The internet industry is suing the state of California over its days-old net neutrality law.

The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday by major trade groups representing broadband companies, is the second major lawsuit filed against the state over the law — the first was brought by the Justice Department.

On Sunday evening, California Governor Jerry Brown signed what is considered to be the strictest net neutrality law in the country. Under the law, internet service providers will not be allowed to block or slow specific types of content or applications, or charge apps or companies fees for faster access to customers.

Hours later, the federal government filed a lawsuit in which it alleged that California was “attempting to subvert the Federal Government’s deregulatory approach” to the internet. The DOJ argues states can’t pass their own laws governing internet companies, because broadband services cross state lines. It is fighting the state over a clause in the 2017 order repealing Obama-era federal net neutrality protections. In that order, the FCC said it could pre-empt state-level net neutrality laws.

The impending legal battle could drag on for many months if not longer, Daniel Lyons, an associate professor at Boston College Law School who specializes in telecommunications and Internet regulation, told CNN.

A lot is riding on the outcome. The California law is considered the most thorough state-level net neutrality legislation yet passed, and other states are expected to use it as a blueprint for their own laws.

If California wins in court, it would open the door for those other states to take similar actions. However, the FCC could try to come back with an order to block their efforts again, Lyons said.

California will likely claim that the pre-emption provision is invalid, Lyons said, while the federal government will attempt to get an injunction to stop the law from taking effect. in doing so, it will claim that the law will cause harm if allowed to take effect.

“These attempts at getting a preliminary injunction seem weak and are likely to fail for the same reasons that the Internet Service Provider [ISP] industry was unable to obtain a stay of the FCC’s former net neutrality rules in 2015,” said telecommunications attorney Pantelis Michalopoulos, a partner at Steptoe & Johnson LLP who has argued net neutrality cases. “The Internet Service Providers offer speculative theories about why they will suffer irreparable injury. These theories do not appear to satisfy the test for a preliminary injunction.”

The industry groups taking part in the new lawsuit represent major companies including AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, as well as other cable companies and wireless providers across the US. The groups had previously lobbied against the state law. (CNN is owned by AT&T.)

“We oppose California’s action to regulate internet access because it threatens to negatively affect services for millions of consumers and harm new investment and economic growth. Republican and Democratic administrations, time and again, have embraced the notion that actions like this are preempted by federal law,” the trade groups USTelecom, CTIA — The Wireless Association, The Internet & Television Association, and the American Cable Association said in a statement. “We will continue our work to ensure Congress adopts bipartisan legislation to create a permanent framework for protecting the open internet that consumers expect and deserve.”

In a statement Wednesday afternoon, Attorney General Xavier Becerra indicated the state would fight to protect its new law.

“This suit was brought by power brokers who have an obvious financial interest in maintaining their stronghold on the public’s access to online content. California, the country’s economic engine, has the right to exercise its sovereign powers under the Constitution and we will do everything we can to protect the right of our 40 million consumers to access information by defending a free and open Internet,” Becerra said in a statement.

State Senator Scott Wiener, a co-author of the bill, previously told CNN he expected the ISPs to sue over the law.

“The internet service providers have every right to sue California, just like California has every right—indeed an obligation—to protect our residents’ access to an open internet,” Wiener said after the trade groups filed their suit.

CNNMoney (San Francisco) First published October 3, 2018: 5:46 PM ET

Tesla’s stock tumbled Friday morning after the SEC sued Elon Musk for misleading investors.

Musk tweeted on August 7 that he had secured funding to take Tesla private at $420 a share. Typically, stocks match takeover prices that a company publicizes. Investors assume the deal will be completed and the company will eventually be worth the price at which the company says it will be sold.

However, skeptical investors never believed Musk, and the stock never approached anything close to $420 a share. It rose as high as $387.46 on August 7 and tumbled since then.

Their skepticism was for good reason: Musk had never secured the funding, the SEC alleges. He abandoned the plan to go private three weeks after he first tweeted about it.

The stock fell as low as $265 after the bell Thursday, 14% below Tesla’s closing price for the day. Including the off-hours plunge, Tesla’s stock has plummeted more than 29% since Musk’s infamous tweet.

Tesla’s (TSLA) falling stock price could come back to haunt the company. Tesla is burning through cash to build expensive plants and cars, but it badly needs that money to pay about $1 billion in debt by February 2019. Most of that would convert to stock if Tesla’s price holds above $360 — but that seems unlikely.

If Tesla needs to pay back its debt with cash — and if the company lacks the cash to pay it — Tesla could raise the money by issuing more debt or stock. But that could further deflate its stock price, depressing the amount of capital the company has to spend on new infrastructure to build cars.

Musk has denied that the company faces a cash crunch. He says increased Model 3 sales will generate enough cash to finally make Tesla profitable in the second half of 2018.

The SEC’s lawsuit could cause other problems for Tesla.

The agency has asked a federal judge to prevent Musk from serving as an officer or a director of a public company, among other penalties.

That’s a serious concern for Tesla, which Musk built from scratch into a multibillion-dollar company. He’s the carmaker’s chairman and CEO.

CNNMoney (New York) First published September 27, 2018: 5:52 PM ET

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A rare spot of happy news: Apple is finally getting a llama emoji. And a raccoon, bagel, frisbee and mosquito emoji, too.

The company said it will likely add 70 new emoji for iPhone and iPad users later this month. Beta testers and developers who update to iOS 12.1 will see the new emoji starting Tuesday.

Beyond the new cute (and bloodsucking) animals, iOS 12.1 users will now be able to send a bagel, salt, luggage, compass, hiking boot, softball, frisbee, and an Asian-inspired Red Gift Envelope to friends and family.

On World Emoji Day in July, Apple previewed new options for bald and redheaded emoji characters, as well a lobster, cupcake and superheroes. These emoji will also roll out to iOS 12.1.

The Unicode Consortium, the nonprofit organization that manages the world’s emoji standards, unveiled its latest list in February. Each company that uses emoji in their products puts their own spin on the tiny cartoons and picks which options from the master list to include.

The interpretations can lead to controversy, such as Google’s misplacement of foam on its beer emoji, and the tragic jumbling of ingredients on its hamburger emoji. Both have since been corrected.

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Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian’s venture capital firm has raised an additional $225 million to invest in early-stage startups.

It is the fourth and largest fund raised by Initialized Capital, the San Francisco-based venture capital firm founded by Ohanian and Garry Tan.

The new fund, announced on Tuesday, comes as Ohanian spends more time with the firm. About nine months ago, he stepped away from his day-to-day role at Reddit, the popular discussion board platform he co-founded in 2005. When Initialized Capital launched in 2012, Ohanian and Tan were also partners at Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley accelerator fund known for helping companies like Airbnb and Dropbox get off the ground.

Tan and Ohanian credit their past experiences as engineers, operators and investors at Y Combinator for their success as investors at their own firm.

“We know that investors sitting around a table are not going to be able to come up with the future because we aren’t the ones actively building it, but we’ve seen enough and built enough in the way of software and scalable businesses that our ‘Spidey’ senses start tingling when we get on the right track with a founder,” Ohanian told CNN Tuesday.

Together, Ohanian and Tan have invested in several startups that are now “unicorns” -— the term for privately-held startups valued at $1 billion or more. That includes crypto marketplace Coinbase and grocery delivery startup Instacart, among others.

Initialized Capital will remained focused primarily on funding early-stage startups but will cut larger checks, such as $1 million, compared to $50,000, the size of some of its first investments. That’s a sign of the times — valuations and deal sizes have grown in recent years. The average deal size in the second quarter of this year was $18 million, the highest this decade, according to PitchBook.

The firm now has a team of eight partners who help portfolio companies with everything from product development to legal, design and marketing.

Ohanian and Tan say their approach to funding startups is “thesis agnostic,” but they tend to look for businesses with “software at their core.”

They’ve invested in startups like Voyage — a self-driving car company that operates its vehicles in two retirement communities — as well Ro, a healthcare company whose first brand, Roman, is helping diagnose and treat those with erectile dysfunction.

“We still feel like there’s a lot of work left to be done when it comes to software solving big problems,” said Ohanian, who also sits on the board of Reddit and Ro. “This is our sweet spot.”

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Honda and General Motors are teaming up to create a new generation of fully autonomous vehicles. Honda will invest $2 billion over 12 years into GM’s autonomous vehicle subsidiary, Cruise.

GM and Cruise have been building and developing self-driving versions of GM’s Chevrolet Bolt EV electric car with plans to deploy a fleet of them for public use next year. With Honda’s engineering and financial assistance, Cruise will begin developing a new vehicle that is not based on any existing car, the companies said. It will represent the next step in autonomous driving, one in which controls for human operation are entirely absent.

“This is a purpose-built vehicle that will be the first vehicle produced at scale that is freed from the constraints of vehicle design and having a driver at the wheel,” said GM president Donald Amman.

Amman gave no precise timing on when Cruise Automation’s self-driving vehicles will be shuttling members of the general public, either in the Bolt EV or the new car. The cars will be deployed only when it has been decided they are safe enough, Amman enough.

The Japanese tech-focused investment bank Softbank recently invested $2.25 billion in Cruise, and Honda took a $750 million equity stake. Together, the Honda and Softbank investments give Cruise a total value of $14.6 billion.

“Autonomous vehicles are not simply a Silicon Valley-based dream,” said Zo Rahim, Research Manager at the automotive media company Cox Automotive. “Current auto manufacturers are primed to dictate the direction and growth of the future of mass mobility.”

GM’s stock rose 2% on Wednesday.

Honda and GM have been working together on electric car battery technology and hydrogen fuel cells, which extract energy electricity from hydrogen gas. The new partnership with Cruise Automation grew out of the two companies’ previous work.

GM (GM) boasts that, with the self-driving Bolt EV, it is currently the only company building autonomous vehicles on a production line. The companies would not say where or when the new vehicle will be produced.

Analysts are telling Tesla investors to brace themselves.

“If you buy or own Tesla stock, be prepared for a wild ride,” Autotrader analyst Michelle Krebs told CNNMoney.

The Securities and Exchange Commission sued Elon Musk on Thursday for making “false and misleading” statements to investors in an August 7 tweet that said he had secured funding to take Tesla (TSLA) private at $420 a share. The SEC alleges he did not have the funding secured.

Tesla’s stock fell 12% to $270 a share on Friday.

The company’s future is in the “board’s court now and it remains to be seen what will happen next,” wrote Cowen analyst Jeff Osborne in a note. The firm slashed Tesla’s price target to $200 per share.

Tesla needs to raise $2 billion in the fourth quarter to avoid bankruptcy in 2019, Osbourne estimates. That will be more of a challenge with Musk’s future in doubt, Osbourne said.

The firm chided Tesla as a company “that has always over promised and under delivered.”

Barclays analyst Brian Johnson said that Tesla’s stock has a $130 “Musk premium,” which could disappear if he leaves. If a judge forces Musk to step aside, investors will “focus back on the value of Tesla as a niche automaker, rather than a founder-led likely disrupter of multiple industries,” Johnson wrote in a note aptly titled “Lawsuit Secured” to clients.

Citigroup downgraded Tesla’s stock to a “sell” rating. It slashed Tesla’s price target to $225.

CNNMoney (New York) First published September 28, 2018: 9:48 AM ET

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Bumble is the latest online dating app to compete for the hearts of women in India.

Bumble, which requires women to make the first move, announced Wednesday plans to launch in India later this year. Indian celebrity Priyanka Chopra, a new investor in the company, will advise on the expansion.

The news comes less than a week after rival Tinder launched a My Move feature in India that gives women the option to prevent men from initiating a conversation.

But Bumble’s efforts for an expansion in India have been in the works for awhile. Founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd said the newly engaged Chopra first told her “Indian women needed Bumble” months ago. Chopra was among a group of high-profile women who helped Bumble kickoff its networking app, Bumble Bizz, in October 2017.

“It was clear then we shared a passion for empowering young women on a global level,” Wolfe Herd told CNN in an e-mail. “From there we began architecting a plan to partner and launch Bumble in India.”

Wolfe Herd said the challenge in entering the Indian market is “localizing the experience and attracting women” — an area in which Chopra will help.

Chopra’s manager, Anjula Acharia, is also an investor and adviser. Acharia helped Chopra — who was already established in India — reach fame in the United States. But Acharia has a long history of crossover efforts. She was instrumental in introducing artists such as Britney Spears and Lady Gaga to India — a background that could translate to Acharia helping Bumble resonate with the local audience.

Bumble’s local app will be in both Hindi and Hinglish — a hybrid between Hindi and English — and available on iOS and Android. It will also roll out new safety features before entering the region, which has a reputation for violence against women. In June, India was named the most dangerous country in the world to be a woman.

Wolfe Herd said it will only require Indian women to provide the first initial of their name — no first or last names — and provide new ways to report “bad behavior” in the app.

Bumble already has photo verification features and more than 4,000 content moderators who review photos and profiles.

Before Bumble, Wolfe Herd was an early employee and exec at Tinder but left the company in 2014 after suing for sexual harassment and discrimination. The case was eventually settled.

But tension between the two dating companies has become increasingly palpable as a result of very public litigation between the Bumble and Match Group, Tinder’s parent company.

In March, Match Group targeted Bumble with a lawsuit accusing the company of patent infringement and stealing trade secrets. Bumble asked the court last week to dismiss the case.

Separately, Bumble filed a counter lawsuit against Match Group. Bumble argues that Match Group is using litigation as revenge over failed acquisition talks. Both lawsuits are ongoing.

While Bumble already operates in over 160 countries, India is a significant market because of its size. According to a report from Bain & Co, India has 390 million internet users, the second largest of any country behind China.

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Uber has a new head of human resources. Her hire comes nearly three months after the controversial exit of the previous HR chief.

Nikki Krishnamurthy will replace Liane Hornsey, who left Uber in early July after an internal investigation into how she handled racial discrimination claims within the company, the company announced on Tuesday.

Krishnamurthy comes from Expedia where she served as its chief people officer. She worked with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. Before joining Uber last August, Khosrowshahi spent a decade leading Expedia.

In a statement, Khosrowshahi called Krishnamurthy a “trusted partner” who will help “evolve our culture.”

The move marks another key hire under Khosrowshahi, who has been tasked with cleaning up the company’s corporate culture.

Uber has faced with a string of scandals, including widespread allegations of gender and sexual harassment that led to co-founder Travis Kalanick’s resignation as CEO in June 2017.

Krishnamurthy, whose title is chief people officer, will oversee Uber’s human resources, recruiting, workplace, and diversity and inclusion teams. She starts on October 8.

Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket company just scored a major contract.

His company’s BE-4 engines will power United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur, a new suite of rockets that will aim to better compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX on price. Its first launch is slated for 2020.

The contract award with ULA marks a high-profile vote of confidence for Bezos’s space startup.

“We are very glad to have our BE-4 engine selected by United Launch Alliance. United Launch Alliance is the premier launch service provider for national security missions, and we’re thrilled to be part of their team and that mission,” Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith said in a statement announcing the award on Thursday.

ULA, a venture co-owned by longtime government contractors Boeing (BA) and Lockheed Martin (LMT), competes with SpaceX to launch sensitive national security satellites for the US government.

But the company had to rely on Russian made RD-180 engines to get its workhorse Atlas V rocket into orbit. That’s caused some political headaches for ULA.

Bezos, who has said he’s funding Blue Origin in part by selling about $1 billion worth of his own stake in Amazon (AMZN) each year, had competition for the contract: aerospace company Aeroject Rocketdyne (AJRD), which has a storied history of providing propulsion technology for NASA as well as existing ULA rockets, also competed for the ULA engine contract.

“ULA has chosen the best systems available to create the Vulcan Centaur,” ULA CEO Tory Bruno said in a statement Thursday.

Blue Origin’s win does not come as a huge surprise. The BE-4 is further along in development than the comparable Aerojet engine, dubbed the AR1, and is expected to be less expensive to make.

Bruno previously expressed his preference for Blue’s BE-4 over Aerojet’s AR1.

The announcement “is pretty significant nonetheless,” said Bill Ostrove, space analyst with Forecast International. “The fact that [Blue Origin] was able to defeat this established, storied company like Aerojet…it’s a major victory for a startup.”

Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000. The company has only launched test flights of its suborbital New Shepard rocket, which the company plans to use to fly tourists on short, scenic trips.

It began developing the BE-4, a massive rocket engine intended for much more powerful launch vehicles, in 2011. The BE-4 completed its first test fire last year.

Blue Origin’s contract win means the company will move forward with plans to open a massive manufacturing facility in Huntsville, Alabama. The firm said in July last year that it would build a 200,000 square foot plant that will employ up to 400 new manufacturing jobs if it cinched the ULA deal.

It also puts Blue Origin in the enviable position of producing BE-4 engines for two different rockets that will ultimately compete against each other for launch contracts.

In addition to supplying ULA’s Vulcan, the BE-4 will power a Blue Origin’s own heavy-lift rocket, called New Glenn.

Those two rockets will also compete against companies like SpaceX and Northrop Grumman (NOC) to land lucrative military launch contracts.

Blue Origin’s victory marks a “major defeat” for Aerojet because it essentially leaves the company out of the market for developing main engines for any of those heavy-lift launch vehicles, Ostrove said.

SpaceX makes engines in-house for its Falcon rockets, and Northrop Grumman is expected to do the same for its OmegA rocket.

Nonetheless, Aerojet still has a solid book of business building smaller engines, including one that will power the Vulcan’s upper stage. It also produces engines for NASA’s Space Launch System.

Steve Warren, Aerojet’s vice president of communications, told CNN Thursday that Aerojet’s AR1 can still be used to power medium-lift launch vehicles.

“This could easily become the workhorse engine for America,” he said.

Ostrove is skeptical. “It’s hard to see a place for it in the market,” he said. “There’s not much activity going on in that medium-class launch market.”

CNNMoney (New York) First published September 27, 2018: 7:03 PM ET

Bitcoin’s big stock market debut is coming at a bad time.

Three of the world’s top makers of cryptocurrency technology are planning to sell shares, giving investors a new way to bet on digital currencies. They’re reportedly hoping to raise billions of dollars.

Unlike the dollar or the euro, which are issued by central banks, cryptocurrencies are based on computer code. Bitcoin, for example, is created and traded through the “mining” process in which computer algorithms solve increasingly complex math problems.

Bitmain, Canaan and Ebang, which are all based in China, make money by selling the high-tech parts and systems that power this mining. Together, they dominate the business.

But the three companies operate in a young, unpredictable industry and are planning their IPOs in Hong Kong in brutal market conditions. The price of bitcoin, which soared to nearly $20,000 in December, has since plunged by about two-thirds. Other cryptocurrencies like ethereum have plummeted, too.

“If the market price of cryptocurrencies suddenly falls … demand for our mining hardware and cryptocurrency mining services will also drop rapidly,” Bitmain warned potential investors this week.

On top of that, Hong Kong’s stock market, where the companies plan to list, entered a bear market this month, having plunged more than 20% from its previous peak because of concerns about China’s economic slowdown and trade war with the United States.

The mining technology companies haven’t said when exactly they plan to go public or how much they’re seeking to raise. Bitmain and Canaan declined interview requests, while Ebang didn’t respond to a request.

“These firms might be looking to cash out before the market takes an even steeper nosedive,” said Benjamin Quinlan, founder of Hong Kong-based financial services consulting firm Quinlan & Associates.

He points out that cryptocurrencies are slowly gaining more acceptance among mainstream investors despite recent setbacks, and that the three mining companies’ revenues are still growing. But the industry faces major challenges.

A key one is how governments go about regulating digital currencies. Last year, China banned most activities involving bitcoin. The country is still thought to be home to a significant number of cryptocurrency mining operations, but authorities have been trying to push them out.

Cryptocurrency miners need huge amounts of electricity to run their rooms full of computing equipment around the clock. Some public utilities in the United States are already introducing higher tariffs specifically for miners.

“Increasing the cost of bitcoin mining will decrease the demand for mining equipment, hindering the performance of these companies,” Quinlan said.

Mining cryptocurrencies is already less lucrative than it used to be.

Bitcoin mining activity has exploded over the past year, boosting demand for the technology. But that means the profits from mining are spread more thinly across a greater number of users. That could hit future demand for mining equipment.

Bitmain, Canaan and Ebang were all profitable in their most recent financial year, according to documents setting out their intention to go public.

But staying in the black will be a “massive challenge,” said Leilei Wang, a Shanghai-based consultant at research firm Kapronasia.

The companies are aware of the risks they face and are trying to adapt. For example, they say they are increasing investment in more advanced chip technology that can be used in areas like artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and connected devices.

Although the Chinese government has a tough stance on cryptocurrencies in general, it’s eager to bulk up the country’s technological prowess in areas like computer chips. Chinese companies are still largely reliant on foreign chip technology, especially from the United States.

“Whether [the cryptocurrency companies] are able to successfully pivot remains to be seen,” Wang said.

For now, their fate is tied to that of the wider industry.

“Cryptocurrencies will likely fall out of favor” without greater mainstream adoption in the near future, Quinlan predicted. The mining equipment makers “will find it extremely difficult to survive when the cryptocurrency market, as a whole, withers away,” he said.

But bitcoin bulls are still hopeful that the currency can stage a recovery as financial exchanges and big companies start to take it more seriously.

“As you see more adoption of just people being comfortable with it, it feels like it’s going to go up,” Mike Novogratz, CEO of cryptocurrency investment firm Galaxy Digital, told CNN this week.

CNNMoney (Hong Kong) First published September 27, 2018: 6:56 AM ET