• Elon Musk's startup xAI has attracted top talent since launching in July 2023.
• xAI has raised more than $12 billion and is valued at $50 billion.
• Its founding members have previous experience at the likes of Google, OpenAI and Tesla.

Elon Musk's startup xAI is one of the newer players in the artificial intelligence race, but that hasn't stopped it from bringing in top talent and soaring to a valuation of $50 billion in just 16 months.

Launched by Musk in July 2023 to take on OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, xAI's lofty goal is to "understand the universe."

The startup began with a team of 12 people who, prior to joining Musk's latest moonshot, worked at the likes of Google DeepMind, Tesla, OpenAI, and Microsoft. It has raised a total of $12 billion, including a $6 billion funding round that closed in December.

Since its launch, xAI has released a chatbot called Grok, which is now free for everyone to use. Some of its latest features include web search results, PDF upload, image understanding, and the ability to summarize conversations and understand posts. It has also rolled out an image-generating tool.

Grok has been trained on user data from X, the company formerly known as Twitter, which Musk also owns. That dynamic has given xAI a competitive advantage but also triggered an investigation from Europe's lead privacy regulator, resulting in X making concessions on some user data.

To compete with rivals like OpenAI and Google, xAI plans to tenfold the size of its Memphis supercomputer, which trains its AI models. The xAI team built the supercomputer, called Colossus, at breakneck speed, and it's already considered the largest of its kind in the world.

Meet the key figures at xAI who are driving the startup's rapid growth.

Igor Babuschkin

Babuschkin, a founding member of xAI, spent three years as a research engineer at Google DeepMind before he joined OpenAI. He returned to Google DeepMind for nearly a year, then left for xAI.

In a livestreamed conversation with Musk and others on X Spaces in July 2023, Babuschkin said he was originally a physicist and briefly worked at the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most advanced particle accelerator.

During that conversation, Babuschkin said he's "always been very passionate" about understanding the universe and then became interested in the deep machine learning and AI fields, and decided to make a career switch.

He added, "I was very passionate about language models and making them do impressive things, and now I've teamed up with Elon to see if we can actually deploy these new technologies to really make a dent in our understanding of the universe and progress our collective knowledge."

Manuel Kroiss

Kroiss previously worked as an engineer at Google DeepMind and coauthored several research papers on machine learning, the most recent being: "Launchpad: A programming model for distributed machine learning research."

Yuhuai (Tony) Wu

Wu previously worked at Google and Google DeepMind and spent a few months as a research scientist intern at OpenAI. He also spent over a year as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University.

Wu said in the 2023 X Spaces livestream that his dream has been to tackle the most difficult problems in mathematics and AI. He has also coauthored a number of research papers on machine learning and large language models.

Wu has a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of New Brunswick and a Ph.D. in machine learning from the University of Toronto.

Christian Szegedy

Szegedy joined xAI from Google, where he spent 14 years of his career. His last role there was as a staff research scientist.

Szegedy holds a master's degree in mathematics and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from The University of Bonn.

In a fireside chat with Nvidia data scientist Bojan Tunguz earlier this year, Szegedy said he had worked on chip design for 12 years.

Then, in 2010, at the age of 40, he decided to make a career change after realizing AI would be the next big thing and joined Google.

Jimmy Ba

Ba has a background in deep neural networks and is a former student of Geoffrey Hinton, who is widely referred to as the "Godfather of AI."

Ba is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. In 2023, the university awarded him a Sloan Research Fellowship, a program that the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation recognizes as individuals "whose creativity, innovation, and research accomplishments make them stand out as the next generation of leaders."

A LinkedIn post by the university's Department of Computer Science announcing the award said Ba's research has played a major influence in deep learning and focuses on creating efficient deep learning algorithms for neural networks.

In the X Spaces last year, Ba said his long-term research ambitions align with xAI's mission to "help humanity to overcome some of the most ambitious challenges out there" through AI tools.

Toby Pohlen

Pohlen spent over six years at Google DeepMind, where he was most recently a staff research engineer. The London-based engineer worked on evaluation tools for LLMs, as well as scalable reinforcement learning at Google DeepMind.

When xAI released Grok in November 2023, Pohlen shared a demo and suggested that the chatbot would have a regular setting as well as a "fun mode."

Ross Nordeen

Nordeen was previously a technical program manager at Tesla and worked on supercomputing before leaving to join xAI in 2023.

According to Musk's biographer, Walter Isaacson, Nordeen was called in to help Musk with a last-minute effort to move some data servers from Sacramento to Oregon.

Nordeen is said to have bought the entire stock of AirTags from an Apple Store in San Francisco, worth $2,000, so he could track the journey of the servers that were being moved.

Nordeen paid a further $2,500 at Home Depot for tools like wrenches, bolt cutters, and headlamps to help with the mission to remove and transfer the servers.

Greg Yang

Yang works on mathematics and the science of deep learning at xAI and was previously a researcher at Microsoft for more than five years.

In the X Spaces session, Yang said he took time off from his undergraduate degree at Harvard University and became a DJ and dubstep music producer. He said that after some introspection, he figured out that he didn't want to be a DJ.

He said his goal is to make artificial general intelligence happen, adding that he wants to "make something smarter than myself." He then studied mathematics to pursue his career ambition.

Guodong Zhang

Guodong has a Ph.D. in machine learning from the University of Toronto. He started his career in AI as a research intern at Microsoft, then Google Brain, and Google DeepMind.

He then spent about 10 months as a research scientist at Google DeepMind before he joined xAI as a pretraining lead.

Zihang Dai

Dai also joined xAI from Google, where he was mostly recently a senior research scientist and spent over five years at the company.

He holds both a master of science degree and a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.

• Klarna will start drug testing employees in Sweden from January, Business Insider has learned.
• The buy-now, pay-later firm told staff about the new measures in an internal Slack post on Monday.
• Klarna, which is gearing up to IPO, said it was part of a wider effort to "strengthen security."

Klarna will start testing employees in Sweden for alcohol and drugs from January, Business Insider has learned, in a sign of the company increasing its internal security ahead of an anticipated IPO.

The buy-now, pay-later firm told employees via a company Slack channel post on Monday that an external supplier would carry out the random testing to ensure it was conducted in accordance with local laws and industry standards.

The post, from Klarna's director of people and HR, Mikaela Mijatovic, said the move was "part of a larger effort to strengthen security across Klarna."

The Slack message, seen by BI, said that Klarna plans to introduce similar drug testing in other countries where it operates, "following local laws and regulations." Mijatovic added that all new hires in Sweden will undergo testing during the recruitment process, starting in January.

Nafsika Karavida, an attorney at Reavis Page Jump in Sweden, told BI that employee drug testing is generally permitted under Swedish law within the private sector. She said it is "fairly common" in the fintech and banking industry and "getting more and more common."

The announcement comes after Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the CEO of Klarna, floated the idea of randomized drug testing to staff during a September all-hands. He said the company could need to introduce some additional safeguards because, as a growing financial institution, there had been greater interest in the startup from "less favorable parts of society: criminals, different hacking groups, and so forth," according to a recording of the meeting obtained by BI.

Some of the measures he discussed included monitoring employees' locations and drug testing staffers. Siemiatkowski added, "For more senior and more sensitive roles, this could also include things like understanding your financial statements to understand if someone is in trouble or could be potentially compromised."

In Monday's internal post, Mijatovic added that Klarna would also examine how it manages company devices and shares information externally.

The Swedish fintech, once Europe's most valuable startup, has been gearing up for an IPO in the US. It announced in November that it confidentially submitted draft registration documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Klarna declined to comment.

Do you work for Klarna? Got a tip? Contact the reporter, Jyoti Mann, via the encrypted messaging app Signal at jyotimann.11 or via email at [email protected]. Reach out through a nonwork device.

• Apple plans to launch a foldable giant iPad and a folding iPhone, according to multiple reports.
• The foldable tablet device is reportedly the size of two iPad Pros.
• Apple could also introduce a thinner iPhone next year, the reports said.

Apple is developing a foldable iPad and a foldable iPhone, according to multiple reports.

Apple is working towards bringing the foldable iPad, said to be the size of two iPad Pros when unfolded, to market around 2028, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported in the "Power On" newsletter on Sunday.

The company is unlikely to bring its folding iPhone to market before 2026, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal reported.

Despite years of working on the new form factor, Apple has faced hurdles in bringing foldable devices to market. Critical components, such as a reliable hinge mechanism and a display screen protection cover for the display, have delayed progress, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Rival tech firms already offer foldable dual-screen products, such as Microsoft Surface Pro and Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 Fold. Similarly, Apple is the only major smartphone company without a foldable device. There have been many reports about a prototype folding iPhone in recent years, including that Apple has been working with LG and Samsung on displays for the collapsible devices.

Apple wants its new iPad to be free of the crease that's present in other foldable devices available on the market. Gurman said the new device has an almost invisible crease.

The Cupertino-headquartered company also plans to introduce a thinner iPhone next year. Apple wants to offer the "thinnest and lightest products" on the market, Gurman wrote in June.

The range of new devices in development is part of Apple's broader strategy to diversify its hardware offerings as it seeks new avenues for growth.

Apple said in its most recent annual report that its future devices might not be as profitable as its iPhone business, which made up nearly half of its total revenue in its fiscal fourth quarter.

In a note to investors in the report, Apple said, "New products, services and technologies may replace or supersede existing offerings and may produce lower revenues and lower profit margin."

It added that it could "materially adversely impact the company's business, results of operations and financial condition."

Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

• Elon Musk shared a legal letter to X which said Neuralink faces a probe by the SEC.
• He shared the letter in a series of posts attacking and mocking SEC Chair Gary Gensler.
• Musk wrote, "Oh Gary, how could you do this to me?"

Elon Musk has revealed that Neuralink, his brain-chip implant company, is facing a probe from the Securities and Exchange Commission, with which he has long feuded.

Musk posted a letter on the subject to X Thursday, as well as a mocking, AI-generated image of SEC chair Gary Gensler. He called the SEC "just another weaponized institution doing political dirty work."

"Oh Gary, how could you do this to me?" Musk wrote in the post sharing the letter from his lawyer, Alex Spiro, to Gensler.

In the letter, which was said it was "in the matter of certain purchases, sales, and disclosures of Twitter shares," Spiro said the SEC "reopened" an investigation into Neuralink but didn't elaborate on why. It also said the SEC was preparing action against Musk over his 2022 acquisition of Twitter, now X.

The billionaire later shared another post featuring an AI-generated image of a snail wearing a business suit and said it depicted Gensler.

Neuralink and the SEC didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

The SEC is investigating how Musk bought shares in Twitter ahead of his $44 billion acquisition of the social network.

Musk started buying shares in Twitter in 2022, and by the spring, he had a 9% stake in the company before he struck a deal to buy it outright later in the year.

Spiro, Musk's lawyer, also said in the letter that the SEC issued a "settlement demand" on Wednesday to agree within 48 hours to make a payment or face enforcement action.

Spiro wrote that this followed "a multi-year investigation and more than six years of harassment" of Musk by the SEC.

This is an apparent reference to the SEC suing Musk in 2018 over a tweet in which he claimed he had the funding to take Tesla private, which led to him being forced to step down as chairman.

• Calendly laid off around 70 employees in its engineering, customer experience, marketing, and billing teams.
• BI obtained a copy of CEO Tope Awotona's memo announcing the cuts to staff on Wednesday morning.
• Calendly previously laid off 60 employees in July 2023 and was valued at $3 billion in 2021.

Scheduling platform Calendly laid off around 70 employees — about 13% of its workforce — on Wednesday.

The CEO, Tope Awotona, emailed employees at 10 a.m. ET on Wednesday with the subject heading "Important Update: Team Changes and Reorganization."

Awotona said he had "some difficult news" and told workers that the company was carrying out "strategic reorganizations" across its engineering, customer experience, marketing, and billing departments and that "approximately 70" people would be impacted.

"These decisions are never easy, and I take full responsibility for the choices that have led us to this point," he wrote.

Awotona also said that those affected would receive a calendar invite for a meeting on Wednesday afternoon.

Two people familiar with the matter told Business Insider that there were 46 layoffs in the engineering team, 16 in the customer-experience team seven in marketing, and two in billing.

A screenshot shared with Business Insider by an employee shows that a companywide Slack channel had 466 members after the laid-off workers lost access to the company's system.

The startup, valued at $3 billion in 2021, previously laid off 60 people in July 2023, The Information reported at the time. It was founded by Awotona in 2013 and grew to have more than 20 million users, about half of which are outside the US.

The company has faced increasing competition from Big Tech. Both Google and Microsoft have rolled out features that let users share a link to their virtual calendars so others can book meetings with them.

Calendly did not immediately respond to a request for comment, made outside normal working hours.

This is Awotona's memo sent to employees, shared with BI by two employees:

Hi Team

I am reaching out this morning to share some difficult news. We've made the decision to do a series of strategic reorganizations across our Engineering, Customer Experience, Marketing and Billing teams. As part of the process, we are reducing these teams, which means we will be saying goodbye to approximately 70 of our talented teammates today. Our primary focus right now is ensuring we handle these transactions with the utmost care and respect.

If you role has been impacted, you will receive an email and calendar invite within the next 30 minutes to your personal email address from a People Team member inviting you to an indiviual meeting later today. Please note that your access to Calendly systems will be turned off shortly, and we've sent a copy of this email to your personal email address as well to ensure you have all the necessary information.

If your roles has NOT been impacted, you will not receive a separate email. During today's All Hands (3 PM ET/ Noon PT), we will share more details about these decisions, and leave time for a live Q&A at the end. Following the All Hands, department leaders will hold team-specific meetings (check your calendar for the exact times) to discuss how these changes affect your team and provide another opportunity to ask questions.

These decisions are never easy, and I take full responsibility for the choices that have led us to this point. To those leaving us today, please know that your hard work and dedication have been deeply valued, and we are incredibly grateful for your contributions to Calendly.

As a reminder, we ask that all team members continue to uphold their confidentiality agreements and adhere to Calendly's privacy policy.

Do you work for Calendly? Got a tip? Contact the reporter Jyoti Mann via the encrypted messaging app Signal at jyotimann.11 or via email at [email protected]. Reach out through a nonwork device.

• OpenAI's CFO trusts Elon Musk to prioritize the national interest despite owning a rival company.
• Musk, a Trump advisor with ties to AI czar David Sacks, has a feud with OpenAI's Sam Altman.
• Altman said last week he does not think Musk will use his political power to hurt competitors.

OpenAI trusts Elon Musk to act in good faith as the owner of a rival AI company with the ear of President-elect Donald Trump, its CFO said.

"We trust him...as a competitor, [Musk] will put first the national interest and compete appropriately," Sarah Friar, the CFO of OpenAI, said at the Reuters NEXT conference on Tuesday.

Musk is a close Trump advisor and is co-leading the advisory body DOGE alongside Vivek Ramaswamy. Musk's ally and fellow PayPal Mafia member David Sacks was recently appointed as Trump's AI and crypto czar.

After Sacks was tapped for the position, OpenAI chief Sam Altman — with whom Musk has a long-running feud — took to X to congratulate him on the role. Musk responded with a laughing emoji.

Friar's comments follow Altman's remarks at The New York Times' DealBook summit last week, in which he said he didn't think Musk would use his political power to his advantage and boost his own AI startup, xAI.

He said, "I believe pretty strongly that Elon will do the right thing and that it would be profoundly un-American to use political power to the degree that Elon would hurt competitors and advantage his own businesses."

Musk has been embroiled in a legal battle with OpenAI since March after twice suing the company behind ChatGPT. He accused the company and some of its cofounders of violating its founding charter with its plans to change its corporate structure to become a for-profit business, and of putting commercial interests ahead of its original mission to benefit humanity.

Altman also addressed the feud between him and Musk at the DealBook conference, calling it "tremendously sad" and said he grew up looking to Musk as a "mega hero."

xAI was launched just 16 months ago, but it has quickly scaled up to be considered a competitor of OpenAI. In record time, the $50 billion startup built a supercomputer in Memphis that has 100,00 GPUs and is aiming to increase that to at least one million.

OpenAI and Elon Musk didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

• China's top antimonopoly regulator is investigating Nvidia.
• The investigation is related to the company's 2020 acquisition of an Israeli chip firm.
• Nvidia's stock fell by 2.2% in premarket trading on Monday.

China's top antimonopoly regulator has launched an investigation into Nvidia, whose shares dropped by 2.2% in premarket trading on Monday following the latest escalation of chip tensions with the US.

The State Administration for Market Regulation said on Monday that it was investigating whether the chipmaker giant violated antimonopoly regulations.

The probe is related to Nvidia's acquisition of Mellanox Technologies, an Israeli chip firm, in 2020. China's competition authority approved the $7 billion takeover in 2020 on the condition that rivals be notified of new products within 90 days of allowing Nvidia access to them.

The US-China chip war has been escalating. Last week, China's commerce ministry said it would halt shipments of key materials needed for chip production to the US. The ministry said the measures were in response to US chip export bans, also announced last week.

Nvidia, which is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, has also faced antitrust scrutiny in the US. The Department of Justice has been examining whether Nvidia might have abused its market dominance to make it difficult for buyers to change suppliers.

Nvidia did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider made outside normal working hours.

• Jeff Bezos said he's "putting a lot of time" into Amazon despite stepping down as CEO in 2021.
• Bezos said Wednesday at the DealBook Summit that he's spending 95% of his time at Amazon on AI.
• Amazon announced this week it's building a supercomputer with Anthropic to enhance AI capabilities.

Jeff Bezos stepped down as CEO of Amazon over three years ago, but he's still putting in the hours at the company to help it in the AI race.

Speaking at The New York Times's DealBook conference on Wednesday, the billionaire said he's still deeply involved and hasn't fully left the company he founded 30 years ago.

"My heart is in Amazon, my curiosity is in Amazon, and my fears are there and my love is there," Bezos said. "I'm never going to forget about Amazon. I'll always be there to help, and right now, I'm putting a lot of time into it. I can help, and it's super interesting, so why not?"

Bezos said that 95% of his time at Amazon is spent focusing on AI within the company, which he said is building 1,000 AI applications internally. One such application is a multimodal model that can process images, video, and text, The Information recently reported.

The company requires a significant amount of computing power to scale its AI ambitions, so it's building a supercomputer using its own chips alongside Anthropic, the AI startup that it has invested $8 billion in, to give it an edge against its Big Tech rivals.

Bezos, who remains at Amazon as its executive chairman, also said one of his jobs is to ensure the success of its CEO, Andy Jassy, and the leadership team.

The world's second-richest man said on an episode of the "Lex Fridman Podcast" last year that the main reason he left his role as the CEO of Amazon in 2021 was so he could focus his time on his rocket company, Blue Origin. At the DealBook Summit, Bezos said it was "not a very good business yet" but predicted it would eventually surpass Amazon and become "the best business" he's been involved in.

Bezos also told the Dealbook Summit audience that he's not worried about Donald Trump's second term, saying he's "actually very optimistic this time around."

Bezos is not the only tech founder to return to a company after taking a step back. Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin both got back in the mix to work on AI initiatives after leaving their executive roles in 2019.

Their return to Google appeared to be sparked by the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT in 2022, which led to Google's management issuing a "code red," The New York Times reported at the time. ChatGPT's successful rollout caught Google off guard and triggered concerns about the future of its search engine, so its CEO, Sundar Pichai, turned to Page and Brin for help, according to The Times.

Amazon didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

• ByteDance has sued a former intern for $1.1 million, per Chinese media reports.
• The TikTok owner claims he sabotaged an AI model training project by modifying code.
• The company has a chatbot similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT, called Doubao.

TikTok owner ByteDance has filed a lawsuit seeking damages of $1.1 million against a former intern it has accused of sabotaging an AI training project, according to local media reports.

The lawsuit, filed in a Beijing district court, reportedly centers on claims that Tian Keyu, the ex-intern, deliberately tampered with code for the company's AI model training tasks.

ByteDance referenced the case in an internal disciplinary notice this month, The South China Morning Post reported on Thursday.

Multiple Chinese media outlets reported this week that ByteDance is seeking 8 million yuan, about $1.1 million, and a public apology.

Last month, ByteDance told the BBC in a statement that it fired Tian in August and that he was an intern in the technology team but did not work in its AI lab. The company added that his social media profile contained inaccuracies. Tian's LinkedIn profile states that he has been a research intern at ByteDance's VC team and AI lab since 2021.

The tech giant also said in its statement last month that reports of the former intern causing damage to about 8,000 specialist chips, called GPUs, and racking up losses amounting to millions of dollars were exaggerated.

ByteDance operates China's most popular chatbot, Doubao, which is similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT.

ByteDance and Tian didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

TikTok faces US ban

In the US, ByteDance faces a January 19 deadline to divest its TikTok stake to an approved buyer or shut down after Congress passed a law in April.

The US government claims it is a national security threat and officials have been concerned about its growing influence in the country. Some government officials are worried ByteDance could hand over sensitive data on its US users to the Chinese Communist Party.

However, President-elect Donald Trump has said he would try to save the app once in office.

• The US is planning new curbs on chip exports to slow China's AI development, multiple reports say.
• It could blacklist 200 Chinese semiconductor equipment manufacturers, Wired reported.
• Targeting Chinese chip equipment makers could benefit European firms such as ASML.

The Biden administration is reported to be considering fresh sanctions against Chinese semiconductor equipment manufacturers, pushing up stocks of semiconductor suppliers in Europe and Japan.

Bloomberg reported that while the newly proposed sanctions still targeted Chinese chip fabrication plants, they put greater emphasis on targeting domestic firms supplying manufacturing equipment to chipmakers. The suggested curbs would add an extra 100 Chinese chip equipment makers to the entity list, the outlet reported.

That pushed the share price of ASML — the Dutch firm supplying crucial specialized equipment to chip manufacturers, including China's SMIC — up by more than 4.27% Thursday.

Tokyo Electron, which also sells equipment for manufacturing chips, saw its share price climb by more than 6% on Thursday.

The restrictions, expected as soon as next week, could also add chipmakers to the sanctions list, including key suppliers to the Chinese smartphone maker Huawei, Bloomberg and Wired reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The new proposals would affect fewer Huawei suppliers, the reports added.

As part of the sweeping sanctions, the US could add 200 Chinese chip firms to its trade blacklist, Wired reported. The controls could also include restrictions around trading memory chips, which are crucial for the development of AI models.

'Malicious attempts to block and suppress China'

Chinese stocks were down on Thursday. Hang Seng's stock slid by more than 1%, and the CSI and the Shanghai Composite are also down by 0.57% and 0.10%, respectively.

"This decline is occurring as the Biden administration is considering imposing additional restrictions on the sale of crucial semiconductors to China, possibly as early as next week," Jim Reid, Deutsche Bank's global head of economics and thematic research, said in a research note.

The Biden administration has worked to limit China's progress in the semiconductor industry in recent years by rolling out export controls aimed at cutting off its access to buying advanced AI chips and chip-making equipment.

American chip equipment makers and allies such as Japan and the Netherlands reportedly pushed back against earlier proposals.

Under the new rules, companies and even foreign firms that used American parts or software in designing and manufacturing AI chips will be required to obtain licenses to export to China.

Mao Ning, a spokesperson for China's foreign ministry, said at a press conference this week, "China is firmly opposed to the US overstretching the concept of national security, abusing export control measures, and making malicious attempts to block and suppress China."

The US Department of Commerce didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

• Intel is getting $7.9 billion in federal grants from the Biden administration.
• The US Department of Commerce announced the grant, part of the CHIPS Act, on Tuesday.
• President-elect Donald Trump has criticized the CHIPS Act in favor of tariffs.

Intel is receiving about $7.9 billion in federal grants, the US Department of Commerce said Tuesday, as the Biden administration finalizes CHIPS Act agreements ahead of Donald Trump taking office.

It is $600 million less than President Joe Biden's $8.5 billion preliminary grant announced in March. Intel is receiving less than what was initially promised because it also received a separate grant of $3 billion to produce chips for the military, the Department of Commerce told The New York Times.

The chip giant is on track to receive at least $1 billion of the total grant award before the end of this year, a senior administration official told Bloomberg.

President-elect Trump has previously criticized the CHIPS Act and suggested he would prefer tariffs to incentivize semiconductor manufacturing on US soil. This has caused the Biden administration to scramble to finalize billions of dollars in payments before the end of the year.

The CHIPS Act cash will help Intel boost its semiconductor production in the US. It is expected to invest nearly $90 billion in the US by the end of the decade.

US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said in a press release that Intel's investments across Arizona, New Mexico, Ohio, and Oregon would "supercharge American innovation" and that the company is playing an important part in the "revitalization" of the semiconductor industry in the US.

"Strong bipartisan support for restoring American technology and manufacturing leadership is driving historic investments that are critical to the country's long-term economic growth and national security," added Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger.

Intel's share price is down by almost 50% this year. It has racked up billions in losses and faced a series of challenges, including layoffs.

The Wall Street Journal reported in September that Qualcomm was interested in acquiring Intel. However, its takeover interest has since cooled as a result of some complications related to acquiring the entire company, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Intel didn't immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment, made outside normal working hours.

• Threads is letting users choose a default feed, Mark Zuckerberg has said.
• Meta's move to compete with Bluesky's growth follows a wave of users leaving Elon Musk's X.
• With its recent rapid growth, Bluesky faces fresh challenges, including content moderation.

Threads is stepping up its game by giving users the power to pick their default feed as it battles to keep pace with Bluesky's explosive growth.

Meta's chief, Mark Zuckerberg, said in a Threads post on Monday that it was "testing the option" for users to decide whether they want a "For You," "following," or customized feed. "Interested to see how and if people use this," he added.

The move has come as the Meta-owned platform seeks to capitalize on a wave of users leaving Elon Musk's X and compete with a surge in interest at the rival social network Bluesky, which is winning over millions of new users.

Bluesky says it now has more than 22.6 million users, up from 13 million in October. Droves of X users recently left the platform because of concerns over hate speech and misinformation.

Bluesky is encountering a fresh set of challenges amid its growth boom. Its chief operating officer, Rose Wang, told Business Insider last week that its 20-person team was in "firefighting mode" as its user growth surpassed its own projections. It's even had to expedite getting additional server capacity at its data centers as it anticipates further growth.

The company is also seeing an "uptick in harmful content" with the surge in users, it said Monday in a post. To tackle this, it's making some short-term decisions to recall posts, which has resulted in "over-enforcement and temporary suspensions for multiple users," it said.

Platformer's Casey Newton reported that Bluesky had eight confirmed cases of child-sexual-abuse material on Monday, compared with just two cases throughout 2023. Aaron Rodericks, Bluesky's head of trust and safety, told Platformer it was increasing the number of its content moderators fourfold to 100.

Threads has recently made a series of updates to its platform that seem to be driven by heightened competition from Bluesky. Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, said last week that Instagram would prioritize content from people users follow, which in turn would mean they'd see less recommended content.

Mosseri also said Instagram was testing a few "long-overdue improvements," including the ability for users to search for posts from a specific date or from a particular account. It's also set to give AI-generated summaries of trending topics in its "Trending Now" feed.

Meta didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider made outside normal working hours.

• Bluesky's user base surged to 21 million, prompting the company to race to get more servers.
• Rose Wang, Bluesky's COO, told Business Insider that its 20-person team is in "firefighting mode."
• Its growth follows users leaving X, with over 280,000 closing their accounts on Election Day.

Bluesky has "blown past" its user growth projections so much that it's racing to get more servers to keep the site running smoothly, the social media platform's chief operating officer has said.

Rose Wang told Business Insider that the influx of new users at Bluesky over the past two weeks was "quite unexpected" and that the company's 20-person team has been in "firefighting mode."

The social media network has surpassed 21 million users, up from 13 million in October, as X users have left in droves and flocked to the platform.

But that level of scaling has come with some growing pains. Bluesky experienced an outage earlier this month, which the company said was due to an external internet provider.

To preempt further growth, it has expedited additional server capacity at its data centers.

"We have grown by a million users every day for the last eight days, which has blown past our projections, and so we were going to get new servers next year, but we had to fast forward that," Wang said.

The US election appears to have triggered a migration of X users to Bluesky, which has been praised because of its similarity to the "old Twitter." More than 280,000 people closed their X accounts on Election Day, data from Similarweb shows.

Gordon MacMillan, X's former head of content strategy, previously told BI that people have been leaving the platform because of its owner, Elon Musk, using it as a political megaphone in his support for president-elect Donald Trump. He also pointed to concerns over hate speech and misinformation on X.

Wang said that Bluesky's growth has come from two areas: event-driven growth, where something happens on a different platform like X, and community-driven growth, where people joined because they like the interaction on the platform.

Bluesky was created in 2019 as an internal project at X when it was still known as Twitter, and Jack Dorsey was still at the helm. It launched as a separate company in 2021, with Jay Gruber as CEO.

It launched a beta version of its app last year, and users could only join with an invite code until February. Dorsey exited the board of directors in May as it shifted towards a corporate structure and told Wired that it was "literally repeating all the mistakes" Twitter made.

Bluesky's 'lightning in the bottle moment'

Wang said that Bluesky caught the attention of users after Musk acquired X for $44 billion in 2022.

"There was a moment in time when right after Elon bought Twitter and before Threads launched, we had our lightning in the bottle moment where the whole world was paying attention to Bluesky, and we had invite codes," she said.

"We didn't have invite codes to be a 'hot' exclusive club, but we had invite codes because we wanted to make sure our moderation was in place to bring on many millions of people," Wang added.

Wang said it was a "hard decision" to make as a company because growth is so hard to come by, but "we chose to stick to our principles."

The company has received a lot of requests from users for new features, Wang said. Some of those already exist on X, such as the ability to bookmark posts and lists of trending topics.

Wang says the team wants to build new products, but the boom in new users means its priorities have completely shifted. Instead of shipping new features, Bluesky is placing its efforts on core priorities like moderation and "firefighting."

"We wish we had the resources to go and build those features," she said. "But instead, the team is focused on let's make sure that one, the website stays online, and two, that moderation is intact so that we are responding to reports within 24 hours with global coverage, and three, that people are able to find each other and the end user is having a good experience."

The company plans to launch a paid subscription model by the end of this year, which will include features such as customizable aesthetics, avatar frames, and more video uploads or high-resolution images.

• Last year's job cuts weren't the end of layoffs. Further reductions continue in 2024.
• Companies like Flagstar Bank, Meta, PwC, Tesla, Google, Microsoft, and Nike have all announced cuts.
• See the list of companies reducing their worker numbers in 2024.

After a brutal year of layoffs in 2023, companies this year have continued to cut jobs across tech, media, finance, manufacturing, and retail.

Tech titans like Meta, IBM, Google, and Microsoft; finance leaders like Goldman Sachs, Citi, and BlackRock; accounting firms like PwC; entertainment behemoths like Pixar and Paramount; and corporate giants like Tesla, Dow, and Nike have all announced layoffs.

A survey in late December said nearly 40% of business leaders had expected layoffs this year, ResumeBuilder said. ResumeBuilder talked to about 900 leaders at organizations with more than 10 employees.

One major factor survey respondents cited was artificial intelligence. Around four in 10 leaders said they would conduct layoffs as they replace workers with AI. Last year, Dropbox, Google, and IBM announced job cuts related to AI.

Here are the dozens of companies with job cuts planned or already underway in 2024.

The US' biggest privately-owned company, Cargill, is cutting thousands of jobs

Cargill, the largest privately owned company in the US, is slashing 5% of its workforce.

The company, which is the world's largest agricultural commodities trader, will lay off thousands of workers from its 164,000-strong workforce, Bloomberg reported on Monday, citing an internal memo it had seen.

"To strengthen Cargill's impact, we must realign our talent and resources to align with our strategy," a Cargill spokesperson told BI.

The cuts would impact workers across all professional levels from countries in Asia, Latin America, North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

The layoffs will not touch its executive team but will impact its "next level senior leaders," Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

"The majority of these reductions will take place this year," Chief Executive Officer Brian Sikes said in the memo, seen by Bloomberg. "They'll focus on streamlining our organizational structure by removing layers, expanding the scope and responsibilities of our managers, and reducing duplication of work."

Microchip Tech is closing an Arizona factory

Microchip Technology, a chipmaker for a variety of consumer products, on Monday said it was closing a facility in Tempe, Arizona, as it deals with slower-than-anticipated orders.

The closure is expected to affect about 500 jobs from the company's total of 22,300, Microchip said. The closure will progress in stages and end in September 2025.

"While the company has taken steps to right size inventory and reduce expenses— including temporary pay reductions and company-wide and factory shutdowns—these measures have not been enough," a spokesperson for Microchip said in a statement on Tuesday.

Microchip also updated its revenue guidance for the quarter ending in December quarter to $1.025 billion, which is at the lower end of its earlier forecast.

The company's stock fell about 3% in after-hours trading and is down 22% year-to-date.

Publishing giant Hearst Magazines trims staff.

The owner of publications including Esquire and Cosmopolitan is conducting a round of layoffs, The Hollywood Reporter said in a November 21 report.

The exact number of positions impacted is not clear.

"After a thorough review of our business, we've decided to reallocate resources to better support our goals and continue our focus on digital innovation while strengthening our best in class print products," Hearst Magazines president Debi Chirichella told staff in a memo obtained by THR. "We will scale back in areas that do not support our core strategy and will eliminate certain positions as we reimagine our team structures to drive long-term growth."

Boeing starts issuing layoff notices to 400 workers amid plans for 10% global cut

In October, Boeing said that it would cut 10% of its 170,000-strong global workforce. The reduction plan will include 2,199 employees in Washington and another 50 in Oregon, according to the company's filings.

As part of the cuts, Boeing is laying off more than 400 workers who are part of its professional aerospace labor union. The Seattle Times reported that 438 members of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) received pink slips.

These included engineers, scientists, analysts, technicians, and other jobs, the outlet reported.

In a note to employees on October 11, CEO Kelly Ortberg said Boeing was in a "difficult position" and that "restoring our company requires tough decisions."

The layoffs come at a difficult time for Boeing. Its share price has fallen more than 40% since the start of the year as it grapples with the fallout from a seven-week strike and technical faults like a door plug coming off an Alaska Airlines 737 Max midflight in January.

Representatives of Boeing and the SPEEA didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Exxon is cutting nearly 400 jobs after Pioneer merger

ExxonMobil is cutting about 400 employees from Pioneer Natural Resources, the oil and gas company it acquired earlier this year.

The cuts will come in seven stages and will be completed in May 2026, Exxon said in a notice to the Texas Workforce Commission.

The cuts represent almost 20% of Pioneer's pre-merger workforce and will mostly affect employees in Pioneer's suburban Dallas offices, the notice said.

AMD is laying off roughly 4% of its workforce.

AMD confirmed it would be reducing its global staff, which numbered around 26,000 total employees as of December 2023.

″As a part of aligning our resources with our largest growth opportunities, we are taking a number of targeted steps that will unfortunately result in reducing our global workforce by approximately 4%," an AMD representative said in a statement to Business Insider. "We are committed to treating impacted employees with respect and helping them through this transition."

The cuts are reportedly targeting sales and marketing roles in areas like consumer PC and gaming PC, according to Bloomberg.

The computer chipmaker is focusing efforts on the artificial intelligence industry as it chases rival Nvidia in the GPU market. In October, AMD raised its 2024 GPU sales estimates from its initial $4.5 billion to over $5 billion.

Chegg is cutting 21% of its employees as AI search destroys its business

Online education site Chegg is laying off staff for the second time this year as generative AI platforms obliterate its business model.

Chegg said it is cutting 319 employees, or 21% of its staff, as it faces strong competition from platforms like ChatGPT. The company slashed global headcount by 23% in June.

"The speed and scale of Google's AIO rollout and student adoption of generative AI products have negatively impacted our industry and our business," Nathan Schultz, Chegg's CEO, said in an earnings release. The company reported a loss of $212.6 million for the third quarter.

Chegg's stock has fallen nearly 85% since the start of this year.

23andMe is cutting 40% of its staff

Genetic testing company 23andMe is cutting 200 employees, or 40% of its workforce, to reduce costs and refocus its business.

The Bay Area-based company is also discontinuing further development of all its therapeutics programs, it said in a mid-November statement.

Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe's CEO and cofounder, has been trying to take the struggling company private since April.

23andMe debuted on the stock market in 2021 but fallen from its peak valuation of $6 billion — its market cap is now north of $100 million. Financial and strategic missteps, as well as high-profile user data hacks, have dragged the company down.

Beyond Inc. plans to cut 20% of its workforce

The parent company of Bed Bath & Beyond, Overstock, Zulily, and other brands revealed its decision to slash a fifth of its staff in an October SEC filing.

The workplace reduction was taken to create a more "variable, leverageable cost structure" and to help align the company with its "asset-light business that supports an affinity and data monetization model with a strong technology focus," Beyond Inc. said in the filing.

The cuts are estimated to save roughly $20 million annually in fixed costs and are expected to be "substantially implemented" in the fourth quarter of 2024.

The news came shortly after Beyond Inc. and Kirkland announced a partnership that means physical Bed Bath & Beyond stores will return in smaller-format "neighborhood" locations.

Meta added to the 20,000+ people it's laid off since 2022

Meta is eliminating some roles on units including Instagram, WhatsApp, and its VR and AR division Reality Labs.

"A few teams at Meta are making changes to ensure resources are aligned with their long-term strategic goals and location strategy," a Meta spokesperson told BI on October 17. "This includes moving some teams to different locations, and moving some employees to different roles."

It's unclear how many roles will be affected, but Meta has trimmed its staff significantly in the year and a half, with more than 20,000 job cuts since 2022. CEO Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed 2023 a "year of efficiency" at the company, and continued cost-cutting measures this year as the tech giant gets flatter in structure.

TikTok is laying off employees as part of content moderation changes.

TikTok is cutting employees in various locations as part of changes to its content-moderation strategy.

A spokesperson for the China-owned company told Reuters in October that 80% of content that violates its policy is now removed through automated technology.

The company did not provide details on the exact number of positions that it eliminated but told Reuters the cuts would affect "several hundred" employees.

PwC is cutting 1,800 employees.

Big Four accounting firm PwC is cutting 1,800 workers, which is about 2.5% of its staff. The cuts will impact staffers ranging from associates to managing directors — half of them offshore. Those affected by the cuts will be informed in October.

In an emailed statement to Business Insider, Tim Grady, PwC's US chief operating officer, said, "To remain competitive and position our business for the future, we are continuing to transform
areas of our firm and are aligning our workforce to better support our strategy, including attracting and moving the right talent and skill sets to the areas where we need them most. Right now, we are focused on running our business well and adapting to meet the needs of our clients and the rapidly changing market."

Nike's up-to-$2 billion cost-cutting plan will involve severances

Nike announced its cost-cutting plans in a December 2023 earnings call, discussing a slow growth in sales. The call subsequently resulted in Nike's stock plunging.

"We are seeing indications of more cautious consumer behavior around the world," Nike Chief Financial Officer Matt Friend said in December.

Google laid off hundreds more workers in 2024

On January 10, Google laid off hundreds of workers in its central engineering division and members of its hardware teams — including those working on its voice-activated assistant.

In an email to some affected employees, the company encouraged them to consider applying for open positions at Google if they want to remain employed. April 9 was the last day for those unable to secure a new position, the email said.

The tech giant laid off thousands throughout 2023, beginning with a 6% reduction of its global workforce — about 12,000 people — last January.

Discord laid off 170 employees.

Discord employees learned about the layoffs in an all-hands meeting and a memo sent by CEO Jason Citron in early January.

"We grew quickly and expanded our workforce even faster, increasing by 5x since 2020," Citron said in the memo. "As a result, we took on more projects and became less efficient in how we operated."

In August 2023, Discord reduced its headcount by 4%. According to CNBC, the company was valued at $15 billion in 2021.

Citi will cut 20,000 from its staff as part of its corporate overhaul.

The layoffs announced in January are part of a larger Citigroup initiative to restructure the business and could leave the company with a remaining head count of 180,000 — excluding its Mexico operations.

In an earnings call that month, the bank said that layoffs could save the company up to $2.5 billion after it suffered a "very disappointing" final quarter last year.

Amazon-owned Twitch also announced job cuts.

Twitch announced on January 10 that it would cut 500 jobs, affecting over a third of the employees at the live-streaming company.

CEO Dan Clancy announced the layoffs in a memo, telling staff that while the company has tried to cut costs, the operation is "meaningfully" bigger than necessary.

"As you all know, we have worked hard over the last year to run our business as sustainably as possible," Clancy wrote. "Unfortunately, we still have work to do to rightsize our company and I regret having to share that we are taking the painful step to reduce our headcount by just over 500 people across Twitch."

BlackRock is planning to cut 3% of its staff.

Larry Fink, BlackRock's chief executive, and Rob Kapito, the firm's president, announced in January that the layoffs would affect around 600 people from its workforce of about 20,000.

However, the company has plans to expand in other areas to support growth in its overseas markets.

"As we prepare for 2024 and this very exciting but distinctly different landscape, businesses across the firm have developed plans to reallocate resources," the company leaders said in a memo.

Rent the Runway is slashing 10% of its corporate jobs as part of a restructuring.

In the fashion company's January announcement, COO and president Anushka Salinas said she will also be leaving the firm, Fast Company reported.

Unity Software is eliminating 25% of its workforce.

Around 1,800 jobs at the video game software company will be affected by the layoffs announced, Reuters reported in January.

eBay cut 1,000 jobs

In a January 23 memo, CEO Jamie Iannone told employees that the eBay layoffs will affect about 9% of the company's workforce.

Iannone told employees that layoffs were necessary as the company's "overall headcount and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business."

The company also plans to scale back on contractors.

Microsoft is reportedly cutting 650 more jobs from its Xbox division

Microsoft will be laying off hundreds of employees in its Xbox gaming division, Bloomberg first reported in September.

The job cuts will mainly affect workers in corporate and support functions, the outlet reported, citing a memo sent by Microsoft Gaming chief Phil Spencer.

However, he reportedly added that the company is not planning to close any studios or remove any games or devices.

This comes after the company also slashed 1,900 workers at Activision, Xbox, and ZeniMax in late January.

Nearly three months after Microsoft acquired video game firm Activision Blizzard, the company announced layoffs in its gaming divisions. The layoffs mostly affect employees at Activision Blizzard.

Xbox in May also reportedly offered some employees voluntary severance packages after shutting three units and absorbing a fourth earlier in the month.

Salesforce is cutting 700 employees across the company, The Wall Street Journal reported

Salesforce announced a round of layoffs that the company says will affect 1% of its global workforce, The Journal reported in late January.

The cuts followed a wave of cuts at the cloud giant last year. In 2023, Marc Benioff's company laid off about 10% of its total workforce — or roughly 7,000 jobs. The CEO said the company over-hired during the pandemic.

iRobot is laying off around 350 employees and founder Colin Angle will step down as chairman and CEO

The company behind the Roomba Vacuum announced layoffs in late January around the same time Amazon decided not to go through with its proposed acquisition of the company, the Associated Press reported.

UPS will cut 12,000 jobs in 2024.

The UPS layoffs will affect 14% of the company's 85,000 managers and could save the company $1 billion in 2024, UPS CEO Carol Tomé said during a January earnings call.

Paypal CEO Alex Chriss announced the company would lay off 9% of its workforce.

Announced in late January, this round of layoffs will affect about 2,500 employees at the payment processing company.

"We are doing this to right-size our business, allowing us to move with the speed needed to deliver for our customers and drive profitable growth," CEO Alex Chriss wrote in a January memo. "At the same time, we will continue to invest in areas of the business we believe will create and accelerate growth."

Okta is cutting roughly 7% of its workforce.

The digital-access-management company announced its plans for a "restructuring plan intended to improve operating efficiencies and strengthen the Company's commitment to profitable growth" in an SEC filing in February.

The cuts will impact roughly 400 employees.

Okta CEO Todd McKinnon told staff in a memo that "costs are still too high," CNBC reported.

Snap has announced more layoffs.

The company behind Snapchat announced in February that it's reducing its global workforce by 10%, according to an SEC filing.

Estée Lauder said it will eliminate up to 3,100 positions.

The cosmetics company announced in February that it would be cutting 3% to 5% of its roles as part of a restructuring plan.

Estee Lauder reportedly employed about 62,000 employees around the world as of June 30, 2023.

DocuSign is eliminating roughly 6% of its workforce as part of a restructuring plan.

The electronic signature company said in an SEC filing in February that most of the cuts will be in its sales and marketing divisions.

Zoom is slashing 150 jobs

Zoom announced 150 job losses in February, which amounted to about 2% of its workforce. It had announced it was laying off 1,300 people the previous February.

Paramount Global is laying off 800 employees days after record-breaking Super Bowl

In February, Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish sent a memo to employees announcing that 800 jobs — about 3% of its workforce — were being cut.

Deadline obtained the memo less than a month after reporting plans for layoffs at Paramount. The announcement comes on the heels of Super Bowl LVIII reaching record-high viewership across CBS, Paramount+, and Nickelodeon, and Univision.

Morgan Stanley is trimming its wealth management division by hundreds of staffers

Morgan Stanley is laying off several hundred employees in its wealth-management division, the Wall Street Journal reported in February, representing roughly 1% of the team.

The wealth-management division has seen some slowdown at the start of 2024, with net new assets down by about 8% from a year ago. The layoffs mark the first major move by newly-installed CEO Ted Pick, who took the reins from James Gorman on January 1.

Expedia Group is cutting more than 8% of its workforce

An Expedia spokesperson told BI that it was implementing cutbacks, as part of an operational review, that were expected to impact 1,500 roles this year.

The company's product and technology division is set to be the worst hit, a report from GeekWire said, citing an internal memo CEO Peter Kern sent to employees in late February.

"While this review will result in the elimination of some roles, it also allows the company to invest in core strategic areas for growth," the spokesperson said.

"Consultation with local employee representatives, where applicable, will occur before making any final decisions," they added.

Sony is laying off 900 workers

The cuts at Sony Interactive Entertainment swept through its game-making teams at PlayStation Studios.

Insomniac Games, which developed the hit Spider-Man video game series, as well as Naughty Dog, the developers behind Sony's flagship 'The Last of Us' video games' were hit by the cuts, the company announced on February 27.

All of PlayStation's London studio will be shuttered, according to the proposal.

"Delivering and sustaining social, online experiences – allowing PlayStation gamers to explore our worlds in different ways – as well as launching games on additional devices such as PC and Mobile, requires a different approach and different resources," PlayStation Studios boss Hermen Hulst wrote.

Hulst added that some games in development will be shut down, though he didn't say which ones.

In early February, Sony said it missed its target for selling PlayStation 5 consoles. The earnings report sent shares tumbling and the company's stock lost about $10 billion in value.

Bumble slashed 30% of its workforce

On February 27, the dating app company announced that it would be reducing its staff due to "future strategic priorities" for its business, per a statement.

The cuts will impact about 30% of its about 1,200 person workforce or about 350 roles, a representative for Bumble told BI by email.

"We are taking significant and decisive actions that ensure our customers remain at the center of everything we do as we relaunch Bumble App, transform our organization and accelerate our product roadmap," Bumble Inc CEO Lidiane Jones said in a statement.

Electronic Arts reduced its workforce by 5%

Electronic Arts is laying off about 670 workers, equating to 5% of its workforce, Bloomberg reported in late February.

The gaming firm axed two mobile games earlier in February, which it described as a difficult decision in a statement issued to GamesIndustry.biz.

CEO Andrew Wilson reportedly told employees in a memo that it would be "moving away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry."

Wilson also said in the memo that the cuts came as a result of shifting customer needs and a refocusing of the company, Bloomberg reported.

IBM cut staff in marketing and communications

IBM's chief communications officer Jonathan Adashek told employees on March 12 that it would be cutting staff, CNBC reported, citing a source familiar with the matter.

An IBM spokesperson told Business Insider in a statement that the cuts follow a broader workforce action the company announced during its earnings call in January.

"In 4Q earnings earlier this year, IBM disclosed a workforce rebalancing charge that would represent a very low single-digit percentage of IBM's global workforce, and we expect to exit 2024 at roughly the same level of employment as we entered with," they said.

IBM has also been clear about the impact of AI on its workforce. In May 2023, IBM's CEO Arvind Krishna said the company expected to pause hiring on roles that could be replaced by AI, especially in areas like human resources and other non-consumer-facing departments.

"I could easily see 30% of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period," Krishna told Bloomberg at the time.

Amazon is laying off hundreds in its cloud division in yet another round of cuts this year

Amazon is cutting hundreds of jobs from its cloud division known as Amazon Web Services, Bloomberg reported on April 3.

The reduction will impact employees on the sales and marketing team and those working on tech for its retail stores, Bloomberg reported.

"We've identified a few targeted areas of the organization we need to streamline in order to continue focusing our efforts on the key strategic areas that we believe will deliver maximum impact," an Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg.

On March 26, Amazon announced another round of job cuts after the company said it was slashing 'several hundred' jobs at its Prime Video and MGM Studios divisions earlier this year to refocus on more profitable products.

"We've identified opportunities to reduce or discontinue investments in certain areas while increasing our investment and focus on content and product initiatives that deliver the most impact," Mike Hopkins, SVP of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, told employees in January.

This year's cuts follow the largest staff layoff in the company's history. In 2023, the tech giant laid off 18,000 workers.

Apple has cut over 700 employees across its self-driving car, displays, and services groups

Apple slashed its California workforce by more than 600 employees in April.

The cuts came after Apple decided to withdraw from its car and smartwatch display projects.

The tech giant filed a series of notices to comply with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification program. One of the addresses was linked to a new display development office, while the others were for the company's EV effort, Bloomberg reported.

Apple officially shut down its decadelong EV project in February. At the time, Bloomberg reported that some employees would move to generative AI, but others would be laid off.

Bloomberg noted that the layoffs were likely an undercount of the full scope of staff cuts, as Apple had staff working on these projects in other locations.

In late August, Bloomberg reported that Apple was slashing 100 jobs in its services group, citing people familiar with the matter.

The layoffs mainly involved people working on the Apple Books app and the Apple Bookstore, Bloomberg reported. Cuts were also made to other service teams like Apple News, the outlet added.

Representatives for Apple did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside normal business hours.

Tesla laid off over 10% of its workforce

Tesla CEO Elon Musk sent a memo to employees on April 14, at nearly midnight in California, informing them of the company's plan to cut over 10% of its global workforce.

In his companywide memo, Musk cited "duplication of roles and job functions in certain areas" as the reason behind the reductions.

An email sent to terminated employees, obtained by BI, read: "Effective now, you will not need to perform any further work and therefore will no longer have access to Tesla systems and physical locations."

On April 29, Musk reportedly sent an email stating the need for more layoffs at Tesla. He also announced the departure of two executives and said that their reports would also be let go. Six known Tesla executives have left the company since layoffs began in April.

Grand Theft Auto 6 publisher Take-Two Interactive is reducing its workforce by 5%

Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Rockstar Games, said on April 16 that it would be "eliminating several projects" and reducing its workforce by about 5%.

The move — a part of its larger "cost reduction program" — will cost the video game publisher up to $200 million. It's expected to be completed by December 31.

As of March 2023, the company said it employed approximately 11,580 full-time workers.

Peloton announced it was reducing its staff by 15% as the CEO stepped down

Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy is stepping down, the company announced May 2. Along with his departure, the fitness company is also laying off about 400 workers.

McCarthy is leaving his role just two years after replacing John Foley as CEO and president in 2022. Peloton said the changes are expected to reduce annual expenses by over $200 million by the end of fiscal 2025 as part of a larger restructuring plan.

Indeed is cutting 1,000 workers after laying off 2,200 in 2023

Careers site Indeed says it will lay off roughly 1,000 employees, or 8% of its workforce, as it looks to simplify its organization.

CEO Chris Hyams took responsibility for "how we got here" in a memo in May but said the company is not yet set up for growth after last year's global hiring slowdown caused multiple quarters of declining sales.

Hyams said the latest cuts will be more concentrated in the US and primarily affect R&D and Go-to-Market teams. It comes after last year's across-the-board reduction of 2,200 workers.

Walmart is axing hundreds of corporate jobs

Retail giant Walmart is cutting hundreds of corporate jobs and asking remote employees to come to work, The Wall Street Journal reported in May, citing people familiar with the matter.

Workers in smaller offices, such as those in Dallas, Atlanta, and Toronto, are also being asked to move to central locations like Walmart's corporate headquarters in Arkansas or those in New Jersey or California, the Journal reported.

Under Armour is slashing an unspecified number of jobs, incurring $22 million in severance costs

Under Armour confirmed it was conducting layoffs in its quarterly earnings report, which was released May 16.

The company said it will pay out employee severance and benefits expenses of roughly $15 million in cash-related and $7 million in non-cash charges this year related to a restructuring plan, with close to half of that occurring in the current fiscal quarter.

"This is not where I envisaged Under Armour playing at this point in our journey," CEO Kevin Plank told investors on the company's full-year earnings call. "That said, we'll use this turbulence to reconstitute our brand and business, giving athletes, retail customers and shareholders bigger and better reasons to care about and believe in Under Armour's potential."

Pixar cuts about 175 people in pivot back to feature films

Disney's Pixar Animation Studios is cutting 175 people, about 14% of its staff, Reuters reported.

The cuts started on May 21 as the studio returns to its focus on feature-length movies. Former Disney CEO Bob Chapek, who was axed in 2022, had increased staff across studios to create more content for the company's streaming service, Disney+.

Pixar cut 75 jobs last year, Reuters previously reported, part of a larger restructuring across Disney.

Lucid Motors is slashing around 400 jobs

In a regulatory filing, Lucid Motors said it would lay off about 400 employees as part of a restructuring plan that should be complete by the end of the third quarter.

"I'm confident Lucid will deliver the world's best SUV and dramatically expand our total addressable market, but we aren't generating revenue from the program yet," CEO Peter Rawlinson said in an email to employees obtained by TechCrunch.

The cuts come ahead of Lucid's launch of its first electric SUV later this year. It comes over a year after the California-based company laid off 1,300 employees, TechCrunch previously reported.

John Deere is laying off over 600 employees

John Deere, maker of the iconic green-and-yellow tractors, is laying off over 600 employees at factories in Illinois and Iowa, the AP reported July 1.

In May, John Deere said sales fell for the third consecutive quarter and projected that the declines would continue in the second half of its fiscal year.

Burberry is expected to cut 100s of jobs

London-based luxury retailer Burberry is expected to cut hundreds of jobs in the coming weeks, the Telegraph reported July 6.

Employees learned about the cuts in late June when they were told in a Zoom meeting that their roles could be eliminated or that they would need to apply for other jobs, according to the Telegraph.

Intuit announced cuts on July 10

Intuit announced on July 10 that it's cutting its workforce by 10%. The layoffs will affect 1,800 employees nationwide, but the company plans to hire 1,800 new employees in "key areas" like engineering, InvestorPlace reports.

The refocus on other areas is following a shift in focus on AI within the company, according to the outlet.

Intuit's stock dropped by 4.01% on July 10 after the company announced the layoffs.

Tinder parent Match group plans to cut 6% of jobs

Match Group, the parent company of Tinder and Hinge, said on July 30 that it would reduce its global workforce by about 6%, or about 156 employees because it is exiting the livestreaming business.

Match said it would remove the livestreaming service from its app Plenty of Fish and sunset the Hakuna app, which focuses on Korea and Japan.

The reduction in workforce is expected to save the company $13 million in annual costs.

Disney cuts 140 jobs across its TV division

Deadline and Bloomberg reported in July that Disney was making cuts across its TV division, to the tune of roughly 140 jobs — or 2% of the staff at Disney Entertainment Television (DET).

Layoffs will impact National Geographic, owned television stations, the marketing and publicity departments, and Freeform, per a source close to the matter, which notes no teams have been eliminated.

While Disney's cable TV business generates billions, it's on the decline, Bloomberg reports, and the company is seeking to cut costs.

Last year, Disney slashed 7,000 jobs across multiple rounds of layoffs as part of a strategy implemented by returning CEO Bob Iger.

Intel plans to eliminate thousands of jobs

Intel plans to cut thousands of jobs in response to a second-quarter earnings slump, Bloomberg reported earlier this week, citing unnamed people familiar with the move.

It was officially announced on August 1, as it posted Q2 earnings. The company intends to reduce its workforce by 15% by the end of 2024.

"Our Q2 financial performance was disappointing, even as we hit key product and process technology milestones," Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said in a statement. "Second-half trends are more challenging than we previously expected, and we are leveraging our new operating model to take decisive actions that will improve operating and capital efficiencies while accelerating our IDM 2.0 transformation."

Intel's stock was down following the lackluster earnings.

The layoffs come after the chip maker laid off about 5% of its workforce last year, bringing its head count down to around 124,000, Bloomberg reported.

During the last round of layoffs, announced in October 2022, Intel faced a drop in demand for processors for personal computers and estimated the layoffs would save $10 billion in costs by 2025, per Bloomberg.

Intel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

WW International is cutting jobs in corporate

Diet program creator WW International, formerly WeightWatchers, plans to lay off employees, it said in an earnings call on August 1.

The company did not specify the number of jobs it will cut. But the layoffs will largely focus on corporate positions, including a 40% cut in roles above and at the vice president level.

The cuts are expected to save the company $60 million, the company's chief financial officer said.

Dell is cutting sales jobs in new focus on AI products

Dell is cutting jobs on its sales team, Bloomberg reported. It wasn't immediately clear how many jobs Dell planned to eliminate.

In a memo announcing the cuts, company executives said that the choice was part of a restructuring to focus more on selling AI products and data center services, Bloomberg reported.

Dell did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI, but a spokesman told Bloomberg: "Through a reorganization of our go-to-market teams and an ongoing series of actions, we are becoming a leaner company."

Paramount Global announced it plans to slash 15% of its US workforce

Paramount Global is planning to cut about 2,000 jobs ahead of its merger with Skydance Media, CNBC reported.

The company identified $500 million in cost savings as it prepared to join forces with Skydance, totalling about 15% of its US workforce, according to the outlet.

The cuts will begin in a few weeks and will mostly be finished by the end of 2024. Paramount employees in marketing and communications, finance, legal, technology, and other support functions have been targeted, the company said on an earnings call.

The cuts come about a month after Paramount agreed to merge with Skydance. Paramount shares jumped more than 5% after hours.

Stellantis is slashing white-collar and factory jobs

In August, the owner of Jeep and Dodge announced it is cutting 2,450 factory workers from its Warren Truck assembly plant outside Detroit.

The layoffs come because the company is ending production of the Ram 1500 Classic truck, Stellantis said. These factory cuts came after white-collar jobs were axed earlier this year.

On March 22, the company said it would lay off employees on its engineering, technology, and software teams in an effort to cut costs, CNBC reported.

Stellantis announced plans for another round of layoffs on July 30, according to Bloomberg. The company is offering voluntary buyouts to non-unionized US employees to "assist those interested in pursuing other career options or retirement," Stellantis said in a message seen by Bloomberg.

The job cuts, the total number of which remains unknown, come after a difficult first half of the year, with unit sales sinking by 16% in the US.

Sonos laid off about 6% of its workforce

The audio equipment company said it slashed roughly 100 jobs in August. The layoffs significantly targeted its marketing division, The Verge reported.

CEO Patrick Spence said in a statement to BI that the company is now focusing on departing employees and "ensuring they have the support they need."

"This action was a difficult, but necessary, measure to ensure continued, meaningful investment in Sonos' product roadmap while setting Sonos up for long term success," Spence said.

Sonos is also reducing some of its customer support offices and will close one in Amsterdam later this year, according to The Verge.

The company previously cut around 7% of its workforce in June 2023, a month after it announced a 24% revenue drop in the second quarter compared to the previous year.

Cisco announced two rounds of layoffs this year

In February, networking company Cisco announced it was slashing 5% of its workforce, upward of 4,000 jobs, Bloomberg reported.

The company said it was restructuring after an industry-wide pullback in corporate tech spending — which execs said they expect to continue through the first half of the year.

On August 14, in a filing, Cisco said it would further reduce its global workforce by 7% amid sales and revenue declines. Reuters reported earlier that the company was slashing around 4,000 jobs as it shifted attention to cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.

Per its latest annual filing, Cisco had about 85,000 employees as of July 2023.

GoPro is laying off nearly 140 employees

Long-troubled GoPro is laying off 15% of its 925 current employees, the company said in a filing.

The action sports camera maker reported a net loss of nearly $48 million in the quarter that ended in June, adding to a streak of consecutive losses.

The company laid off 4% of its staff in March.

Shell is reportedly planning for major cuts in its oil exploration division

Oil giant Shell will slash its workforce in oil and gas exploration and development by 20%, according to an August 29 report from Reuters. Company sources reportedly cited intentions to cut costs in the highly profitable segments due to "deep cuts in renewables and low-carbon businesses."

Exploration, wells development, and subsurface units will face hundreds of layoffs globally, with offices in Houston, The Hauge, and Britain expected to take the biggest hit, the sources told Reuters.

A Shell spokesperson would not comment directly on the layoffs but told Business Insider that, "Shell aims to create more value with less emissions by focusing on performance, discipline and simplification across the business."

"That includes delivering structural operating cost reductions of $2-3 billion by the end of 2025, as announced at our Capital Markets Day event in June 2023," the spokesperson added.

Goldman Sachs plans to lay off more than 1,300 workers, The Wall Street Journal reported

The global investment bank is set to cut hundreds of employees during annual reviews this year, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the situation.

Goldman Sachs is targeting low performers with the intention of laying off between 3% and 4% of its global workforce, equaling somewhere between 1,300 and 1,800 people, according to the outlet.

The cuts are already underway and will continue in the coming months, one person told the outlet. Goldman typically tries to cut anywhere from 2% to 7% of employees each year, per The Journal.

Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop is cutting 18% of staff

Goop is cutting 18% of its 216-person staff, citing a change to its organization, WWD wrote in September. It will now focus on beauty, fashion, and food — specifically its Goop Beauty and good.clean.goop beauty brands, G.Label clothing line, and Goop Kitchen restaurants.

That means it's moving away from wellness, home, travel, and sexual wellness, some of which are categories that once defined the brand.

Samsung plans to cut jobs globally this year, Reuters reported

Samsung is planning to cut jobs this year, a move that will impact workers in the US, Europe, Asia, and Africa, Reuters reported.

The electronic devices maker will cut up to 30% of staff in some divisions, the report says. It is unclear how many jobs will be impacted.

Samsung told Reuters in a statement that the workforce adjustments would not impact its production staff and that no specific targets for the cuts are in place.

Verizon is laying off 4,800 US employees

Verizon is letting go of 4,800 US-based management employees in a voluntary separation program.

The company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that more than half of these employees would exit in September, while the rest will leave by the end of March 2025.

The telecommunications giant expects severance charges to cost as much as $1.9 billion before tax in the third quarter of this year.

General Motors is laying off about 1,700 employees in Kansas

General Motors is laying off 1,695 employees at its Fairfax plant in Kansas, the company said in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notice in mid-September.

The layoffs will begin in mid-November, and a second phase will continue in January, Reuters reported, citing a GM spokesperson. It is unclear which departments will be affected, but about 1,450 of these employees will be laid off temporarily, the spokesperson said.

In August, the carmaker laid off over 1,000 workers, or 1.3% of its workforce.

The August layoffs came primarily from GM's software and services business, which it had bulked up over the past few years. Last year, the company brought on two former Apple executives to run the unit.

Flexport conducts second round of layoffs in 2024

US logistics startup Flexport is laying off another 2% of its US staff this week as it aims to cut costs and reorganizes its retail delivery business.

The fulfillment center-focused cuts amount to about 40 people and were first reported by The Information, citing an internal memo.

In January, Flexport cut 15% of its staff, or around 400 people. Those cuts came after Flexport founder and CEO Ryan Petersen initiated a 20% reduction of its workforce of an estimated 2,600 employees in October 2023.

Flexport kicked off 2024 with the announcement that it raised $260 million from Shopify and made "massive progress toward returning Flexport to profitability."

NYCB's Flagstar Bank cuts 700 jobs

New York Community Bancorp's Flagstar Bank will cut 8% of its workforce, or 700 jobs, as it aims to revamp its business, the company's CEO, Joseph Otting, said in a statement on October 17.

An additional 1,200 employees will be laid off at the end of the quarter after the company sells its residential mortgage business.

NYCB is also changing its name to Flagstar Financial as part of the turnaround efforts after losses from its commercial real estate portfolio.

Chief, a networking group for female executives, made cuts across the company

Chief, which has positioned itself as the nation's largest network of senior executive women, confirmed to Business Insider on October 20 that it has shed roles.

The company told BI that the cuts, which had already been announced internally, mainly impacted "our technology and administrative functions."

"Like many companies, we are balancing growth and profitability," the spokesperson added.

In a June press release, the American company said 40% of its members were C-suite executives and that they represent more than 10,000 companies.

In April 2023, Chief cut 14% of its workforce in what the founders called a "challenging economic environment," TechCrunch reported at the time.

This January, the company said it would close its London offices — opened one year previously — to refocus on the American market.

Visa will reportedly lay off around 1,400 people

Visa plans to lay off around 1,400 workers this year, The Wall Street Journal reported on October 29.

In a statement provided to BI, a Visa spokesperson said the company expects to grow its workforce for the foreseeable future but that it is continuously evolving to serve clients, innovate, and grow, "which can lead to the elimination of some roles."

"When this happens, we are committed to supporting our employees," the spokesperson added.

Workers affected by layoffs included employees and contractors, with more than 1,000 in technology roles, the Journal reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the situation. Visa has more than 30,000 employees.

Dropbox is slashing around 20% of its global workforce

The cloud storage company is laying off 528 employees, targeting "over-invested or underperforming" areas, CEO Drew Houston announced in an email sent to employees.

"As CEO, I take full responsibility for this decision and the circumstances that led to it, and I'm truly sorry to those impacted by this change," Houston wrote.

The Dropbox chief cited diminishing demand and macro headwinds in the company's core business, as well as excessive management levels, as contributing factors.

The layoffs come as the company is undergoing a "transitional period" with its growing File Sync and Share (FSS) business and greater efforts on products like Dash, Dropbox's AI-powered work assistant.

KPMG plans to cut nearly 4% of its US audit workforce.

Consulting giant KPMG informed about 330 people, or less than 4%, in its US audit workforce that they would be laid off within the next couple of weeks, a spokesperson told BI.

"The actions reflect our ongoing focus to align the size, shape and skills of our workforce to the market, while addressing continued low levels of attrition," the spokesperson said in a written statement.

This follows an earlier round of layoffs in March, as well as another one last summer, that also affected the company's audit unit, similarly due to low levels of voluntary exits, the spokesperson said.

Nissan said it will slash 9,000 jobs globally.

Japanese automobile giant Nissan said during its November earnings release that it would be cutting 9,000 jobs in an attempt to save money.

The car company reported lower revenue for the period, which it attributed to higher selling and production costs. Nissan said it brought in about 32 million yen, or $208 million, at the end of the first half of the fiscal year — a steep drop from the $1.4 billion it reported for the same time last year.

In addition to a 20% production capacity reduction, CEO Makoto Uchida will give up 50% of his compensation and other executives have taken voluntary pay cuts.

NASA JPL plans to cut about 5% of its workforce.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California is cutting its workforce for the second time this year.

In November, the agency announced it plans to lay off 325 employees, or about 5% of its workforce. The cuts follow a round of layoffs in February, where JPL cut 530 employees.

"Although we can never have perfect insight into the future, I sincerely believe that after this action we will be at a more stable workforce level moving forward," JPL Director Laurie Leshin wrote in a company-wide memo.

Leshin added that the reductions affect all areas of JPL including technical, project, business, and support areas. The layoffs are the result of "continued funding challenges" Leshin wrote.

JPL is responsible for some of NASA's most daring feats like landing the Curiosity rover on Mars and guiding Voyagers 1 and 2 into interstellar space.

Associated Press will lay off 8% of its global staff.

The Associated Press in November announced plans to reduce its staff by 8% through a combination of buyouts and layoffs.

"This is about ensuring AP's important role as the only truly independent news organization at scale during a period of transformation in the media industry," The Associated Press said in a statement about the cuts.

The union representing a portion of AP members indicated 121 of its guild members would be offered buyouts before layoffs began, per AP.

Less than half of the expected cuts will involve news employees, the outlet reported, and though the AP has bureaus around the world, a majority of the staff reduction will occur within the United States.

Sotheby's laid off 100 workers.

Sotheby's cut 100 employees from its New York offices on Tuesday, the company confirmed to multiple publications. The layoffs include back-office workers, junior staffers, and specialists, reports said.

The layoffs come as the auction market has experienced a recent slowdown in sales and earnings. The company also previously cut about 50 employees in its London location, Art News reported.

Sotheby's recently closed a deal in October for Abu Dhabi investment company ADQ to acquire a minority stake in the company. ADQ said in a press release about the deal that the $1 billion investment was meant to support Sotheby's domestic and international expansion plans.

Sotheby's did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

Wells Fargo plans to cut over 700 workers in Oregon.

Wells Fargo filed two WARN notices on December 4 sharing plans to lay off over 700 workers in Oregon, including 500 people from its Hillsboro location and 221 employees from its Salem office. It also plans to shut down both offices.

The company said in its filing that it verbally notified employees of the changes on December 3, and plans to deliver formal notices for displacement in the fourth quarter of 2025. Wells Fargo said it will provide more details on impacted roles at a later time.

Those who don't get relocated into other roles within the business are eligible to receive severance based on years of service and their opportunity to use the company health plan at active rates, the filing said.

"We continue to bring the majority of our non-customer facing positions together in locations best suited for our customers and our company," a Wells Fargo spokesperson told BI. "This effort does not impact our commitment to serving customers and clients."

CVS files notice for 164 layoffs

CVS filed a WARN notice on Friday announcing 164 layoffs during a 14-day period beginning February 15.

The company shared plans in October to cut about 2,900 workers, which is less than 1% of the company, as part of a multi-year initiative to cut costs by $2 billion. The company said the vast majority of impacted workers were notified last week.

"Before taking this step, we prioritized finding cost savings everywhere we could, including closing open job postings," CVS said in a statement. "Decisions on which positions to eliminate were extremely difficult and do not diminish the value that impacted colleagues have brought to the company."

The company said most cuts would be corporate roles and wouldn't impact front line-line jobs in stores, pharmacies, and distribution centers.

The company also filed a WARN notice in October announcing 416 layoffs, 323 of which were remote. It filed another notice in November announcing 42 cuts, 30 of which were remote workers.

"We are committed to supporting these colleagues, who will receive severance pay and benefits, including access to outplacement services," the company said in a statement.

Party City announced mass layoffs

Party City sent an email to employees about mass layoffs at its New Jersey headquarters on Friday, CBS News reported. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in the Southern District of Texas the next day.

The company said in an announcement that the decision to "wind down" followed extensive efforts to continue operations in an "immensely challenging environment driven by inflationary pressures on costs and consumer spending."

• Amazon has told staff in Germany they can apply to work from home for up to two days a week.
• A leaked internal document seen by BI says requests can be submitted starting December 15.
• Amazon has a global mandate for all employees to return five days a week to the office from January.

Amazon employees in Germany will be able to apply to work from home up to two days a week when the company's global return-to-office mandate takes effect, Business Insider has learned.

Managers at the e-commerce giant told staff about the measure on Thursday and Friday via Slack and email, directing them to a new flexible working policy, two people familiar with the matter said.

The document, seen by BI, said people could apply for flexible working starting December 15.

In September, Amazon announced a mandate for all global employees to return to the office full time from January. The majority of the company's 1.5 million employees work in warehouses. Amazon's CEO, Andy Jassy, said at the time that the RTO push was to help the company "further strengthen" its culture and teams.

Amazon said the expectation was still for employees to work from the office five days a week in Germany and that it had a similar flexible work policy before the pandemic.

"Regular working from home arrangements can be made for 1 day every week, exceptionally 2 days every week, and are limited to a one-year time frame," the document said.

It added that the policy applied to all Amazon employees in Germany but that it did not include Twitch and Audible employees. It said Amazon could reconsider or change informal arrangements "at its discretion at any time."

The rule includes two types of work arrangements: informal and formal. Under the formal arrangement, employees can request to work from home for up to two days a week and change their scheduled hours, the document said.

On an informal basis, managers can approve ad hoc requests made with 24 hours' notice to work from home, it added.

It said formal flexible working arrangements change employee contractual terms and conditions and "require documentation."

The document also said that Amazon would take disciplinary action, including terminating employment, for staff who fail to comply with the policy.

Announcing the five-day RTO mandate in September, Jassy said he wanted Amazon to "operate like the world's largest startup."

He added: "That means having a passion for constantly inventing for customers, strong urgency (for most big opportunities, it's a race!), high ownership, fast decision-making, scrappiness and frugality, deeply connected collaboration (you need to be joined at the hip with your teammates when inventing and solving hard problems), and a shared commitment to each other."

Amazon said in June that it's on track to have more than 40,000 permanent employees in Germany by the end of this year. It also announced an investment of 10 billion euros (about $10.4 billion) in the country to expand its logistics network and cloud infrastructure.

Are you a tech worker with insights to share? Contact the reporter, Jyoti Mann, via email at [email protected] or Signal at jyotimann.11. Reach out via a nonwork device.

• A bipartisan US congressional commission urges a "Manhattan Project" for AI to outpace China.
• The commission recommends contracts for AI, cloud, and data center firms to ensure US leadership.
• Trump has previously called China the "primary threat" in the AI race.

Donald Trump has made no secret that he sees China as the US' biggest rival in AI. Ahead of his second presidency, a bipartisan congressional commission has called for a "Manhattan Project-like" program to fund initiatives to beat China in the race to build powerful AI that surpasses human intelligence.

In its annual report, published Tuesday, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission recommended that Congress establish a project "dedicated to racing to and acquiring an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) capability."

The Manhattan Project was a secret program led by the US government during World War II to develop the world's first atomic bombs. While AGI does not yet exist, companies such as OpenAI are striving to build systems that can understand and solve any intellectual task that humans can.

The commission also suggested giving the executive branch the power to award multiyear contracts and funding for AI, cloud, and data center firms. These would aim to establish "US AGI leadership." Trump's previous comments on AI and China suggest he would support this objective.

In an interview on Logan Paul's "Impaulsive" podcast in June, Trump said, "We have to be at the forefront" of AI.

"We have to take the lead over China, China is the primary threat," he added.

Trump has said he plans to introduce tariffs against China. However, President Joe Biden's administration has implemented sweeping sanctions against the country.

The US Treasury Department issued a final rule last month to implement new restrictions on US venture capital firms' investments in Chinese tech startups. The limits, which will come into effect in January, will prevent investors from backing Chinese firms developing AI models. The US has also implemented sanctions against China that aim to limit its access to advanced AI chips.

According to the commission's report, 50 companies in China were developing AI models as of June 2024, compared with what it says is just a small number of large companies in the US building AI models.

ChatGPT maker OpenAI proposed that the government provide more funding for AI development in its "Infrastructure Blueprint for the US," which was seen by Business Insider presented in Washington last week. OpenAI also cited the Manhattan Project in its blueprint as one of the US's "iconic infrastructure projects that moved the country forward."

However, many prominent AI safety advocates, including AI "godfather" Yoshua Bengio, have spoken out about the potential dangers that could arise from race dynamics between countries and companies, including the possibility of AI going rogue without sufficient risk mitigation.

Future of Life Institute cofounder and MIT professor Max Tegmark told The Guardian last week that Elon Musk's influence on the incoming Trump administration could mean that he will persuade Trump to "understand that an AGI race is a suicide race."