ReportWire

Tag: Microsoft Corp

  • Layoffs are piling up, raising worker anxiety. Here are some companies that have cut jobs recently

    NEW YORK (AP) — It’s a tough time to be looking for a job.

    Amid wider economic uncertainty, some analysts have said that businesses are at a “no-hire, no fire” standstill. That’s caused many to limit new work to only a few specific roles, if not pause openings entirely. At the same time, sizable layoffs have continued to pile up — raising worker anxieties across sectors.

    Some companies have pointed to rising operational costs spanning from President Donald Trump’s barrage of new tariffs and shifts in consumer spending. Others cite corporate restructuring more broadly — or, as seen with big names like Amazon, are redirecting money to artificial intelligence.

    Federal employees have encountered additional doses of uncertainty, impacting worker sentiment around the job market overall. Shortly after Trump returned to office at the start of the year, federal jobs were cut by the thousands. And the record 43-day government shutdown also left many to work without paychecks.

    The impasse put key economic data on hold, too. In a delayed report released Thursday, the Labor Department said U.S. employers added a surprising 119,000 jobs in September. But unemployment rose to 4.4% — and other troubling details emerged, including revisions showing the economy actually lost 4,000 jobs in August. There’s also growing gender and racial disparities. The National Women’s Law Center notes women only accounted for 21,000 of September’s added jobs — and that Black women over the age of 20, in particular, saw unemployment climb to 7.5% for the month.

    The shutdown has left holes in more recent hiring numbers. The government says it won’t release a full jobs report for October.

    Here are some of the largest job cuts announced recently:

    Verizon

    In November, Verizon began laying off more than 13,000 employees. In a staff memo announcing the cuts, CEO Dan Schulman said that the telecommunications giant needed to simplify operations and “reorient” the entire company.

    General Motors

    General Motors moved to lay off about 1,700 workers across manufacturing sites in Michigan and Ohio in late October, as the auto giant adjusts to slowing demand for electric vehicles. Hundreds of additional employees are reportedly slated for “temporary layoffs” at the start of next year.

    Paramount

    In long-awaited cuts just months after completing its $8 billion merger with Skydance, Paramount plans to lay off about 2,000 employees — about 10% of its workforce. Paramount initiated roughly 1,000 of those layoffs in late October, according to a source familiar with the matter.

    In November, Paramount also announced plans to eliminate 1,600 positions as part of divestitures of Televisión Federal in Argentina and Chilevision in Chile. And the company said another 600 employees had chosen voluntary severance packages as part of a coming push to return to the office full-time.

    Amazon

    Amazon said last month that it will cut about 14,000 corporate jobs, close to 4% of its workforce, as the online retail giant ramps up spending on AI while trimming costs elsewhere. A letter to employees said most workers would be given 90 days to look for a new position internally.

    UPS

    United Parcel Service has disclosed about 48,000 job cuts this year as part of turnaround efforts, which arrive amid wider shifts in the company’s shipping outputs. UPS also closed daily operations at 93 leased and owned buildings during the first nine months of this year.

    Target

    Target in October moved to eliminate about 1,800 corporate positions, or about 8% of its corporate workforce globally. The retailer said the cuts were part of wider streamlining efforts.

    Nestlé

    In mid-October, Nestlé said it would be cutting 16,000 jobs globally — as part of wider cost cutting aimed at reviving its financial performance amid headwinds like rising commodity costs and U.S. imposed tariffs. The Swiss food giant said the layoffs would take place over the next two years.

    Lufthansa Group

    In September, Lufthansa Group said it would shed 4,000 jobs by 2030 — pointing to the adoption of artificial intelligence, digitalization and consolidating work among member airlines.

    Novo Nordisk

    Also in September, Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk said it would cut 9,000 jobs, about 11% of its workforce. The company — which makes drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy — said the layoffs were part of wider restructuring, as it works to sell more obesity and diabetes medications amid rising competition.

    ConocoPhillips

    Oil giant ConocoPhillips announced plans in September to lay off up to a quarter of its workforce, as part of broader efforts from the company to cut costs. Between 2,600 and 3,250 workers were expected to be impacted, with most layoffs set to take place before the end of 2025.

    Intel

    Intel has moved to shed thousands of jobs — with the struggling chipmaker working to revive its business. In July, CEO Lip-Bu Tan said Intel expected to end the year with 75,000 “core” workers, excluding subsidiaries, through layoffs and attrition. That’s down from 99,500 core employees reported the end of last year. The company previously announced a 15% workforce reduction.

    Microsoft

    In May, Microsoft began laying off about 6,000 workers across its workforce. And just months later, the tech giant said it would be cutting 9,000 positions — marking its biggest round of layoffs seen in more than two years. The company has cited “organizational changes,” but the labor reductions also arrive as the company spends heavily on AI.

    Procter & Gamble

    In June, Procter & Gamble said it would cut up to 7,000 jobs over the next two years, 6% of the company’s global workforce. The maker of Tide detergent and Pampers diapers said the cuts were part of a wider restructuring — also arriving amid tariff pressures.

    Source link

  • Bubble fears ease but investors still waiting for AI to live up to its promise

    Fears about the artificial intelligence boom turning into an overblown bubble have diminished for now, thanks to a stellar earnings report from Nvidia that illustrated why its indispensable chips transformed it into the world’s most valuable company.

    But that doesn’t mean the specter of an AI bubble won’t return in the months and years ahead as Big Tech gears up to spend trillions of dollars more on a technology the industry’s leaders believe will determine the winners and losers during the next wave of innovation.

    For now, at least, Nvidia has eased worries that the AI craze propelling the stock market and much of the economy for the past year is on the verge of a massive collapse.

    If anything, Nvidia’s quarterly report indicated that AI spending is picking up even more momentum. The highlights, released late Wednesday, included quarterly revenue of $57 billion, a 62% increase from the same time last year. That sales growth was an acceleration from the 56% increase in year-over-year revenue from the May-July quarter.

    What’s more, Nvidia forecast revenue of $65 billion for the current quarter covering November-January, which would be a 65% year-over-year increase.

    Given Nvidia’s forecasts, “it is very hard to see how this stock does not keep moving higher from here,” according to analysts at UBS led by Timothy Arcuri. The UBS analyst also said the “AI infrastructure tide is still rising so fast that all boats will be lifted.”

    Nvidia’s numbers are viewed through a window that extends far beyond the Santa Clara, California, company’s headquarters because its products are needed by a wide range of companies — including Big Tech peers like Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta Platforms — to build data centers that are becoming known as AI factories.

    “AI spending isn’t just holding up, it’s accelerating. That’s exactly what the market needed to see,” said Jake Behan, head of capital markets for investment firm Direxion.

    The numbers initially lifted Nvidia’s stock price by as much as 5% in Thursday’s trading, while other tech stocks tied to the AI spending frenzy also got a boost. But Nvidia’s shares and other tech stocks reversed course later in the session as investors found other issues besides AI, such as the government’s latest jobs report and the future direction of interest rates.

    Even with a 3% drop in its stock price amid the broader market decline, Nvidia remains valued at $4.4 trillion, more than 10 times its valuation three years ago when OpenAI released its ChatGPT chatbot, triggering the biggest technological shift since Apple released the iPhone in 2007.

    Nvidia’s rapid rise has turned its CEO Jensen Huang into the chief evangelist for the AI revolution and he sought to use his bully pulpit during a late Wednesday conference call with industry analysts to make a case that the spending to make technology with humanlike intelligence is just beginning.

    “There’s been a lot of talk about an AI bubble. From our vantage point, we see something very different,” Huang insisted while celebrating “depth and breadth” of Nvidia’s growth.

    Huang is hardly a lone voice in the wilderness. A recent report from Gartner Inc. estimates that worldwide spending on AI will rise to more than $2 trillion next year, a 37% increase from the nearly $1.5 trillion that the research firm expects to be spent this year.

    But it remains to be seen if all that money pouring into AI will actually produce all the profits and productivity that proponents have been promising. That leaves the question unanswered if all the real spending that’s happening will be worth it.

    The most recent survey of global fund managers by Bank of America showed a record percentage of investors saying companies are “overinvesting.”

    Big Tech is already so profitable that many of the most successful finance their spending sprees with their ongoing stream of revenue and cash hoards in their bank accounts. But some companies, such as Meta Platforms and Oracle, are relying more heavily on debt to fund their AI ambitions — a strategy that has raised enough alarms among investors that their stock prices have plunged more dramatically than their peers in recent weeks.

    Both Meta and Oracle have suffered more than 20% declines in their stock prices since late October.

    But other Big Tech powerhouses leading the way in AI remain just behind Nvidia and iPhone maker Apple in the rankings of the most valuable companies. Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon boast market values currently ranging from $2.3 trillion to $3.6 trillion.

    “It is true that valuations are high and that there is some froth in the market, however, the spending on AI is real,” said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer for money manager Northlight Asset Management. “Whether or not the spending turns out to be overdone won’t be known for many years.”

    —

    AP Business Writer Stan Choe in New York contributed to this story.

    Source link

  • Nvidia earnings clear lofty hurdle set by analysts amid fears about an AI bubble

    SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Nvidia’s sales of the computing chips powering the artificial intelligence craze surged beyond the lofty bar set by stock market analysts in a performance that may ease recent jitters about a Big Tech boom turning into a bust that topples the world’s most valuable company.

    The results announced late Wednesday provided a pulse check on the frenzied spending on AI technology that has been fueling both the stock market and much of the overall economy since OpenAI released its ChatGPT three years ago.

    Nvidia has been by far the biggest beneficiary of the run-up because its processors have become indispensable for building the AI factories that are needed to enable what’s supposed to be the most dramatic shift in technology since Apple released the iPhone in 2007.

    ARCHIVO – Varias personas miran los nuevos productos de Nvidia en la exhibición Computex 2025 en Taipéi, Taiwán, el miércoles 21 de mayo de 2025. (AP Foto/Chiang Ying-ying, Archivo)

    But in the past few weeks, there has been a rising tide of sentiment that the high expectations for AI may have become far too frothy, setting the stage for a jarring comedown that could be just as dramatic as the ascent that transformed Nvidia from a company worth less than $400 billion three years ago to one worth $4.5 trillion at the end of Wednesday’s trading.

    Nvidia’s report for its fiscal third quarter covering the August-October period elicited a sigh of relief among those fretting about a worst-case scenario and could help reverse the recent downturn in the stock market.

    “The market should belt out a heavy sigh, given the skittishness we have been experiencing,” said Sean O’Hara, president of the investment firm Pacer ETFs.

    The company’s stock price gained more than 5% in Wednesday’s extended trading after the numbers came out. If the shares trade similarly Thursday, it could result in a one-day gain of about $230 billion in stockholder wealth.

    Nvidia earned $31.9 billion, or $1.30 per share, a 65% increase from the same time last year, while revenue climbed 62% to $57 billion. Analysts polled by FactSet Research had forecast earnings of $1.26 per share on revenue of $54.9 billion. What’s more, the Santa Clara, California, company predicted its revenue for the current quarter covering November-January will come in at about $65 billion, nearly $3 billion above analysts’ projections, in an indication that demand for its AI chips remains feverish.

    Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaks during a press conference at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, Friday, Oct.31, 2025 (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

    Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaks during a press conference at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, Friday, Oct.31, 2025 (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

    The incoming orders for Nvidia’s top-of-the-line Blackwell chip are “off the charts,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a prepared statement that described the current market conditions as “a virtuous cycle.” In a conference call, Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Collette Kress said that by the end of next year the company will have sold about $500 billion in chips designed for AI factories within a 24-month span Kress also predicts trillions of dollars more will be spent by the end of the 2020s.

    In a conference call preamble that has become like a State of the AI Market address, Huang seized the moment to push back against the skeptics who doubt his thesis that technology is at tipping point that will transform the world. “There’s been a lot of talk about an AI bubble. From our vantage point, we see something very different,” Huang insisted while celebrating “depth and breadth” of Nvidia’s growth.

    The upbeat results, optimistic commentary and ensuring reaction reflects the pivotal role that Nvidia is playing in the future direction of the economy — a position that Huang has leveraged to forge close ties with President Donald Trump, even as the White House wages a trade war that has inhibited the company’s ability to sell its chips in China’s fertile market.

    Trump is increasingly counting on the tech sector and the development of artificial intelligence to deliver on his economic agenda. For all of Trump’s claims that his tariffs are generating new investments, much of that foreign capital is going to data centers for AI’s computing demands or the power facilities needed to run those data centers.

    “Saying this is the most important stock in the world is an understatement,” Jay Woods, chief market strategist of investment bank Freedom Capital Markets, said of Nvidia.

    The boom has been a boon for more than just Nvidia, which became the first company to eclipse a market value of $5 trillion a few weeks ago, before the recent bubble worries resulted in a more than 10% decline. As OpenAI and other Big Tech powerhouses snap up Nvidia’s chips to build their AI factories and invest in other services connected to the technology, their fortunes have also been soaring. Apple, Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet Inc. and Amazon all boast market values in the $2 trillion to $4 trillion range.

    Source link

  • Nvidia’s earnings attest to its leadership in the AI race. By the numbers

    Nvidia reported more eye-catching numbers for its fiscal third quarter Wednesday, with net income jumping 65% and revenue increasing 62% from a year earlier.

    Last month, Nvidia became the first public company to reach a market capitalization of $5 trillion.

    The ravenous appetite for the Silicon Valley company’s chips is the main reason that the company’s stock price has increased so rapidly since early 2023.

    Nvidia carved out an early lead in tailoring its chipsets known as graphics processing units, or GPUs, from use in powering video games to helping to train powerful AI systems, like the technology behind ChatGPT and image generators. Demand skyrocketed as more people began using AI chatbots. Tech companies scrambled for more chips to build and run them.

    Nvidia’s journey to be one of the world’s most prominent companies has produced some extraordinary numbers. Here’s a look.

    $31.9 billion

    Nvidia’s net income for the third quarter, up from $19.3 billion a year ago.

    38.9%

    Nvidia stock’s gain for the year, as of the close of trading Wednesday. That follows gains of 171% in 2024 and 239% in 2023.

    $4.53 trillion

    Nvidia’s total market capitalization as of the close of trading Wednesday, tops in the S&P 500.

    Apple at $3.98 trillion and Microsoft at $3.62 trillion were next among the most valuable companies in the S&P 500. In all, nine companies in the index have market cap’s above $1 trillion.

    $4.28 trillion

    The gross domestic product of Japan, the world’s fourth largest economy, according to the International Monetary Fund.

    79

    The number of trading days it took for Nvidia’s market cap to grow from $4 trillion to $5 trillion earlier this year. The market cap had jumped from $3 trillion on May 13, to $4 trillion on July 9 (41 trading days), although Nvidia had crossed and fallen back below the $3 trillion threshold a number of times between June 2024 and May 2025 before making the run to $4 trillion.

    19.8%

    The company’s contribution to the gain in the S&:P 500 this year as of Oct. 31, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices.

    $162 billion

    The net worth of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, according to Forbes, putting him eighth on its Real-Time Billionaires List. Elon Musk is No. 1 at $467.7 billion.

    Source link

  • Microsoft partners with Anthropic and Nvidia in cloud infrastructure deal

    Microsoft said Tuesday it is partnering with artificial intelligence company Anthropic and chipmaker Nvidia as part of an AI infrastructure deal that moves the software giant further away from its longtime alliance with OpenAI.

    Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude that competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, said it is committed to buying $30 billion in computing capacity from Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform.

    As part of the partnership, Nvidia will also invest up to $10 billion in Anthropic, and Microsoft will invest up to $5 billion in the San Francisco-based startup.

    The joint announcements by CEOs Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, and Jensen Huang of Nvidia came just ahead of the opening of Microsoft’s annual Ignite developer conference.

    “This is all about deepening our commitment to bringing the best infrastructure, model choice and applications to our customers,” Nadella said on a video call with the other two executives, adding that it builds on the “critical” partnership Microsoft still has with OpenAI.

    Microsoft was, until earlier this year, the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI and made the technology behind ChatGPT the foundation for its own AI assistant, Copilot. But the two companies moved farther apart and their business agreements were amended as OpenAI increasingly sought to secure its own cloud capacity through big deals with Oracle, SoftBank and other data center developers and chipmakers.

    Asked in September if OpenAI could do more with those new computing partnerships than it could with Microsoft, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told The Associated Press his company was “severely limited for the value we can offer to people.”

    At the same time, Microsoft holds a roughly 27% stake in the new for-profit corporation that OpenAI, founded as a nonprofit, is forming to advance its commercial ambitions as the world’s most valuable startup.

    Anthropic, founded by ex-OpenAI leaders in 2021, said Claude will now be the “only frontier model” available to customers of the three biggest cloud computing providers: Amazon, which remains Anthropic’s primary cloud provider, and Google and Microsoft.

    AI products like Claude, ChatGPT, Copilotand Google’s Gemini are reshaping how many people work but take huge amounts of energy and computing power to build and operate. Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic has yet reported turning a profit, amplifying concerns about an AI bubble if their products don’t meet investors’ high expectations and justify the expenditures. As part of the deal, Nvidia said Anthropic will have access to up to a gigawatt of capacity from its specialized AI chips.

    Huang said he’s “admired the work of Anthropic and Dario for a long time, and this is the first time we are going to deeply partner with Anthropic to accelerate Claude.”

    At Microsoft’s Ignite conference, a showcase of its latest AI technology which opened Tuesday in San Francisco, Anthropic’s chief product officer Mike Krieger highlighted the budding partnership during an on-stage appearance.

    “From the beginning, it has seemed there has been a lot of shared DNA between our companies,” said Krieger, who was also the co-founder of Instagram.

    ——

    AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke in San Francisco contributed to this report.

    Source link

  • Anthropic warns of AI-driven hacking campaign linked to China

    WASHINGTON (AP) — A team of researchers has uncovered what they say is the first reported use of artificial intelligence to direct a hacking campaign in a largely automated fashion.

    The AI company Anthropic said this week that it disrupted a cyber operation that its researchers linked to the Chinese government. The operation involved the use of an artificial intelligence system to direct the hacking campaigns, which researchers called a disturbing development that could greatly expand the reach of AI-equipped hackers.

    While concerns about the use of AI to drive cyber operations are not new, what is concerning about the new operation is the degree to which AI was able to automate some of the work, the researchers said.

    “While we predicted these capabilities would continue to evolve, what has stood out to us is how quickly they have done so at scale,” they wrote in their report.

    The operation targeted tech companies, financial institutions, chemical companies and government agencies. The researchers wrote that the hackers attacked “roughly thirty global targets and succeeded in a small number of cases.” Anthropic detected the operation in September and took steps to shut it down and notify the affected parties.

    Anthropic noted that while AI systems are increasingly being used in a variety of settings for work and leisure, they can also be weaponized by hacking groups working for foreign adversaries. The San Francisco-based company, maker of the generative AI chatbot Claude, is one of many tech developers pitching AI “agents” that go beyond a chatbot’s capability to access computer tools and take actions on a person’s behalf.

    “Agents are valuable for everyday work and productivity — but in the wrong hands, they can substantially increase the viability of large-scale cyberattacks,” the researchers concluded. “These attacks are likely to only grow in their effectiveness.”

    A spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately return a message seeking comment on the report.

    Microsoft warned earlier this year that foreign adversaries were increasingly embracing AI to make their cyber campaigns more efficient and less labor-intensive. The head of OpenAI’s safety panel, which has the authority to halt the ChatGPT maker’s AI development, recently told The Associated Press he’s watching out for new AI systems that give malicious hackers “much higher capabilities.”

    America’s adversaries, as well as criminal gangs and hacking companies, have exploited AI’s potential, using it to automate and improve cyberattacks, to spread inflammatory disinformation and to penetrate sensitive systems. AI can translate poorly worded phishing emails into fluent English, for example, as well as generate digital clones of senior government officials.

    Anthropic said the hackers were able to manipulate Claude, using “jailbreaking” techniques that involve tricking an AI system to bypass its guardrails against harmful behavior, in this case by claiming they were employees of a legitimate cybersecurity firm.

    “This points to a big challenge with AI models, and it’s not limited to Claude, which is that the models have to be able to distinguish between what’s actually going on with the ethics of a situation and the kinds of role-play scenarios that hackers and others may want to cook up,” said John Scott-Railton, senior researcher at Citizen Lab.

    The use of AI to automate or direct cyberattacks will also appeal to smaller hacking groups and lone wolf hackers, who could use AI to expand the scale of their attacks, according to Adam Arellano, field CTO at Harness, a tech company that uses AI to help customers automate software development.

    “The speed and automation provided by the AI is what is a bit scary,” Arellano said. “Instead of a human with well-honed skills attempting to hack into hardened systems, the AI is speeding those processes and more consistently getting past obstacles.”

    AI programs will also play an increasingly important role in defending against these kinds of attacks, Arellano said, demonstrating how AI and the automation it allows will benefit both sides.

    Reaction to Anthropic’s disclosure was mixed, with some seeing it as a marketing ploy for Anthropic’s approach to defending cybersecurity and others who welcomed its wake-up call.

    “This is going to destroy us – sooner than we think – if we don’t make AI regulation a national priority tomorrow,” wrote U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, on social media.

    That led to criticism from Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, an advocate of the Facebook parent company’s open-source AI systems that, unlike Anthropic’s, make their key components publicly accessible in a way that some AI safety advocates deem too risky.

    “You’re being played by people who want regulatory capture,” LeCun wrote in a reply to Murphy. “They are scaring everyone with dubious studies so that open source models are regulated out of existence.”

    __

    O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

    Source link

  • Cash App’s Moneybot might know your spending habits better than you do

    NEW YORK (AP) — Imagine if your bank could move money for you with only the slightest of digital nods for your approval. Or that could tell you that you’re overspending but more importantly know how to address that overspending and put you on better financial footing.

    That’s what you’ll get with Moneybot, a new financial services chatbot shown off this week by Cash App that will be slowly introduced into its banking app this winter. Unlike existing bank chatbots, which can handle routine tasks like changing an address, Moneybot can take advanced actions for a customer like creating a savings plan, buying or selling stock, or even evaluating a customer’s spending habits.

    Moneybot is part of the next generation of chatbots using what the tech industry calls “agentic” AI, which turns tools like ChatGPT into an “AI agent” that can take action online on a person’s behalf. That means, instead of just writing text, answering questions or recommending products found online, an “agentic” chatbot could also buy a product.

    Amazon now has Rufus to go with Alexa, which both either provide information on products or can buy things on customers’ behalf. Walmart is rolling out “Chat & Buy” and Microsoft has Copilot Shopping.

    Agentic AI, for being so new, is already causing some controversy. Amazon is suing an AI chatbot company, Perplexity, for alleged computer fraud over AI shopping agents that Amazon says are disguising themselves as human buyers to access customer accounts without Amazon’s permission. Perplexity has denied the claims.

    Traditional banks have had chatbots for a while, notably Bank of America’s “Erica” or “Ask Amex” from American Express, but have hesitated to roll out agentic AI. They worry about possible liability if a chatbot buys a product by mistake for a customer or is maliciously used to buy things it is not supposed to.

    “Our top priority is to keep our customers’ and clients’ data safe above all else,” said Mark Birkhead, chief data officer at JPMorgan Chase, in an interview with the consulting firm McKinsey back in June on the issue of why the bank hasn’t rolled out agentic AI yet to customers.

    Cash App on the other hand is diving in head first.

    One notable feature of Moneybot is its prompts and suggestions. When Moneybot launches, it does an analysis of the the customer’s transactions and spending and gives them independent recommendations on actions they could take. Unlike other bank chatbots, which take you to other parts of a banks’ website, Moneybot’s transactions and analysis happen inside a single screen. Cash App’s executives see Moneybot becoming the primary way people interact with CashApp in the future.

    Want to know your biggest spending categories instantly and how to cut your spending? Moneybot gives several suggestions in a matter of seconds, showing you the merchants you spent with. Need to save $1,000 toward a vacation in six months? Moneybot creates an automated savings plan for you with only a couple of prompts.

    Want to put money into the stock market? It takes only a request and confirmation in Moneybot, which will buy Tesla stock for you or even bitcoin. Moneybot will remind you, however, that it does not give investing advice.

    Moneybot may even anticipate why the customer is opening up the app in the first place.

    “We have such a deep understanding of who you are that it’s almost a failure if we have to rely on customers to ask right questions,” said Owen Jennings, executive officer and business lead at Block, in an interview.

    Company officials pointed out that, despite having these agent abilities, Moneybot will still need active confirmation from the user to do its money-moving tasks. But that confirmation is often just a simple push of a button or a “yes” in a chat box.

    Cash App executives say Moneybot uses three different AI models, choosing the most appropriate one for the customer’s question. Some are easier to recognize, including the eager-to-please tone that often comes with ChatGPT 5.

    A Cash App employee demo’ing Moneybot, much to his chagrin, showed that he spent heavily at Nordstrom last month. Moneybot kindly suggested he might want to cut back on his clothing purchases if he needs to save money.

    There are things Moneybot cannot do because of the legal and privacy questions that have yet to be answered. Moneybot won’t offer you a loan but feels like it could do so if the toggle were ever turned on.

    Because of the way the prompts are written, Cash App employees acknowledged there could be privacy and legal implications with what Moneybot suggests if appropriate guardrails are not put into place.

    Policymakers have raised concerns about how these chatbots could steer customers into one product or another, even if one product may not be in the best interest for the customer. For instance, what’s to stop a future version of Moneybot from favoring a buy now, pay later loan from AfterPay — also owned by Cash App’s parent company Block — for purchases instead of Affirm or Klarna?

    “If firms cannot manage using a new technology in a lawful way, then they should not use the technology,” said Rohit Chopra in 2024, when he was director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Chopra spent much of his tenure at the bureau raising concerns about the adoption of AI in financial services.

    In the meantime, asking for a loan inside Moneybot will transfer a customer to a human agent.

    Not surprisingly, Moneybot has the usual disclosure found at the bottom of most chatbots these days: Artificial intelligence can make mistakes. Somehow, that feels a bit more important in banking than an AI chatbot accidentally providing the wrong amount of cumin in a fajita recipe or buying the wrong size of shirt.

    __

    An earlier version of this story misspelled Moneybot.

    Source link

  • These are the 37 donors helping pay for Trump’s $300 million White House ballroom

    WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says his $300 million White House ballroom will be paid for “100% by me and some friends of mine.”

    The White House released a list of 37 donors, including crypto billionaires, charitable organizations, sports team owners, powerful financiers, tech and tobacco giants, media companies, longtime supporters of Republican causes and several of the president’s neighbors in Palm Beach, Florida.

    It’s incomplete. Among others, the list doesn’t include Carrier Group, which offered to donate an HVAC system for the ballroom, and artificial intelligence chipmaker Nvidia, whose CEO, Jensen Huang, publicly discussed its donation.

    The White House hasn’t said how much each donor is giving, and almost none was willing to divulge that. Very few commented on their contributions when contacted by The Associated Press.

    A senior White House official said the list has grown since it was first released in October, but some companies don’t want to be publicly named until required to do so by financial disclosure regulations. No foreign individuals or entities were among the donors, according to the official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details that haven’t been made public.

    Here’s a look at the divulged donors:

    Tech giants (8):

    Amazon Background: Trump was once highly critical of company founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, but has been much less so lately. Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, an event attended by Bezos. Its video streaming service paid $40 million to license a documentary about first lady Melania Trump. Its cloud-based computing operation, Amazon Web Services, is a major government contractor.

    Apple Background: After an up-and-down relationship during Trump’s first term, CEO Tim Cook has sought to improve his standing with the president this time. Before returning to the White House, Trump hosted Cook at his Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago, and said he had spoken with Cook about the company’s long-running tax battles with the European Union. Cook also donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. In the spring, Trump threatened the computing giant with tariffs after Apple announced plans to build manufacturing facilities in India. In August, Cook presented the president with a customized glass plaque with a gold base as the CEO announced plans to bring Apple’s total investment commitment in U.S. manufacturing over four years to $600 billion.

    Google Background: During his first term, Trump’s administration sued Google for antitrust violations. While a candidate last year, Trump suggested he might seek to break up the search engine behemoth. Once Trump won the election, Google donated $1 million to his inauguration, and its CEO, Sundar Pichai, joined other major tech executives in attending the ceremony. Google’s subsidiary, YouTube, agreed in September to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit with Trump after it suspended his account following the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. According to court filings, $22 million of that went to the Trust for the National Mall, which can help pay for ballroom construction.

    HP Background: An original Silicon Valley stalwart, the company donated to Trump’s inaugural fund. HP ‘s CEO, Enrique Lores, participated in a White House roundtable event in September. Lores also previously met with President Joe Biden at the White House on multiple occasions as top CEOs endorsed that administration’s economic plans.

    Meta Background: Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg had been critical of Trump going back to 2016, and Facebook suspended Trump for years after the Jan. 6 insurrection. This time around, Meta contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, and Zuckerberg attended.

    Micron Technology Background: The producer of advanced memory computer chips announced an April 2024 agreement with the Biden administration to provide $6.1 billion in government support for Micron to make chips domestically. Then, in June, Micron pledged $200 billion for U.S. memory chip manufacturing expansion under Trump. But at least $120 billion of that involved holdovers first announced during Biden’s administration.

    Microsoft Background: The company donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, twice what it spent for Biden’s or for Trump’s first inauguration. CEO Satya Nadella has also met with Trump numerous times, as Microsoft has supported the administration’s relaxation of regulations on artificial intelligence. He met previously with Biden, too. Trump has called for Microsoft’s president of global affairs, Lisa Monaco, to be fired because she was a deputy attorney general under Biden when the Justice Department led several investigations against Trump.

    Palantir Technologies Background: Co-founded by billionaire libertarian Peter Thiel, the firm concentrates on artificial intelligence and machine learning. It has seen profits soar thanks to lucrative defense and other federal contracts.

    Crypto (5):

    Coinbase Background: The major cryptocurrency exchange was founded by Brian Armstrong, a top donor to a political action committee that helped Trump and other pro-crypto candidates in 2024. Armstrong attended the first crypto summit at the White House in March. Coinbase also hired Trump’s co-campaign manager, Chris LaCivita, to its Global Advisory Council.

    Ripple Background: In March, the Securities and Exchange Commission dropped a lawsuit filed during Trump’s first term, which accused the company of violating securities laws by selling XRP crypto coins without a securities registration. In his second term, Trump has eased regulations on digital assets, repealing an SEC accounting rule and a previous presidential executive order mandating more federal study and proposed changes to crypto regulations.

    Tether Background: A cryptocurrency company and major stablecoin issuer, Tether paid fines for misleading investors. CEO Paolo Ardoino has been to Trump’s White House, and, in April, the company hired former Trump administration crypto policy official Bo Hines to lead its domestic expansion efforts.

    Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss Background: Each Winklevoss twin is listed as a separate donor. Best known as Zuckerberg’s chief antagonists in “The Social Network,” the brothers founded the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange. Biden’s SEC sued Gemini for selling unregistered securities, but the case has been paused under Trump.

    Energy and industrial (4):

    Caterpillar Background: The equipment maker ‘s PAC has donated to candidates from both parties, but given more to Republicans. It has also said publicly that Trump’s tariffs, some of which the administration has now eased, could increase its costs and hurt earnings.

    NextEra Energy Background: NextEra is the world’s largest electric utility holding company. Trump says he’ll work to ensure tech giants can secure their own sources of electricity to power data centers, especially as they expand energy-hogging artificial intelligence operations. Google recently entered into an agreement to buy power from a shuttered nuclear power plant in Iowa owned by NextEra, which the company plans to bring back online in 2029.

    Paolo Tiramani Background: An American industrial designer who has donated to Trump’s political campaigns. Tiramani, with his son, runs BOXABL, a firm specializing in modular, prefabricated homes.

    Union Pacific Background: Trump has endorsed the company’s proposed $85 billion acquisition of Norfolk Southern, which would be the largest-ever rail merger. It also will be up to the president to appoint two more Republican members of the Surface Transportation Board, who will ultimately decide whether to approve the merger. In August, Trump fired one of the two Democratic members of the board.

    Philanthropy (3):

    Adelson Family Foundation Background: Founded to strengthen the state of Israel and the Jewish people, the foundation was created by Miriam Adelson, the majority owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, close Trump ally and longtime GOP megadonor. She’s also the widow of Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire founder and owner of Las Vegas Sands.

    Betty Wold Johnson Foundation Background: Based in Palm Beach, the foundation supports health, arts and culture initiatives, as well as environmental and educational programs. It’s named in honor of the mother of New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Kingdom during his first term.

    Laura & Isaac Perlmutter Foundation Background: The nonprofit based in Lake Worth Beach, near Palm Beach, focuses on promoting health care, social justice, the arts and community initiatives. Isaac is an Israeli American businessman and financier and former chair of Marvel Entertainment. He and his wife have donated to Trump’s presidential campaigns and affiliated PACs.

    Trump administration officials (3):

    Benjamin Leon Jr. Background: The Cuban American founder of Miami-based Leon Medical Centers is Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Spain.

    Kelly Loeffler and Jeffrey Sprecher Background: A former Republican senator from Georgia, Loeffler heads Trump’s Small Business Administration. Her husband is CEO of the energy market Intercontinental Exchange Inc. and chairs the New York Stock Exchange. The couple faced scrutiny in 2020 for dumping substantial portions of their portfolio and purchasing new stocks, including in firms making protective equipment, after Congress received briefings on the severity of the coming coronavirus pandemic.

    Lutnick Family Background: Howard Lutnick is Trump’s commerce secretary. A crypto enthusiast, he once headed the brokerage and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald.

    Communications/entertainment (3):

    Comcast Background: The mass media and telecom conglomerate has often been criticized by Trump, including in April, when the president posted that Comcast was a “disgrace to the integrity of broadcasting.” The company owns NBC and is spinning off MSNBC. It could be interested in acquiring Warner Bros. Discover, and that would leave Comcast looking for government approval.

    Hard Rock International Background: A Florida-based gaming and tourism concern owned by the Seminole Tribe, the company operates a number of casinos, including the former Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Trump has for decades criticized federal exemptions allowing tribes to operate casinos.

    T-Mobile Background: The wireless carrier is indirectly linked to Trump Mobile, which the president’s family controls and offers gold phones and cell service in a licensing deal. Trump Mobile uses Liberty Mobile Wireless, a small, Florida-based network that T-Mobile says runs its operations on T-Mobile’s network. T-Mobile says that is unrelated to its decision to donate to Trump’s ballroom, which it says is meant to “restore and enrich the historic landmarks that define our nation’s capital.”

    Big Tobacco (2):

    Altria Group Background: The tobacco giant controls Philip Morris USA, maker of Marlboro. It has pressed for federal crackdowns on counterfeit and illegal vaping products. The company donated $50,000 to Trump’s inauguration.

    Reynolds American Background: With brands including Lucky Strike and Camel, the company has been active in lobbying to steer the Trump administration away from a Biden-proposed ban on menthol cigarettes.

    Defense/national security (2):

    Booz Allen Hamilton Background: A major defense and national security technology firm with extensive government contracts, it paid fines to settle lawsuits with the Justice Department under Biden. Booz Allen Hamilton agreed to pay more than $377 million in 2023 to settle allegations that it improperly billing costs to its government contracts. In January, it paid nearly $16 million to settle allegations that it submitted fraudulent claims in connection with government contracts.

    Lockheed Martin Corporation Background: The massive defense contractor has huge government contracts. It said in a statement that it “is grateful for the opportunity to help bring the President’s vision to reality and make this addition to the People’s House.”

    Individuals (7):

    Stefan E. Brodie Background: A biotech entrepreneur and co-founder of the chemical manufacturing company Purolite, Brodie and his family donated to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and affiliated committees. Brodie and his brother, Donald, were convicted in 2002 of circumventing U.S. sanctions on Cuba.

    Charles and Marissa Cascarilla Background: Charles Cascarilla is co‑founder of the blockchain firm Paxos. He and his wife are philanthropists who have advocated for financial technology sector deregulation.

    J. Pepe and Emilia Fanjul Background: Longtime Republican donors and Palm Beach residents, the couple controls U.S. sugar refining interests that includes the Domino brand.

    Edward and Shari Glazer Background: Members of the family that owns the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers and has a controlling stake in the Manchester United football club, the couple donated to Trump’s campaign. Edward is the founder and CEO of US Property Trust, which operates shopping centers, and the car dealership company US Auto Trust.

    Harold Hamm Background: The billionaire oil tycoon and pioneer of hydraulic fracturing heads the oil producer Continental Resources. He’s praised the Trump administration for aggressively moving to purchase oil to replenish the Strategic Petroleum Reserve stockpile.

    Stephen A. Schwarzman Background: A Palm Beach resident and chair and CEO of the Blackstone Group, a global private equity firm he helped establish in 1985. Schwarzman has donated to Trump and his PACs previously and led his first-term President’s Strategic and Policy Forum.

    Konstantin Sokolov Background: Born in Russia, he immigrated to the U.S. and now heads the Chicago-based private equity firm IJS Investments. Sokolov has donated to many educational and charitable causes in the past, and to Trump’s political campaigns.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

    ___

    This story has been updated to correct the first name of an individual who donated to the White House ballroom. He is Harold Hamm, not Howard Hamm.

    Source link

  • Anthropic, Microsoft announce new AI data center projects as industry’s construction push continues

    Artificial intelligence company Anthropic announced a $50 billion investment in computing infrastructure on Wednesday that will include new data centers in Texas and New York.

    Microsoft also on Wednesday announced a new data center under construction in Atlanta, Georgia, describing it as connected to another in Wisconsin to form a “massive supercomputer” running on hundreds of thousands of Nvidia chips to power AI technology.

    The latest deals show that the tech industry is moving forward on huge spending to build energy-hungry AI infrastructure, despite lingering financial concerns about a bubble, environmental considerations and the political effects of fast-rising electricity bills in the communities where the massive buildings are constructed.

    Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude, said it is working with London-based Fluidstack to build the new computing facilities to power its AI systems. It didn’t disclose their exact locations or what source of electricity they will need.

    Another company, cryptocurrency mining data center developer TeraWulf, has previously revealed it was working with Fluidstack on Google-backed data center projects in Texas and New York, on the shore of Lake Ontario. TeraWulf declined comment Wednesday.

    A report last month from TD Cowen said that the leading cloud computing providers leased a “staggering” amount of U.S. data center capacity in the third fiscal quarter of this year, amounting to more than 7.4 gigawatts of energy, more than all of last year combined.

    Oracle was securing the most capacity during that time, much of it supporting AI workloads for Anthropic’s chief rival OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT. Google was second and Fluidstack came in third, ahead of Meta, Amazon, CoreWeave and Microsoft.

    Anthropic said its projects will create about 800 permanent jobs and 2,400 construction jobs. It said in a statement that the “scale of this investment is necessary to meet the growing demand for Claude from hundreds of thousands of businesses while keeping our research at the frontier.”

    Microsoft has branded its two-story Atlanta data center as Fairwater 2 and said it will be connected across a “high-speed network” with the original Fairwater complex being built south of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The company said the facility’s densely packed Nvidia chips will help power Microsoft’s own AI technology, along with OpenAI’s and other AI developers.

    Microsoft was, until earlier this year, OpenAI’s exclusive cloud computing provider before the two companies amended their partnership. OpenAI has since announced more than $1 trillion in infrastructure obligations, much of it tied to its Stargate project with partners Oracle and SoftBank. Microsoft, in turn, spent nearly $35 billion in the July-September quarter on capital expenditures to support its AI and cloud demand, nearly half of that on computer chips.

    Anthropic has made its own computing partnerships with Amazon and, more recently, Google.

    The tech industry’s big spending on computing infrastructure for AI startups that aren’t yet profitable has fueled concerns about an AI investment bubble.

    Investors have closely watched a series of circular deals over recent months between AI developers and the companies building the costly chips and data centers needed to power their AI products. Anthropic said it will continue to “prioritize cost-effective, capital-efficient approaches” to scaling up its business.

    OpenAI had to backtrack last week after its chief financial officer, Sarah Friar, made comments at a tech conference suggesting the U.S. government could help in financing chips needed for data centers. The White House’s top AI official, David Sacks, responded on social media platform X that there “will be no federal bailout for AI” and if one of the leading companies fails, “others will take its place,” though he also added he didn’t think “anyone was actually asking for a bailout.”

    OpenAI CEO Sam Altman later confirmed in a lengthy statement that “we do not have or want government guarantees” for the company’s data centers and also sought to address concerns about whether it will be able to pay for all the infrastructure it has signed up for.

    “We are looking at commitments of about $1.4 trillion over the next 8 years,” Altman wrote. “Obviously this requires continued revenue growth, and each doubling is a lot of work! But we are feeling good about our prospects there.”

    Source link

  • Microsoft $9.7 billion deal with IREN will give it access to Nvidia chips

    Microsoft has entered into a $9.7 billion cloud services contract with artificial intelligence cloud service provider IREN that will give it access to some of Nvidia’s chips.

    The five-year deal, which includes a 20% prepayment, will help Microsoft as it looks to keep up with AI demand. Last week the software maker reported its quarterly sales grew 18% to $77.7 billion, beating Wall Street expectations while also surprising some investors with the huge amounts of money it is spending to expand its cloud computing infrastructure and address the growing need for AI tools.

    Microsoft spent nearly $35 billion in the July-September quarter on capital expenditures to support AI and cloud demand, nearly half of that on computer chips and much of the rest related to data center real estate.

    “IREN’s expertise in building and operating a fully integrated AI cloud — from data centers to GPU stack — combined with their secured power capacity makes them a strategic partner,” Jonathan Tinter, president of business development and ventures at Microsoft, said in a statement. “This collaboration unlocks new growth opportunities for both companies and the customers we serve.”

    Microsoft also announced new deal with OpenAI last week that pushed the Redmond, Washington, company to $4 trillion in valuation for the second time this year. The agreement gives the software giant a roughly 27% stake in OpenAI’s new for-profit corporation but changes some of the details of their close partnership. Microsoft’s $135 billion stake will be just ahead of the OpenAI nonprofit’s $130 billion stake in the for-profit company.

    IREN also said Monday that it signed a deal with Dell Technologies to buy the chips and ancillary equipment for about $5.8 billion. The Australian company anticipates the chips being deployed in phases through next year at its Childress, Texas campus.

    Shares of IREN jumped 22% before the opening bell in the U.S. Shares of Microsoft rose slightly,.

    Source link

  • Microsoft to ship 60,000 Nvidia AI chips to UAE under US-approved deal

    WASHINGTON (AP) — Microsoft said Monday it will be shipping Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence chips to the United Arab Emirates as part of a deal approved by the U.S. Commerce Department.

    The Redmond, Washington software giant said licenses approved in September under “stringent” safeguards enable it to ship more than 60,000 Nvidia chips, including the California chipmaker’s advanced GB300 Grace Blackwell chips, for use in data centers in the Middle Eastern country.

    The agreement appeared to contradict President Donald Trump’s remarks in a “60 Minutes” interview aired Sunday that such chips would not be exported outside the U.S.

    Asked by CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell if he will allow Nvidia to sell its most advanced chips to China, Trump said he wouldn’t.

    “We will let them deal with Nvidia but not in terms of the most advanced,” Trump said. “The most advanced, we will not let anybody have them other than the United States.”

    The UAE’s ability to access chips is tied to its pledge to invest $1.4 trillion in U.S. energy and AI-related projects, an outsized sum given its annual GDP is roughly $540 billion.

    The UAE ambassador to the U.S., Yousef Al Otaiba, said in a statement earlier this year that the arrangement was “setting a new ‘Gold Standard’ for securing AI models, chips, data and access.”

    Microsoft’s announcement Monday was part of the company’s planned $15.2 billion investment in technology in the UAE, which is says has some of the highest per-capita usage of AI. Microsoft had already accumulated in the UAE more than 21,000 of Nvidia’s graphics processor chips, known as GPUs, through licenses approved under then-President Joe Biden.

    “We’re using these GPUs to provide access to advanced AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, open-source providers, and Microsoft itself,” said a company statement.

    Source link

  • OpenAI and Amazon sign $38 billion deal for AI computing power

    SEATTLE (AP) — OpenAI and Amazon have signed a $38 billion deal that enables the ChatGPT maker to run its artificial intelligence systems on Amazon’s data centers in the U.S.

    OpenAI will be able to power its AI tools using “hundreds of thousands” of Nvidia’s specialized AI chips through Amazon Web Services as part of the deal announced Monday.

    Amazon shares increased 4% after the announcement.

    The agreement comes less than a week after OpenAI altered its partnership with its longtime backer Microsoft, which until early this year was the startup’s exclusive cloud computing provider.

    California and Delaware regulators also last week allowed San Francisco-based OpenAI, which was founded as a nonprofit, to move forward on its plan to form a new business structure to more easily raise capital and make a profit.

    “The rapid advancement of AI technology has created unprecedented demand for computing power,” Amazon said in a statement Monday. It said OpenAI “will immediately start utilizing AWS compute as part of this partnership, with all capacity targeted to be deployed before the end of 2026, and the ability to expand further into 2027 and beyond.”

    AI requires huge amounts of energy and computing power and OpenAI has long signaled that it needs more capacity, both to develop new AI systems and keep existing products like ChatGPT answering the questions of its hundreds of millions of users. It’s recently made more than $1 trillion worth of financial obligations in spending for AI infrastructure, including data center projects with Oracle and SoftBank and semiconductor supply deals with chipmakers Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom.

    Some of the deals have raised investor concerns about their “circular” nature, since OpenAI doesn’t make a profit and can’t yet afford to pay for the infrastructure that its cloud backers are providing on the expectations of future returns on their investments. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman last week dismissed doubters he says have aired “breathless concern” about the deals.

    “Revenue is growing steeply. We are taking a forward bet that it’s going to continue to grow,” Altman said on a podcast where he appeared with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

    Amazon is already the primary cloud provider to AI startup Anthropic, an OpenAI rival that makes the Claude chatbot.

    Source link

  • Layoffs are piling up, raising worker anxiety. Here are some companies that have cut jobs recently

    NEW YORK (AP) — It’s a tough time for the job market.

    Amid wider economic uncertainty, some analysts have said that businesses are at a “no-hire, no fire” standstill. That’s caused many to limit new work to only a few specific roles, if not pause openings entirely. At the same time, some sizeable layoffs have continued to pile up — raising worker anxieties across sectors.

    Some companies have pointed to rising operational costs spanning from President Donald Trump’s barrage of new tariffs and shifts in consumer spending. Others cite corporate restructuring more broadly — or, as seen with big names like Amazon, are redirecting money to artificial intelligence.

    Federal employees have encountered additional doses of uncertainty, impacting worker sentiment around the job market overall. Shortly after Trump returned to office at the start of the year, federal jobs were cut by the thousands. And many workers are now going without pay as the U.S. government shutdown nears its fourth week.

    “A lot of people are looking around, scanning the job environment, scanning the opportunities that are available to them — whether it’s in the public or private sector,” said Jason Schloetzer, professor business administration at Georgetown University’s McDonough School. “And I think there’s a question mark around the long-term stability everywhere.”

    Government hiring data is on hold during the shutdown, but earlier this month a survey by payroll company ADP showed that the private sector lost 32,000 jobs in September.

    Here are some companies that have moved to cut jobs recently.

    General Motors

    General Motors moved to lay off about 1,700 workers across manufacturing sites in Michigan and Ohio on Wednesday, as the auto giant adjusts to slowing demand for electric vehicles.

    Hundreds of additional employees are reportedly slated for “temporary layoffs.” And GM has recently moved to downsize other parts of its workforce, too — including 200 layoffs mostly impacting engineers in Detroit, and other 300 job cuts at a Georgia IT Innovation Center, which it is also shuttering.

    Paramount

    In long-awaited cuts just months after completing its $8 billion merger with Skydance, Paramount is going to lay off about 2,000 employees — about 10% of its workforce.

    Paramount initiated roughly 1,000 of those layoffs on Wednesday, according to a source familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The rest of the cuts will be made at a later date.

    Amazon

    Amazon will cut about 14,000 corporate jobs as the online retail giant ramps up spending on artificial intelligence.

    Amazon said Tuesday that it will cut about 14,000 corporate jobs, close to 4% of its workforce, as the online retail giant ramps up spending on AI while trimming costs elsewhere. A letter to employees said most workers would be given 90 days to look for a new position internally.

    CEO Andy Jassy previously said he anticipated generative AI would reduce Amazon’s corporate workforce in the coming years. And he has worked to aggressively cut costs overall since 2021.

    UPS

    United Parcel Service has disclosed about 48,000 job cuts this year as part of turnaround efforts, which arrive amid wider shifts in the company’s shipping outputs.

    In a Tuesday regulatory filing, UPS said it’s cut about 34,000 operational positions — and the company announced another 14,000 role reductions, mostly within management. Combined, that’s much higher than the roughly 20,000 cuts UPS forecast earlier this year.

    Target

    Last week, Target that it would eliminate about 1,800 corporate positions, or about 8% of its corporate workforce globally.

    Target said the cuts were part of wider streamlining efforts — with Chief Operating Officer Michael Fiddelke noting that “too many layers and overlapping work have slowed decisions.” The retailer is also looking to rebuild its customer base. Target reported flat or declining comparable sales in nine of the past eleven quarters.

    Nestlé

    In mid-October, Nestlé said it would be cutting 16,000 jobs globally — as part of wider cost cutting aimed at reviving its financial performance.

    The Swiss food giant said the layoffs would take place over the next two years. The cuts arrive as Nestlé and others face headwinds like rising commodity costs and U.S. imposed tariffs. The company announced price hikes over the summer to offset higher coffee and cocoa costs.

    Lufthansa Group

    In September, Lufthansa Group said it would shed 4,000 jobs by 2030 — pointing to the adoption of artificial intelligence, digitalization and consolidating work among member airlines.

    Most of the lost jobs would be in Germany, and the focus would be on administrative rather than operational roles, the company said. The layoff plans arrived even as the company reported strong demand for air travel and predicted stronger profits in years ahead.

    Novo Nordisk

    Also in September, Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk said it would cut 9,000 jobs, about 11% of its workforce.

    Novo Nordisk — which makes drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy — said the layoffs were part of wider restructuring as the company works to sell more obesity and diabetes medications amid rising competition.

    ConocoPhillips

    Oil giant ConocoPhillips has said it plans to lay off up to a quarter of its workforce, as part of broader efforts from the company to cut costs.

    A spokesperson for ConocoPhillips confirmed the layoffs on Sept. 3, noting that 20% to 25% of the company’s employees and contractors would be impacted worldwide. At the time, ConocoPhillips had a total headcount of about 13,000 — or between 2,600 and 3,250 workers. Most reductions were expected to take place before the end of 2025.

    Intel

    Intel has moved to shed thousands of jobs — with the struggling chipmaker working to revive its business as it lags behind rivals like Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices.

    In a July memo to employees, CEO Lip-Bu Tan said Intel expected to end the year with 75,000 “core” workers, excluding subsidiaries, through layoffs and attrition. That’s down from 99,500 core employees reported the end of last year. The company previously announced a 15% workforce reduction.

    Microsoft

    In May, Microsoft began began laying off about 6,000 workers across its workforce. And just months later, the tech giant said it would be cutting 9,000 positions — marking its biggest round of layoffs seen in more than two years.

    The latest job cuts hit Microsoft’s Xbox video game business and other divisions. The company has cited “organizational changes,” with many executives characterizing the layoffs as part of a push to trim management layers. But the labor reductions also arrive as the company spends heavily on AI.

    Procter & Gamble

    In June, Procter & Gamble said it would cut up to 7,000 jobs over the next two years, 6% of the company’s global workforce.

    The maker of Tide detergent and Pampers diapers said the cuts were part of a wider restructuring — also arriving amid tariff pressures. In July, P&G said it would hike prices on about a quarter of its products due to the newly-imposed import taxes, although it’s since said it expects to take less of a hit than previously anticipated for the 2026 fiscal year.

    Source link

  • The stock market is breaking records. Time for a gut check

    NEW YORK (AP) — Almost everything in your 401(k) should be coming up a winner now. That makes it time for a gut check.

    Not only is the U.S. stock market setting records, so are foreign stocks. Bond funds, which are supposed to be the boring and safe part of any portfolio, are also doing well this year, along with gold and cryptocurrencies.

    But in the midst of all the fun, it can pay to remember how you felt during April. That’s when financial markets were tumbling because of worldwide tariffs that President Donald Trump announced on his “Liberation Day.”

    Did all that fear push you to sell your stocks, lock in the losses and miss out on the stunning rebound that came afterward? Or did you hold tight, as many financial advisers suggested? Either way, it’s valuable information because another downturn could strike at any time.

    To be sure, many professionals along Wall Street are forecasting that the U.S. stock market will keep rising. But the threat of a sharp drop remains, as it always does. That leaves investors with the luxury now, while prices are high, to reassess. Don’t get lulled into leaving your 401(k) on autopilot, unless you’re intentionally doing so, and make sure your portfolio isn’t stuffed with too much risk.

    Here are some things to keep in mind:

    The stock market is doing well?

    It’s been another fabulous year for stocks. The S&P 500 has soared more than 35% from its low point in April, shortly after “Liberation Day.”

    The market has had a few hiccups recently, as worries have popped up about everything from potentially bad loans at some banks to renewed talk about much higher tariffs on China. But stocks have come back from each stumble, only to push higher.

    “The market continues to (hit) record highs on the back of strong earnings and easing U.S.–China trade tensions,” said Mark Hackett, chief market strategist at Nationwide, who calls the current state of “steady growth without irrational exuberance” a ”Goldilocks environment.”

    If the market’s great, why should I worry?

    You don’t need to worry at the moment, but remember that the stock market will fall eventually. It always does.

    The S&P 500 index, which sits at the heart of many 401(k) accounts, has forced investors to swallow a 10% drop every couple of years or so, on average. That’s what Wall Street calls a “correction,” and professional investors see them as ways to clear out excessive optimism that may have built up and pushed prices too high. More serious drops of at least 20%, which Wall Street calls “bear markets,” are less common but can last for years.

    Back in April, the S&P 500 index plunged nearly 20% from its record at the time. But the market came back, propelled by the big tech companies that have led the way the last few years.

    “Fundamentally superior stocks recover quickly and bounce like fresh tennis balls, while fundamentally inferior stocks bounce like rocks.” said Louis Navellier, founder and chief investment officer of asset manager Navellier & Associates, who also brushed off worries that the stock market is in a bubble.

    What could trip up the market?

    The stock market has charged to records because investors are expecting several important things to happen. If any fail to pan out, it would undercut the market.

    Chief among those expectations is that big U.S. companies will continue to deliver big growth in profits. That’s one of the few ways they can justify the jumps for their stock prices and quiet criticism that they’ve become too expensive.

    Critics point in particular to the frenzy going on in artificial-intelligence technology. There, they hear echoes of the dot-com bonanza that ultimately imploded in 2000 and sent stocks on a yearslong descent. One popular measure of valuing stocks, which looks at corporate profits over the preceding 10 years, showed the S&P 500 recently was near its most expensive level since the 2000 dot-com bubble.

    Consider Nvidia, the chip company that’s become the poster child of the AI trade. If it fails to meet analysts’ high expectations for growth, its stock will look more expensive than it already does. It’s trading at 54 times its earnings per share over the last 12 months, much higher than the overall S&P 500’s price-earnings ratio of nearly 30.

    What’s the next event to be mindful of?

    Wednesday’s meeting of the Federal Reserve could be a key moment for the market.

    Besides companies delivering bigger profits or stock prices falling, another way for the stock market to look less expensive is if interest rates ease.

    The widespread expectation is that the Fed will cut its main interest rate to support the slowing job market and deliver more reductions through next year. But the Fed has also warned it may hold off on cuts if inflation accelerates beyond its still-high level. That’s because lower interest rates can make inflation worse, and Wednesday’s focus will be on whether the Fed gives any hints about the likelihood of more cuts in coming months.

    Several of Wall Street’s most influential stocks will also be reporting their latest earnings results this week, including Microsoft and Apple. And Trump will be meeting with China’s leader, Xi Jinping on Thursday. The market has already run up on hopes that the two will ease rising trade tensions at some point.

    If there’s a bubble, I should sell everything, right?

    A famous saying on Wall Street is that being too early is the same as being wrong.

    Consider prescient investors who knew that stocks were too expensive when former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan famously talked about the possibility of “irrational exuberance” in financial markets. That was in late 1996.

    If they sold then, they would have missed out as the bubble inflated further and the S&P 500 more than doubled through late March 2000 before it popped.

    Instead, the better way to think of it may be: Make sure your investments are set up the right way, so you can stomach the market whether it goes up or down.

    How much of my 401(k) should be in stocks?

    It depends on your age and how much risk you’re willing to take.

    If you did sell stocks this past April, you may have had too much of your portfolio in stocks for your risk tolerance. Or you may need to steel yourself more during the next drop.

    Remember that anyone decades away from retirement has the luxury of waiting out any drops in the market. Bear markets are actually great in that case, because they put stocks on sale for anyone continuing to make regular contributions to their 401(k) account.

    Workers closer to retirement still need stocks, though in smaller proportions, because they have historically provided the highest returns over the long term, and a retirement can last decades.

    “They aren’t the most sexy, but companies with dependable dividends are a good bet, as are simple index funds designed to track the S&P 500 or a subset aimed at value or growth,” said John Kiernan, managing editor of personal finance site WalletHub.

    “Young people need to grow their money over time, and they will have decades to make up for any losses,” Kiernan said. “Older people need to protect the money they have now, which might mean favoring bonds and high-yield savings accounts over risky investments.”

    It’s easy to see how much stock retirement savers are recommended to hold at various ages. Mutual-fund companies have target-date retirement funds, which are built as autopilot products that will automatically move investors from lots of stocks when they’re young to fewer stocks when they’re closer to retirement.

    The average target-date fund for workers just starting their careers had 92% of its portfolio invested in stocks at the end of last year, according to Morningstar. Target-date funds designed for people entering retirement have a bit under 50% invested in stocks, meanwhile.

    I hate all this uncertainty

    Unfortunately, it’s the price you have to pay if you want the strong returns that the U.S. stock market has historically provided over the long term.

    This is what the stock market does. It goes up and down, sometimes by shocking amounts, but it usually helps patient savers build their nest eggs over decades.

    Ben Fulton, CEO of WEBs investments, recommends monitoring volatility by paying attention to the VIX, a volatility index, sometimes called the “fear index, which measures market expectations of future risk. The VIX is currently around 16, which Fulton said signals ”calm by historical standards.”

    “When the VIX begins to hold consistently above 20, it often signals a time to gradually reduce market exposure,” he said. That happened during the tech bubble and more recently during the pandemic in 2020 and when inflation spiked in 2022.

    “Until then, maintaining positions is critical, as markets that rise steadily can continue longer than logic might suggest, and stepping aside too early can mean missing valuable portfolio appreciation,” Fulton said.

    “Markets rarely behave as we want, instead reflecting the collective sentiment of all investors.”

    Source link

  • Amazon cuts 14,000 corporate jobs as spending on artificial intelligence accelerates

    Amazon will cut about 14,000 corporate jobs as the online retail giant ramps up spending on artificial intelligence while cutting costs elsewhere.

    Teams and individuals impacted by the job cuts will be notified on Tuesday. Most workers will be given 90 days to look for a new position internally, Beth Galetti, Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology at Amazon, wrote in a letter to employees on Tuesday. Those who can’t find a new role at the company or who opt not to look for one will be provided transitional support including severance pay, outplacement services and health insurance benefits.

    Amazon has about 350,000 corporate employees and a total workforce of approximately 1.56 million. The cuts announced Tuesday amount to about a 4% reduction in its corporate workforce.

    In June CEO Andy Jassy, who has aggressively sought to cut costs since becoming CEO in 2021, said that he anticipated generative AI would reduce Amazon’s corporate workforce in the next few years.

    Jassy said at the time that Amazon had more than 1,000 generative AI services and applications in progress or built, but that figure was a “small fraction” of what it plans to build.

    Amazon has announced plans to invest $10 billion building a campus in North Carolina to expand its cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure.

    Since 2024 started, Amazon has committed to about $10 billion apiece to data center projects in Mississippi, Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina as it builds up its infrastructure to try to keep up with other tech giants making leaps in AI. Amazon is competing with OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta and others. In a conference call with industry analysts in May, Jassy said that the potential for growth in the company’s AWS business is massive.

    “If you believe your mission is to make customers’ lives easier and better every day, and you believe that every customer experience will be reinvented with AI, you’re going to invest very aggressively in AI, and that’s what we’re doing. You can see that in the 1,000-plus AI applications we’re building across Amazon. You can see that with our next generation of Alexa, named Alexa+,” he said.

    Amazon’s workforce doubled during the pandemic as millions stayed home and boosted online spending. In the following years, big tech and retail companies cut thousands of jobs to bring spending back in line.

    The cuts announced Tuesday suggests Amazon is still trying to get the size of its workforce right and it may not be over. It was the biggest culling at Amazon since 2023, when the company cut 27,000 jobs. Those cuts came in waves, with 9,000 jobs trimmed in March of that year, and another 18,000 employees two months later. Amazon has not said if more job cuts are on the way.

    Yet the jobs market which has for years been a pillar in the U.S. economy, is showing signs of weakening. Layoffs have been limited, but the same can be said for hiring.

    Government hiring data is on hold during the government shut down, but earlier this month a survey by payroll company ADP showed a surprising loss of 32,000 jobs losses in the private sector in September.

    Many retailers are pulling back on seasonal hiring this year due to uncertainty over the U.S. economy and tariffs. Amazon Inc. said this month, however, that it would hire 250,000 seasonal workers, the same as last year’s holiday season.

    Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, said in a statement that the layoffs “represent a deep cleaning of Amazon’s corporate workforce.”

    “Unlike the Target layoffs, Amazon is operating from a position of strength,” he said. “The company has been producing good growth, and it still has a lot of headroom for further expansion in both the U.S. and overseas.”

    But Saunders noted that Amazon is not immune to outside factors, as global markets tighten and underlying costs climb.

    “It needs to act if it wants to continue with a good bottom-line performance. This is especially so given the amount of investment the company is making in areas like logistics and AI. In some ways, this is a tipping point away from human capital to technological infrastructure,” he said.

    Amazon will post quarterly financial results on Thursday. During its most recent quarter, the company reported 17.5% growth for its cloud computing arm Amazon Web Services.

    Source link

  • These 5 tech stocks could let you play earnings season like a pro

    These 5 tech stocks could let you play earnings season like a pro

    Source link

  • Microsoft employee protests lead to 18 arrests as company reviews its work with Israel’s military

    Police officers arrested 18 people at worker-led protests at Microsoft headquarters Wednesday as the tech company promises an “urgent” review of the Israeli military’s use of its technology during the ongoing war in Gaza.

    Two consecutive days of protest at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington called for the tech giant to immediately cut its business ties with Israel.

    But unlike Tuesday, when about 35 protesters occupying a plaza between office buildings left after Microsoft asked them to leave, the protesters on Wednesday “resisted and became aggressive” after the company told police they were trespassing, according to the Redmond Police Department.

    The protesters also splattered red paint resembling the color of blood over a landmark sign that bears the company logo and spells Microsoft in big gray letters.

    “We said, ‘Please leave or you will be arrested,’ and they chose not to leave so they were detained,” said police spokesperson Jill Green.

    Microsoft late last week said it was tapping a law firm to investigate allegations reported by British newspaper The Guardian that the Israeli Defense Forces used Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform to store phone call data obtained through the mass surveillance of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

    “Microsoft’s standard terms of service prohibit this type of usage,” the company said in a statement posted Friday, adding that the report raises “precise allegations that merit a full and urgent review.”

    In February, The Associated Press revealed previously unreported details about the tech giant’s close partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Defense, with military use of commercial artificial intelligence products skyrocketing by nearly 200 times after the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. The AP reported that the Israeli military uses Azure to transcribe, translate and process intelligence gathered through mass surveillance, which can then be cross-checked with Israel’s in-house AI-enabled targeting systems.

    Following The AP’s report, Microsoft acknowledged the military applications but said a review it commissioned found no evidence that its Azure platform and artificial intelligence technologies were used to target or harm people in Gaza. Microsoft did not share a copy of that review or say who conducted it.

    Microsoft said it will share the latest review’s findings after it’s completed by law firm Covington & Burling.

    The promise of a second review was insufficient for the employee-led No Azure for Apartheid group, which for months has protested Microsoft’s supplying the Israeli military with technology used for its war against Hamas in Gaza. The group said Wednesday the technology is “being used to surveil, starve and kill Palestinians.”

    Microsoft in May fired an employee who interrupted a speech by CEO Satya Nadella to protest the contracts, and in April, fired two others who interrupted the company’s 50th anniversary celebration.

    On Tuesday, the protesters posted online a call for what they called a “worker intifada,” using language evoking the Palestinian uprisings against Israeli military occupation that began in 1987.

    On Wednesday, the police department said it took 18 people into custody “for multiple charges, including trespassing, malicious mischief, resisting arrest, and obstruction.” It wasn’t clear how many were Microsoft employees. No injuries were reported.

    Microsoft said in a statement after the arrests that it “will continue to do the hard work needed to uphold its human rights standards in the Middle East, while supporting and taking clear steps to address unlawful actions that damage property, disrupt business or that threaten and harm others.”

    Source link

  • Amazon CEO pledges AI investments will pay off as capital expenditures surge 81%

    Amazon CEO pledges AI investments will pay off as capital expenditures surge 81%

    Amazon CEO, Andy Jassy speaking with CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Mad Money in Seattle, WA. on Dec. 6th, 2023.

    CNBC

    Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is trying to reassure investors who may be worried about the future payoff of the company’s massive investments in generative artificial intelligence.

    On a conference call with analysts following the company’s third-quarter earnings report on Thursday, Jassy pointed to the success of Amazon’s cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services, which has become a crucial profit engine despite the extreme costs associated with building data centers.

    “I think we’ve proven over time that we can drive enough operating income and free cash flow to make this a very successful return on invested capital business,” Jassy said. “We expect the same thing will happen here with generative AI.”

    Amazon spent $22.6 billion on property and equipment during the quarter, up 81% from the year before. Jassy said Amazon plans to spend $75 billion on capex in 2024 and expects an even higher number in 2025.

    The jump in spending is primarily being driven by generative AI investments, Jassy said. The company is rushing to invest in data centers, networking gear and hardware to meet vast demand for the technology, which has exploded in popularity since OpenAI released its ChatGPT assistant almost two years ago.

    “It is a really unusually large, maybe once-in-a-lifetime type of opportunity,” Jassy said. “And I think our customers, the business and our shareholders will feel good about this long term that we’re aggressively pursuing it.”

    AI spending was a big topic on tech earnings calls this week. Meta on Wednesday raised its capital expenditures guidance, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was “quite happy” with the team’s execution. Meanwhile, Microsoft‘s investment in OpenAI weighed on its fiscal first-quarter earnings released on Wednesday, and the company said capital spending would continue to rise. A day earlier, Alphabet CFO Anat Ashkenazi warned the company expects capital spending to grow in 2025.

    Amazon has said its cloud unit has picked up more business from companies that need infrastructure to deploy generative AI models. It’s also launched several AI products for enterprises, third-party sellers on its marketplace and advertisers in recent months. The company is expected to announce a souped-up version of its Alexa voice assistant that incorporates generative AI, something Jassy said will arrive “in the near future.”

    Amazon hasn’t disclosed its revenue from generative AI, but Jassy said Thursday it’s become a “multi-billion-dollar revenue run rate” business within AWS that “continues to grow at a triple-digit year-over-year percentage.”

    “It’s growing more than three times faster at this stage of its evolution as AWS itself grew, and we felt like AWS grew pretty quickly,” he added.

    WATCH: Mag 7 are value and growth stocks

    Source link

  • How major US stock indexes fared Thursday, 10/31/2024

    How major US stock indexes fared Thursday, 10/31/2024

    Drops in big tech companies including Microsoft and Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms led Wall Street lower.

    Source link

  • One of the largest solar projects in the US opens in Texas, backed by Google

    One of the largest solar projects in the US opens in Texas, backed by Google

    One of the largest solar projects in the U.S. opened in Texas on Friday, backed by what Google said is the largest solar electricity purchase it has ever made.

    Google executive Ben Sloss said at the ribbon cutting, about two hours south of Dallas, that the corporation has a responsibility to bring renewable, carbon-free electricity online at the same time it opens operations that will use that power. Google expects to spend $16 billion through 2040 globally to purchase clean energy, he said.

    U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who attended, said the solar project is a posterchild for the administration’s efforts to incentivize manufacturers and developers to locate energy projects in the U.S.

    “Sometimes when you are in the middle of history, it’s hard to tell, because you are in the middle of it,” she said. “But I’m telling you right now that we are in the middle of history being made.”

    SB Energy built three solar farms side by side, the “Orion Solar Belt,” in Buckholts, Texas. Combined, they will be able to provide 875 megawatts of clean energy. That is nearly the size of a typical nuclear facility. In total, Google has contracted with clean energy developers to bring more than 2,800 megawatts of new wind and solar projects to the state, which it says exceeds the amount of power required for its operations there.

    Google, Amazon and Microsoft have all recently announced investments in nuclear energy to power data centers, too, as the tech giants seek new sources of carbon-free electricity to meet surging demand from data centers and artificial intelligence. Google has a commitment to get all of its electricity without contributing to climate change, regardless of time of day or whether the sun is up, but neither it nor other large companies are meeting those commitments with the rise of artificial intelligence.

    The International Energy Agency forecasts that data centers’ total electricity consumption could reach more than 1,000 terawatt-hours in 2026, more than doubling from 2022. Estimates suggest one terawatt-hour can power 70,000 homes for a year.

    The demand for power is also growing globally as buildings and vehicles electrify. People used more electricity than ever last year, placing strain on electric grids around the world.

    In August, Google said it planned to invest more than $1 billion in Texas this year to support its cloud and data center infrastructure.

    Google will use about 85% of the project’s solar power for data centers in Ellis County and for cloud computing in the Dallas region. In Ellis County, Google operates a data center campus in Midlothian and is building out a new campus in Red Oak. The rest of the solar power will go to the state’s electrical grid. Thousands of sheep graze in the area, maintaining the vegetation around the solar arrays.

    “This project was a spreadsheet and a set of emails that I had been exchanging and a bunch of approvals and so on. And then you come over the rise over there and you see it laid out in front of you and it kind of takes your breath away, right? Because there’s this enormous field of solar arrays,” Sloss said during the ceremony. “And we actually collectively have done this. That is amazing.”

    SB Energy said most of the solar farm components are made in the United States, and that’s only possible because the climate law formally known as the Inflation Reduction Act spurred clean energy manufacturing. The company expects the projects to be the first to qualify for an extra tax credit the law affords for using domestic content.

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

    Source link