*By Carlo Versano*
Shares of Tesla jumped more than 15 percent in the pre-market Monday on news that CEO Elon Musk settled a lawsuit with the SEC over Musk's social media use.
Under the terms of the settlement, Musk will step down as chairman of Tesla ($TSLA) for at least three years but can remain in the chief executive role. He and the company must each pay $20 million in fines. Two independent board members will also be appointed.
Federal regulators sued Musk last week, arguing that his infamous Aug. 7 "funding secured" tweet amounted to securities fraud. The lawsuit was filed after Musk reportedly scuttled a last-minute deal with the agency under which he would resign as chairman and pay a fine but not admit to any wrongdoing. Talks restarted soon after, and by Saturday a new settlement was in place.
The settlement takes care of one major headache for investors, who will now look to the car maker's third-quarter production and delivery numbers, which may be reported as early as Monday. Musk [reportedly] (https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/30/elon-musk-tells-tesla-to-ignore-distractions-hints-at-profitability.html) emailed employees over the weekend, telling them to "ignore all distractions" and that the company was approaching profitability.
Nearly a thousand Twitter accounts were blocked and several Facebook pages taken down on Monday in a coordinated effort by the social media platforms to curb misinformation campaigns spread by the Chinese government against protesters in Hong Kong.
Startup Kino Institute will be providing the tech for Steven Spielberg's upcoming interactive horror project.
Conversational artificial intelligence company Uniphore has big plans to disrupt call centers by further deploying AI technology into the customer support sector.
Outlier is a new for-profit venture from Aaron Rasmussen that aims to replace universities' introductory-level courses with highly-produced educational online content.
In Srinagar, the capital city of Jammu and Kashmir, over one million people woke up last week to a complete telecommunications blackout. The blackout was mandated by the Indian government, which just hours later would unilaterally strip the disputed territory of its autonomy status.
The Utah-based virtual reality startup expanding its "add-on" for retail centers in a bid to draw shoppers back to malls and into the worlds of Hollywood's most popular franchises through its virtual reality experiences.
While the combined media giants will be able to produce more content, the jury is still out on whether or not ViacomCBS will be able to compete with other streaming behemoths.
Greenbox Robotics' artificial intelligence-powered robots at CBD and wellness shop Come Back Daily. Founder Zack Johnson hopes machine will not only boost business and speed up sales, but also educate customers about hemp compound CBD.
Founder and CEO Coulter Lewis told Cheddar that Sunday aims to distinguish itself within the industry by focusing on the strength of grass, rather than on killing weeds and pests.
A Cheddar video illustrating a salmon cannon developed to help fish pass over dams in seconds, rather than days, surprisingly brightened up social media in 2019.
