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.
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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.
The logo of Japanese company SoftBank Group is seen outside the company’s headquarters in Tokyo on January 22, 2025.
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Shares of SoftBank Group plunged as much as 9.17% Wednesday, as technology stocks in Asia declined, tracking losses in U.S. peers overnight.
The Japanese tech-focused investment firm saw shares drop for a second consecutive session, following its announcement of a $2 billion investment in Intel. Intel shares rose 6.97% to close at $25.31 Tuesday stateside.
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Other Japanese tech stocks also declined, with semiconductor giant Advantest falling as much as 6.27%. Meanwhile, shares in Renesas Electronics and Tokyo Electron were last seen trading 2.46% and 0.75% lower, respectively.
Technology companies in South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, also fell after U.S. tech stocks dropped overnight spurred by declines in artificial intelligence darling Nvidia‘s shares.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is considering the federal government taking equity stakes in semiconductor companies that get funding under the CHIPS Act for building plants in the U.S, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. The U.S. CHIPS and Science Act seeks to boost the country’s semiconductor industry, scientific research and innovation.
Shares of Taiwanese chip company TSMC and manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry — known globally as Foxconn — declined 1.69% and 2.16%, respectively. TSMC manufactures Nvidia’s high-performance graphics processing units that help power large language models, while Foxconn has a strategic partnership with Nvidia to build “AI factories.”
Meanwhile, South Korean tech stocks mostly fell with shares of chipmaker SK Hynix down 3.33%. Samsung Electronics, however, rose 0.75%.
TSMC, Samsung and SK Hynix are among companies that have received funding under the CHIPS Act.
Over in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Tech index lost 0.87% in early trade.
CEO of Palantir Technologies Alex Karp attends the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 15, 2025.
Andrew Caballero-reynolds | Afp | Getty Images
Palantir‘s stock slumped more than 9% on Tuesday, falling for a fifth straight day to continue its pullback from all-time highs.
The artificial intelligence software provider’s stock has slid more than 15% over the last five trading sessions, after a stellar earnings report earlier this month propelled shares to all-time highs. The report was Palantir’s first-ever $1 billion revenue quarter.
Tuesday’s dip coincided with a broader market pullback.
Palantir is the most significant gainer to date in the S&P 500 in 2025, up more than 100%.
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Shares have more than doubled as the company benefits from ongoing AI enthusiasm, scooping up government contracts with President Donald Trump pushing to overhaul agencies.
Palantir’s ascent has pushed the company into a list of top 10 U.S. tech firms and 20 most valuable U.S. companies, while also making shares incredibly expensive to own. Its forward price-to-earnings ratio, which tracks future earnings relative to share price, has soared past 245 times.
By comparison, technology giants such as Microsoft and Apple carry a P/E of nearly 30 times and rake in significantly greater quarterly revenues. Meta‘s and Alphabet‘s P/E ratios hover in the 20s.
The data analytics software vendor said Tuesday that it’s raising a funding round that values the company at over $100 billion. That would make Databricks just the fourth private company to eclipse the $100 billion mark, following SpaceX, ByteDance and OpenAI, according to data from CB Insights.
Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi told CNBC’s Brian Sullivan that the total round will exceed $1 billion. The company was last valued by private investors at $62 billion in a $10 billion financing round late last year.
In June, Databricks executives told investors the company was forecasting $3.7 billion in annualized revenue by July, with 50% year-over-year growth.
Snowflake, one of Databricks’ top rivals, is expected to generate $4.5 billion in revenue for the fiscal year that ends in January, representing annual growth of 25%, according to LSEG. Snowflake currently has a market cap of about $65 billion. Other competitors include cloud providers such as Amazon and Microsoft, which are also Databricks partners.
Ghodsi said he heard from a lot of interested investors following Figma’s IPO late last month. Shares of the design software company more than tripled in their New York Stock Exchange debut, a sign that public investors are seeking out tech offerings after in extended lull in the IPO market.
“My phone was blowing up,” Ghodsi said on Tuesday. “So yes, there’s definitely been a big push from outside.”
Figma shares have since retreated from their initial $115.50 closing price. The stock is trading at about $70, still more than double the $33 IPO price.
Ghodsi said the round will help Databricks invest in products that clients can tap when using artificial intelligence models.
Founded in 2013 and based in San Francisco, Databricks ranked third on CNBC’s 2025 Disruptor 50 list. As of June, the company employed 8,000 people. Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners Thrive Capital and WCM Investment Management are buying shares, a spokesperson said.