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Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks at a panel at the CEO Summit of the Americas hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on June 09, 2022 in Los Angeles, California.

Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images

Google executives are deferring a portion of employees’ year-end bonus checks, according to documents viewed by CNBC, as the company moves toward permanently pushing back payouts.

In past years, employees received their full bonuses in January. However, Google will pay qualifying full-time employees 80% of their bonus checks this month and the remaining 20% in March or April, the documents say. Payments in April would be in the second quarter, potentially allowing the company to spread out its costs.

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Google described the January payout as an “advance” in correspondence to employees. Leadership said it will be a one-time change due to “transition” of its employee-evaluation system and the altered timing for future bonuses.

“After 2023, full bonuses will be paid in March,” the company said in the memo.

Following publication of this story, a Google spokesperson told CNBC in an email, “This one-time 80% bonus advance was extensively communicated to employees in May 2022 and in subsequent communications since, as part of the transition to our new performance management timeline.”

The delayed payment comes as Google CEO Sundar Pichai seeks to reel in costs while still avoiding mass layoffs. Unlike large tech peers Meta, Microsoft and Amazon, Google parent Alphabet has thus far skirted significant job cuts and focused instead on eliminating lagging products and groups. Last week, Alphabet’s Verily health sciences unit said it will cut headcount by 15%, accounting for about 240 lost jobs, and the company also reduced staff in its robotics unit Intrinsic.

In the latter part of 2022, Alphabet canceled the next generation of its Google Pixelbook laptop, slashed funding to its Area 120 in-house incubator and said it would be shuttering its digital gaming service Stadia. Pichai said in September he wants to make the company 20% more efficient.

Meanwhile, Google has been overhauling its performance ratings system. The company recently released new details, showing a larger number of employees will more easily fall into lower-rated categories, CNBC reported last month. Employees said they feared it could be used as a way to reduce headcount without conducting layoffs.

Internal Google employee memes take on company’s bonus check deferrals.

Staffers also expressed concerns with the latest changes to bonus payments. Some told CNBC they weren’t aware of the partial deferment, and said they received little help internally as they tried to search for answers.

One graphic on Memegen, an employee meme generator, showed a split screen of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, with a quote from Markle that’s edited to say, “Harry is adjusting great to Google” next to an image of a disturbed-looking Prince Harry with the text “Where the hell did 20% of my bonus go?” 

Sources also described a meme with the text reading “Got my BONU,” referring to the realization that they didn’t receive their whole bonus as expected.

Alphabet is scheduled to report fourth-quarter earnings on Feb. 2. Analysts expect revenue growth of less than 2% from a year earlier, according to Refinitiv, while earnings per share is expected to drop to $1.18 from $1.53. The stock has dropped 31% in the past year.

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Here’s how fusion energy could power your home or an AI data center

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Here's how fusion energy could power your home or an AI data center

Clean Start: Fusion energy gets new look from startup Type One Energy

The artificial intelligence boom has sent energy demand soaring. Some of the supercomputers sucking up all that power are helping to find new energy sources.

Fusion energy is the process of forcing two hydrogen atoms to combine and form one helium atom, which releases huge amounts of power. It uses a stellarator, a type of fusion reactor invented in the 1950’s that produces heat.

Until now, the technology was too difficult to deploy commercially.

But this old concept has brand new potential. Type One Energy, a startup based in Tennessee, claims to have proven that fusion energy will be able to produce electricity in the next decade.

“It’s going to create heat that’s going to boil water, make steam, run a turbine and put fusion electrons on the power grid on a 24/7 reliable basis,” said Type One Christofer Mowry.

AI has made it all practical.

“Things have really accelerated remarkably over the last five or six years,” Mowry said. “The supercomputers have allowed industry, academia and large institutions to develop now and actually test at large scale the science machines that demonstrate the process.”

Dozens of other companies are working on different approaches to fusion energy, but Mowry said Type One is so far the only one with the proven stellarator technology to implement at existing power plants. It will soon be tested with the Tennessee Valley Authority.

TDK Ventures is betting that Mowry is right.

“With Type One Energy solutions, we expect outsized return potential,” said Nicola Sauvage, president of TDK Ventures. “Fusion is no longer science fiction, and Type One Energy’s technology is catching up fast to the vision of this low-cost, continuous green energy.”

Type One is also backed by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Centaurus Capital, GD1, Foxglove Capital, and SeaX Ventures, and has raised a total of $82.4 million.

Fusion energy is different from nuclear power, and there’s no risk of a nuclear accident. The power source has no long-term radioactive waste, and, according to Mowry, can’t be weaponized.

But for handling AI, it could be a critical solution. Fusion energy can be deployed anywhere, whether it’s next to a data center or near a large industrial park that needs clean, reliable energy.

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CoreWeave shares soar 19% after $2 billion debt offering

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CoreWeave shares soar 19% after  billion debt offering

Michael Intrator, Founder & CEO of CoreWeave, Inc., Nvidia-backed cloud services provider, gestures during the company’s IPO at the Nasdaq Market, in New York City, U.S., March 28, 2025. 

Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters

CoreWeave shares popped 19% after announcing a $2 billion debt offering.

The renter of artificial intelligence data centers powered by Nvidia chips said it had priced the notes at 9.25%, with a June 2030 maturity date. The deal represents a $500 million increase from its initial announcement.

CoreWeave said it plans to use the capital to pay off outstanding debt. The company confirmed to CNBC that the debt offering was five times oversubscribed.

In its first-quarter earnings report last week, CoreWeave said that it raised a total of $17.2 billion in equity and debt “to support its strategy to drive the next generation of cloud computing for the future of AI.” The company topped revenues expectations but posted wider-than-expected net loss and said it plans to spend big on capital expenditures to support infrastructure demand.

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During an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” last week, CEO Michael Intrator defended CoreWeave’s spending plans after some investors cast doubt on its debt, and demand durability. He said the company is meeting “demand signals” from some of its major clients.

In a call with analysts, CoreWeave said it has no debt maturities until 2028 other than payments related to vendor financing and “self-amortizing debt through committed contract payments.” The company said it had about $3.8 billion in current debt and $4.9 billion in non-current debt at the end of the quarter.

A year ago, CoreWeave announced that it had raised $7.5 billion in debt, led by Blackstone and Magnetar, to more heavily invest in its cloud data centers. CoreWeave said in its IPO prospectus that it was “one of the largest private debt financings in history and signals the confidence that debt investors have in funding our company to build and scale the next generation AI cloud.”

CoreWeave counts Nvidia and Microsoft among its biggest customers and has signed two seperate deals with OpenAI, totaling nearly $16 billion.

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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says tariffs haven’t dented consumer spending

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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says tariffs haven't dented consumer spending

Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, speaks during an unveiling event in New York on Feb. 26, 2025.

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Wednesday that the company hasn’t seen any signs of consumers tightening their wallets in the face of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs.

Jassy’s comments came during Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting, which was held virtually on Wednesday.

“We have not seen any attenuation of demand at this point,” Jassy said during a question-and-answer portion of the meeting. “We also haven’t yet seen any meaningful average selling price increases.”

Amazon and other retailers continue to digest the impact of Trump’s tariffs. Rival retailer Walmart warned last week that consumers could start seeing price hikes from tariffs later this month and in June. Within days, that sparked the ire of Trump, who urged the company to “EAT THE TARIFFS.”

Read more CNBC Amazon coverage

Target said Wednesday it will likely need to hike prices on some items, while Home Depot said it expects to maintain its current pricing levels.

Jassy said last month the company made some “strategic forward inventory buys” to stock up on goods and is “pretty maniacally focused” on keeping prices low for shoppers.

Some third-party sellers, which account for roughly 60% of products sold, have increased prices on certain items, while others have opted to keep prices steady, Jassy said on Wednesday.

“I think that the diversity and the size of our marketplace really helps customers have the best selection of the best prices,” Jassy said.

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