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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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StubHub aims to raise up to $9.2 billion in IPO, pricing at $22 to $25 per share

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StubHub aims to raise up to .2 billion in IPO, pricing at  to  per share

The StubHub logo is seen at its headquarters in San Francisco.

Andrej Sokolow | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

StubHub is aiming to raise as much as $851 million in its initial public offering, giving it a valuation of up to $9.2 billion, the company revealed in a new filing on Monday.

The ticket reselling marketplace plans to sell more than 34 million shares priced between $22 and $25 per share, according to the filing.

The long-awaited IPO comes after StubHub hit pause on the process in April as the stock market was reeling from President Donald Trump‘s sweeping tariffs. The company also eyed an IPO last year, but it postponed its efforts in July 2024 amid a slowdown in the IPO market.

StubHub plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “STUB.”

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The IPO market has bounced back in recent months, with recent debuts from Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchange Bullish, design software company Figma and crypto firm Circle.

Klarna, a Swedish provider of buy now, pay later loans, and Gemini, the crypto firm founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, are gearing up for public debuts this week.

StubHub filed an updated IPO prospectus last month, showing that first-quarter revenue grew 10% from a year earlier to $397.6 million. Operating income came in at $26.8 million for the period.

The company’s net loss widened to $35.9 million from $29.7 million a year ago.

The company has been a longtime player in the ticketing industry since its launch in 2000. It was purchased by eBay for $310 million in 2007, but was reacquired by co-founder Eric Baker in 2020 for $4 billion through his new company Viagogo.

StubHub had sought a $16.5 billion valuation before it began the IPO process, CNBC previously reported

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Chinese EV maker Xpeng eyes global launch of mass-market Mona brand in 2026

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Chinese EV maker Xpeng eyes global launch of mass-market Mona brand in 2026

Xpeng CEO He Xiaopeng speaks to reporters at the electric carmaker’s stand at the IAA auto show in Munich, Germany on September 8, 2025.

Arjun Kharpal | CNBC

Xpeng plans to launch its mass-market Mona brand in overseas markets next year in a move that will boost competition with its Chinese rivals and established automakers in the electric vehicle arena.

In a wide-ranging interview with CNBC on Tuesday, Xpeng CEO He Xiaopeng said the company’s international expansion is moving faster than he expected and signaled, for the first time, that the company is open to acquiring other electric carmakers.

Xpeng launched the Mona brand in China last year with the debut of the Mona M03 electric coupe. The car was launched with an aggressive starting price of 119,000 Chinese yuan, which is just under $17,000.

Xpeng will launch Mona-branded cars in Europe next year, He told CNBC. This is the first time the launch has been reported.

“In 2026 you can expect a variety of Mona products launched into the Chinese and European markets, as well as in rest of the world,” He said, in comments translated by CNBC.

“I believe by then, what we launch will be very proven and very excellent vehicles.”

These cars will likely be cheaper than some of Xpeng’s higher-end models such as the P7 and G6.

It comes as Chinese automakers are aggressively launching cars outside of China and finding success in Europe where companies like BYD have continued to grow.

Adding even more competitively priced cars into the mix overseas will ramp up competition in markets like Europe where traditional automakers such as Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen have launched their own electric vehicles to fend off Chinese rivals.

Chinese firms’ expansion into Europe comes at a time when Tesla continues to record declining sales in the region.

Global expansion accelerates

The Guangzhou-headquartered auto firm began its global expansion in 2020 with Norway and has since launched in other markets including Germany and France.

Xpeng had previously stated a goal of establishing a presence in 60 countries and regions by the end of 2025. He said this goal had been met already, due to faster-than-expected global growth. For reference, the CEO said Xpeng was only present in three to five markets two years ago.

Xpeng displayed its humanoid robot called “Iron” at the IAA auto show in Munich, Germany on September 8, 2025.

Arjun Kharpal | CNBC

At the IAA Mobility auto show in Munich, Germany, Xpeng brought an upgraded version of the flagship P7 car — the Next P7 — to showcase in Europe for the first time.

Even as Xpeng continues to push overseas, especially in Europe, it faces challenges including dealing with the European Union’s tariffs on China-made electric vehicles.

This has led Chinese automakers to explore manufacturing their cars in Europe. Xpeng would like to manufacture in Europe but has not not yet made a decision on the timeline for this, He said.

Xpeng open to acquisitions

At home in China, the price war continues as EV makers battle it out for market share. Competition is ramping up between domestic automakers and Tesla.

This has prompted Chinese regulators to call a halt to excessive competition, known colloquially as “neijuan” or involution.

The Xpeng CEO himself has previously warned that only a handful of Chinese carmakers will survive in the coming years as many go out of business.

He said the collapse is already happening.

In this environment, He said he is open to acquisitions, something that the company hasn’t done in large quantities to date. In 2023, Xpeng acquired the electric car development business of Chinese ride-hailing firm Didi.

He said Xpeng would be open to acquiring companies, including other electric carmakers.

“I think if we have the opportunity then we want to acquire some companies,” He said. “For us it’s a good thing to do. Manufacturing companies, EV companies are always possible.”

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Dan Ives to become chair of company that will buy Sam Altman-backed Worldcoin for its treasury

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Dan Ives to become chair of company that will buy Sam Altman-backed Worldcoin for its treasury

Daniel Ives, Wedbush Securities

Scott Mlyn | CNBC

Wedbush Securities’ Dan Ives is joining a new company focused on accumulating Worldcoin (WLD), the native token of the blockchain used in Open AI creator Sam Altman’s biometric identity verification startup, World.

Eightco Holdings, a tiny company that currently trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker “OCTO,” announced Monday that Ives, Wedbush’s global head of technology research, is now chairman of the board of directors. It also announced a $250 million private placement to implement a buying strategy around Worldcoin as its main treasury asset.

“As someone that’s so passionate about the AI revolution and the future of tech, I view World as really the de facto standard for authentication and identification in the future world of AI,” Ives told CNBC. “I would not be doing this initiative if it was just a cookie cutter token strategy.”

The offering is expected to close on or around Sept. 11, at which point it plans to change its ticker to “ORBS.”

Ives’ move is similar to one made by another widely-followed Wall Street forecaster, Tom Lee of Fundstrat, who in June joined the ether accumulator BitMine Immersion Technologies as chairman. BitMine shares have rocked more than 800% since Lee announced his involvement.

That company also made a $20 million strategic investment in Eightco, it announced Monday, marking the start of its “Moonshot” strategy to back bold ideas that strengthen Ethereum’s ecosystem.

Given the more crypto-friendly regulatory environment this year, more public companies have adopted the MicroStrategy playbook of using debt financing and equity sales to buy crypto to hold on their balance sheet to try to increase shareholder returns. Companies with high-profile backers like Fundstrat’s Lee and tech billionaire Peter Thiel (who has a stake in both ether-focused companies BitMine and Ethzilla) have been holding up better in the recent crypto pullback.

Ives, known for his bold street calls (and fashion choices) also runs the Dan Ives Wedbush AI Revolution ETF (IVES), which launched earlier in the summer with a focus on software and chips, and has said tech will be in a bull market for the next two to three years.

Increasingly, companies pursuing crypto treasury strategies are looking further out on the risk spectrum of crypto, beyond bitcoin, hoping for even bigger gains. For example, DeFi Development Corp launched in April with a focus on accumulating Solana’s SOL token, and a little-known Canadian vape company called CEA Industries announced a Binance Coin (BNB) accumulation plan in July.

Altman’s World venture aims to authenticate actual humans on its network given the acceleration of the number of threats from artificial intelligence, such as deepfakes. The project provides users with a “World ID” for anonymous sign-ins and rewards them with its Worldcoin cryptocurrency.

“As the AI infrastructure and [large language models] are built out without true identification and proof of human, it’s a limiting factor in the growth of AI for the coming years,” Ives said. “I view the whole crypto world going more and more toward a focus on blockchain, and how are you going to identify humans … in a future where robots are going to play a major role in physical AI?”

His comments on the need for a digital identity verification system echo those made by BlackRock CEO Larry Fink who has said in his annual letter this year that one day “tokenized funds,” or funds represented on a blockchain network like Ethereum, “will become as familiar to investors as ETFs — provided we crack one critical problem: identity verification.”

Worldcoin launched in 2023 and has a market cap of about $1 billion, compared to bitcoin’s roughly $2 trillion and ether’s $518 billion, according to CoinGecko.

Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:

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