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Thomas Kurian, CEO of Alphabet’s Google Cloud, speaks at the Google Cloud Next conference in San Francisco on April 9, 2019.
Michael Short | Bloomberg | Getty Images

As a part of a recent reorganization within Google Cloud, CEO Thomas Kurian sidelined multiple tenured company veterans — one way he’s is living up to the company’s big expectations when it hired him two years ago.

CNBC reported Wednesday that Kurian, in a recent email to staff, announced a broad reorganization within Google Cloud’s engineering units. The shakeup is meant to help Google Cloud continue to grow its market share while streamlining an organization that has ballooned since Kurian took over. The technical unit alone has doubled since he joined, Kurian said in his recent email.

Google still lags behind Amazon and Microsoft in market share, but the recent reorganization and steady gains show why Kurian, an initially unlikely candidate, is doing what Google had hoped.

In the latest re-org, Kurian sidelined several veterans who otherwise may have stayed on board thanks to their tenure. There’s a joke among Google employees that longtime middle managers and executives can sit comfortably in their positions for as long as they want despite changing business needs, thanks to the cultural bureaucracy. But in this latest move, Kurian showed he isn’t afraid to bench veterans and give others more responsibility.

Kurian removed Eyal Manor, who has been at the company more than 14 years and worked within Cloud for five years. Manor oversaw the app management service Anthos, which Google hopes will give it an edge against rivals. Manor will look for other areas inside the company to work, Kurian said. Google spokesperson Jacinda Mein said that Manor chose to leave the group, and that the timing coincided with this reorg.

The reorg also effectively sidelines Urs Holzle, who was one of Google’s first ten employees and first vice president of engineering, removing him from some of his day-to-day responsibilities in favor of a more strategic role. Holzle recently faced backlash from employees for contradicting his own remote work policies, too.

Kurian also moved to unify Google Cloud’s technical teams under Brad Calder, who will take on some of Manor’s and Holzle’s responsibilities and report directly to Kurian. Calder spent eight years at Microsoft before joining Google Cloud in 2015.

Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer at Google LLC, speaks during the Google Cloud Next ’19 event in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Tuesday, April 9, 2019.
Michael Short | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Growth trumps culture, for now

While Google Cloud still isn’t profitable, Kurian has more than doubled revenue and slashed losses from when he first joined the company, earning praise from Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, CFO Ruth Porat and investors.

In the most recent quarter, cloud revenue grew to $4.63 billion, up nearly 54% from $3.01 billion a year ago. The cloud business had operating losses of $591 million, a dramatic 58.7% improvement from last year’s loss of $1.43 billion.

Kurian has also put a strong focus on the company’s sales organization. Prior to Kurian, 10 managers would have to provide approval before a salesperson could offer a discount to a customer, and the deal would then require non-disclosure agreements and a team of lawyers. Kurian streamlined some of those practices early on.

He has also encouraged the sales teams to incorporate other Google products, such as artificial intelligence tools and the Android mobile operating system, into their pitches in attempts to compete for more customers, especially more noteworthy ones. Kurian also reportedly boosted salespeople’s salaries to be more competitive than Amazon and Microsoft. 

Kurian had a reputation for a no-frills, at-times militant leadership style at Oracle. When Google hired him in 2018, it came as a shock because he was the least “Google-y” person to be a leader at the company, where employees largely felt they had a voice and everything was working toward a greater good.

Culturally, Kurian is still trying to figure out how to navigate that longstanding justice-motivated employee culture, but he isn’t completely writing it off, as some internally expected. Most recently, he claimed to seek information from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol about how the company’s artificial intelligence cloud tools would be used amid employee concern. While, there’s still a contingent of employees upset with the prospects, Kurian hasn’t completely written those concerns off yet.

But culture fit is not why Google hired him. They knew his reputation. Google’s culture more generally had already begun moving toward a culture that no longer shied away from military contracts or used slogans like “Don’t Be Evil.”

Whether or not Kurian’s process works in the long run, growth is what Google wants and growth is what what it’s getting — for now, at least.

Watch Now: Google Cloud is reorganizing its engineering units

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Rocket Lab stock jumps 8%, building on strong two-month rally

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Rocket Lab stock jumps 8%, building on strong two-month rally

An Electron rocket launches the Baby Come Back mission from New Zealand on July 17, 2023.

Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab stock soared 8% Monday, building on a strong run fueled by space innovation.

Shares of the space infrastructure company have nearly doubled over the last two months following a slew of successful launches and a deal with the European Union.

The stock is up 63% year to date after surging nearly sixfold in 2024.

Last month, Rocket Lab announced a partnership with the European Space Agency to launch satellites for constellation navigation before December.

Rocket Lab also announced the successful launch of its 66th, 67th and 68th Electron rockets in June. The company successfully deployed two rockets from the same site in 48 hours.

Read more CNBC tech news

Rocket Lab competes with a growing list of companies in a maturing and increasingly competitive space industry with growing demand. Some of the main competitors in the sector include Elon Musk‘s SpaceX and Firefly Aerospace, which filed its prospectus to go public on Friday.

“For Electron, our little rocket, we’ve seen increased demand over the last couple of years and we’re not just launching single spacecraft — these are generally entire constellations for customers,” CEO Peter Beck told CNBC last month.

He said the company is producing a rocket every 15 days.

Beck, a New Zealand-native, founded the company in 2006. Since its debut on the Nasdaq in August 2021 through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, the Long Beach, California-based company’s market value has swelled to more than $19 billion.

WATCH: Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck: One thing I don’t worry about at night is demand

Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck: One thing I don't worry about at night is demand

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Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI granted up to $200 million for AI work from Defense Department

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Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI granted up to 0 million for AI work from Defense Department

A view of the Pentagon on December 13, 2024, in Washington, DC. Home to the US Defense Department, the Pentagon is one of the world’s largest office buildings.

Daniel Slim | Afp | Getty Images

The U.S. Department of Defense on Monday said it’s granting contract awards of up to $200 million for artificial intelligence development at Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI.

The DoD’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office said the awards will help the agency accelerate its adoption of “advanced AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges.” The companies will work to develop AI agents across several mission areas at the agency.

“The adoption of AI is transforming the Department’s ability to support our warfighters and maintain strategic advantage over our adversaries,” Doug Matty, the DoD’s chief digital and AI officer, said in a release.

Elon Musk’s xAI also announced Grok for Government on Monday, which is a suite of products that make the company’s models available to U.S. government customers. The products are available through the General Services Administration (GSA) schedule, which allows federal government departments, agencies, or offices to purchase them, according to a post on X.

OpenAI was previously awarded a year-long $200 million contract from the DoD in 2024, shortly after it said it would collaborate with defense technology startup Anduril to deploy advanced AI systems for “national security missions.”

In June, the company launched OpenAI for Government for U.S. federal, state, and local government workers.

WATCH: US needs an allied strategy for AI investment in military and defense: Palantir

US needs an allied strategy for AI investment in military and defense: Palantir

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Meta CEO Zuckerberg says first AI data supercluster will come online in 2026

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Meta CEO Zuckerberg says first AI data supercluster will come online in 2026

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears at the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday said he plans to invest “hundreds of billions of dollars” into artificial intelligence compute infrastructure, and that Meta plans to bring its first supercluster online next year.

A supercluster is a large, complex computing network that’s designed to train advanced AI models and handle their workloads.

“Meta Superintelligence Labs will have industry-leading levels of compute and by far the greatest compute per researcher,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post on Monday. “I’m looking forward to working with the top researchers to advance the frontier!”

Zuckerberg said Meta’s first supercluster is called Prometheus, and that the company is building several other multi-gigawatt clusters. One cluster, called Hyperion, will be able to scale up to five gigawatts over several years, he said.

Read more CNBC tech news

Zuckerberg has been on a multibillion-dollar AI hiring spree in recent weeks, highlighted by a $14 billion investment in Scale AI. He announced a new organization in June called Meta Superintelligence Labs that’s made up of top AI researchers and engineers.

Zuckerberg had grown frustrated with Meta’s progress in AI, especially after the release of its Llama 4 AI models in April received a lukewarm response from developers. He is revamping Meta’s approach to better compete with rivals like OpenAI and Google.

“For our superintelligence effort, I’m focused on building the most elite and talent-dense team in the industry,” Zuckerberg wrote Monday.

WATCH: Meta announces several multi-gigawatt data centers, first planning to come online in 2026

Meta announces several multi-gigawatt data centers, first planning to come online in 2026

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