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The Twitter profile page belonging to Elon Musk is seen on an Apple iPhone mobile phone.

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After Elon Musk closed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter last week, employees at the company braced for job cuts. Some told CNBC they were worried about losing their equity compensation if Musk sent them packing before their shares vested the first week of November.

Musk and Tesla have been sued repeatedly over employees’ claims that they were fired just before their shares vested, depriving them of compensation.

However, it appears that the current tranche of stock-based compensation for many Twitter employees, who were there before Musk took over, will get paid out after all.

According to employees at the company and internal communications viewed by CNBC, newly vesting shares are expected to be paid in the first half of November, starting as early as Nov. 4. Employees said they were reassured by managers that the company’s payroll department was working on processing their vested stock.

Tech companies are known for paying a high percentage of their compensation through stock awards, and Twitter has been notably reliant on equity payouts. In the first six months of 2022, Twitter recorded a stock-based compensation expense of $459.5 million, up from $289.1 million during the same period a year earlier. That’s close to 20% of Twitter’s revenue for the quarter.

Musk has indicated many times in recent months that Twitter is overstaffed and that one of his first moves would be to make dramatic reductions. He’s already gotten rid of top executives, starting with the CEO, CFO, policy chief and other high-ranking leaders and their direct reports. Musk reportedly fired them “for cause,” potentially to avoid paying millions of dollars in so-called golden parachutes.

It’s not clear whether other executives and employees who were fired or who resigned after Musk bought the company will be compensated for shares about to vest. Twitter didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Musk was scheduled to hold an all-hands meeting with Twitter employees on Nov. 2. The meeting was canceled unexpectedly, employees told CNBC.

The New York Times reported that layoffs at Twitter could take place before Nov. 1, a date when many employees were scheduled to receive stock grants.

Musk responded, “this is false,” in a tweet on Friday, though he didn’t provide any evidence or further details.

Twitter employees had some reason to be concerned about their equity, given the company is now in private hands, and because Musk has a history of apparently trying to avoid payouts.

According to 2009 deposition transcripts from a high-profile Tesla lawsuit, Martin Eberhard v. Elon Musk et al, a former Tesla Chief Information Officer named Gene Glaudell said Musk and other Tesla executives at that time, “did not want to say in public that Tesla was making cuts for financial reasons.” Rather, they tried to attribute the cuts to “performance and management accountability.”

In a lawsuit after that, about 50 former Tesla employees claimed the company had terminated them without paying equity compensation that they’d been promised in job offer letters. The former Tesla employees won, but the electric vehicle maker was able to overturn the decision later on appeal.

Musk is the richest person on the planet, with most of his wealth derived from Tesla stock via the perforam and a historically large compensation package that the company has granted him through the years.

Some unhappy Tesla shareholders are slated to take Musk and the Tesla board to court this month over his 2018 CEO compensation package. They allege that it was reckless to give away so much of the company’s stock to Musk, and that the pay package failed to achieve its stated purpose of getting him to focus on Tesla’s business.

Kathaleen McCormick, the same judge who encouraged Musk and Twitter to settle their differences and complete the $44 billion transaction they agreed to in April, is deciding the case.

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AI chipmaker Cerebras withdraws IPO

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AI chipmaker Cerebras withdraws IPO

AI chipmaker Cerebras pulls IPO after raising $1 billion

Artificial intelligence chipmaker Cerebras Systems said on Friday that it’s withdrawing plans for an IPO, days after announcing that it raised over $1 billion in a fundraising round.

In a filing with the SEC, Cerebras said it does not intend to conduct a proposed offering “at this time,” but didn’t provide a reason. A spokesperson told CNBC on Friday that the company still hopes to go public as soon as possible.

Cerebras filed for an IPO just over a year ago, as it was ramping up to take on Nvidia in an effort to create processors for running generative AI models. The filing revealed a heavy reliance on a single customer in the United Arab Emirates, Microsoft-backed G42, which is also a Cerebras investor.

In its prospectus, Cerebras said it had given voluntary notice to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States about selling shares to G42. In March, the company announced that the committee had provided clearance.

Since its initial filing to go public on the Nasdaq, Cerebras has shifted its focus away from selling systems and more toward providing a cloud service for accepting incoming queries to models that use its chips underneath.

The announced withdrawal comes three days into a U.S. government shutdown that’s left agencies like the SEC operating with a small staff. In a plan for a shutdown published in August, the SEC said its electronic system EDGAR “is operated pursuant to a contract and thus will remain fully functional as long as funding for the contractor remains available through permitted means.”

On Tuesday, Cerebras said it had raised $1.1 billion at a valuation of $8.1 billion in a private funding round. At the time, CEO Andrew Feldman said that the company still wanted to go public, rather than continue to raise venture capital.

“I don’t think this is an indication of a preference for one or the other,” he told CNBC in an interview. “I think we have tremendous opportunities in front of us, and I think it’s good practice, when you have enormous opportunities, not to let them fall by the wayside for lack of capital.”

Feldman thought the original prospectus from last year was out of date, especially considering developments in AI, the spokesperson said on Friday.

Well heeled technology companies have been quickly signing up for additional infrastructure to handle demand. On Tuesday CoreWeave, which rents out Nvidia chips through a cloud service, said it had signed a $14.2 billion agreement with Meta. ChatGPT operator OpenAI said last week that it had committed to spending $300 billion on cloud services from Oracle.

The government shutdown did not factor into Cerebras’ decision, the spokesperson said.

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Amazon shutters 4 Fresh stores in Southern California as grocery strategy keeps shifting

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Amazon shutters 4 Fresh stores in Southern California as grocery strategy keeps shifting

An employee arranges a salad dressing display at an Amazon Fresh grocery store on December 12, 2024 in Federal Way, Washington.

David Ryder | Getty Images

Amazon is closing four more Fresh supermarkets in Southern California as the e-commerce giant continues to focus its grocery strategy around Whole Foods and delivery.

The closures will take place in the coming weeks, Amazon confirmed to CNBC. They follow the shuttering of four other U.S. locations in recent months, in Washington, Virginia, New York and a Los Angeles suburb.

“Certain locations work better than others, and after an assessment, we’ve made the decision to close these Amazon Fresh locations,” Amazon spokesperson Griffin Buch said in a statement. “We’re working closely with affected employees to help them find new roles within Amazon wherever possible.”

At one Fresh supermarket in La Verne, California, employees were told to gather for an all-hands meeting on Wednesday, according to an internal message viewed by CNBC. They learned at the meeting that the store would close in mid-November, and that employees would receive a severance package, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the details were confidential.

The other three stores that are closing are in cities of Mission Viejo, La Habra and Whittier.

Last week, Amazon said it intends to close 14 Fresh grocery stores in the U.K. and convert its five other locations there into Whole Foods markets.

Amazon said it regularly evaluates its store portfolio, which can lead to opening, reopening, relocating or closing certain locations. In the U.S., the company has more than 60 remaining Fresh stores. Last year, the company removed its “Just Walk Out” cashierless technology from the stores. It’s also been culling its footprint of Go cashierless convenience stores.

Amazon has been determined to become a major grocery player for nearly two decades. The company launched Amazon Fresh in 2007, then a pilot project for fresh food delivery, before acquiring upscale chain Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in 2017, its biggest purchase on record.

Amazon debuted its Fresh grocery chain in 2020, with an eye toward mass-market shoppers. The rollout has been turbulent since its early days.

The company opened a flurry of Fresh locations by 2022, but the expansion plans ran into CEO Andy Jassy’s widespread cost-cutting efforts as the company reckoned with the impact of rising interest rates and soaring inflation. In 2023, Amazon announced it would shut some Fresh stores and halt further openings temporarily as it evaluated how to make the chain stand out for shoppers.

While it’s closing Fresh stores, Amazon continues to “innovate and invest in making grocery shopping easier, faster, and more affordable,” Buch said. The company still maintains 500 Whole Foods locations and has opened mini “daily shop” Whole Foods stores in New York City.

On Wednesday, Amazon also launched a new “price-conscious” grocery brand that will be offered online and in its physical stores. And last month, Amazon expanded same-day delivery of fresh foods to more pockets of the U.S.

Jassy and other company executives have touted the success of sales of “everyday essentials” within its online grocery business, which refers to items such as canned goods, paper towels, dish soap and snacks. Jassy told investors at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in May that he remains “bullish” on grocery, calling it a “significant business” for Amazon.

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Quantum stocks Rigetti Computing and D-Wave surged double-digits this week. Here’s what’s driving the big move

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Quantum stocks Rigetti Computing and D-Wave surged double-digits this week. Here's what's driving the big move

Inside Google’s quantum computing lab in Santa Barbara, California.

CNBC

Quantum computing stocks are wrapping up a big week of double-digit gains.

Shares of Rigetti Computing, D-Wave Quantum and Quantum Computing have surged more than 20%. Rigetti and D-Wave Quantum have more than doubled and tripled, respectively, since the start of the year. Arqit Quantum skyrocketed more than 32% this week.

The jump in shares followed a wave of positive news in the quantum space.

Rigetti said it had purchase orders totalling $5.7 million for two of its 9-qubit Novera quantum computing systems. The owner of drugmaker Novo Nordisk and the Danish government also invested 300 million euros in a quantum venture fund.

In a blog post earlier this week, Nvidia also highlighted accelerated computing, which it argues can make “quantum computing breakthroughs of today and tomorrow possible.”

Investors have piled into quantum computing technology this year, as tech giants Microsoft, Nvidia and Amazon have embraced the technology with a wave of new chip announcements, multi-million dollar investments and research plans.

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