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In this articleAAPLCraig Federighi, Senior Vice President Software Engineering speaks during Apple’s annual world wide developer conference (WWDC) in San Jose, California, U.S. June 5, 2017.Stephen Lam | ReutersApple’s head of software, Craig Federighi, said in court on Wednesday that Apple is not pleased with the amount of harmful software, or malware, on its operating system for Mac computers, MacOS.Federighi said the ability Apple gives users to install software from the internet on Mac computers is “regularly exploited” and that the iPhone’s operating system, iOS, has a “dramatically higher bar” for customer protection.”Today, we have a level of malware on the Mac that we don’t find acceptable and that is much worse than iOS,” Federighi testified in the Epic Games v. Apple trial.The difference between iPhone and Mac security is important in the trial because Epic Games is seeking to force Apple to allow it to install alternative app stores, which are permitted on Mac computers, on iPhones.Epic Games argues that Apple can easily apply Mac software installation policies and security mechanisms to iPhones, while Apple says its App Store review process and rules keep users secure.On Wednesday, Federighi said that the user base of the Mac is about one-tenth the user base of the iPhone. Apple said in January that it had 1 billion active iPhone users.”For iOS, we aspired to create something far more secure. All indications are that we have succeeded in doing so,” Federighi said. He said that Apple found and removed about 130 different kinds of malware on Macs last year that had infected hundreds of thousands of user systems, compared with three kinds of malware that had infected iPhones.”I have a couple family members who’ve gotten some malware on the Mac, but ultimately I think the Mac can be operated safely,” Federighi said.Federighi’s admission was prompted by a question from Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who will decide what action to take in the coming weeks or months. The trial is scheduled to end next Monday after three weeks.Apple customers have long wondered if the company was considering merging its Mac desktops and iPad tablets, which run a version of iOS. Apple’s latest Mac computer uses the same processor as its high-end iPads.Federighi subsequently provided a metaphor that suggests that Apple still sees them as separate products. For example, software developers still use Macs because they can install development tools, such as Xcode, and access the guts of the computer — including installing unauthorized software.”I think of it as the Mac is the car, you can take it off road if you want, you can drive wherever you want. As that comes as a driver, you’ve got to be trained, there’s a certain level of responsibility to doing that. But that’s what you wanted to buy, you wanted to buy a car,” Federighi said. “With iOS, you’re able to create something where children, even infants, can operate an iOS device and be safe in doing so. Really different products.”A recent report from Nokia cited by Federighi said that iOS devices accounted for 1.72% of mobile malware infections, compared with 26.64% for Android and 38.92% for Windows.”Android still has a considerable malware problem,” Federighi said. “Something like 50 times the malware of iOS.”Apple CEO Tim Cook is scheduled to testify in the trial on Friday.

In this articleCSCOIn this image released on May 2, 2021, from left, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins and Chief Public Affairs, Communications and Sustainability Officer of Coca-Cola Company Bea Perez speak onstage during Global Citizen VAX LIVE: The Concert To Reunite The World at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.Kevin Winter | Getty ImagesCisco shares fell 6% in extended trading on Wednesday after the data center networking hardware maker said it expects this quarter’s earnings to be lower than analysts had expected. The company revealed the news in its earnings report for the quarter ended May 1, its fiscal third quarter.Here’s how the company did:Earnings: 83 cents per share, adjusted, vs. 82 cents per share as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.Revenue: $12.80 billion, vs. $12.56 billion as expected by analysts, according to Refinitiv.Cisco reversed a five-quarter streak of revenue declines, posting nearly 7% growth year over year, although the quarter included 14 weeks, rather than 14 in the year-ago quarter.With respect to guidance, Cisco said it sees 81 cents to 83 cents in adjusted earnings per share and 6% to 8% revenue growth in the fiscal fourth quarter. Analysts had expected 85 cents in adjusted earnings per share and $12.82 billion in revenue, which implies 5.5% growth.In the fiscal third quarter Cisco’s top segment, Infrastructure Platforms, which includes sales of networking switch hardware, delivered $6.83 billion, which was up 6% and above the FactSet consensus estimate of $6.77 billion.The Applications segment that includes Webex video-calling products contributed $1.43 billion in revenue, up 5% and just under than the $1.44 billion FactSet consensus.Cisco has been enduring supply-chain challenges, along with automakers and other businesses.”The good news, and this is reflected in our guidance, is that we are confident we will work through this as we have already put in place revised arrangements with several of our key suppliers,” Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said on a conference call with analysts. “We believe these actions will enable us to optimize our access to critical components including semiconductors and take care of our customers by fulfilling their demand as quickly as possible.”The supply conditions impacted the adjusted gross margin for the fiscal fourth quarter as Cisco continues to incur costs to make sure it gets products to customers, said Scott Herren, the company’s finance chief. “I think the supply-chain issues will stay with us at least through from what I can see at least through the end of this calendar year,” Herren said.In the quarter Cisco closed its $4.5 billion acquisition of networking hardware maker Acacia Communications and the $730 million acquisition of cloud communications software company IMImobile. Cisco also committed to delivering the majority of its portfolio as a service.Not including Wednesday’s after-hours move, Cisco shares have risen about 17% since the start of the year, compared with a 9% rise for the S&P 500 index over the same period.Executives will discuss the results with analysts on a conference call starting at 4:30 p.m. Eastern time.This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.WATCH: Why this trader is buying more Cisco

In this articleSQSPThe New York Stock Exchange welcomes Squarespace, Inc. (NYSE: SQSP), on May 19, 2021, in celebration of its Direct Listing.NYSEBy 2010, Anthony Casalena was seven years into bootstrapping his start-up Squarespace, which he’d grown from a dorm room project at the University of Maryland into a business with $10 million in revenue.That’s when Getty Images approached him to see if he wanted to sell.Casalena considered the offer long and hard, but he didn’t want to give up control. Instead, he opted to stay independent and bring in outside investors for the first time, allowing him to accelerate hiring and product development and also sell some of his stock.He didn’t know it at the time, but in raising a $38.5 million financing round, Casalena was making a billion-dollar decision for himself and a highly lucrative one for venture firms Index Ventures and Accel Partners.Squarespace, which sells tools for easy website creation and publishing, debuted on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday with a market value of $6.6 billion. Casalena, the company’s biggest stakeholder, owns shares worth $2.4 billion, while Index and Accel control holdings valued at $944 million and $750 million, respectively.Because Squarespace went public through a direct listing rather than raising capital in an IPO, insiders can start selling right away and don’t have to wait for a lock-up expiration. Their stakes listed above include some sales that they registered to trade right away, including 6.2 million registered by Casalena.”A direct listing fit for us because Squarespace has been a profitable company for a number of years and we don’t need to raise money in this event,” Casalena told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday. “Our thinking was pursue the direct listing, give people the option to buy if they want to buy, sell if they want to sell. What’s great about the direct listing is no one’s suffering unnecessary dilution today.”Squarespace had a rough debut, opening at $48, below its $50 reference price on the NYSE. In March, the company raised a private round at $68.42 a share, valuing the business at $10 billion. Stocks were broadly down on Wednesday, and cloud software stocks have been badly underperforming the market this year, as investors rotate out of risk.Still, at 38 years old, Casalena is the latest tech entrepreneur to join the billionaire ranks as high-growth companies that had filled up the IPO pipeline in recent years hit the market with big valuations. The founders of Affirm, Roblox, Coinbase, Bumble, UiPath and AppLovin have all entered the three-comma club this year.Squarespace competes most directly with companies such as Wix, Automattic’s WordPress, Square’s Weebly and Shopify. The company has 3.7 million subscribers.Revenue last year rose 28% to $621.1 million. Net income narrowed to $30.6 million from $58.2 million a year earlier, as the company boosted spending on sales and marketing by 40% “in light of the accelerating trends in the amount of time and money consumers are spending online during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Squarespace said in its prospectus.From college to CEOThe Squarespace story began in 2003 at a student apartment complex called South Campus Commons in College Park, Maryland. While in school, Casalena was looking for a website that enabled easy online publishing, but he found the existing services such as Blogger insufficient. He coded together his own and soon found that someone wanted to pay him to use it.”The blog was the anchor, but it was always about doing more with it,” Casalena told the NPR podcast How I Built This with Guy Raz, in 2019.Casalena eventually persuaded his dad to give him $30,000 so he could buy a couple of servers and house them in a data center in New York. After college, he drove to Manhattan and took up residence in a fourth-floor walkup apartment that he’d found on Craigslist.Over the next few years, Squarespace grew steadily with a skeleton crew and little structure. In 2007, Casalena started trying to professionalize operations and even hired a more seasoned executive as CEO. He realized that approach wasn’t going to work.”I learned a lot of lessons the hard way, by literally making, I think, pretty much every possible mistake one can make,” Casalena told Raz. “I didn’t know what I was getting into.”Meanwhile, Accel had been keeping a close eye on Casalena. The firm, which was best known for an early bet on Facebook, had begun looking for internet and software businesses across the globe that were gaining significant traction without venture funding. Someday, Accel’s thinking went, these founders may want to raise money to make an acquisition or seek funding to hire some more expensive talent.”In those situations, we want to do our best to build a relationship and try to be there when perhaps they evolve their thinking,” Andrew Braccia, the Accel partner who ended up leading the Squarespace investment, said in an interview.Accel used a similar approach to invest in Atlassian, an Australian software company whose products were popular with developers, and Qualtrics, a family-run cloud software business in Utah. Atlassian now has a market cap of $54 billion, and Qualtrics was acquired by SAP in 2018 for $8 billion, before spinning out this year into a publicly traded company worth $17 billion.A decade ago Accel’s growth investing strategy was just a thesis, but Braccia said it’s now clear that “you can create venture-style returns out of later-stage bootstrapped businesses.”Braccia, who’s based in Silicon Valley, flew out to meet Casalena in 2010. He and fellow Accel partner Ryan Sweeney had breakfast with the Squarespace founder at Mercer Kitchen downtown and then spent a couple hours at the Squarespace office, where Casalena walked them through his vision for the next iteration of the company’s publishing system.”I remember watching Anthony take us through the new version of his product,” Braccia said. “He was maniacally focused on the smallest of details.”A lucky eruptionAround the same time, in July 2010, Index’s Dominique Vidal was in New York to meet Casalena. He was introduced by Jonathan Klein, Getty’s CEO at the time, and flew in from London to try to land the deal. Vidal, who was also friends with Braccia from their pre-venture days working at Yahoo, ended up stuck in New York for much longer than expected because of the volcanic eruption in Iceland that spewed ash across much of Europe and disrupted international travel.Vidal wasn’t available for an interview, but Nina Achadjian, another partner at Index, relayed the story to CNBC on his behalf.”Dom’s flight was canceled, and he hung out with Anthony a ton more,” Achadjian said. “The more time he spent with Anthony, the more he was blown away.”Casalena told Raz on his podcast that he wasn’t sure how Index and Accel heard that Getty had made an offer, but somehow they “caught wind of this,” he said. They had a counterproposal for him.They said, “You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to sell it all if you want some liquidity,” Casalena told Raz. “Why don’t you accept an investment from us? We’ll put some money into the company. You can sell some of your shares to us. You can keep running it. We’ll put a board in place, we’ll help you recruit executives and all that. I liked that.”Vidal and Klein joined the board along with Braccia. Casalena resumed as CEO.Squarespace went on to raise another $40 million in 2014 in a round led by General Atlantic, which is now the biggest outside investor, with a $1.3 billion stake. The company raised $200 million at a $1.7 billion valuation in 2017 and $300 million in March ahead of the direct listing.The New York Stock Exchange welcomes Squarespace, Inc. (NYSE: SQSP), on May 19, 2021, in celebration of its Direct Listing.NYSEBy waiting so long before raising his first outside capital, Casalena maintained a bigger stake than many founders of venture-backed companies.He also has an outsized amount of control over decision-making. Squarespace has a dual-class voting structure, and Casalena owns most of the Class B shares, giving him control of about 68% of the total voting power.While that structure has become common in Silicon Valley among founder-led companies, critics say it creates poor systems for accountability and limits the ability for the board and shareholders to take action when necessary.IPO research firm New Constructs, in a report this week, said the corporate structure is one of the reasons that investors should be cautious. The firm said Squarespace is worth “at best $4.2 billion,” in part because it operates in a highly competitive market with cheaper alternatives.The consolidation of power doesn’t help.”A risk of investing in Squarespace’s direct listing, and other recent IPOs, is the fact that the shares sold provide little to no say over corporate governance,” the firm wrote.WATCH: Squarespace ad distinguishes between two worlds

In this articleAMZNAn Amazon worker inside a warehouse during coronavirus pandemicAmazon said Wednesday it will soon stop requiring face masks for fully vaccinated workers inside warehouses, except where required by law.Starting Monday, fully vaccinated operations employees in the U.S. will no longer be required to wear a face covering at work unless it is mandated by state or local regulations, according to a notice Amazon sent to workers that was obtained by CNBC.Amazon confirmed to CNBC that it’s updating its mask policies for fully vaccinated workers.Amazon said in the notice to workers that it considers them to be fully vaccinated once it has been 14 or more days since their final vaccine dose. Workers must also have a copy of their vaccine card, the company said.”A HUGE thank you to everyone who has and continues to prioritize our Covid-19 safety measures,” the company said in the notice to workers. “The last 14 months have not always been easy, but your dedication continues to be appreciated by leaders and customers across the country. We cannot wait to see your smile.”To verify that workers are vaccinated, Amazon will require employees to enter their vaccine information into an internal employee portal, called “A to Z.” Fully vaccinated employees will receive a green check mark on screen, which they then show as proof as they enter their site at the start of their shift.By early June, Amazon said it will provide workers with a green check mark sticker that they can add to their badge, signifying they’re fully vaccinated and allowing them to enter work without a face covering or verifying their vaccination status. By mid-June, Amazon said, it will ask workers to upload a picture of their vaccine card to the internal portal.All other Covid-19 safety protocols will remain the same, Amazon said. Last March, Amazon began taking certain safety precautions inside warehouses, such as instructing employees to wash their hands, use hand sanitizer and practice social distancing.Amazon joins a growing list of retailers and restaurants that have eased mask requirements since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said earlier this month that fully vaccinated people don’t have to cover their faces indoors anymore. Costco, Walmart, Chipotle, Target and Starbucks are among several companies that have updated their mask requirements. Home Depot, Gap and Ulta Beauty are among those that said they would maintain their safety precautions for the time being.Amazon hasn’t required its front-line workers to get vaccinated, but it has nudged employees to get a coronavirus shot by offering them a bonus of up to $80. Additionally, it has told new hires that they will get $100 for showing proof of vaccination.Amazon in March began rolling out on-site vaccination clinics at warehouses in Missouri, Nevada and Kansas. Since then, Amazon said, clinics have opened in more than 250 warehouses across the U.S. and Canada, covering more than half a million front-line warehouse and delivery workers.

In this articleTSPTuSimple self-driving truckSource: TuSimpleAutonomous vehicle company TuSimple on Wednesday claimed that its trucks shaved 10 hours off what’s normally a 24-hour job.The company tested its trucks by hauling fresh watermelons along a 951-mile route from Nogales, Arizona to Oklahoma City. The drive was part of a pilot project with TuSimple partners Giumarra, a produce grower and distributor, and the Associated Wholesale Grocers.The run normally takes 24 hours and 6 minutes with human drivers and traditional trucks, but TuSimple’s automated driving systems enabled a 42% faster run of 14 hours and six minutes, the company said.According to TuSimple, a human driver worked on the pick-up and delivery of the produce. But during the long middle segment of the drive — from Tucson, Arizona, to Dallas, Texas — TuSimple’s vehicle drove itself with a human safety driver on board.A spokesperson for TuSimple told CNBC the pilot was done with a safety driver on-board partly to comply with a patchwork of local regulations in the U.S. TuSimple aims to operate its trucks without needing a safety driver on-board at all by the end of 2024. Its trucks can be driven manually if and when needed.Today, federal regulation does not limit the use of automated driving systems in the U.S. Rules and enforcement are left to states. But a congressional subcommittee on Tuesday discussed possible rules and incentives that would encourage broader adoption of driverless vehicles and grow the emerging industry domestically.As an emerging tech company, TuSimple is not yet profitable despite its market cap of more than $7 billion. The approximately 800-employee startup spent $41.4 million on research and development in the first quarter this year, and generated $944,000 in revenue during the same period.The company is going after a significant piece of an estimated $4 trillion global truck freight market.Competitors developing autonomous vehicle systems specifically for hauling freight also include Aurora, Tesla via its Heavy Trucking unit, Daimler Trucks (via their Torc Robotics subsidiary), Amazon-backed Embark and Alphabet’s Waymo, among others in the U.S.Some competitors, joined by the likes of Toyota-backed Pony.ai and Nuro, are developing driverless vehicles for “contactless” food deliveries to consumers as well.Prior to its IPO, TuSimple struck partnerships with and scored financial backing from Volkswagen AG’s heavy-truck business, The Traton Group, and from Navistar to develop their vehicles. It also raised funds from the venture arm of UPS, and partnered with the U.S. Postal Service to conduct a multi-state test program running trucks between Dallas and Phoenix.