Personalized AI pricing is coming

Tech giant Oracle will receive a copy of the algorithm powering TikTok to operate for U.S. users, according to a senior official in President Donald Trump’s administration on Monday.

Determining next steps for the algorithm, currently owned by the Beijing-based ByteDance, has been one of the most closely watched issues during negotiations over TikTok’s future.

The Trump administration official, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the emerging deal, said they believe the plan will satisfy national security concerns if TikTok divests from its Chinese parent, ByteDance. President Joe Biden signed bipartisan legislation before leaving office, requiring the Chinese company to sell its assets to an American company or face a ban.

American officials have previously warned that the algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect.

“It wouldn’t be in compliance if the algorithm were Chinese. There can’t be any shared algorithm with ByteDance,” said a spokesperson for the House Select Committee on China.

Oracle would receive a copy of the algorithm and oversee the app’s security operations.

The algorithm would be “fully inspected and retrained,” the senior White House official said Monday. In a call with reporters, the official later emphasized that the content recommendation formula would be retrained only on U.S. data to make sure the system is “behaving appropriately.” It is currently unclear if retraining the U.S. copy of the algorithm on local data would essentially create a separate TikTok experience just for domestic users.

“The president will sign later this week, essentially declaring that the terms of this deal meet America’s national security needs,” the White House official said. He notes that Trump will then issue a 120-day reprieve to get the necessary agreements finalized.

Full details on the investors have not been released. However, the official confirmed that the U.S. operations will be a new joint venture with a board of directors that will have a majority of American members — Oracle and Silver Lake, a private equity firm, are the only confirmed consortium participants so far.

The White House official also said that under the preliminary deal — which still requires Chinese officials to sign off on a framework agreement — the United States will not take an equity stake in the new venture or have representation on the controlling committee.

Trump, a Republican, has extended the deadline several times as he worked to reach a deal to keep TikTok available. He spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday.

Spirit Airlines is planning to furlough one-third of its flight attendants, another effort by the bankrupt airline to slash expenses. 

The carrier said Monday that it plans to furlough 1,800 of its roughly 5,200 flight attendants. Hundreds had already been out on voluntary leaves, but Chief Operating Officer John Bendoraitis said Spirit had reached the limit of what it could achieve through such measures.

“We need to shift our focus to a complete rightsizing of the airline, which means volume-based adjustments to our Flight Attendant group, and across our teams,” he wrote in an employee message. “This is hard news, and we understand it affects not only you and your peers but also your families.”

Flight attendants can volunteer for furlough, which will determine how many are involuntarily cut. Voluntary furloughs can run either six months or a year, according to the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, a union that represents flight attendants at Spirit and other airlines.

Voluntary furloughs will take effect Nov. 1, while involuntary furloughs will take effect Dec. 1, the union said in a notice to members. “Furlough news is more than just a corporate decision; it’s a deeply personal and professional upheaval,” the union said.

The move means more pain for employees as Spirit looks to drastically scale back. It told employees last week that it plans to reduce flying capacity by 25% in its November schedule from a year earlier, leaving the airline with more planes and employees than it needs. 

Spirit last month filed for bankruptcy for a second time in less than a year. Executives said the company’s first Chapter 11 process failed to address all its financial issues, including costly airplane leases and high labor costs.

The carrier told pilots last week it needs to find $100 million in annual contract savings. Ryan Muller, chairman of the union that represents Spirit’s pilots, told members in a note that concessions were inevitable, whether through a negotiated agreement, a judge’s order, or the company’s liquidation. 

“That is the reality of this bankruptcy,” he wrote last week. “There is no ‘do nothing’ option.”

Chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab plans to invest up to $100 billion in artificial intelligence startup OpenAI under a new agreement, the companies said on Monday, as competition intensifies among technology giants to secure access to energy and chips needed for AI growth.

The companies unveiled a letter of intent for a landmark strategic partnership to deploy at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia chips for OpenAI's AI infrastructure.

They aim to finalize partnership details in the coming weeks, with the first deployment phase targeted to come online in the second half of 2026

"Everything starts with compute," Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI ,said in a release.

"Compute infrastructure will be the basis for the economy of the future, and we will utilize what we're building with Nvidia to both create new AI breakthroughs and empower people and businesses with them at scale."

Shares of Oracle (ORCL.N), opens new tab, a partner with OpenAI, SoftBank (9434.T), opens new tab, and Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab on the $500 billion Stargate AI data center project, gained nearly 5%.

Nvidia's investment comes days after it committed $5 billion to struggling chipmaker Intel (INTC.O), opens new tab.

 Whether pricing is labeled "dynamic" or "personalized," consumers know this much – they don't like it. But as Bloomberg columnist Allison Schrager notes, we should prepare for AI to play a role in determining how much we pay for virtually every online purchase, whether it's plane tickets or children's Tylenol. Delta recently faced blowback after partnering with an AI firm to set airfares. The proliferation of personal data simply presents too inviting a target. "If the data is there," Schrager writes, "sellers will want to use it."

Dynamic Pricing and AI: The Future of Ticket Sales is Here! 🤑

In 2025, companies are using artificial intelligence to adjust ticket prices in real time. This is not just a trend — it’s a way to increase revenue and improve the customer experience.
Why it works:
·      📊 Price optimization based on demand
·      🤖 Analysis of past sales, audience activity, and external factors
·      💸 Increased conversion and event profitability
Major airline Delta is already using AI for dynamic ticket pricing, taking into account customer behavior and even the time of day. Similarly, the concert industry can use AI to adjust ticket prices for popular shows: if interest in an event rises, prices can increase to maximize revenue; if demand is lower than expected, prices can decrease to attract more attendees.
AI helps businesses sell more, faster, and more efficiently, while customers get the right price at the right time.

 Have you ever encountered dynamic pricing? What opportunities do you think AI will bring to the ticketing industry in the coming years?

The Trump administration says the new $100,000 fee for H-1B visas, which it announced Friday, will help American workers.

Economists agree that it could indeed benefit some U.S. workers. But they worry that for the bulk of workers, it could do just the opposite. 

“H-1B visas cause innovation, they cause entrepreneurship, they cause more R&D investment,” said George Mason University economist Michael Clemens. “They cause higher productivity in the whole U.S. economy, which generates job opportunities and higher earnings for native workers across the skill spectrum.” 

Clemens and other economists cite a body of research suggesting that the program has benefited U.S. workers and the U.S. economy, far more than it has hurt. 

The H-1B program, created by Congress in 1990, is the main pathway to the U.S. for highly skilled foreign workers. It has long generated controversy, with critics contending that it gives jobs to foreigners at the expense of native workers. 

Workers born in India accounted for nearly three-quarters of these visas in 2023, a Pew Research Center analysis found. China-born workers were a distant second, accounting for a bit more than one in 10 visas.

A large number of the H-1B visas issued to workers at for-profit companies are in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—the so-called STEM professions. Many go into computer-related jobs at some of the largest U.S. tech companies: Pew found that in 2023, Amazon.com had by far the most H-1B approvals of any company.

President Trump’s administration set the new fee for the visas. PHOTO: BONNIE CASH/BLOOMBERG NEWS

Universities and nonprofits also use the H-1B program to hire foreign-born professors and other workers. The H-1B visa additionally helps attract foreign STEM students to American universities, since it gives them a pathway to living and working in the U.S. after graduation. 

The tech industry has shed thousands of employees in recent years, and critics of the H-1B system say it has benefited foreign workers at the expense of domestic tech workers. The turmoil comes at a time when advances in artificial intelligence have upended the landscape for tech workers.

The new $100,000 fee is meant to revamp a system the Trump administration says has been exploited by tech companies. Currently, applicants for the H-1B visa must pay a small fee to enter into a lottery system, and the winners of that lottery pay a larger fee alongside their vetting applications. 

Under the new system, the administration argues, only the best high-skilled workers will be worth the price, leaving more opportunities for U.S.-based labor. “We’re having people come in, people that in many cases are very successful or whatever, as opposed to walking over the borders,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Friday.

A slice of native-born workers, such as some computer programmers, would likely benefit from the reduction in new workers on H-1B visas the fee would spark. 

“The typical H-1B visa employee working for the typical for-profit company that’s hired them is doing work for whom otherwise available workers exist,” said Notre Dame economist Kirk Doran. 

Their employment prospects could improve as companies scrambled to fill positions, and their wages could rise. 

But other workers could be hurt. A 2015 paper by economists Giovanni Peri, Kevin Shih, and Chad Sparber found that influxes of foreign-born workers boosted wages for native-born workers. A 2023 paper by economist Britta Glennon found that when H-1B immigration is restricted, U.S. multinationals tend to shift work to other countries. 

The new fee could do lasting damage, according to Rutgers University economist Jennifer Hunt.

“This misguided measure could shut down the H-1B program entirely,” she said. “And if that happens, it’ll have a very detrimental effect on the economy as a whole.” Overall, Hunt said H-1B workers don’t substitute for U.S. workers, but complement them instead, helping them do their jobs and making them more productive.

In its announcement Friday, the White House cited 2017 research by economists John Bound, Gaurav Khanna, and Nicolas Morales showing that the influx of foreigners entering the U.S. high-skill workforce over the 1990s dampened the wages of native-born computer scientists.

The announcement didn’t include the economists’ other findings, such as that other information-technology workers see wage benefits, and that U.S. workers and consumers more broadly benefit from the innovation and efficiency created by immigrant-driven software production.

“When we consider the broader picture, U.S.-born workers as a whole experience net benefits,” Khanna said in an email.

Over time, the U.S. labor market would likely be able to adjust to the sharp reduction in H-1B visas, potentially caused by the $100,000 fee, said Notre Dame’s Doran. The problem is that a sudden implementation could cause big dislocations, triggering large numbers of vacancies at companies that relied on H-1B workers. Even if there are enough native-born workers to fill those positions, they might not immediately live where the jobs are. 

“Trauma happens in labor markets when a large shock occurs and there’s not enough time to adjust for it,” he said. 

President Donald Trump’s latest plan to overhaul the American immigration system has left some immigrant workers confused, forcing the White House on Saturday to scramble to clarify that a new $100,000 fee on H-1B visas for skilled tech workers only applies to new applicants and not to current visa holders.

“Those who already hold H-1B visas and are currently outside of the country right now will NOT be charged $100,000 to re-enter,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a posting on X. “This applies only to new visas, not renewals, and not current visa holders.”

The fee took effect at 12:01 a.m. ET Sunday. It is scheduled to expire after a year. But it could be extended if the government determines that it is in the interest of the United States to keep it.