In this photo illustration a Twitter logo seen displayed on a smartphone screen with Elon Musk Twitter in the background in Athens, Greece on October 30, 2022. Elon Musk begins his Twitter ownership with firings.
Nikolas Kokovlis | Nurphoto | Getty Images
A large number of Twitter’s contract workers discovered they were suddenly terminated this weekend after they lost access to Slack and other work systems, according to internal communications shared with CNBC by full-time Twitter employees.
An estimated 4,400 of its 5,500 contract workers were cut, according to Platformer, which first reported on the cuts. CNBC has not confirmed the total number.
Some of Twitter’s contract workers were based overseas in India, among other locations. Full-time employees, who asked to remain un-named since they were not authorized to speak on behalf of Twitter, said that they had no internal notice before contractors they were collaborating with were let go.
Twitter has dismissed all of its internal communications team, according to these employees. They also cracked bitter jokes that media outlets covering the company are now filling the role of internal communications.
The cancellation of contractors’ work would mark the latest reduction at the social media platform, which already laid off approximately half of its employees following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company on Oct. 28.
Musk and Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey apologized last week for growing the company “too quickly,” a day after the social media company carried out the layoffs. Dorsey personally endeavored for Musk to take over his company in a contentious leveraged buyout and has rolled his own shares into the new holding company.
As of June 30, 2013, shortly before Twitter went public, it had approximately 2,000 employees, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. By the end of last year, the company reported that it had grown to around 7,500 full-time employees.
Musk addressed the layoffs in a tweet on Nov. 4, writing: “Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required.”
Since he has taken over, Musk has informed remaining Twitter employees that he sold billions of dollars worth of shares in Tesla, his electric vehicle business, to “save” Twitter. It’s not clear if Musk will continue to sell Tesla shares to pay down Twitter’s debt.
He also told Twitter employees that bankruptcy is not out of the question for the social media business amid an economic downturn, and as advertisers have fled or paused spending on the platform during his rocky takeover.
Altimeter Capital CEO Brad Gerstner said Thursday that he’s moving out of the “bomb shelter” with Nvidia and into a position of safety, expecting that the chipmaker is positioned to withstand President Donald Trump’s widespread tariffs.
“The growth and the demand for GPUs is off the charts,” he told CNBC’s “Fast Money Halftime Report,” referring to Nvidia’s graphics processing units that are powering the artificial intelligence boom. He said investors just need to listen to commentary from OpenAI, Google and Elon Musk.
President Trump announced an expansive and aggressive “reciprocal tariff” policy in a ceremony at the White House on Wednesday. The plan established a 10% baseline tariff, though many countries like China, Vietnam and Taiwan are subject to steeper rates. The announcement sent stocks tumbling on Thursday, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq down more than 5%, headed for its worst day since 2022.
The big reason Nvidia may be better positioned to withstand Trump’s tariff hikes is because semiconductors are on the list of exceptions, which Gerstner called a “wise exception” due to the importance of AI.
Nvidia’s business has exploded since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, and annual revenue has more than doubled in each of the past two fiscal years. After a massive rally, Nvidia’s stock price has dropped by more than 20% this year and was down almost 7% on Thursday.
Gerstner is concerned about the potential of a recession due to the tariffs, but is relatively bullish on Nvidia, and said the “negative impact from tariffs will be much less than in other areas.”
He said it’s key for the U.S. to stay competitive in AI. And while the company’s chips are designed domestically, they’re manufactured in Taiwan “because they can’t be fabricated in the U.S.” Higher tariffs would punish companies like Meta and Microsoft, he said.
“We’re in a global race in AI,” Gerstner said. “We can’t hamper our ability to win that race.”
YouTube on Thursday announced new video creation tools for Shorts, its short-form video feed that competes against TikTok.
The features come at a time when TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is at risk of an effective ban in the U.S. if it’s not sold to an American owner by April 5.
Among the new tools is an updated video editor that allows creators to make precise adjustments and edits, a feature that automatically syncs video cuts to the beat of a song and AI stickers.
The creator tools will become available later this spring, said YouTube, which is owned by Google.
Along with the new features, YouTube last week said it was changing the way view counts are tabulated on Shorts. Under the new guidelines, Shorts views will count the number of times the video is played or replayed with no minimum watch time requirement.
Previously, views were only counted if a video was played for a certain number of seconds. This new tabulation method is similar to how views are counted on TikTok and Meta’s Reels, and will likely inflate view counts.
“We got this feedback from creators that this is what they wanted. It’s a way for them to better understand when their Shorts have been seen,” YouTube Chief Product Officer Johanna Voolich said in a YouTube video. “It’s useful for creators who post across multiple platforms.”
CEO of Meta and Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attend the inauguration ceremony before Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th U.S. president in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025.
Saul Loeb | Via Reuters
Technology stocks plummeted Thursday after President Donald Trump’s new tariff policies sparked widespread market panic.
Apple led the declines among the so-called “Magnificent Seven” group, dropping nearly 9%. The iPhone maker makes its devices in China and other Asian countries. The stock is on pace for its steepest drop since 2020.
Other megacaps also felt the pressure. Meta Platforms and Amazon fell more than 7% each, while Nvidia and Tesla slumped more than 5%. Nvidia builds its new chips in Taiwan and relies on Mexico for assembling its artificial intelligence systems. Microsoft and Alphabet both fell about 2%.
The drop in technology stocks came amid a broader market selloff spurred by fears of a global trade war after Trump unveiled a blanket 10% tariff on all imported goods and a range of higher duties targeting specific countries after the bell Wednesday. He said the new tariffs would be a “declaration of economic independence” for the U.S.
Companies and countries worldwide have already begun responding to the wide-sweeping policy, which included a 34% tariff on China stacked on a previous 20% tax, a 46% duty on Vietnam and a 20% levy on imports from the European Union.
China’s Ministry of Commerce urged the U.S. to “immediately cancel” the unilateral tariff measures and said it would take “resolute counter-measures.”
The tariffs come on the heels of a rough quarter for the tech-heavy Nasdaq and the worst period for the index since 2022. Stocks across the board have come under pressure over concerns of a weakening U.S. economy. The Nasdaq Composite dropped nearly 5% on Thursday, bringing its year-to-date loss to 13%.
Trump applauded some megacap technology companies for investing money into the U.S. during his speech, calling attention to Apple’s plan to spend $500 billion over the next four years.