Moments after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerbergâs all-hands comments to employees were widely leaked, a company executive warned in an internal memo that leakers will be fired.
âWe take leaks seriously and will take action,â Metaâs chief information security officer, Guy Rosen, said in an internal memo Iâve seen. âWhen information is stolen or leaked, there are repercussions beyond the immediate security impact. Our teams become demoralized and we all waste time that is better spent working on our products and toward our goals and mission.â
Rosen goes on to say that Meta âwill take appropriate action, including terminationâ if it identifies leakers and that âwe recently terminated relationships with employees who leaked confidential company information inappropriately and exfiltrated sensitive documents.â
During todayâs all-hands meeting, Zuckerberg told employees he would no longer be as transparent due to leaks. âWe try to be really open and then everything I say leaks,â he said. âIt sucks.â
Tensions were high inside Meta ahead of Mark Zuckerbergâs first all-hands meeting of the year.
Employee-submitted questions for the CEO touched on a couple of big themes: concerns about his announcement that âlow-performersâ would be let go on February 10th, his MAGA-fueled changes to Metaâs content moderation policies and DEI programs, and his comment to Joe Rogan about wanting more âmasculine energyâ in the workplace. âAre the changes we’re seeing (in any way) influenced by the new U.S. president?â asked one employee ahead of the internal meeting. âIf so, why are we making changes based on these factors?â
With a lot of the rank and file clearly on edge, Zuckerberg made sure there would be fewer opportunities for drama during todayâs Q&A. Before it started, HR notified employees that âwe will skip questions that we expect might be unproductive if they leak.â For the first time, the most upvoted employee questions were no longer ranked for everyone to see and comments were disabled during the livestream.
Before jumping into the Q&A, Zuckerberg addressed the changes head on: âWe try to be really open and then everything I say leaks. It sucks.â
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed sales figures for the companyâs Ray-Ban smart glasses for the first time, telling employees that over 1 million units were sold in 2024. In remarks during an all-hands meeting seen by The Verge, Zuckerberg posed a question to staff about whether sales would go from 1 million to as much as 5 million units in 2025.
âWe basically invented the category and our competitors haven’t really shown up yet,â Zuckerberg said during the meeting. âI think we’ll probably start seeing some of that maybe a little later this year, maybe next year, but we just have this wide open field right now to run and basically introduce as many people as possible to Meta AI glasses and we should take that opportunity.â
That was CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s message to investors during his company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Wednesday. During the Q&A portion of the call with Wall Street analysts, Zuckerberg fielded multiple questions about DeepSeek’s impressive AI models and what the implications are for Meta’s AI strategy. He said that what DeepSeek was able to accomplish with relatively little money has “only strengthened our conviction that this is the right thing to be focused on.”
Zuckerberg noted that “there’s a number of novel things they did we’re still digesting” and that Meta plans to implement DeepSeek’s “advancements” into Llama. DeepSeek caused a massive sell-off in AI stocks due to fears that models will no longer need as much computing power. Zuckerberg tried to dispel concerns that the billions of dollars he’s spending on GPUs will go to waste: “I continue to think that investing very heavily in CapEx and infra is going to be a strategic advantage over time.”
His argument is in line with the growing consensus that computing resources will move from the training phase of AI development towards helping models better “reason.” In Zuckerberg’s own words, this “doesn’t mean you need less compute” because you can “apply more compute at inference time in order to generate a higher level of intelligence and a higher quality of service.” Meta is gearing up to release Llama 4 with multimodal and “agentic” capabilities in the coming months, according to Zuckerberg. He expects Meta’s AI assistant to reach one billion users this year.
He also took a thinly veiled jab at OpenAI, Anthropic, and other unprofitable startups by noting that Meta has a “strong business model” to support the roughly $60 billion it will spend on AI this year versus “others who don’t necessarily have business models to support it on a sustainable basis.”
Zuckerberg also made sure to praise President Donald Trump. “We now have a US administration that is proud of our leading companies, prioritizes American technology winning,” and “will defend our values and interests abroad,” he said. Moments before the earnings call started, news broke that Meta is paying Trump $25 million to settle a lawsuit he brought against the company for banning his account after the January 6th insurrection. (The vast majority of the money is going to pay for Trump’s presidential library.)
Meanwhile, Meta is a cash-printing machine. Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $48.39 billion — a 22-percent increase from the year-ago period — while net profit was a staggering $20.8 billion (up 43-percent from a year before). During the earnings call, CFO Susan Li said that Meta hasn’t “seen any noticeable impact” from its content policy changes on ad spending. 3.35 billion people used at least one of Meta’s apps daily in the fourth quarter — a 5-percent increase from the year-ago period.
Rarely does a one-liner so perfectly capture the state of the moment. Here, you have Microsoft CEO Satya Nadellasaying he’s “not in the details” about Stargate, the supposedly multi-hundred-billion AI infrastructure project driven by his marquee investment, OpenAI.
Nadella not being read in on the nebulous details of Stargate says a lot about how much Microsoft and OpenAI have drifted apart. Microsoft is mentioned in the Stargate press release since OpenAI’s models are still exclusive to Azure. But the most striking aspect of Stargate is not that the money isn’t there for it yet; it’s that OpenAI’s biggest backer has decided to not participate in what Sam Altman is calling “the most important project of this era.” As Nadella made clear on CNBC this week, he’s running his own, $80 billion AI infrastructure buildout and, going forward, OpenAI can get additional compute — with his blessing — elsewhere.
While it received fewer headlines this week, I found Nadella’s response to Elon Musk on X even more illuminating. In his response to Musk saying, “on the other hand, Satya definitely does have the money,” Nadella responded: “ And all...
TikTok is officially going dark in the United States now that a federal ban on the app is set to go into effect on January 19th. Around 9PM ET, the app began notifying people in the US with a message that said the ban will “make our services temporarily unavailable.”
The message goes on to say that TikTok is “working to restore our service in the US as quickly as possible” — an outcome that will require action from the incoming Trump administration one way or another. A similar message is showing up in the CapCut video editor, which is also owned by TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance.
Inside TikTok, an internal memo viewed by The Verge calls the news “disappointing” but tells employees that, “President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office” on the 20th, and “teams are working tirelessly to bring our app back to the U.S. as soon as possible.” Shortly after the memo was shared with employees, both TikTok and Capcut started showing the same line about Trump to users.
TikTok warned on Friday that it would be forced to go dark if the Biden administration didn’t promise to delay enforcement of the law penalties on TikTok’s service providers, like Apple and Google, which can be fined thousands of dollars per US user once the ban goes into effect. In response, the Biden administration said it had already passed enforcement responsibilities on to the Trump administration and called TikTok’s threat to go offline a “stunt.”
Trump — who tired to ban TikTok five years ago — has indicated he plans to extend the deadline for the ban by 90 days via an executive order once he is sworn in on January 20th. It’s not clear if he will use the provision in the law that allows for a delay if a sale is pending, or if he even has that option once the ban goes into effect. TikTok’s users are decidedly upset, of course, although none of them seem to be pressuring the company to sell as much as they’re pressuring politicians from both parties to rescind the ban.
Update, January 18th: Noted that TikTok and CapCut app shutdowns have begun in the US.
TikTok says it plans to go offline on Sunday, January 19th if the Biden administration doesn’t intervene.
The company confirms earlier reporting that it will be “forced to go dark” on the 19th unless the outgoing administration provides a “definitive statement” assuring its “most critical service providers” that they won’t be held liable for breaking the law. Those providers include Apple and Google, which together distribute TikTok through their app stores, and its hosting partners, which include Amazon and Oracle.
TikTok’s statement follows Friday’s Supreme Court ruling that upheld the law banning the app unless its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, divests its ownership stake. Shortly after the Supreme Court’s ruling, TikTok CEO Shou Chew appealed to President-elect Donald Trump in a video but didn’t give any indication of what might happen when the law goes into effect at midnight on Saturday.
Unfortunately for TikTok, the White House has already made clear that it intends to punt the fate of the app to Donald Trump, who has promised to save it and is set to be sworn in as president on Monday, January 20th. Trump said on Friday that he spoke with China President Xi Jinping about “balancing trade, fentanyl, TikTok, and many other subjects.”
“President Biden’s position on TikTok has been clear for months, including since Congress sent a bill in overwhelming, bipartisan fashion to the President’s desk: TikTok should remain available to Americans, but simply under American ownership or other ownership that addresses the national security concerns identified by Congress in developing this law,” the White House said in a statement on Friday. “Given the sheer fact of timing, this Administration recognizes that actions to implement the law simply must fall to the next Administration, which takes office on Monday.”
Meanwhile, the Department of Justice, which is tasked with enforcing the TikTok ban by fining its US service providers $5,000 per user with access to the app, has signaled that it’s still behind the ban.
“Authoritarian regimes should not have unfettered access to millions of Americans’ sensitive data,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Friday. “The Court’s decision affirms that this Act protects the national security of the United States in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution.”
As the ban deadline gets nearer, politicians who voted for it have started flipping by arguing that ByteDance should have more time to divest. According to The New York Times, Senator Chuck Schumer told President Biden that allowing a ban to happen would “damage his legacy.”
You can read TikTok’s full statement about shutting down below:
The statements issued today by both the Biden White House and the Department of Justice have failed to provide the necessary clarity and assurance to the service providers that are integral to maintaining TikTok’s availability to over 170 million Americans.
Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19.
You’d think that TikTok would have a Plan B by now.
It’s now clear the company never planned for a scenario in which it would lose to the Supreme Court. Maybe it couldn’t, given that the Chinese government ultimately has final say on a sale. Now, TikTok’s leaders are banking on Donald Trump to save them in a last-ditch effort that will unquestionably come with strings attached.
Politically, TikTok misplayed its hand at every turn of this multi-year saga. Executives repeatedly dismissed the possibility of a ban, even going so far as to literally laugh at the idea. They were blindsided by Congress overwhelmingly agreeing on a ban. Then, they lost on appeal to the Supreme Court with only a day left before the law goes into effect. The only leverage they seemingly have left is that Trump thinks the app helped him win the election — plus their willingness to let him extract whatever pound of flesh he wants.
TikTok backed itself into this corner technically, too. It spent over $1 billion on Project Texas to try and appease concerns about US data making its way to China. Amazingly, TikTok started Project Texas before the government gave its blessing, which of course never came. US...
In an internal memo obtained by The Verge, employees were told that the company is “continuing to plan the way forward” ahead of the court’s imminent decision, which is expected as soon as Wednesday, January 15th.
“We know it’s unsettling to not know exactly what happens next,” reads the memo, which notes that TikTok’s offices will stay open regardless of what happens to the app over the next several days. “The bill is not written in a way that impacts the entities through which you are employed, only the US user experience [of TikTok],” according to the memo.
Inside TikTok, the mood is grim. One source describes the situation as “definitely stressful,” while another notes that even the employees who survived the first US ban attempt now “seem rattled.”
The Chinese government, which has the final say on any sale of TikTok, is reportedly consideringallowing Elon Musk to buy the app. Frank McCourt, a billionaire real estate and former owned of the LA Dodgers, has also floated a proposal to buy the app’s US operations. “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary...
Meta will soon lay off more “low-performers” across the company, according to an internal memo from CEO Mark Zuckerberg that was shared by a source at the company.
“I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster,” Zuckerberg says in the memo, which you can read in full below. “We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year, but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle — with the intention of backfilling these roles in 2025.”
While the exact number of job cuts is unclear, managers at Meta have been told that about 5 percent of employees will be let go starting February 10th. Bloomberg first reported on Zuckerberg’s memo and the planned layoffs. Meta last laid off employees in October after cutting 21,000 workers between 2022 and 2023.
Here’s Zuckerberg’s full memo to employees:
Meta is working on building some of the most important technologies in the world — Al, glasses as the next computing platform, and the future of social media. This is going to be an intense year, and I want to make sure we have the best people on our teams.
At this point, it’s pretty clear what Donald Trump wants from Mark Zuckerberg. But what does Zuckerberg, who has now gone to Mar-a-Lagotwice since the November election, want from the President-elect?
That’s the question I’ve been asking sources in and around Meta over the last several days. They all described Meta’s relationship with the outgoing Biden administration as incredibly hostile. It’s safe to assume that Zuckerberg wants a reset for the MAGA regime, especially since Trump threatened not that long ago to imprison him for life.
In Trump’s America, removing tampons from the mens’ restrooms on Meta’s campuses, — a real thing that just happened — is as much a business decision as a political one. Destroying ‘woke’ ideology is a key pillar of Trump’s stated mandate. Others who know they need to play the game, like Amazon, are also starting to fall in line. Even still, Zuckerberg is transforming Meta for this new political reality at a speed that’s unusual for a company of its size and influence. Founder mode.
As promised, I’ve got a special mailbag issue this week. Thanks to everyone who sent in questions. Like last year, I picked a handful that hit some of the themes I plan to continue covering in 2025.
On to your questions…
I’m really concerned / worried / curious about the near-term future. Between now and 10 years from now, I think it is very clear AI will be replacing many job functions. What are we all going to do?
The leaders at the AI labs say that, yes, there will be job loss, but that doesn’t mean catastrophe. The optimistic take is that humans are creative and will invent new jobs, like they always have when technology changes things. At the moment, there’s also a macro belief among the CEOs driving a lot of the spending on infrastructure for AI that its impact will be deflationary and lead to GDP growth.
Job displacement will still be painful, of course. Sam Altman and others believe that some form of universal basic income will be necessary to offset the economic impacts of AGI. Altman has his other startup, Tools for Humanity, already scanning eyeballs and distributing cryptocurrency. But I think it’s way too early to be seriously concerned. As Altman himself recently...
Donald Trump. | Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photos from Scott Olson, Getty Images
President-elect Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to let him negotiate a deal to save TikTok from an imminent US ban.
In an amicus brief filed to the court, Trump says he “seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office,” and that he “alone possesses the consummate dealmaking expertise, the electoral mandate, and the political will to negotiate a resolution to save the platform.”
Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments that a bill passed by Congress banning TikTok on national security grounds violates the First Amendment. The bill gives wide latitude to the president to delay its enforcement if there’s progress being made towards a deal that ensures TikTok isn’t fully controlled by its Chinese parent company, ByteDance.
But the deadline for that determination is January 19th, which is one day before Trump is set to be sworn in.
In his Supreme Court filing, Trump asks for the bill’s January 19th deadline to be stayed, arguing that the deal he’d negotiate “would obviate the need for this Court to decide the historically challenging First Amendment question presented here on the current, highly expedited basis.”
He offers no details on what said deal would look like, though it would likely have to involve ByteDance selling a signification portion of its ownership in TikTok to an American company.
Trump argues that having over 14 million followers on TikTok, along with his ownership of Truth Social, gives him unique ability to “evaluate TikTok’s importance as a unique medium for freedom of expression, including core political speech.” He also cites Brazil’s temporary ban of Elon Musk’s X as an example of “the historic dangers presented” by a government banning a social media platform.
There’s still plenty of political pressure to enforce a TikTok ban, however. A group of senators and congressmen, including Mitch McConnell and Ro Khanna, filed petitions on Friday, joined by 22 U.S. states and former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, urging the Supreme Court to reject TikTok’s appeal.
Naveen Rao, VP of AI at Databricks. | Naveen Rao / The Verge
For my last issue of the year, I’m focusing on the AI talent war, which is a theme I’ve been covering since this newsletter launched almost two years ago. And keep reading for the latest from inside Google and Meta this week.
But first, I need your questions for a mailbag issue I’m planning for my first issue of 2025. You can submit questions via this form or leave them in the comments.
“It’s like looking for LeBron James”
This week, Databricks announced the largest known funding round for any private tech company in history. The AI enterprise firm is in the final stretch of raising $10 billion, almost all of which is going to go to buying back vested employee stock.
How companies approach compensation is often undercovered in the tech industry, even though the strategies play a crucial role in determining which company gets ahead faster. Nowhere is this dynamic as intense as the war for AI talent, as I’ve covered before.
To better understand what’s driving the state of play going into 2025, this week I spoke with Naveen Rao, VP of AI at Databricks. Rao is one of my favorite people to talk to about the AI industry. He’s deeply technical but also business-minded, having...
Sen. Chuck Schumer during a December 15th press conference. | Screenshot: NBC News
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has asked the Department of Homeland Security to provide New York and New Jersey authorities with an advanced drone detection system to help “determine what the heck is going on” with continued sightings in the Northeast.
“We’ve seen lots of recent sightings in New York, New Jersey, Long Island, Staten Island.” Schumer said during a December 15th press conference. “With all these sightings over the last while, why do we have more questions than answers?”
Over the weekend, parts of Stewart International Airport were temporarily shut down due to the drone sightings, prompting New York Governor Kathy Hochul to say, “this has gone too far.” Drone activity also shut down airspace over the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio for over four hours.
President-elect Donald Trump said on Monday that he’s canceling a trip to Bedminster, New Jersey due to drone sightings in the area. He said, “the government knows what is happening” and “they’d be better off saying what it is.”
During a press conference on Sunday, Schumer requested a “360-degree” detection system like the one built by Robin Radar Systems. The European company sells micro-doppler radars that it claims can distinguish between birds and drones moving up to 60 miles per hour in 3D space. Its website features case studies of its radars being used for security at airports, during the G7 Summit, and to study bird migration in the Netherlands.
Mark Zuckerberg. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge; Getty Images
Meta is asking California Attorney General Rob Bonta to block OpenAI’s planned transition from a non-profit to for-profit entity.
In a letter sent to Bonta’s office this week, Meta says that OpenAI “should not be allowed to flout the law by taking and reappropriating assets it built as a charity and using them for potentially enormous private gains.”
The letter, which was first reported on by The Wall Street Journaland you can read in full below, goes so far as to say that Meta believes Elon Musk is “qualified and well positioned to represent the interests of Californians in this matter.” Meta supporting Musk’s fight against OpenAI is notable given that Musk and Mark Zuckerberg were talking about literally fighting in a cage match just last year.
OpenAI started as a non-profit but stumbled into commercial success with ChatGPT, which now makes billions of dollars a year in revenue. CEO Sam Altman has been clear that the company needs to shed its non-profit status to become more attractive to investors and continuing funding its ambitions. The stakes are so high that OpenAI will have to return the billions of dollars it raised this year (with interest) if it can’t successfully...
So far, ByteDance has shown zero willingness to spin off TikTok in the US. The Chinese parent company seems to be banking on the Supreme Court or President-elect Donald Trump rescuing the app before it’s banned next month.
The obvious names that would would buy TikTok if they could — Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle, etc. — are sitting on the sidelines and waiting to see what happens in the coming weeks. The clock is ticking. Congress just sent letters to Sundar Pichai and Tim Cook reminding them that they will be legally liable for continuing to host TikTok in their app stores after January 19th.
Then there’s Frank McCourt, the real estate billionaire and former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. For months, McCourt has been very public about his desire to buy TikTok. He has ramped up his drumbeat since ByteDance recently lost its legal fight on appeal. This week, he pitched more investors on his Project Liberty plan to buy the app’s US operations.
When I spoke with McCourt over Zoom in between those investor meetings, he told me he currently has roughly $20 billion behind him for a bid. He has asked Kevin Mayer, who was briefly TikTok’s CEO the last time it was almost...
Arm CEO Rene Haas has a unique, bird’s eye view of the tech industry. His company’s chip designs are in the majority of devices you use on a daily basis, from your smartphone to your car. The SoftBank-backed company he leads is worth almost $150 billion, which is now considerably more than Intel.
With the news earlier this week that Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger “retired” and Intel is evaluating its options for a possible spinoff or outright sale, I wanted to hear what Haas thought should happen to his longtime frenemy. There were reports that he approached Intel about buying a big chunk of the company before Gelsinger was ousted. At the same time, Arm is also rumored to be eyeing an expansion into building its own chips and not just licensing its designs.
Haas and I touched on all that and more in an exclusive interview earlier today, which will air in full on a future episode of Decoder. (You can listen to my episode about AI spending in the enterprise that just came out as well.) In the meantime, I wanted to give subscribers the first peek at the highlights from my conversation with Haas.
The following interview has been edited and condensed:
