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Andrew Bosworth AKA Boz, an advertising expert for Facebook, gives a talk at the Online Marketing Rockstars marketing trade show in Hamburg, Germany, 03 March 2017. Photo: Christian Charisius/dpa | usage worldwide (Photo by Christian Charisius/picture alliance via Getty Images)
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is turning to an old friend and former Harvard teaching assistant, Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, in a time of trouble for the company.

Last week, a damaging series of reports in The Wall Street Journal showed major problems in the company’s ecosystem, including a lack of content moderators for markets outside the U.S., an avalanche of anti-vaccine misinformation in user comments, and Facebook-owned Instagram’s negative effect on teens’ mental health.

Some of the reports said Facebook employees and execs knew of these problems but could not or would not fix them. Lawmakers have already pledged to question execs from Facebook and other Big Tech companies over social media’s effects on teens.

On Wednesday, Facebook shuffled its leadership. Mike Schroepfer, its CTO of more than eight years, will resign next year and will be replaced by Bosworth.

It’s not clear why Schroepfer is leaving, or whether it has anything to do with the Journal reports. In his note announcing his resignation, he said he hoped to dedicate more time to family and philanthropy while still helping out with recruiting and with artificial intelligence technologies as the company’s first senior fellow.

With Bosworth, Zuckerberg is once again turning to one of his most trusted deputies.

Since joining in 2006, Bosworth has gained a reputation as Zuckerberg’s go-to-fix-it guy. He has developed key products and turned around crucial divisions, including hardware and Facebook’s bread and butter: advertising. He has a reputation for being direct with his peers and subordinates. He also frequently posts his thoughts on technology, leadership and personal growth — internally and on his public blog.

Some of these thoughts are unusually blunt for a corporate exec. For instance, in a leaked memo from January 2020, Bosworth said Facebook was more like sugar than a toxin.

“While Facebook may not be nicotine I think it is probably like sugar,” he wrote. “Sugar is delicious and for most of us there is a special place for it in our lives. But like all things it benefits from moderation.”

In a 2016 memo that leaked, he wrote about an attitude among some Facebook employees that connecting people is “de facto good” even if it sometimes leads to bad outcomes, like bullying or a “terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.” After the leak, Bosworth and Zuckerberg explained that the memo was meant to criticize this mindset among Facebook employees rather than defend it.

Bosworth is also one of Facebook’s most accessible executives, posting frequently on Twitter or holding Q&A sessions on Instagram. Most recently, he launched a podcast called “Boz To The Future” where he and guests discuss the latest in technology.

He is a polarizing figure within the company as well. One former employee who spoke on condition of anonymity so as to not break is non-disclosure agreement with Facebook told CNBC that Bosworth thinks he’s a genius, but probably just got lucky in his career. However, a former company executive who worked directly with Bosworth for several years told CNBC that Bosworth is a passionate leader to work for who demands greatness out of his employees.

Facebook declined to comment.

News Feed, ads and hardware

Bosworth met Zuckerberg at Harvard as a teaching assistant in an artificial intelligence class. After Zuckerberg founded Facebook in 2004, Bosworth joined the company in January 2006 as one of the company’s earliest software engineers.

Within months, Bosworth had left his mark. He was one of the few software engineers who built what is now the most significant Facebook feature, News Feed. Prior to News Feed’s launch in September 2006, Facebook was a bunch of profiles users could jump between, leaving posts on each other’s “walls” as desired. News Feed brought all of these posts together in a single, never-ending screen, where the content just kept coming. Bosworth is regarded as the godfather of News Feed, a former executive told CNBC.

Some Facebook users were initially upset that their messages to one another were now easily visible for all their friends to see. But the feature eventually became a hit.

As Facebook transitioned from being primarily web-focused to mobile-first in 2012, Zuckerberg tapped Bosworth to lead the development of the company’s advertising products. In that role, Bosworth took a dysfunctional hodge-podge of products in a division that had been struggling, the former Facebook executive told CNBC, and he turned it into a a nearly $27 billion money-maker by the end of 2016.

In August 2017, Facebook announced that Bosworth would manage consumer hardware, including the company’s struggling skunkworks division of Building 8.

Even though Bosworth had no experience working on hardware, Zuckerberg turned to him to fix the teams, which included the virtual reality division Oculus acquired in 2014 for $2.3 billion. Oculus had barely released its first consumer headset, the Rift, a year earlier with little consumer success, and Building 8 was struggling to deliver products at the overzealous pace Facebook was expecting.

Over the past four years, Bosworth has reorganized and refocused Facebook’s hardware unit, which is now called Facebook Reality Labs.

Now, the company finally has a broad stable of hardware gadgets available for purchase. These include the Oculus Quest headset, the Portal, Portal Go, Portal+ and Portal TV video-calling devices, and smart glasses built in conjunction with Luxottica called Ray-Ban Stories. Earlier this year, Facebook also announced a new team within Reality Labs that will focus on the metaverse — a future space in virtual reality where people can meet.

Facebook has yet to break out specific sales figures for its hardware devices, but the company’s other revenue category, which includes Facebook’s Workplace enterprise software division, has grown to nearly $1.8 billion in 2020, up nearly 118% from $825 million in 2018.

Now, with a key spot needing to be filled, Zuck is turning to Bosworth again.

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World’s largest chipmaker TSMC says it has discovered potential trade secret leaks

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World's largest chipmaker TSMC says it has discovered potential trade secret leaks

TSMC workers walk down a hallway in a chipmaking fab in Taiwan. The company is building three such plants in Arizona.

TSMC

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. said on Tuesday that it had detected “unauthorized activities” that lead to the discovery of potential trade secret leaks.

The world’s biggest semiconductor manufacturer told CNBC that it has taken “strict” disciplinary action against the personnel involved and that it has also launched legal proceedings.

“TSMC maintains a zero-tolerance policy toward any actions that compromise the protection of trade secrets or harm the company’s interests,” the company said.

“Such violations are dealt with strictly and pursued to the fullest extent of the law. We remain committed to safeguarding our core competitiveness and the shared interests of all our employees.”

Semiconductors have grown in strategic importance in recent years as they have become the key pillar in the boom in artificial intelligence models and applications. Rising geopolitical tensions has put the spotlight on the competitive technological advantages of major firms in the chip supply chain like TSMC and other leaders across the board.

TSMC, headquartered in Taiwan, dominates the market for the manufacturing of the world’s most advanced chips and counts major tech giants including Apple and Nvidia as clients.

As the case is now under judicial review, TSMC is unable to provide further information, the firm said.

TSMC identified the issue early due to its “comprehensive and robust monitoring mechanisms,” the company said, adding that it carried out swift internal investigations.

Nikkei Asia, citing multiple sources familiar with the matter, reported on Tuesday that several former employees of TSMC are suspected of attempting to obtain critical proprietary information on 2-nanometer chip development and production while they were still working at the company.

Production of the 2-nanometer chip is among the leading edge manufacturing processes in the semiconductor industry currently. TSMC said it did not have any additional information to share when asked by CNBC about the Nikkei report.

As the world’s leading chipmaker, TSMC has a treasure trove of intellectual property. By its own account, the company has previously said it has more than 200,000 trade secrets recorded in its internal system.

It is not the first time that TSMC has been the target for potential theft. In 2018, a Taiwanese court indicted a former employee for copying trade secretes related to the 28-nanometer fabrication process, with intent to transfer them to a semiconductor company in mainland China.

In 2023, ASML, which makes machines that are required to manufacture the most advanced chips, said that it discovered that a former employee in China had misappropriated data related to its proprietary technology.

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Hims & Hers stock falls 10% on revenue miss

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Hims & Hers stock falls 10% on revenue miss

The Hers app arranged on a smartphone in New York, US, on Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2025. 

Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Shares of Hims & Hers Health fell 9% in extended trading on Monday after the telehealth company reported second-quarter results that missed Wall Street’s expectations for revenue.

Here’s how the company did based on average analysts’ estimates compiled by LSEG:

  • Earnings per share: 17 cents adjusted vs. 15 cents
  • Revenue: $544.8 million vs. $552 million

Revenue at Hims & Hers increased 73% in the second quarter from $315.6 million during the same period last year, according to a release. Hims & Hers reported a net income of $42.5 million, or 17 cents per share, compared to $13.3 million, or 6 cents per share, during the same period a year earlier.

For its third quarter, Hims & Hers said it expected to report revenue between $570 million to $590 million, while analysts were expecting $583 million. The company said its adjusted EBITDA for the quarter will be between the range of $60 million to $70 million. Analysts polled by StreetAccount were expecting $77.1 million.

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Hims & Hers has faced controversy in recent months over its continued sale of compounded GLP-1s, which are cheaper, unapproved versions of the blockbuster diabetes and weight loss drugs. Compounded drugs can be mass produced when brand-name treatments are in shortage, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced in February that ongoing supply issues had been resolved.

Some telehealth companies, including Hims & Hers, have continued to offer the compounded medications. It’s legal for patients to access personalized doses of the knockoffs in unique cases, like if they are allergic to an ingredient in a branded product, for instance. Hims & Hers has said consumers may still be able to access personalized doses through its site if clinically applicable. 

In June, Hims & Hers shares tumbled more than 30% after a short-lived collaboration with Novo Nordisk fell apart. The drugmaker said Hims & Hers “failed to adhere to the law which prohibits mass sales of compounded drugs” under the “false guise” of personalization.

Hims & Hers reported adjusted EBITDA of $82 million for its second quarter, up from $39.3 million last year and above the $73 million expected by StreetAccount.

Hims & Hers will host its quarterly call with investors at 5 p.m. ET.

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YTD chart of Hims & Hers Health.

–CNBC’s Annika Kim Constantino contributed to this report

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Palantir tops $1 billion in revenue for the first time, boosts guidance

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Palantir tops  billion in revenue for the first time, boosts guidance

Palantir reports $1 billion in revenue for the first time

Palantir topped Wall Street’s estimates Monday, surpassing $1 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time, and hiking its full-year guidance.

Shares rallied more than 5%.

Here’s how the company did versus LSEG estimates:

  • Earnings per share: 16 cents adj. vs. 14 cents expected
  • Revenue: $1.00 billion vs. $940 million expected

The artificial intelligence software provider’s revenues grew 48% during the period. Analysts hadn’t expected the $1 billion revenue benchmark from the Denver-based company until the fourth quarter of this year.

“The growth rate of our business has accelerated radically, after years of investment on our part and derision by some,” wrote CEO Alex Karp in a letter to shareholders. “The skeptics are admittedly fewer now, having been defanged and bent into a kind of submission.”

The software analytics company also boosted its full-year outlook guidance. For the full year, Palantir now expects revenues to range between $4.142 billion and $4.150 billion, up from prior guidance of $3.89 billion to $3.90 billion.

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For the third quarter, Palantir forecast revenues between $1.083 billion and $1.087 billion, beating an analyst estimate of $983 million. Palantir also lifted its operating income and full-year free cash flow guidance.

Palantir’s U.S. revenues jumped 68% from a year ago to $733 million, while U.S. commercial revenues nearly doubled from a year ago to $306 million.

The software analytics company has seen a boost from President Donald Trump‘s government efficiency campaign, which included layoffs and contract cuts. Palantir’s U.S. government revenues jumped 53% from the year-ago period to $426 million.

“It has been a steep and upward climb — an ascent that is a reflection of the remarkable confluence of the arrival of language models, the chips necessary to power them, and our software infrastructure,” Karp wrote in a letter to shareholders.

During the quarter, Palantir said it closed 66 deals of at least $5 million and 42 deals totaling at least $10 million. Total value of its contracts grew 140% from last year to $2.27 billion.

Net income rose 144% to about $326.7 million, or 13 cents a share, from about $134.1 million, or 6 cents per share a year ago.

Palantir shares have more than doubled this year as investors bet on the company’s AI tools and contract agreements with governments.

Its market value has accelerated past $379 billion and into the list of top 20 most valuable U.S companies, surpassing SalesforceIBM and Cisco to join the top 10 U.S. tech companies by market cap. Shares hit a new high Monday.

At its size, buying the stock requires investors to pay hefty multiples.

Shares currently trade 276 times forward earnings, according to FactSet. Tesla is the only other top 20 with a triple-digit ratio at 177.

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Palantir one-day stock chart.

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