the masses," Kafantaris said. The overarching point is that hydrogen's combination of abundance and portability makes it an ideal fuel for all-electric vehicles. And, of course, the only by-product is water, which is synthesized by a fuel cell's power-generating process.

Kafantaris, who studied engineering at Ohio State before moving to Transportation Design at Detroit's College for Creative Studies, is quick to point out that hydrogen is actually a way to store useful energy, particularly if you want an efficient, zero-emissions way to go fast.

"You don't have the extra battery weight," he said, referring to the bulk of lithium-ion batteries, which are the main way that energy is currently banked for EVs. "So you can have better acceleration and handling — and the same amount of energy as a car that weighs twice as much. This is why NASA has been using hydrogen for 60 years. When you go to space, you want to be as light as possible."

The XP-1, at 2,275 pounds, is a potent featherweight. Made of composites, Kevlar, aluminum, and titanium, it has no hefty engine or battery pack to haul around, just electric motors serving up punishing torque, so using hydrogen to max out performance made sense.

True, hydrogen refueling infrastructure is in its infancy. But with just 300 vehicles slated for production, Hyperion doubtless expects to localize XP-1 sales in places like California, where a smattering of hydrogen stations serve those few buyers who drive one of the three fuel-cell cars on sale in the US today: the Toyota Mirai, Hyundai NEXO, and Honda Clarity. 

While those cars have their fans, Kafantaris bills the XP-1 as the far more compelling pitch for what the most abundant element in the universe can do.

Energy is the focus

"The XP-1 will be the least exciting vehicle from Hyperion," Kafantaris said, but he doesn't plan on becoming another Tesla rival. "I don't want our focus to be manufacturing," he said, echoing sentiments recently offered by Henrik Fisker, whose struck a deal with contract builder Magna to assemble his new Ocean EV.

"Our focus is on the energy side," Kafantaris said, adding that hydrogen has its most "impactful applications in aerospace and industrials." To support that vision and enhance the consumers' understanding of hydrogen as a medium of energy storage, he said Hyperion would undertake the assembly of a nationwide network of refueling stations. But he's also managing expectations. 

"To be an innovator, you have to set aside your biases," he said. "In five years, if hydrogen isn't the best solution, I'll know that." 

Still, he puts a lot of stock in atomic number one.

"Until we have cold fusion, hydrogen will be best."

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• Airbnb says it will pursue legal claims and damages against a guest who threw a party at a Sacramento rental Saturday where three people were shot and injured.
• Airbnb says the guest booked the short-term rental under false pretenses, acted with negligence, and violated public health orders. The guest has been banned from Airbnb's platform.
• It will be the first time the company has taken legal action against a guest for breaking its policies.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Airbnb announced Wednesday that it will pursue legal claims and damages against a guest who threw a party that descended into mayhem at a Sacramento, California rental over the weekend.

Three people were injured Saturday night after someone opened fire at the party, which was attended by roughly 50 people despite ongoing state mandates preventing large indoor gatherings, according to local NBC affiliate KCRA3.

This marks the first time that Airbnb has taken legal action against a guest accused of violating its policies. The company first banned house parties in November 2019 after five people were killed in a shooting at a Halloween party hosted at an Airbnb rental in San Francisco. Before that, one person was killed and at least three were injured at Airbnb house parties across Northern California in 2019, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Airbnb spokesperson Ben Breit said in a statement to Business Insider that the guest who threw the Sacramento party this week booked the rental under false pretenses, acted with negligence, and violated public health orders.

"Airbnb has no tolerance for unauthorized parties, which are expressly banned in its Community Standards," Breit said.

The short-term rental startup has previously taken steps aiming to prevent parties at its listings. In February, the company encouraged hosts to install "party sensors" that detect high humidity and noise that may indicate a party. The company also altered its policies in July to ban guests under the age of 25 from booking rentals.

Airbnb is reportedly planning to file for an IPO later this month despite harsh conditions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. CEO Brian Chesky said the company expects its 2020 revenue to be less than half what it was last year, and the company recently laid off 25% of its staff and hundreds of contract workers, froze its marketing, and borrowed $2 billion.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Pathologists debunk 13 coronavirus myths

• Airbnb's revenue plummeted 67% in the second quarter compared to the same period last year, according to Bloomberg.
• The steep drop-off is a reflection of the impact of COVID-19, which has restricted travel across the globe.
• The company reportedly brought in just $335 million in revenue during the period ended June 30, down from more than $1 billion in the same period last year.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Airbnb is feeling the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic — the short-term rental startup's revenue plunged 67% in the second quarter of 2020, according to Bloomberg.

Revenue reportedly fell to $335 million during the period ended June 30, down from more than $1 billion during the same period last year. By contrast, Airbnb reportedly saw $842 million in sales in the first quarter of 2020.

But the company is still planning an IPO this year — possibly as soon as August, sources told Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal. Airbnb was reportedly planning to make its public offering earlier this year, but those plans were thrown off track by the unexpected impact of COVID-19 on its business.

An Airbnb spokesperson declined to comment.

CEO Brian Chesky warned in May that the company expected its 2020 revenue to be less than half what it was last year. In the months that followed, the company recently laid off 25% of its staff and hundreds of contract workers, froze its marketing, and borrowed $2 billion to help stay afloat through the pandemic.

According to Bloomberg, Airbnb recorded a loss of $400 million in the second quarter before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. That loss likely does not include restructuring charges related to the 1,900 job cuts or other items it could classify as one-time charges, meaning its net loss is almost certainly wider than that.

Airbnb hosts have felt the pain of COVID-19 related travel restrictions for months. As coronavirus lockdowns first began to set in, hosts protested the company for allowing guests to cancel bookings free of charge. Months later, hosts are still complaining of missing payments, CNBC reported this week.

SEE ALSO: Airbnb is suing a guest who threw a party after 3 people were injured in a shooting at the short-term rental

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• This is a preview of the Business Insider Intelligence Internet of Medical Things premium research report. Purchase this report here.
• Business Insider Intelligence offers even more technology coverage with our Connectivity & Tech Briefing. Subscribe today to receive industry-changing connectivity news and analysis to your inbox.

Healthcare providers have been turning to the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) to facilitate their digital transformation since before the coronavirus hit the US — but the pandemic has caused a sea change in providers' willingness to implement IoT solutions that augment efforts in preparing for, containing, and diagnosing the virus. 

As the backbone that powers the IoMT, connectivity and technology providers have a mounting opportunity to capture a larger slice of the market as it evolves alongside the coronavirus pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, healthcare providers were forecast to adopt IoT devices at one of the fastest rates of any industry segment, with the installed base of IoT endpoints expected to grow 29% year-over-year in 2020.

And pre-pandemic, healthcare was among the top three industries expected to see the fastest growth rates (15.4%) in IoT investment in terms of spending over the 2017-2022 forecast period. But the coronavirus is fundamentally changing how healthcare can be accessed and delivered in the US, and we expect to see even faster growth throughout 2020 — and that this upward momentum will outlast the pandemic.

In TheInternet of Medical Things, Business Insider Intelligence assesses the North American IoMT market and explores how the IoMT opportunity for connectivity providers is evolving alongside the coronavirus pandemic, and how these players are carving out their place in the growing segment. We first unpack the opportunities for connectivity and technology providers in the IoMT market and outline how the coronavirus pandemic will impact demand for various IoT solutions in healthcare. We then detail how emerging techonlogies are propelling the healthcare IoT space forward. Finally, we explore how connectivity and technology players can expand within the IoMT ecosystem.

The companies mentioned in this report include: AT&T, Augmedics, AVIA, Choice IoT, DarioHealth, Eko, GE Healthcare, Intel, Medtronic, Packet, Phillips, PlushCare, PTC, Smardii, Sprint, Telit, Vuzix, XENEX, Zebra. 

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report: 

• Healthcare providers are prioritizing IoT investment in solutions that enhance virtual care delivery, augment emergency services and triage, and automate or streamline tasks. 
• The IoMT opportunities for connectivity and technology providers will only be amplified as the IoT intersects with other emerging technologies. 
• We interviewed executive decision-makers in the connectivity and technology space to gather their insights on how they determine which IoMT opportunities to prioritize, the best go-to-market strategy for these new opportunities, and what goes into the decision process when selecting a partner to expand within the IoMT. 
• The report also highlights the opinions of executive decision-makers in the connectivity and technology space on topics that include: telemedicine, preventative care, administrative operations, 5G, edge computing, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality. 

In full, the report: 

• Sizes the North American IoMT market through 2022 and explains how it compares with pre-coronavirus estimates. 
• Identifies the three biggest IoMT opportunities for connectivity and technology providers based on conversations with companies entrenched in the IoMT ecosystem, and on our analysis of their impact, scalability, early evidence of value creation, and increased utility amid the coronavirus pandemic.
• Provides recommendations for connectivity and technology providers on how to carve out and expand their footprint in ways that unlock the most value. 

Interested in getting the full report? Here's how to get access:

1. Business Insider Intelligence analyzes the tech industry and provides in-depth analyst reports, proprietary forecasts, customizable charts, and more. >> Check if your company has BII Enterprise membership access to the full report
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• As part of a reorg, Microsoft just moved a team from its Azure cloud business into the organization responsible for Windows, Surface devices, and Microsoft 365.
• Microsoft 365 is the bundle of business applications that includes the Office 365 productivity suite, collaboration tools like OneDrive and SharePoint, the Microsoft Teams chat app, and even the Windows 10 operating system itself.
• The Microsoft 365 bundle represents a huge portion of Microsoft's catalogue of cloud software — an area where it has a clear advantage in the cloud wars over rivals like Amazon Web Services and Google's G Suite.
• Below are the 22 power players behind Microsoft 365.
• Click here to read more BI Prime stories.

Microsoft just bolstered the organization responsible for Windows, Surface devices, and its Microsoft 365 bundle of business applications with some internal cloud talent.

The company recently relocated a team from its Azure cloud business to this organization, known as "experiences and devices," according to longtime Microsoft pundit Brad Sams, writing for Petri.com, "to help the Windows/Surface teams build more cohesive experiences that the company hopes customers will love and push the Surface team to create better products as well."

The experiences and devices team is responsible for a big part of Microsoft's business. Microsoft 365, for example, is the company's a bundle of business apps, introduced in 2017, that includes Office 365 – cloud-based versions of the company's flagship productivity applications such as Word and Excel – collaboration tools like OneDrive and SharePoint, the Microsoft Teams chat app, and even the Windows 10 operating system itself. The strategy, the company has said, is to make it easier for customers to adopt the best of Microsoft, all at once.

The latest changes come after the company earlier this year notified employees about a significant reorganization, which took effect Feb. 25, affecting the Windows experience and devices teams, according to an internal memo obtained by Business Insider. 

That represents a big chunk of Microsoft's lineup of cloud software products, an area where it has a clear advantage in the cloud wars with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. AWS doesn't have a cloud software business to speak of, while Google's G Suite only accounts for a sliver of the market compared with the juggernaut that is Microsoft Office.

United under the banner of Microsoft 365, these power players are helping the company in "moving closer toward a comprehensive enterprise application ecosystem," Nucleus Research analyst Andrew MacMillen recently told Business Insider.

Here are the 21 power players behind Microsoft 365:

Rajesh Jha, executive VP of Experiences & Devices

Rajesh Jha leads Microsoft's Experiences and Devices group.

Jha's purview includes Windows client, Office Product Group, the New Experiences and Technology team (charged with finding new ways to engage Microsoft customers) and Enterprise Mobility and Management (which runs Windows Enterprise deployment and management).

Jha was the one who notified Microsoft employees about the big reorganization in early February.

Jha has been on Microsoft's leadership team since 2006, and has worked at Microsoft since he finished graduate school in 2000.

Panos Panay, chief product officer

Panos Panay now runs the Windows + Devices Team created through the reorganization.

As Jha explained it, the new team "will drive end-to-end people centered innovation including the entire Windows ecosystem," he said in the email to employees. "The joining of these teams will streamline the decision-making process to help us deliver the best device experience from silicon through the OS for our customers on OEM and Surface Devices."

Panay is generally considered the driving force behind Microsoft's line of Surface products.

Kirk Koenigsbauer, corporate vice president of Microsoft 365

Kirk Koenigsbauer is the corporate vice president responsible for product marketing and management for Microsoft 365.

Koenigsbauer's purview includes the overall Microsoft 365 bundle, Office 365, Windows 10 Enterprise, and the IT security and management tool Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS).

Koenigsbauer originally started working at Microsoft in 1992, but left in 1998 and did a three-year stint at Amazon. He rejoined Microsoft in 2002 as a corporate vice president.

Koenigsbauer in 2015 was notably the first Microsoft executive ever to grace the stage at an Apple product event. 

Now that the reorg has taken effect, Koenigsbauer will report directly to Jha as the chief operating officer for the Experience and Devices group.

Jared Spataro, corporate vice president of Microsoft 365

Jared Spataro runs Microsoft 365 marketing, which according to Microsoft includes business management, product marketing and go-to-market programs for the suite of applications.

Spataro was tasked with public communications related to Microsoft ending support Windows 7 its operating system used on millions of PCs since its launch in 2009, and encouraged users to upgrade to Windows 10 or buy new PCs that come preinstalled with it. 

The successful upgrade push helped make Microsoft's most recent quarter the best for its Windows business in terms of growth since CEO Satya Nadella took over in 2014.

Spataro joined Microsoft in 2006 as a director for Microsoft's SharePoint collaboration platform.

Brian MacDonald, corporate vice president of Microsoft Teams

Brian MacDonald is retiring from Microsoft once the reorg goes into place — but in the interim, he's the corporate vice president of the Microsoft Teams chat app. 

MacDonald is a legend within Microsoft, known as the "father of Outlook," the company's flagship email product. He led Microsoft's push to create Teams, the fast-growing chat app, by taking a small group of engineers to his fruit plantation in Maui to hack it together.

"In-between writing lines of code, the team spent their days hiking, riding tractors, picking food from the land, all to inspire new ways of thinking about the essence of teamwork, how technology can take collaboration to new levels, and what Microsoft could uniquely offer," according to Microsoft. "By the end, they left with the crystallizing idea that they wanted to build a service that made it frictionless for individuals and teams to create, collaborate and 'work in the open.'"

Teams has more than 20 million daily active users, according to Microsoft – more than rival Slack, although Slack has taken issue with Microsoft's accounting since Teams comes bundled with Microsoft 365.

Jeff Teper, corporate vice president of Office 365

Jeff Teper is corporate vice president of Microsoft's Office 365 cloud-based suite of productivity tools. He'll also take over Microsoft Teams chat app when MacDonald retires.

Teper runs design, product and engineering for products including core Office applications such as Word and Excel, OneDrive file storage system and collaboration platform SharePoint.

Teper joined Microsoft in 1992 and is best known as a co-creator of Microsoft SharePoint, which is now an industry-standard way for teams to share files and work with each other.

Perry Clarke, corporate vice president of Microsoft 365

Perry Clarke is the Microsoft 365 corporate vice president responsible for the core platform and artificial intelligence experience.

He's a Microsoft distinguished engineer who joined the company after working on neutron scattering work at the experimental reactor at Riso Lab in Denmark.

Clarke's purview includes Microsoft's bot framework and cognitive services, which is a collection of AI tools for vision, speech, language, knowledge and search; Microsoft Search, a search tool for businesses within Microsoft 365; AI intelligence throughout Microsoft 365; and the Intelligent Office Graph, which helps track information as it moves across Office 365.

Jon Tinter, corporate vice president of business development for Microsoft 365 & Search, Ads, and News

Jon Tinter is the corporate vice president of business development for Microsoft 365 & Search, Ads, and News.

The 13-year Microsoft veteran runs strategy for products including Microsoft 365 when it comes to growth, mergers and acquisitions, commercial partnerships and strategic investments.

Tinter's strategic leadership also includes products such as Windows, Surface devices, search products like Bing and Microsoft Search, plus Microsoft News and the company's digital advertising business.

Brad Anderson, corporate vice president of Microsoft Commercial Management Experiences

Brad Anderson is corporate vice president of Microsoft Commercial Management Experiences, which means he runs the team responsible for Microsoft 365 Modern Workplace products for businesses. 

Specifically, Anderson oversees engineering and strategic leadership for security platform Enterprise Mobility + Security – a key part of Microsoft 365– and the Microsoft product for managing large groups of computers running Windows, called System Center Configuration Manager.

Anderson's team include engineers who work on Microsoft 365 customer deployment and usage, Windows commercial products, management and security of PCs and mobile devices. 

Emma Williams, corporate vice president of Microsoft Office Vertical Solutions

As Microsoft Office Vertical Solutions corporate vice president, Emma Williams runs Office 365 solutions for industry verticals including health care, financial services, retail, manufacturing, and government.

One of the biggest changes Satya Nadella has made at Microsoft is shifting the company from a focus on making general-purpose products to ones that can be tuned for specific industries, a Microsoft executive recently told Business Insider.

Williams – a 16-year veteran of Microsoft – helps make that happen. 

Now that the reorg has taken effect, Williams will report directly to Jha as a member of the Experiences and Devices leadership group.

Jon Friedman, corporate vice president of Microsoft Design & Research

Jon Friedman is corporate vice president of Microsoft Design & Research, a position he describes on his LinkedIn profile as "the chief designer of Microsoft Office products."

Friedman – responsible for the last major redesign of Microsoft Office– leads a team of 250 employees who research and design Microsoft products, including within Microsoft 365.

Sumit Chauhan, corporate vice president of Microsoft Office Engineering

Sumit Chauhan is Microsoft's Office Engineering corporate vice president, meaning she runs engineering for flagship products including Word and PowerPoint across mobile, web and desktop. 

Chauhan's team is also responsible for infusing artificial intelligence into Microsoft's Office 365 cloud-based suite of productivity tools.

Chauhan is a 24-year veteran of Microsoft who joined the company as a principal software developer in 1996. 

Jaime Teevan, chief scientist of Microsoft Experiences & Devices

Jamie Teevan is the chief scientist for Microsoft Devices and Experiences, which means she's the brains behind Microsoft's productivity innovations. She works with Microsoft's research team to get experts who can help contribute to the company's updates in productivity — across software and devices. 

She has been at Microsoft since 2006 and was previously a technical advisor to CEO Satya Nadella and a principal researcher at Microsoft Research AI, where she led the productivity team. 

She is an award-winning and leading computer scientist in her field, known particularly for her research on human-computer interaction and information retrieval and personalized search. 

Tara Roth, corporate vice president of Office Customer Success Engineering (CSE)

Tara Roth heads up the Office Customer Success Engineering team and looks at a few areas all linked to how Microsoft interacts with its customers. Her team is in charge of customer support, the help pages, and anything else that helps customers use Microsoft products.

Her team is a key part of Microsoft's process for releasing new products and answering customer questions and concerns.

Roth has been at Microsoft for 27 years, starting as an engineer in 1992. 

Ales Holecek, corporate vice president of Office Engineering

Ales Holecek is the corporate vice president of the engineering team that builds Microsoft Office applications. His team helps deliver the "modern office experience" to Microsoft customers. 

Prior to joining the Office team, Holecek worked on the Windows Developer Ecosystem and Platform team, helping third party developers build on top of the Windows platform. As part of that he designed and built the Universal Windows Platform, an ambitious push to unify app development across Windows 10 on PCs, tablets, and the Xbox One gaming console.

He's been at Microsoft since 2004. Now that the reorg has taken effect, Holecek and Joe Belfiore will lead Microsoft's Office and Office Experience Group team as "a product/engineering duo."

Guarav Sareen, corporate vice president of Communication & Time Management

Guarav Sareen leads the Communications and Time Management organization at Microsoft, overseeing engineering and product teams for Outlook, Skype and the Yammer corporate social network. Prior to that, he led the engineering team for Outlook. 

Soon after Sareen joined Microsoft in 2001, he became of the engineers that helped build the Bing search engine. He continued to develop and grow Bing until 2016, when he switched gears to lead Outlook.  

Harvinder Bhela, corporate vice president of Microsoft 365 Security & Compliance

Harvinder Bhela is in charge of product, engineering and research for Microsoft's security and compliance business. His team develops security and compliance tools that help Microsoft 365 customers make sure their employees are working safely and securely, while also integrating with other products.

On his LinkedIn, Bhela calls the security and compliance "perhaps one of the largest growth engines for the M365 business," given that its a market worth over $50 billion per year. 

Bhela has worked at Microsoft for 23 years, previously working in the Exchange, Outlook/Outlook.com, Office and Windows divisions. 

Hayete Gallot, vice president of Modern Workplace WCB

Hayete Gallot runs the sales team for the Modern Workplace Solutions team, helping to get Microsoft products in the hands of more businesses, and similarly to help those companies through their digital transformation. 

She's got experience working both for the software and hardware divisions at Microsoft. Prior to her current role, she led the team responsible for developing new business models for Office products. Before that, she played a key role in developing Microsoft's Surface tablet division into a multi-billion-dollar business. 

Rob Lefferts, corporate vice president of Microsoft 365 Security & Compliance

Rob Lefferts is in charge of making sure Microsoft 365 has simple and clear security for users across all its products. Prior to this role, he led the Windows Enterprise & Security team, and was responsible for the significant security upgrades in Windows 10.

He's been at the company for 22 years, and has played a key role in developing many of Microsoft's technologies, and was a major driver in the creation of the Microsoft 365 strategy in the first place.

Joy Chik, corporate vice president of Microsoft Identity, Cloud & Enterprise

Joy Chik is the corporate vice president for the Identity division in Microsoft's Cloud + AI group. She's responsible for a variety of cloud and identity management products, including Active Directory, the backbone of login security for Windows and other Microsoft products.

Chik's role is key to every product Microsoft makes. Whenever any Microsoft product asks you to log in — from the Xbox games console to the Office 365 suite — chances are pretty good that it's using technology from Chik's team at some layer.

Chik has been at the company for 22 years, starting as a software design engineer in 1998.

Bob Davis, corporate vice president of Microsoft 365 & Security

Bob Davis is responsible for ensuring Microsoft customers across all industries (commercial, education, and public sector) are satisfied with the products. In his role he is in charge of the engineering and commercial & partner teams that help get a product ready for the market.

Davis helped to build the first version of Office 365, Microsoft's cloud-based subscription suite of productivity tools.

He joined the company in 1993 and helped it through its transition to the cloud computing era. 

Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president of Essential Products Group (EPIC)

Joe Belfiore leads the engineering team that is responsible for Windows 10 and Microsoft's other "essential products" including Microsoft Edge, Microsoft News, OneNote, Education products, and mobile applications for iOS and Android. 

Amid an executive shuffle in the division, Belfiore will soon switch over the the Office side of the company, to lead Microsoft's Office and Office experience group with Ales Holecek "as a product/engineering duo." 

Since joining Microsoft in 1990, Belfiore has had a crucial role in building some of the most significant features for the Windows platform. That includes things like the Start Button in Windows 10 and the Cortana digital assistant. 

He's been at Microsoft since 2004. Now that the reorg has taken effect, Belfiore and Ales Holecek will lead Microsoft's Office and Office Experience Group team as "a product/engineering duo."