Politics

More tech money pours into Zuckerberg-backed California tax measure

Dustin Moskovitz, Irwin Jacobs and Jeff Lawson just put hundreds of thousands of dollars into Proposition 15.

Co-founder Dustin Moskovitz

Facebook and Asana co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna are among the new tech backers of Proposition 15 in California.

Photo: Asana

Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs and Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson are joining the ranks of tech leaders throwing their support behind Proposition 15, a California ballot initiative that would raise as much as $12 billion for local schools and communities by hiking some commercial property taxes.

Until recently, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, were lonely voices in this fight, flooding the Yes on 15 campaign with more than $10 million in support. Despite activists' concerted efforts to get more of Silicon Valley's business leaders to support the measure, even the industry's most socially conscious CEOs were staying silent.

That is, until this week, when Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced he was backing the measure with $400,000 in funding. "We're supporting CA Prop 15 [...] because it's an important step in addressing the resource deficits that both our public schools & local governments face," Benioff tweeted.

That announcement broke the dam, leading to a wave of new contributions from the tech sector. According to newly filed contribution records to the Yes on 15 campaign, Moskovitz and his wife, Cari Tuna, donated $250,000 to the measure. Lawson and his wife Erica gave $100,000. Jacobs and his wife Joan contributed $250,000. And the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which has raised gobs of money in the past from tech billionaires including WhatsApp co-founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton, shelled out $100,000. Moskovitz, Jacobs and Lawson are also all prominent Democratic donors.

"Support for Proposition 15 keeps rolling in because this crisis has further exposed the structural inequities baked into our current system, and tech and business leaders recognize that Proposition 15 will result in an equitable reinvestment in our schools, local communities, and small businesses," Gina Dalma, executive vice president at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, said in a statement.

Proposition 15 will carve large commercial landowners out of California's Proposition 13, which allows property owners to pay taxes on the price of their property when it was purchased, not its current market value. Prop 13 has allowed commercial landowners in California to skirt the higher taxes that younger companies, many of them in the tech sector, currently pay. Proposition 15 would change that, and it has been endorsed by California Sen. Kamala Harris, a flurry of education and labor groups, and most mayors in the state. The opposition, meanwhile, includes a slew of business groups including the California Chamber of Commerce, as well as agricultural organizations, who argue that even though farmland is exempt from the measure, Proposition 15 would lead to tax hikes on "fixtures and improvements" to farmland.

Since Proposition 15 was introduced, a nonprofit group called TechEquity has also been actively seeking out tech sector endorsements for the measure. Catherine Bracy, executive director of TechEquity, was encouraged by the new show of support. "It's very heartening to see tech step up to support what is the most critically important policy to help California recover from the recession," Bracy told Protocol. "We hope this is an indicator that tech leaders realize the importance of addressing structural issues to bring about a twenty-first century economy that works for everyone."

Fintech

Judge Zia Faruqui is trying to teach you crypto, one ‘SNL’ reference at a time

His decisions on major cryptocurrency cases have quoted "The Big Lebowski," "SNL," and "Dr. Strangelove." That’s because he wants you — yes, you — to read them.

The ways Zia Faruqui (right) has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster.

Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

“Cryptocurrency and related software analytics tools are ‘The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic.’”

That’s not a quote from "The Big Lebowski" — at least, not directly. It’s a quote from a Washington, D.C., district court memorandum opinion on the role cryptocurrency analytics tools can play in government investigations. The author is Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

Keep ReadingShow less
Veronica Irwin

Veronica Irwin (@vronirwin) is a San Francisco-based reporter at Protocol covering fintech. Previously she was at the San Francisco Examiner, covering tech from a hyper-local angle. Before that, her byline was featured in SF Weekly, The Nation, Techworker, Ms. Magazine and The Frisc.

The financial technology transformation is driving competition, creating consumer choice, and shaping the future of finance. Hear from seven fintech leaders who are reshaping the future of finance, and join the inaugural Financial Technology Association Fintech Summit to learn more.

Keep ReadingShow less
FTA
The Financial Technology Association (FTA) represents industry leaders shaping the future of finance. We champion the power of technology-centered financial services and advocate for the modernization of financial regulation to support inclusion and responsible innovation.
Enterprise

AWS CEO: The cloud isn’t just about technology

As AWS preps for its annual re:Invent conference, Adam Selipsky talks product strategy, support for hybrid environments, and the value of the cloud in uncertain economic times.

Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

AWS is gearing up for re:Invent, its annual cloud computing conference where announcements this year are expected to focus on its end-to-end data strategy and delivering new industry-specific services.

It will be the second re:Invent with CEO Adam Selipsky as leader of the industry’s largest cloud provider after his return last year to AWS from data visualization company Tableau Software.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donna Goodison

Donna Goodison (@dgoodison) is Protocol's senior reporter focusing on enterprise infrastructure technology, from the 'Big 3' cloud computing providers to data centers. She previously covered the public cloud at CRN after 15 years as a business reporter for the Boston Herald. Based in Massachusetts, she also has worked as a Boston Globe freelancer, business reporter at the Boston Business Journal and real estate reporter at Banker & Tradesman after toiling at weekly newspapers.

Image: Protocol

We launched Protocol in February 2020 to cover the evolving power center of tech. It is with deep sadness that just under three years later, we are winding down the publication.

As of today, we will not publish any more stories. All of our newsletters, apart from our flagship, Source Code, will no longer be sent. Source Code will be published and sent for the next few weeks, but it will also close down in December.

Keep ReadingShow less
Bennett Richardson

Bennett Richardson ( @bennettrich) is the president of Protocol. Prior to joining Protocol in 2019, Bennett was executive director of global strategic partnerships at POLITICO, where he led strategic growth efforts including POLITICO's European expansion in Brussels and POLITICO's creative agency POLITICO Focus during his six years with the company. Prior to POLITICO, Bennett was co-founder and CMO of Hinge, the mobile dating company recently acquired by Match Group. Bennett began his career in digital and social brand marketing working with major brands across tech, energy, and health care at leading marketing and communications agencies including Edelman and GMMB. Bennett is originally from Portland, Maine, and received his bachelor's degree from Colgate University.

Enterprise

Why large enterprises struggle to find suitable platforms for MLops

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, and as larger enterprises go from deploying hundreds of models to thousands and even millions of models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

As companies expand their use of AI beyond running just a few machine learning models, ML practitioners say that they have yet to find what they need from prepackaged MLops systems.

Photo: artpartner-images via Getty Images

On any given day, Lily AI runs hundreds of machine learning models using computer vision and natural language processing that are customized for its retail and ecommerce clients to make website product recommendations, forecast demand, and plan merchandising. But this spring when the company was in the market for a machine learning operations platform to manage its expanding model roster, it wasn’t easy to find a suitable off-the-shelf system that could handle such a large number of models in deployment while also meeting other criteria.

Some MLops platforms are not well-suited for maintaining even more than 10 machine learning models when it comes to keeping track of data, navigating their user interfaces, or reporting capabilities, Matthew Nokleby, machine learning manager for Lily AI’s product intelligence team, told Protocol earlier this year. “The duct tape starts to show,” he said.

Keep ReadingShow less
Kate Kaye

Kate Kaye is an award-winning multimedia reporter digging deep and telling print, digital and audio stories. She covers AI and data for Protocol. Her reporting on AI and tech ethics issues has been published in OneZero, Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, CityLab, Ad Age and Digiday and heard on NPR. Kate is the creator of RedTailMedia.org and is the author of "Campaign '08: A Turning Point for Digital Media," a book about how the 2008 presidential campaigns used digital media and data.

Latest Stories
Bulletins