Connect with us

Published

on

Neal Stephenson
Source: Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Author Neal Stephenson shot to fame almost 30 years ago with the science-fiction novel “Snow Crash,” which envisioned a future dominated by mega-corporations and organized crime, competing for dominance in both the real world and the “metaverse,” a computer-generated world accessible through virtual reality headsets.

Since then, he’s written several more novels encompassing technology and history, including a trilogy set at the dawn of the scientific revolution, and has done work for various technology companies including Jeff Bezos’ space travel company, Blue Origin, and augmented reality company Magic Leap.

His new novel, “Termination Shock,” out Nov. 16, focuses on the looming issue of our age — human-generated climate change, projecting a near future of extreme weather and social chaos. Against this setting, a maverick oilman decides to take matters into his own hands and builds the world’s biggest gun to shoot canisters of sulfur dioxide into the air, echoing the effects of a volcanic eruption and temporarily cooling parts of the globe. Geopolitics, social media and Dutch royalty all play a part.

Stephenson acknowledges that geoengineering is a radical step, but suggests as the effects of climate change grow more destructive, the demand for radical solutions will grow.

But if geoengineering does happen, it probably won’t be because a billionaire took matters into their own hands.

“In real life, somebody like that would probably get shut down,” he told CNBC in an interview.

“By far, the more plausible scenario is that some government somewhere just makes the calculation at some point that doing this would be fairly cheap and easy. And better than not doing it, as far as [their] selfish purposes are concerned.”

Personally, he favors an all-of-the-above set of solutions to climate change, including more clean energy sources, decarbonizing the economy and carbon capture to take some of the CO2 we’ve emitted over the last 150 years out of the atmosphere. The trouble is convincing large numbers of people that this kind of action is necessary.

He points to two factors that he expects will convince more people that climate change can no longer be ignored. One is rising sea levels.

“You can be as ideological as you want. But you can’t argue with the fact that your house is full of water,” he says.

“And the other one is these possible so-called wet-bulb events, where some areas become so hot and humid that everyone who’s outdoors will just die.” Stephenson points to the “heat dome” that descended over the Pacific Northwest last summer, causing temperatures to skyrocket for a few days and killing hundreds of people.

He does not necessarily believe governments will come together and agree on solutions, although he says the recent 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP 26, was a necessary and useful event. “We have to have those conferences. And we have to hope and pray that their strongest and most optimistic recommendations are put into effect.”

But even if they can’t agree, governments will be forced to respond.

“I think we’ll see the big governments, the Indias and Chinas of the world, charting their own path,” he says. “At the end of the day, most politicians want to retain their power. And they’re going to do what it takes to keep getting votes or to maintain their grip on on the political system. And if they’re seen as having presided over huge apocalyptic disasters and not taking effective action, then they’re in trouble.”

Although he was one of the first writers to popularize the idea of virtual reality, he does not necessarily believe that people will retreat into artificial worlds as the real world becomes harder to live in.

“I don’t hate VR,” he says. “But the reality has been so far that most people don’t like to hang out there for more than a short period of time. That may change as the technology gets better, but there’s just inherent limitations on things like the problem of getting motion sickness, the problem of how do you move around?”

He’s more bullish on augmented reality — the idea pioneered by Magic Leap and currently being developed by Microsoft, Apple, and others, where computer-generated images are blended with the real world. But he agrees it won’t take off until there’s a good reason for people to wear headsets or glasses for long periods of time. “It’ll probably have something to do with making it even smaller, more compact, and less of an intrusive experience to wear around.”

As far as the metaverse goes, Stephenson has stood back and watched as the tech and business worlds have claimed the term for themselves, most notably the company formerly known as Facebook, which renamed itself Meta to emphasize its interest in building a computer-generated universe.

“All I can do is kind of sit back and watch it in amazement,” he said. But, as many have noticed, “There’s a pretty big gap between what Facebook is actually doing, like running Facebook and WhatsApp and Instagram, and the visions that they’re talking about for the metaverse.”

Here’s a transcript of the complete interview, lightly edited for clarity and length.

Matt Rosoff, CNBC: The plot of your new novel “Termination Shock” is essentially about a maverick businessperson using geoengineering to reverse climate change. For CNBC readers who may not be familiar with the concept of geoengineering, can you tell us a little bit about it?

Neal Stephenson, author: The first point to emphasize is that it doesn’t fix the actual problem, which is too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But it’s thought that it could be a stopgap way to slow down the rate at which the climate gets hotter.

And it’s basically imitating the effects of large volcanic eruptions by putting sulfur dioxide or something else into the atmosphere, right?

Exactly. There have been many cases throughout history where a big volcano — most recently, Pinatubo in the Philippines — does exactly this. And it puts particles or droplets of sulfates into the stratosphere, and those sort of act as a veil that bounces back a little bit of the sun’s radiation back into space so that it never reaches our planet and doesn’t warm us up. So we know that this cools the planet down because it’s happened a bunch of times throughout history. And we also know that the sulfates will kind of naturally wash out of the atmosphere in a couple of years. And you go back to where you were before.

The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines, 1991.
Thomson Reuters

So you almost need a constant infusion of them. While you decarbonize.

Exactly. The only sane way to use this, if it’s done at all, is as a way to buy time for decarbonization, which is what we really need to do.

How did you get interested in this subject and become fascinated with it enough to base a novel on it?

I’ve been hearing about the idea for a number of years. I’m interested in history. I’m interested in science and the physics of the planet. And so, the idea that a volcano could erupt somewhere and affect temperatures all over the planet is a natural, fascinating topic for me. Over the last decade or two, it’s become increasingly clear that the CO2 content in the atmosphere is a huge problem, and that it’s getting worse fast, and we’re not really being very effective. Despite efforts by a number of people to draw attention to the problem and and push for emissions reductions, that number is still climbing rather rapidly and probably will keep climbing for a while. So rolling that together in the brain of the science fiction novelist, that looks like the basis for a story that that’s got that technical angle to it, but that’s also got a strong geopolitical and personal storytelling basis.

Do you think it’s a realistic likelihood that this could happen in 10 to 15 years? Maybe a maverick individual, but more likely a government that doesn’t particularly care much about world opinion will take it into their own hands?

I agree. In this book, it’s the maverick billionaire because it makes for a good story. But I have to do a lot of explaining as to how he’s able to get away with it, because in real life, somebody like that would probably get shut down. By far, the more plausible scenario is that some government somewhere just makes the calculation at some point that doing this would be fairly cheap and easy. And better than not doing it as far as [their] selfish purposes are concerned.

It’s considered a pretty radical out-there idea. If you look at the overall landscape and what you’ve been seeing over the last few years, what do you think the likelihood of countries in industry and individuals voluntarily taking steps to reduce emissions enough to keep global warming to a minimum? Or how do you think it’s likely to play out over the next 10 to 15 years?

The number that matters is the CO2 in the atmosphere, which is above 400 parts per million and climbing, That’s higher than it’s been in millions of years. So when we talk about emissions reductions, all we’re saying is that the rate at which that number grows, will slow down. But it’s still growing, the numbers still get higher every year. It’s just not climbing as fast because we reduced our emissions. If we could get to zero emissions, which might happen in a few decades — like China’s saying maybe by 2060, it might get to zero emissions. That just means that that number stays wherever it is, for about a million years, which is how long it takes natural processes to remove it. So emissions reductions are great and zero emissions would be better than than not doing that, but still leaves us stuck with the number at a dangerously high level until we take active measures to remove that carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

What do you think of carbon capture as a technology? Have you followed it at all?

I know an increasing number of people who are techies who are altering their careers to think about this and work on this. There’s a bunch of ways that it could be done. We have to do it. It will be the biggest engineering project by far in human history. We have to do it. We have to succeed. And it’ll take many decades.

Did you follow the COP26 conference at all? What did you think of it?

I followed it. Not super closely. But all of that stuff is great. We have to have those conferences. And we have to hope and pray that their strongest and most optimistic recommendations are put into effect. For sure. It’s just while we’re doing that, we can’t lose sight of what I said before, which is that reducing emissions or taking emissions to zero still doesn’t begin to solve the problem. It just means that we’re not making the problem worse.

What about other forms of energy? Nuclear energy in particular is one that draws a lot of interest from from readers. It’s zero carbon, but there’s fear about it, and some of that fear is grounded. What about that and other energy forms?

Nuclear, I think during the Cold War it kind of got rushed into service, too soon. And before the whole picture was was fully understood. So it’s not where where the engineering resources have been going in the last few decades. And with more resources, more engineers, more money, maybe we can find ways to do it that are that are safer. There are still intractable problems around what to do with nuclear waste, and and so on that need attention. But we’re entering into this phase in our history where we have to start thinking in terms of relative risks. If you’re talking about a particular new technology, they have to compare its risk to the risk of not using it.

There’s a lot going on that’s promising. Beyond just nuclear, there’s geothermal and the usual suspects, wind, solar, etc. And we need it all.

A lot of these discussions get bogged down by ideological purity tests. So one one side you’ve got activists who say if you even talk about adaptation, that’s wrong. Because you’re giving up on reduction. And if you even talk about carbon capture, you’re just giving the current economy and the current fossil fuel industry more more leeway to keep burning. Then you’ve got other people, the Bjorn Lomborgs of the world, who say, “Oh, we’re focusing way too much on the risks and not talking about the costs enough, and growth is the only way out.” How do you think about this? How do you parse this when you’re looking at all of these different, really strong ideological beliefs?

Yeah, a whole separate dimension to the problem that we’re facing is weird, weird polarization of everything. It’s incredibly obstructive. There was just an article in The New York Times about Republicans who are furious at other Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill. Like, how dare you vote for bridges?

It’s really disheartening and seems like it’s definitely this partisan shift by bad actors who think they’re gaining something from it.

I personally can look at something like carbon capture, and I can make an argument that convinces me that we should be doing it, so it’s not hard for me to formulate my own opinion on that. Much harder is getting millions and millions of other people to agree.

What do you think will be the tipping point? I’ve noticed a lot more people coming around to the idea that we need a multifaceted, throw-everything-at-it solution. And I think some of that comes as the effects become harder and harder to ignore, so it’s harder to presume that this is just happening somewhere else. Do you imagine some kind of event, or series of events, that can break this logjam?

So here’s an example. We had this heat dome event in Seattle over the summer, where out of nowhere, from a normal summer’s day, just suddenly, it was 115 degrees. Much hotter than it has ever been in Seattle.

I grew up there, and lived there for 10 years as an adult as well. So yeah, that was staggering.

So that happened overnight, and after three days of that, overnight, the temperature dropped by 50 degrees. A bunch of people died. So I think an event like that might convince a bunch of people who live in Seattle.

But I think one is going to be rising sea levels, which is something you can’t argue with. You can be as ideological as you want. But you can’t argue with the fact that your house is full of water.

And the other one is these possible so-called wet-bulb events, where some areas become so hot and humid that everyone who’s outdoors will just die.

How can people come together to ensure that solutions help the broadest number of people, rather than pulling up the drawbridges — let’s just escape into space or our compound in New Zealand or something like that? Or do you think it’s inevitable that the people with the means are going to run?

Of course, some people are going to do that. And other parts of the world are going to be depopulated one way or the other. But I think we’ll see the big governments, the Indias and Chinas of the world, charting their own path, going their own way, doing what they think they need to do, in order to basically prevent their their governments from falling. At the end of the day, most politicians want to retain their power. And they’re going to do what it takes to keep getting votes or to maintain their grip on on the political system. And if they’re seen as having presided over huge apocalyptic disasters and not taking effective action, then they’re in trouble.

I have to ask about the metaverse, a term that you coined in the book “Snow Crash” in 1992. Now it’s everywhere in tech. It was on Disney‘s earnings call! Everybody in the tech world is suddenly using the term, probably not the way you intended it or originally envisioned it. What are your thoughts on that?

I have to assume that some of this is pre-emptive. Making sure that one company — that Facebook — doesn’t establish a trademarkable position. If they begin to throw the term around, and nobody else does, then they might be able to later prevent other people from from using the term. So that might be part of why they’re doing this.

I don’t know. All I can do is kind of sit back and watch it in amazement.

There’s a pretty big gap between what Facebook is actually doing, like running Facebook and WhatsApp and Instagram, and the visions that they’re talking about for the metaverse. They’re two very different things. That’s important to keep in mind.

I had a conversation with a VC maybe six or seven years ago, and he was sort of a pessimist in general about the course of humanity and where things are going. He said, “Hey, you know, if you’re a pessimist, VR seems like a great bet. Because everybody’s going to want to escape from their real world conditions.” Do you see things that way at all?

I’m personally more interested in AR than in VR. I mean, I don’t hate VR. But the reality has been so far that most people don’t like to hang out there for more than a short period of time. That may change as the technology gets better, but there’s just inherent limitations on things like the problem of getting motion sickness, the problem of how do you move around? I mean, while I’m talking to you, I’m just kind of wandering around my house. And that’s a normal human thing to do, to want to get up and move around. That’s a difficult thing to do in a VR environment because you’ll step on your cat.

I know you were involved with Magic Leap, and that seems to have gone in a different direction with Peggy Johnson in charge, focusing on enterprise a lot, like Microsoft has, but what’s it going to take for for AR to really take off? What are the technological barriers? I look at how mobile was with Windows Mobile and Palm and some of those things, and then all of a sudden, the iPhone had enough new things in it, the capacitive touch screen and the idea of apps, that it was 18 months ahead of everybody else. And that was enough for it to take off. Is there something like that, that would have to happen for AR to take off?

I think that’s a good analogy. Somewhere out there is that tipping point. And nobody knows where it is until they’ve found it. And so timing is tricky. I think what Magic Leap accomplished in the way of hardware is impressive. I mean, they’re shipping a headset with a 6D controller and a whole system that tracks the room around you. And it makes it possible for applications to interact with things that it sees in your environment. And there’s a lot of engineering that has to happen to make those things all work together in a package that doesn’t immediately catch on fire or run out of batteries.

I actually saw [former Oculus CTO John] Carmack tweeted, not about Magic Leap, but he was saying maybe what VR headsets need is a big heat exchanger that would sit on top of your head.

So engineering-wise, I think it’s been going pretty well. The question is what will prompt people to want to wear something like this all day long and make it just a routine thing to carry around. And it’ll probably have something to do with making it even smaller, more compact, and less of an intrusive experience to wear around.

You’ve been writing about technology for about three decades now. When you look back at when you started this, when the internet was young, what has surprised you and what do you think you’ve been right about? What did you anticipate, and what did you not anticipate?

The popularity early on of relatively simple forms of the internet, just simple web browsers with words and pictures, and how catchy that was, how rapidly people adopted it. That was a surprise to me because as a techie, I wanted to have more splashy kinds of technologies like full 3D immersive experiences. Who knew that reading a few words on a webpage and maybe seeing a grainy JPEG would be so transformative?

On the not-so-happy side, the speed with which and the completeness with which it was taken over by bad actors. I remember when Obama was elected. People were saying, ‘Well, you know, Obama’s team, they understood the internet, they understood how to use the internet. And Republicans, they’re old. And they don’t get it. So they’ve been left in the dust.’ And then eight years later, not only did they get it, but they got way in a way deeper, and much more kind of cynical way than the Democrats had.

I know that there’s an HBO adaptation of “Snow Crash” in the works, maybe coming out this year. I haven’t heard much about it recently, can you talk about that?

The reason you haven’t heard about it is because they passed on it in June. So it’s no longer an HBO Max project. It’s reverted to Paramount. And Kennedy/Marshall.

Are we going to see it soon?

All I can say is stay tuned. A lot of people want it to happen.

Continue Reading

Technology

Apple scores big victory with ‘F1,’ but AI is still a major problem in Cupertino

Published

on

By

Apple scores big victory with 'F1,' but AI is still a major problem in Cupertino

Formula One F1 – United States Grand Prix – Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas, U.S. – October 23, 2022 Tim Cook waves the chequered flag to the race winner Red Bull’s Max Verstappen 

Mike Segar | Reuters

Apple had two major launches last month. They couldn’t have been more different.

First, Apple revealed some of the artificial intelligence advancements it had been working on in the past year when it released developer versions of its operating systems to muted applause at its annual developer’s conference, WWDC. Then, at the end of the month, Apple hit the red carpet as its first true blockbuster movie, “F1,” debuted to over $155 million — and glowing reviews — in its first weekend.

While “F1” was a victory lap for Apple, highlighting the strength of its long-term outlook, the growth of its services business and its ability to tap into culture, Wall Street’s reaction to the company’s AI announcements at WWDC suggest there’s some trouble underneath the hood.

“F1” showed Apple at its best — in particular, its ability to invest in new, long-term projects. When Apple TV+ launched in 2019, it had only a handful of original shows and one movie, a film festival darling called “Hala” that didn’t even share its box office revenue.

Despite Apple TV+ being written off as a costly side-project, Apple stuck with its plan over the years, expanding its staff and operation in Culver City, California. That allowed the company to build up Hollywood connections, especially for TV shows, and build an entertainment track record. Now, an Apple Original can lead the box office on a summer weekend, the prime season for blockbuster films.

The success of “F1” also highlights Apple’s significant marketing machine and ability to get big-name talent to appear with its leadership. Apple pulled out all the stops to market the movie, including using its Wallet app to send a push notification with a discount for tickets to the film. To promote “F1,” Cook appeared with movie star Brad Pitt at an Apple store in New York and posted a video with actual F1 racer Lewis Hamilton, who was one of the film’s producers.

(L-R) Brad Pitt, Lewis Hamilton, Tim Cook, and Damson Idris attend the World Premiere of “F1: The Movie” in Times Square on June 16, 2025 in New York City.

Jamie Mccarthy | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

Although Apple services chief Eddy Cue said in a recent interview that Apple needs the its film business to be profitable to “continue to do great things,” “F1” isn’t just about the bottom line for the company.

Apple’s Hollywood productions are perhaps the most prominent face of the company’s services business, a profit engine that has been an investor favorite since the iPhone maker started highlighting the division in 2016.

Films will only ever be a small fraction of the services unit, which also includes payments, iCloud subscriptions, magazine bundles, Apple Music, game bundles, warranties, fees related to digital payments and ad sales. Plus, even the biggest box office smashes would be small on Apple’s scale — the company does over $1 billion in sales on average every day.

But movies are the only services component that can get celebrities like Pitt or George Clooney to appear next to an Apple logo — and the success of “F1” means that Apple could do more big popcorn films in the future.

“Nothing breeds success or inspires future investment like a current success,” said Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian.

But if “F1” is a sign that Apple’s services business is in full throttle, the company’s AI struggles are a “check engine” light that won’t turn off.

Replacing Siri’s engine

At WWDC last month, Wall Street was eager to hear about the company’s plans for Apple Intelligence, its suite of AI features that it first revealed in 2024. Apple Intelligence, which is a key tenet of the company’s hardware products, had a rollout marred by delays and underwhelming features.

Apple spent most of WWDC going over smaller machine learning features, but did not reveal what investors and consumers increasingly want: A sophisticated Siri that can converse fluidly and get stuff done, like making a restaurant reservation. In the age of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini, the expectation of AI assistants among consumers is growing beyond “Siri, how’s the weather?”

The company had previewed a significantly improved Siri in the summer of 2024, but earlier this year, those features were delayed to sometime in 2026. At WWDC, Apple didn’t offer any updates about the improved Siri beyond that the company was “continuing its work to deliver” the features in the “coming year.” Some observers reduced their expectations for Apple’s AI after the conference.

“Current expectations for Apple Intelligence to kickstart a super upgrade cycle are too high, in our view,” wrote Jefferies analysts this week.

Siri should be an example of how Apple’s ability to improve products and projects over the long-term makes it tough to compete with.

It beat nearly every other voice assistant to market when it first debuted on iPhones in 2011. Fourteen years later, Siri remains essentially the same one-off, rigid, question-and-answer system that struggles with open-ended questions and dates, even after the invention in recent years of sophisticated voice bots based on generative AI technology that can hold a conversation.

Apple’s strongest rivals, including Android parent Google, have done way more to integrate sophisticated AI assistants into their devices than Apple has. And Google doesn’t have the same reflex against collecting data and cloud processing as privacy-obsessed Apple.

Some analysts have said they believe Apple has a few years before the company’s lack of competitive AI features will start to show up in device sales, given the company’s large installed base and high customer loyalty. But Apple can’t get lapped before it re-enters the race, and its former design guru Jony Ive is now working on new hardware with OpenAI, ramping up the pressure in Cupertino.

“The three-year problem, which is within an investment time frame, is that Android is racing ahead,” Needham senior internet analyst Laura Martin said on CNBC this week.

Apple’s services success with projects like “F1” is an example of what the company can do when it sets clear goals in public and then executes them over extended time-frames.

Its AI strategy could use a similar long-term plan, as customers and investors wonder when Apple will fully embrace the technology that has captivated Silicon Valley.

Wall Street’s anxiety over Apple’s AI struggles was evident this week after Bloomberg reported that Apple was considering replacing Siri’s engine with Anthropic or OpenAI’s technology, as opposed to its own foundation models.

The move, if it were to happen, would contradict one of Apple’s most important strategies in the Cook era: Apple wants to own its core technologies, like the touchscreen, processor, modem and maps software, not buy them from suppliers.

Using external technology would be an admission that Apple Foundation Models aren’t good enough yet for what the company wants to do with Siri.

“They’ve fallen farther and farther behind, and they need to supercharge their generative AI efforts” Martin said. “They can’t do that internally.”

Apple might even pay billions for the use of Anthropic’s AI software, according to the Bloomberg report. If Apple were to pay for AI, it would be a reversal from current services deals, like the search deal with Alphabet where the Cupertino company gets paid $20 billion per year to push iPhone traffic to Google Search.

The company didn’t confirm the report and declined comment, but Wall Street welcomed the report and Apple shares rose.

In the world of AI in Silicon Valley, signing bonuses for the kinds of engineers that can develop new models can range up to $100 million, according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

“I can’t see Apple doing that,” Martin said.

Earlier this week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent a memo bragging about hiring 11 AI experts from companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google’s DeepMind. That came after Zuckerberg hired Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang to lead a new AI division as part of a $14.3 billion deal.

Meta’s not the only company to spend hundreds of millions on AI celebrities to get them in the building. Google spent big to hire away the founders of Character.AI, Microsoft got its AI leader by striking a deal with Inflection and Amazon hired the executive team of Adept to bulk up its AI roster.

Apple, on the other hand, hasn’t announced any big AI hires in recent years. While Cook rubs shoulders with Pitt, the actual race may be passing Apple by.

WATCH: Jefferies upgrades Apple to ‘Hold’

Jefferies upgrades Apple to 'Hold'

Continue Reading

Technology

Musk backs Sen. Paul’s criticism of Trump’s megabill in first comment since it passed

Published

on

By

Musk backs Sen. Paul's criticism of Trump's megabill in first comment since it passed

Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks alongside U.S. President Donald Trump to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who bombarded President Donald Trump‘s signature spending bill for weeks, on Friday made his first comments since the legislation passed.

Musk backed a post on X by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who said the bill’s budget “explodes the deficit” and continues a pattern of “short-term politicking over long-term sustainability.”

The House of Representatives narrowly passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on Thursday, sending it to Trump to sign into law.

Paul and Musk have been vocal opponents of Trump’s tax and spending bill, and repeatedly called out the potential for the spending package to increase the national debt.

On Monday, Musk called it the “DEBT SLAVERY bill.”

The independent Congressional Budget Office has said the bill could add $3.4 trillion to the $36.2 trillion of U.S. debt over the next decade. The White House has labeled the agency as “partisan” and continuously refuted the CBO’s estimates.

Read more CNBC tech news

The bill includes trillions of dollars in tax cuts, increased spending for immigration enforcement and large cuts to funding for Medicaid and other programs.

It also cuts tax credits and support for solar and wind energy and electric vehicles, a particularly sore spot for Musk, who has several companies that benefit from the programs.

“I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!” Trump wrote in a social media post in early June as the pair traded insults and threats.

Shares of Tesla plummeted as the feud intensified, with the company losing $152 billion in market cap on June 5 and putting the company below $1 trillion in value. The stock has largely rebounded since, but is still below where it was trading before the ruckus with Trump.

Stock Chart IconStock chart icon

hide content

Tesla one-month stock chart.

— CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger and Erin Doherty contributed to this article.

Continue Reading

Technology

Microsoft layoffs hit 830 workers in home state of Washington

Published

on

By

Microsoft layoffs hit 830 workers in home state of Washington

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at the Axel Springer building in Berlin on Oct. 17, 2023. He received the annual Axel Springer Award.

Ben Kriemann | Getty Images

Among the thousands of Microsoft employees who lost their jobs in the cutbacks announced this week were 830 staffers in the company’s home state of Washington.

Nearly a dozen game design workers in the state were part of the layoffs, along with three audio designers, two mechanical engineers, one optical engineer and one lab technician, according to a document Microsoft submitted to Washington employment officials.

There were also five individual contributors and one manager at the Microsoft Research division in the cuts, as well as 10 lawyers and six hardware engineers, the document shows.

Microsoft announced plans on Wednesday to eliminate 9,000 jobs, as part of an effort to eliminate redundancy and to encourage employees to focus on more meaningful work by adopting new technologies, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. The person asked not to be named while discussing private matters.

Scores of Microsoft salespeople and video game developers have since come forward on social media to announce their departure. In April, Microsoft said revenue from Xbox content and services grew 8%, trailing overall growth of 13%.

In sales, the company parted ways with 16 customer success account management staff members based in Washington, 28 in sales strategy enablement and another five in sales compensation. One Washington-based government affairs worker was also laid off.

Microsoft eliminated 17 jobs in cloud solution architecture in the state, according to the document. The company’s fastest revenue growth comes from Azure and other cloud services that customers buy based on usage.

CEO Satya Nadella has not publicly commented on the layoffs, and Microsoft didn’t immediately provide a comment about the cuts in Washington. On a conference call with analysts in April, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said the company had a “focus on cost efficiencies” during the March quarter.

WATCH: Microsoft layoffs not performance-based, largely targeting middle managers

Microsoft layoffs not performance-based, largely targeting middle managers

Continue Reading

Trending