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Tag: CNBC

  • Google CEO: ‘Things Will Go Wrong’ With Bard AI

    Google CEO: ‘Things Will Go Wrong’ With Bard AI

    Google has finally released its Bard AI to the world, albeit via a waitlist, but Google CEO Sundar Pichai is warning “things will go wrong.”

    Google’s Bard has already had a rough launch. When the company first announced it, the AI flubbed an answer to one of the questions, spooking investors and taking $100 billion off of Alphabet’s stock value. In response, Pichai asked Googlers to test Bard in an effort to improve it, leading to its public release Tuesday.

    While the release is good news for Google, Pichai is warning company employees not to expect perfection.

    “As more people start to use Bard and test its capabilities, they’ll surprise us. Things will go wrong,” Pichai wrote in an internal email to employees Tuesday viewed by CNBC. “But the user feedback is critical to improving the product and the underlying technology.”

    Pichai said Googlers “should be proud of this work and the years of tech breakthroughs that led us here, including our 2017 Transformer research and foundational models such as PalM and BERT.”

    Nonetheless, he cautioned: “Even after all this progress, we’re still in the early stages of a long Al journey.”

    “For now, I’m excited to see how Bard sparks more creativity and curiosity in the people who use it.”

  • Laid-Off Googlers Ask CEO to Honor Approved Medical Leave

    Laid-Off Googlers Ask CEO to Honor Approved Medical Leave

    Laid-off Google employees have repeatedly asked Google and CEO Sundar Pichai to honor previously approved medical leave.

    Google did what was once considered unthinkable for the company, laying off thousands of workers for the first time in its history. At the time, Google promised 16 weeks of severance pay plus an additional two weeks for every year an employee worked at the company.

    Unfortunately, for some workers, that still comes out to less time than they were previously promised for medical leave, parental leave, or caregiver’s leave. In early 2022, Google increased the length of various leaves, with parental leave lasting up to 24 months. At the time, Chief People Officer Fiona Cicconi said the company wanted employees to “spend more time with their new baby, look after a sick loved one or take care of their own wellbeing,” according to CNBC.

    Now, faced with losing some of that time they were previously promised, more than 100 employees have formed the “Laid off on Leave” group. The group has already sent three letters to Google executives, including Pichai, asking them to honor their previous promise.

    In the meantime, the layoffs are causing a significant amount of hardship and inconvenience, including individuals losing access to their health care via Google’s on-site One Medical facility the moment the layoffs were announced.

    Still others found out about the reduced leave they’re now facing right when they needed it most.

    “Exactly a week after receiving the text and sharing the exciting news that my maternity leave was approved, I got the already widely talked-about email letting me know that I was among the 12k terminated,” a Google program manager wrote on LinkedIn. “Easy target? Maybe.”

    “On 1/20/23 at 7:05 am while in the hospital bed holding my hours-old newborn I learned that I was part of the #thegolden12K of Googlers who had been laid off,” Kate Howells wrote on LinkedIn. “I was a Googler for 9.5 years.”

    When contacted by CNBC, a Google spokesperson simply pointed to the original layoff announcement.

    “As we shared with impacted employees, we benchmarked this package to ensure the care we’re providing compares favorably with other companies, including for Googlers on leave,” the spokesperson said.

    Needless to say, the company’s actions are not going over well with Googlers and fly in the face of the image the company has maintained for years, in terms of how it treats its employees.

    “When Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced layoffs, he mentioned the company’s commitment to AI three times, but never once mentioned Google’s commitment to accessibility,” the group wrote in an email to CNBC. “This matters deeply because accessibility is part of the company’s actual mission. This clearly calls for a re-centering of priorities. It’s unsurprising that through a bungled demo just days after laying us off, Google showed they’re indeed not leading the way in AI. However, the good news is that an incredible opportunity remains to be an accessibility leader in the treatment of laid off workers.”

  • Amazon Faces NYC Lawsuit for Not Disclosing Facial Rec Use

    Amazon Faces NYC Lawsuit for Not Disclosing Facial Rec Use

    Amazon is facing a class-action lawsuit in New York City over not disclosing its use of facial recognition in its Go stores.

    NYC is the only major city in the US that requires businesses to disclose when they are using facial recognition, according to CNBC. Amazon’s Go stores achieve their cashier-less by using a plethora of cameras to link a person’s purchases with their Amazon account.

    The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Alfredo Perez, says Amazon violated NYC’s law by not clearly disclosing the use of facial recognition until just recently, when the company finally put up cameras.

    “To make this ‘Just Walk Out’ technology possible, the Amazon Go stores constantly collect and use customers’ biometric identifier information, including by scanning the palms of some customers to identify them and by applying computer vision, deep learning algorithms, and sensor fusion that measure the shape and size of each customer’s body to identify customers, track where they move in the stores, and determine what they have purchased,” the lawsuit says.

    The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project is representing Perez.

    “It means that even a global tech giant can’t ignore local privacy laws,” Albert Cahn, project director, told CNBC in a text message. “As we wait for long overdue federal privacy laws, it shows there is so much local governments can do to protect their residents.”

  • EU Telcos: ‘There Would Be No Netflix, Google Without Us’

    EU Telcos: ‘There Would Be No Netflix, Google Without Us’

    The battle over who will pay for EU infrastructure upgrades is heating up, with the telcos saying Big Tech owes them.

    The EU is looking to the future and trying to determine how critical network infrastructure will be funded. One of the leading proposals involves charging Big Tech companies, especially those responsible for the bulk of traffic, to help fund the upgrades. Needless to say, such a proposal is not popular with the tech industry.

    In a statement to CNBC, however, Michael Trabbia, chief technology and innovation officer for France’s Orange, makes the case that Big Tech companies wouldn’t enjoy the success they do without the telecom operators.

    “Without the telcos, without the network, there is no Netflix, there is no Google,” said Trabbia.

    Similarly, Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Hoettges asked why Big Tech couldn’t “at least a little bit, contribute to the efforts and the infrastructure which we are building here in Europe.”

    The proposal is just the latest challenge Big Tech is facing amid growing antitrust scrutiny, privacy, and security concerns.

  • Google Will Be Promoting Fewer Staff to Senior Roles

    Google Will Be Promoting Fewer Staff to Senior Roles

    Google has informed employees that there will be fewer promotions to senior roles, a reflection of the company’s changing workforce.

    Like many in the tech industry, Google has conducted extensive layoffs, letting some 12,000 employees go. The company has also cut back on projects and has implemented various hiring freezes. As a result of these changes, it appears there are fewer senior roles than in past years.

    The company informed employees via an email that was seen by CNBC:

    “The process is manager-led and will be largely similar to last year — though with our slower pace of hiring, we are planning for fewer promotions into L6 and above than when Google was growing quickly.”

    The company added that the adjustment is being made “to ensure that the number of Googlers in more senior and leadership roles grows in proportion to the growth of the company.”

    “If your manager believes that you are ready to be promoted, they will nominate you,” the email said. Those who want to “self-nominate” have a “short window of time” from March 6-8.

  • National Cyber Strategy Puts Cybersecurity Burden on Big Tech

    National Cyber Strategy Puts Cybersecurity Burden on Big Tech

    The White House unveiled its National Cyber Strategy, shifting the burden of providing security from individuals to Big Tech.

    Cybersecurity has become a major issue for individuals, businesses, and government agencies, with hardly a day going by without disclosure of another data breach. According to CNBC, a key component of the new strategy is putting the burden of protection on Big Tech, the segment best equipped to address security issues.

    “The president’s strategy fundamentally reimagines America’s cyber social contract,” Acting National Cyber Director Kemba Walden said during a press briefing on Wednesday. “It will rebalance the responsibility for managing cyber risk onto those who are most able to bear it.”

    Walden added, “the biggest, most capable and best-positioned actors in our digital ecosystem can and should shoulder a greater share of the burden for managing cyber risk and keeping us all safe.”

    The strategy document emphasizes the importance of the public and private sectors working together:

    The most capable and best-positioned actors in cyberspace must be better stewards of the digital ecosystem. Today, end users bear too great a burden for mitigating cyber risks. Individuals, small businesses, state and local governments, and infrastructure operators have limited resources and competing priorities, yet these actors’ choices can have a significant impact on our national cybersecurity. A single person’s momentary lapse in judgment, use of an outdated password, or errant click on a suspicious link should not have national security consequences. Our collective cyber resilience cannot rely on the constant vigilance of our smallest organizations and individual citizens.

    Instead, across both the public and private sectors, we must ask more of the most capable and best- positioned actors to make our digital ecosystem secure and resilient. In a free and interconnected society, protecting data and assuring the reliability of critical systems must be the responsibility of the owners and operators of the systems that hold our data and make our society function, as well as of the technology providers that build and service these systems. Government’s role is to protect its own systems; to ensure private entities, particularly critical infrastructure, are protecting their systems; and to carry out core governmental functions such as engaging in diplomacy, collecting intelligence, imposing economic costs, enforcing the law, and, conducting disruptive actions to counter cyber threats. Together, industry and government must drive effective and equitable collaboration to correct market failures, minimize the harms from cyber incidents to society’s most vulnerable, and defend our shared digital ecosystem.

    The National Cyber Strategy echoes sentiments voiced by Google, in which the company threw its support behind companies being held responsible for cybersecurity. Google also emphasized the need for companies to build systems that are fundamentally more secure — rather than offloading that burden on the average user.

  • Qualcomm CEO: Apple Will Use Their Own Modems in 2024

    Qualcomm CEO: Apple Will Use Their Own Modems in 2024

    Qualcomm isn’t holding out any hope of continuing as Apple’s primary modem supplier and is expecting to lose that business in 2024.

    Apple and Qualcomm have a contentious relationship, one filled with alternating deals and lawsuits. For the time being, Qualcomm is the primary provider of the modems Apple uses in its iPhones and iPads, but the Cupertino company has been working hard to build its own modems and end reliance on Qualcomm.

    It appears those plans are closer to reality than ever before, according to Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon.

    “We’re making no plans for 2024, my planning assumption is we’re not providing [Apple] a modem in ’24, but it’s their decision to make,” Amon told CNBC at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

    Apple bought Intel’s failed modem division after the latter exited the business, accusing Qualcomm of creating a “a web of anticompetitive conduct designed to allow Qualcomm to coerce customers, tilt the competitive playing field and exclude competitors, all the while shielding itself from legal scrutiny and capturing billions in unlawful gains.”

    While there’s no love lost between Apple and Qualcomm, the latter is sure to feel a financial hit from losing the lucrative iPhone business.

  • Google Wants Employees to Share a Desk

    Google Wants Employees to Share a Desk

    Google is taking an unusual approach to bringing people back to the office, asking them to share a desk.

    Like many in the tech industry, Google has been working to bring employees back to the office at least part-time. According to an internal document seen by CNBC, the company is looking to optimize its use of real estate by asking some employees to share a desk on alternating days.

    “Most Googlers will now share a desk with one other Googler,” the internal document stated, describing a system of alternate work days so desks don’t have two people using them at the same time. “Through the matching process, they will agree on a basic desk setup and establish norms with their desk partner and teams to ensure a positive experience in the new shared environment.”

    In the event someone comes into work on an off-day when their desk will be in use, they will have to use “overflow drop-in space.”

    Google’s approach is a novel one to the new normal in which hybrid workflows require rethinking traditional office space requirements.

  • DOJ Says Google Misled It, “Systematically Destroyed” Messages

    DOJ Says Google Misled It, “Systematically Destroyed” Messages

    The Department of Justice says Google “systematically destroyed” messages and misled the agency about its actions.

    US companies are required by law to keep copies of internal communications if there is any reasonable anticipation of upcoming litigation. In Google’s case, the DOJ argues in its filing that the company should have anticipated the government’s legal action against it as early as mid-2019, according to CNBC.

    In spite of the DOJ’s belief that Google should have anticipated the current litigation, the company continued to delete its internal chats every 24 hours…right up to this month. Instead, the company left it up to individuals to decide whether they would keep or auto-delete their messages.

    “Few, if any,” did, says the DOJ.

    To make matters worse, the DOJ says the company repeatedly and “falsely” told the agency that it had ”‘put a legal hold in place’ that ‘suspends auto-deletion.’”

    See Also: States Sue Google for Antitrust

    As a result of the DOJ’s claims, Judge James Donato indicated at the end of January that he would consider an adverse jury instruction, although he would be open to allowing the jury to arrive at their own conclusions regarding the implications of Google’s actions.

    Eileen Scallen, a professor at the UCLA School of Law, told CNBC that an adverse jury instruction would be “very damning.”

    “The one person the jury respects in a courtroom is the trial judge,” Scallen said. “And if the trial judge is telling them you can presume that this was bad news for Google, they’re going to take that to heart.”

    In the meantime, Google is disputing the DOJ’s claims. A company spokesperson told CNBC that company officials “strongly refute the DOJ’s claims. Our teams have conscientiously worked for years to respond to inquiries and litigation. In fact, we have produced over 4 million documents in this case alone, and millions more to regulators around the world.”

    Given the various antitrust investigations that have been building against the company for years, it is hard to fathom any halfway intelligent individual not anticipating possible litigation against the company. Google may well have dug its own grave on this one.

  • Europe Is Finally Going After TikTok

    Europe Is Finally Going After TikTok

    The European Union is finally beginning to scrutinize TikTok, changing the status quo that has seen the Chinese platform go largely unchallenged.

    TikTok has been under fire in the US for several years, but the EU has largely been silent, instead focusing its attention on larger players among Big Tech. According to CNBC, that appears to be changing.

    Thierry Breton, EU Commissioner of the Internet Market, has reportedly warned TikTok CEO Shou Zi that the app could be banned if it fails to comply with EU digital content regulations by the September 1 deadline.

    TikTok has evidently avoided scrutiny so far through a combination of popularity among Europeans and flying under the radar. While EU regulators have been concerned over the social media platform and its penchant for privacy and data scandals, the bloc has been more concerned with companies like Google and Meta.

    “It takes a little bit of time for the European Commission to get its act together on these issues,” Dexter Thillien, lead tech and telecoms analyst at The Economist Intelligence Unit, told CNBC.

    “It’s not because of a lack of willingness from the European Commission to do something,” Thillien continued. “They’ve got their hands full with bigger companies.”

    That appears to be changing, however, with the bloc finally turning its attention to TikTok and realizing action will be needed to reign in its privacy abuses.

    “TikTok’s success is the result of a European policy failure,” Moritz Korner, a member of the European Parliament for Germany’s Free Democratic Party, told CNBC.

    “From a geopolitical perspective, the EU’s inactivity towards TikTok has been naive.”

  • Major Banks Joining Forces to Take on Apple Card, PayPal

    Major Banks Joining Forces to Take on Apple Card, PayPal

    Major banks are reportedly joining forces in an effort to better take on Apple Card and PayPal in the digital wallet market.

    In the era of digital transactions and wallets, traditional banks have found themselves playing second fiddle to tech companies. According to CNBC, several of the biggest banks want to change the status quo and exert more direct influence.

    Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo are among those reportedly looking to work together to create their own digital wallet that will link to customers’ debit and credit cards.

    The new cards reportedly could launch later in 2023, with both Visa and Mastercard on board.

    The banks are likely driven by a desire to maintain a more direct relationship with the customer, along with the possibility of selling them additional services as a result of that relationship. Banks are probably also somewhat leery of tech deals that leave them with the short end of the stick. For example, Goldman Sachs has reportedly lost somewhere between $1 to $3 billion on the Apple Card deal.

    Nonetheless, entering the market and competing with established tech companies won’t be easy, experts warn.

    Bernstein analyst Harshita Rawat said banks have “likely always had PayPal envy,” but that didn’t mean the way forward is going to be easy.

    “It simply takes a very long time, a killer customer experience (which needs to be better than incumbents, not just similar), and a compelling merchant value proposition to build the two-sided network effects in payments to achieve scale,” Rawat said in a note to clients.

  • Stripe May Go Public Within the Next Year

    Stripe May Go Public Within the Next Year

    Stripe’s IPO may be on the horizon, with the company telling employees it will decide within the next year whether to go public.

    Stripe was riding high during the pandemic, one of many tech companies that benefited from the switch to remote work and e-commerce. As spending slowed and interest rates crept up post-pandemic, Stripe was forced to delay any plans to go public.

    According to The Information, via CNBC, the company’s founders, John and Patrick Collison, have told employees they will make a decision within the next year. The goal is to either either go public, or give employees the chance to sell their shares via secondary offering.

  • JPMorgan Says It Was Duped Into Buying a Startup, Sues Founder

    JPMorgan Says It Was Duped Into Buying a Startup, Sues Founder

    JPMorgan is in the middle of an embarrassing situation, claiming it was duped into purchasing a startup.

    JPMorgan bought Frank, a financial aid website for college students, for some $175 million. Unfortunately, when JPMorgan sent out marketing emails to Frank’s customers, 70% of them bounced back, according to CNBC. The bank is accusing Frank founder Charlie Javice of creating almost 4 million fake accounts to artificially inflate the value of her company.

    “To cash in, Javice decided to lie, including lying about Frank’s success, Frank’s size, and the depth of Frank’s market penetration in order to induce JPMC to purchase Frank for $175 million,” the bank said. “Javice represented in documents placed in the acquisition data room, in pitch materials, and through verbal presentations [that] more than 4.25 million students had created Frank accounts.”

    The bank claims that, in reality, Frank had “fewer than 300,000 customers.” JPMorgan also makes the case that Javice knowingly faked the email accounts, since she approached her engineering chief to use an algorithm to create “fake customer details.” When the engineering chief refused, Javice turned to a college professor in New York.

    Javice’s emails with the professor leave little to the imagination, in terms of what she was allegedly trying to do.

    “Will the fake emails look real with an eye check or better to use unique ID,” she allegedly asked.

    For her part, Javice is claiming JPMorgan bought her company and then failed to pay her what she was owed when the bank ran into unforeseen issues.

    “After JPM rushed to acquire Charlie’s rocketship business, JPM realized they couldn’t work around existing student privacy laws, committed misconduct and then tried to retrade the deal,” Alex Spiro, Javice’s attorney, told The Wall Street Journal. “Charlie blew the whistle and then sued.”

    JPMorgan has since shuttered the Frank website, but the case raises more questions than it answers, not the least of which is how JPMorgan could be duped in the first place. Either JPMorgan’s case is accurate, and it failed to properly investigate the scope of the business it was buying, or Javice is correct and JPMorgan bought a business it couldn’t properly monetize due to privacy laws — which is still a failure to properly investigate a potential acquisition.

    Either way, JPMorgan clearly needs to revamp acquisition process.

  • Microsoft Looks to Invest $10 Billion in OpenAI and ChatGPT

    Microsoft Looks to Invest $10 Billion in OpenAI and ChatGPT

    OpenAI’s ChatGPT has taken the world by storm and Microsoft is not immune, with the Redmond giant set to invest $10 billion in the firm and its tech.

    ChatGPT is one of the most realistic AI-driven chat platforms available, providing answers with almost human-like responses. Researchers, students, writers, and more have tasked the AI with various written tasks, many of which are decently good.

    Microsoft has been a long-time investor in OpenAI, leveraging its investment to gain exclusive access to some of its AI tech. News broke late last year that Microsoft was looking to increase its investment, but the latest report says it plans to invest as much as $10 billion in the AI company.

    According to Semafor, this latest round of funding, which includes various venture capital firms, would see OpenAI valued at $29 billion. Once the deal closes, Microsoft will receive 75% of the company’s profits until its investment is paid off. After that, profits will be split according to ownership, with Microsoft accounting for 49%, other owners accounting for another 49%, and OpenAI’s parent accounting for the remaining 2%,

    Microsoft clearly sees ChatGPT as a way for it to better take on Google’s dominance in the search market. The company is looking to integrate ChatGPT into a version of Bing, but some analysts are not convinced the AI tool can help Microsoft make up ground.

    Brent Thill of Jefferies told CNBC:

    “There is incredible amount of promise, but today, in terms of real time, it’s not there.”

  • Apple Drops Out of the $2 Trillion Club

    Apple Drops Out of the $2 Trillion Club

    Apple’s valuation has dropped below $2 trillion for the first time since mid-2022, after its stock price dropped 3% Tuesday.

    Apple became the first US company to cross $2 trillion in valuation in August 2020, with Microsoft and Google following suit. The company then hit $3 trillion in January 2022.

    As CNBC points out, Apple has not been immune to the economic downturn in the wake of the pandemic. iPhone 14 orders have been lower than expected, and the company has reportedly begun the process of scaling back production on a range of products, including MacBooks, AirPods, and the Apple Watch.

  • IBM Stock Was the Real Winner Among Big Tech in 2022

    IBM Stock Was the Real Winner Among Big Tech in 2022

    IBM may fly under radar, compared to its Big Tech rivals, but Big Blue was the real winner in 2022.

    2022 was not a good year for the tech industry. Despite flying high during the pandemic, an economic downturn has taken its toll, resulting in slower growth and mass layoffs.

    According to CNBC, however, IBM is the exception to the rule. The company is one of only two among companies valued at $50 billion or more whose stock is up over the course of 2022. The other one is VMware, although its stock is only up because of its deal to be purchased by Broadcom.

    Read more: IBM Beats Expectations on Strong Hybrid Cloud Results

    IBM’s stock, which is up 6%, appears to be benefiting from the company’s long-term strategy which has reassured investors. The company has reinvented itself as a hybrid cloud provider and formed close ties with its larger cloud rivals, such as Microsoft and AWS.

    As a result of the company’s strategy, Bernstein Research analysts say IBM is “trading well above its historical range.”

    “Given its defensive characteristics and historical performance, we believe that IBM is likely to fare well if we continue to have pressured markets, and likely to lag major indices if we enter a recovery period,” they continued.

    IBM is once again proving its ability to adapt to changing circumstances and stay relevant when many younger, more “nimble” companies struggle to keep up.

  • Congress Passes Bill Banning TikTok From Government Devices

    Congress Passes Bill Banning TikTok From Government Devices

    Congress has passed a $1.7 trillion spending bill that includes a clause banning TikTok from government devices.

    TikTok has been under fire for repeated privacy concerns, not to mention lying to Congress about how US user data is handled. Several states have already banned the app from state-owned devices, but Congress has taken it a step further.

    According to CNBC, both chambers of Congress have passed a $1.7 trillion bill that includes a provision banning the app from government devices. Despite praise from various industry groups, the move drew condemnation from TikTok.

    “We’re disappointed that Congress has moved to ban TikTok on government devices — a political gesture that will do nothing to advance national security interests — rather than encouraging the Administration to conclude its national security review,” a TikTok spokesperson said. “The agreement under review by CFIUS will meaningfully address any security concerns that have been raised at both the federal and state level. These plans have been developed under the oversight of our country’s top national security agencies — plans that we are well underway in implementing — to further secure our platform in the United States, and we will continue to brief lawmakers on them.”

    Only time will tell if lawmakers are satisfied with banning the app from government devices, or if additional measures will taken to implement a wider ban.

    In the meantime, the bill will go to President Biden to be signed into law.

  • Google Moving Slowly on AI Chatbots Over ‘Reputational Risk’

    Google Moving Slowly on AI Chatbots Over ‘Reputational Risk’

    Amid the ruckus over OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google execs have made it clear they are in no hurry to jump on the chatbot bandwagon.

    ChatGPT is one of OpenAI’s most well-known innovations and has gained widespread recognition. According to CNBC, Google employees expressed concerns about ChatGPT, especially given Microsoft’s backing of OpenAI. Given Google’s background in AI, employees were concerned the company could be falling behind.

    “Is this a missed opportunity for Google, considering we’ve had Lamda for a while?” read one top-rated question at a company all-hands meeting.

    In response to, CEO Sundar Pichai and Google AI head Jeff Dean emphasized that Google already has similar capabilities as OpenAI and ChatGPT, but that the company needed to be extra careful since so many people rely on Google for quality answers.

    “This really strikes a need that people seem to have but it’s also important to realize these models have certain type of issues,” Dean said

    Interestingly, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman seemed to endorse Google’s caution, admitting ChatGPT was not production-ready.

  • US Government Snapping Up Laid-Off Tech Workers

    US Government Snapping Up Laid-Off Tech Workers

    The US government is proving to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the tech industry’s mass layoffs.

    The tech industry has laid off tens of thousands of workers in recent months following significant miscalculations about the state of the post-pandemic economy. Despite the downturn, the federal government is seeing an opportunity, finally able to compete with Big Tech’s recruitment.

    According to CNBC, Kurt DelBene, chief information officer at the US Department of Veterans Affairs, is one such individual that is looking to hire laid-off tech workers. The CIO, who previously spent 30 years at Microsoft, wants software engineers and designers who can “really sink their teeth into designing and redesigning new systems” as the VA accelerates its digital transformation.

    “It’s one thing to build productivity software for individuals,” DelBene said. “It’s quite another to think about how your systems deliver healthcare benefits to veterans who have so selflessly given of themselves to defend our country.”

    DelBene isn’t the only one who sees an opportunity.

    “This is an opportunity for those industries, that have traditionally lagged behind in digital transformation and cybersecurity, to hire talent at a level they may not have been able to before when the tech industry was gobbling them up,” Simone Petrella, CEO of CyberVista, told CNBC.

  • Bret Taylor Stepping Down as Salesforce Co-CEO

    Bret Taylor Stepping Down as Salesforce Co-CEO

    For the second time in three years, a co-CEO is leaving Salesforce as Bret Taylor announces his departure from the role and the company.

    Bret Taylor joined Marc Benioff as co-CEO in late 2021, replacing Keith Block who resigned from the role in early 2020. Taylor was well-respected within the company and widely viewed as Marc Benioff’s heir-apparent. Despite holding the job for just one year, Taylor is stepping down and leaving the company, effective January 31, 2023.

    “I am grateful for six fantastic years at Salesforce,” said Taylor. “Marc was my mentor well before I joined Salesforce and the opportunity to partner with him to lead the most important software company in the world is career-defining. After a lot of reflection, I’ve decided to return to my entrepreneurial roots. Salesforce has never been more relevant to customers, and with its best-in-class management team and the company executing on all cylinders, now is the right time for me to step away.”

    “It’s bittersweet that Bret has decided to step down as my Co-CEO,” said Benioff. “He made his mark on Salesforce as an incredible technologist, leader and friend to us all. Bret founded two incredible companies so it’s understandable why he wants to return to his entrepreneurial roots. I’m excited to see his next chapter unfold, as I’ll always be his biggest champion and he’ll always be part of the Salesforce ‘Ohana.”

    According to CNBC, Taylor is stepping away to found a new company.

    “We have to let him be free, let him go, and I understand, but I don’t like it. And Bret, you know that you’re always going to be our brother. We love you deeply, you have a home here, we’re gonna try to get you back somehow. Don’t think you’re gonna somehow get out of this alive because you’re not,” Benioff told analysts.

    In the meantime, Benioff has made clear he has no intention of ever leaving the company.

  • Microsoft CEO Bullish on Asian Data Center Market

    Microsoft CEO Bullish on Asian Data Center Market

    Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is bullish on the Asian data center market, including China and India, at a time when trade tensions are ramping up.

    Microsoft operates the second-largest cloud platform and, as such, operates data centers around the world. As one of the world’s largest growth markets, Asia represents tremendous opportunity for the company.

    “Absolutely. We’re very, very bullish about what’s happening in Asia,” Satya Nadella, said in an interview with CNBC’s Tanvir Gill.

    Nadella singled out two countries as especially important to the company’s future: China and India.

    “We’re absolutely committed to all of these countries and in China too,” Nadella said. “Today, we primarily work to support multinational companies that operate in China and multinational companies out of China.”

    Similarly, while India is important to the company’s future, Microsoft sees significant changes to the market.

    “Microsoft’s presence in India was about mostly multinational companies operating in India. But for now, it’s completely changed,” he said.

    “It’s the reverse where these companies who are innovating in India, whether it’s the big large conglomerates, or the new startups, are all using [artificial intelligence] cloud technology to be able to innovate and create services that are obviously popular in India and elsewhere,” he added.

    In all, Nadella said Microsoft plans on investing in at least 11 different regions.