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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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Intel appoints Lip-Bu Tan as new CEO, stock jumps 12%

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Intel appoints Lip-Bu Tan as new CEO, stock jumps 12%

Lip-Bu Tan appointed chief executive officer of Intel Corporation

Courtesy: Intel

Intel said on Wednesday that it had appointed Lip-Bu Tan as its new CEO, as the chipmaker attempts to recover from a tumultuous four-year run under Pat Gelsinger.

Tan was previously CEO of Cadence Design Systems, which makes software used by all the major chip designers, including Intel. He was an Intel board member but departed last year, citing other commitments.

Tan replaces interim co-CEOs David Zinsner and MJ Holthaus, who took over in December when former Intel CEO Patrick Gelsinger was ousted. Tan is also rejoining Intel’s board.

The appointment closes a chaotic chapter in Intel’s history, as investors pressured the semiconductor company to cut costs and spin off businesses due to declining sales and an inability to crack the booming artificial intelligence market.

Intel shares rose over 12% in extended trading on Wednesday.

Tan becomes the fourth permanent CEO at Intel in seven years. Following Brian Krzanich’s resignation in 2018, after the revelations of an inappropriate relationship with an employee, Bob Swan took the helm in Jan. 2019. He departed two years later after Intel suffered numerous blows from competitors and chip delays. Swan was succeeded by Gelsinger in 2021.

Gelsinger took over with a bold plan to transform Intel’s business to manufacture chips for other companies in addition to its own, becoming a foundry. But Intel’s overall products revenue continued to decline, and investors fretted over the significant capital expenditures needed for such massive chip production, including constructing a $20 billion dollar factory complex in Ohio.

Last fall, after a disappointing earnings report, Intel appeared to be for sale, and reportedly drew interest from rival companies including Qualcomm. Analysts assessed the possibility of Intel spinning off its foundry division or selling its products division — including server and PC chips — to a rival.

In AI, Intel has gotten trounced by Nvidia, whose graphics processing units (GPUs) have become the chip of choice for developers over the past few years.

In January, Intel issued a weak forecast even as it beat on earnings and revenue. The company pointed to seasonality, economic conditions and competition, and said clients are digesting inventory. The prospect of tariffs was adding to the uncertainty, Zinsner said.

Intel said that Zinsner will return to his previous role of CFO. Holthaus will remain in charge of Intel Products.

Intel was removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average in November and was replaced by Nvidia, reflecting the dramatic change of fortune in the semiconductor industry. Intel shares lost 60% of their value last year, while Nvidia’s stock price soared 171%. At Wednesday’s close, Intel’s market cap was $89.5 billion, less than one-thirtieth of Nvidia’s valuation.

WATCH: Intel appoints Lip-Bu Tan as CEO

Intel appoints Lip-Bu Tan as CEO

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Shares of iRobot tank 30% after Roomba maker raises doubt about its survival

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Shares of iRobot tank 30% after Roomba maker raises doubt about its survival

Roomba vacuums by iRobot are displayed at Best Buy store on January 19, 2024 in San Rafael, California. 

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Shares of iRobot plunged more than 30% on Wednesday after it said there is “substantial doubt” about its ability to stay in business.

The Roomba maker’s financial outlook has darkened since Amazon abandoned its planned $1.7 billion acquisition of the company in January 2024, citing regulatory scrutiny. Since then, iRobot has struggled to generate cash and pay off debts.

Massachusetts-based iRobot has been restructuring since the Amazon deal plunged into uncertainty. The company has laid off 51% of its workforce since the end of 2023, and iRobot has looked to reignite revenue growth by overhauling its product lineup. The company on Tuesday launched eight new Roombas in the hopes of “better positioning iRobot as the leader in the category that we created,” CEO Gary Cohen said in a statement.

“There can be no assurance that the new product launches will be successful,” iRobot said in its Wednesday earnings statement, citing limited consumer demand, tariff uncertainty and heightened competition.

“Given these uncertainties and the implication they may have on the company’s financials, there is substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern for a period of at least 12 months,” iRobot said in its earnings report.

The company’s fourth-quarter revenue sagged 44% year over year to $172 million, missing estimates of $180.8 million, according to FactSet. The Roomba maker posted a net loss of $77.1 million, or $2.52 per share. Excluding a one-time “manufacturing transition charge,” iRobot had a loss of $2.06 a share, exceeding the $1.73 per share projected by analysts surveyed by FactSet.

In July 2023, iRobot took a $200 million loan from the Carlyle Group to fund the company’s operations as a stopgap until the Amazon deal closed. The company amended the loan for a temporary waiver on certain financial obligations, which requires iRobot to pay a fee of $3.6 million.

As part of Wednesday’s report, iRobot said its board has initiated a strategic review of the business and is considering alternatives that could include refinancing its debt and exploring a potential sale. The board hasn’t set a deadline for when its review will conclude, the company said.

Shortly after the Amazon deal fell apart, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy criticized regulators’ approach to its iRobot acquisition. European Union regulators threatened to block the deal, and the Federal Trade Commission in the U.S. was reportedly expected to challenge the acquisition in court.

The proposed merger, which was announced in late 2022, would have allowed iRobot to scale and better compete with its rivals, Jassy said. Several of the fastest-growing robotic vacuum businesses are based in China, such as Anker, Ecovacs and Roborock, all of which have eaten into iRobot’s share of the market.

“We abdicate the acquisition, iRobot lays off a third of its staff, the stock price completely tanks, and now, there’s a real question of whether they’re going to be a going concern,” Jassy told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin in an interview last April.

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Amazon CEO on abandoning iRobot deal due to regulatory hurdles: It's a sad story

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FTC asks to delay Amazon Prime deceptive practices case, citing staffing shortfalls

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FTC asks to delay Amazon Prime deceptive practices case, citing staffing shortfalls

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The Federal Trade Commission asked a judge in Seattle to delay the start of its trial accusing Amazon of duping consumers into signing up for its Prime program, citing resource constraints.

Attorneys for the FTC made the request during a status hearing on Wednesday before Judge John Chun in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. Chun had set a Sept. 22 start date for the trial.

Jonathan Cohen, an attorney for the FTC, asked Chun for a two-month continuance on the case due to staffing and budgetary shortfalls.

The FTC’s request comes amid a push by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency to reduce spending. DOGE, which is led by tech baron Elon Musk, has slashed the federal government’s workforce by more than 62,000 workers in February alone.

“We have lost employees in the agency, in our division and on our case team,” Cohen said.

Chun asked Cohen how the FTC’s situation “will be different in two months” if the agency is “in crisis now, as far as resources.” Cohen responded by saying that he “cannot guarantee if things won’t be even worse.” He pointed to the possibility that the FTC may have to move to another office “unexpectedly,” which could hamper its ability to prepare for the trial.

“But there’s a lot of reason to believe … we may have been through the brunt of it, at least for a little while,” Cohen said.

John Hueston, an attorney for Amazon, disputed Cohen’s request to push back the trial date.

“There has been no showing on this call that the government does not have the resources to proceed to trial with the trial date as presently set,” Hueston said. “What I heard is that they’ve got the whole trial team still intact. Maybe there’s going to be an office move. And by the way, both in government and private sector, I’ve never heard of an office move being more than a few days disruptive.”

The FTC sued Amazon in June 2023, alleging that the online retailer was deceiving millions of customers into signing up for its Prime program and sabotaging their attempts to cancel it. Amazon has denied any wrongdoing, calling the FTC’s claims “wrong on the facts and the law.”

“Amazon tricked and trapped people into recurring subscriptions without their consent, not only frustrating users but also costing them significant money,” former FTC Chair Lina Khan said at the time.

The FTC brought a separate case against Amazon in September 2023 accusing it of wielding an illegal monopoly. The agency alleged that Amazon prevents sellers from offering cheaper prices elsewhere through its anti-discounting measures. That case is set to go to trial in October 2026.

In the time since the FTC filed its cases, Khan has been replaced as the head of the FTC by Trump appointee Andrew Ferguson. Tech companies, which are the target of several regulatory agencies, have sought to curry favor with Trump, including Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos. He attended President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, and Amazon was among several tech companies to donate $1 million to Trump’s inauguration committee.

WATCH: Trump FTC Chair tells CEOs it will crack down on conduct or mergers that hurt Americans

Trump FTC Chair tells CEOs it will go after companies if it thinks conduct or mergers hurt Americans

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