Amazon employees push CEO Andy Jassy to drop return-to-office mandate
The Amazon Spheres, part of the Amazon headquarters campus, right, in the South Lake Union neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, U.S., on Sunday, Oct. 24, 2021.
Chona Kasinger | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A group of Amazon employees is urging CEO Andy Jassy to reconsider a recent return-to-office mandate.
Last week, Jassy announced Amazon would require corporate staffers to spend at least three days a week in the office beginning May 1. Amazon is rolling back its pandemic-era flexibility toward remote work after Jassy and Amazon’s leadership team, known as the S-team, determined it would be easier for employees to collaborate and invent together in person, while also strengthening the company’s culture.
The move marks a shift from Amazon’s prior policy, last updated in October 2021, which left it up to managers to decide how frequently their teams needed to be in the office. Since then, there’s been a mix of fully remote and hybrid work among Amazon’s white-collar workforce.
Staffers on Friday created a Slack channel to advocate for remote work and share their concerns about the new return to work policy, according to screenshots viewed by CNBC. Almost 14,000 employees had joined the Slack channel as of Tuesday morning.
The employees have also drafted a petition, addressed to Jassy and the S-team, that calls for leadership to drop the new policy, saying it “runs contrary” to Amazon’s positions on diversity and inclusion, affordable housing, sustainability, and focus on being the “Earth’s Best Employer.”
“We, the undersigned, call for Amazon to protect its role and status as a global retail and tech leader by immediately cancelling the RTO policy and issuing a new policy that allows employees to work remotely or more flexibly, if they choose to do so, as their team and job role permits,” according to a draft of the petition, which was previously reported by Business Insider.
An Amazon spokesperson pointed back to Jassy’s blog post about return-to-office guidance.
The employees also pointed to Jassy’s previous statements on return-to-office plans, in which he said there is no “one-size-fits-all approach for how every team works best” and extolled the benefits of remote work.
“Many employees trusted these statements and planned for a life where their employer wouldn’t force them to return to the office,” a draft of the petition states. “The RTO mandate shattered their trust in Amazon’s leaders.”
Employees who moved during the pandemic or were hired for a remote role are concerned about how the new policy will impact them, according to one employee, who asked to remain anonymous. Amazon’s headcount ballooned over the last three years, and it hired more employees outside of its key tech hubs like Seattle, New York, and Northern California as it embraced a more distributed workforce.
Amazon hasn’t addressed whether remote employees will be asked to relocate, beyond Jassy noting that there will be “a small minority” of exceptions to the new policy.
The petition cites internal data showing that a significant share of employees prefer working fully remote with the option of a monthly sync-up in-office, or prefer working in the office at most one to two days a week. It also points to research showing that remote work increases productivity, and allows companies such as Amazon to reduce expenses and attract and retain top talent.
It also notes that a return to mostly in-person work could affect employees’ work-life balance, and could particularly hurt parents, minorities, caregivers and people with disabilities. Employees also questioned Amazon’s rationale behind forcing in-person work in all cases. For instance, some employees who are part of global teams will come into the office only to continue taking virtual meetings, and they may not even have a coworker in their office, the petition states.
Samuel Boivin | Nurphoto | Getty Images
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew told employees on Thursday that the company’s U.S. operations will be housed in a new joint venture.
The entity is named TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, according to a memo sent by Chew and obtained by CNBC. As part of the joint venture, Chew said the company has signed agreements with the three managing investors: Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX. He said that the deal’s “closing date” is Jan. 22.
Under a national security law, which the Supreme Court upheld in January, China-based ByteDance was required to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations or face an effective ban in the country. In September, President Donald Trump signed an executive order approving a proposed deal that would keep TikTok operational in the U.S. by meeting the requirements of a law originally signed by former President Joe Biden.
Chew noted that the new TikTok joint venture would be “majority owned by American investors, governed by a new seven-member majority-American board of directors, and subject to terms that protect Americans’ data and U.S. national security.”
The U.S. joint venture will be 50% held by a consortium of new investors, including Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX with 15% each. Just over 30% will be held by affiliates of certain existing investors of ByteDance, and 19.9% will be retained by ByteDance, the memo said.
The TikTok chief said the entity will be responsible for protecting U.S. data, ensuring the security of its prized algorithm, content moderation and “software assurance.” He added that the joint venture will “have the exclusive right and authority to provide assurances that content, software, and data for American users is secure.”
In addition to being an investor, Oracle will serve as the “trusted security partner” in charge of auditing and validating that it complies with “agreed upon National Security Terms,” the memo said. Sensitive U.S. data will be stored in Oracle’s U.S.-based cloud computing data centers, Chew wrote.
The new TikTok entity will also be tasked with retraining the video app’s core content recommendation algorithm “on U.S. user data to ensure the content feed is free from outside manipulation,” the memo said.
Chew noted that TikTok global U.S. entities “will manage global product interoperability and certain commercial activities, including e-commerce, advertising, and marketing.”
Under Trump’s executive order in September, the attorney general was blocked from enforcing the national security law for a 120-day period in order to “permit the contemplated divestiture to be completed,” allowing the deal to finalize by Jan 23.
WATCH: TikTok signs deal for sale of U.S. unit to joint venture
The VC arms of Google and Nvidia have invested in Swedish vibe coding startup Lovable’s $330 million Series B at a $6.6 billion valuation, the company announced on Thursday.
The news confirms an earlier story from CNBC, which reported on Tuesday that Lovable had raised at that valuation, trebling its valuation from its previous round in July, and that the investors included U.S. VC firms Accel and Khosla Ventures.
CapitalG, one of Google’s VC divisions, and Menlo Ventures led the round. Alongside Accel and Khosla, Nvidia venture arm NVentures, actor Gwyneth Paltrow’s VC firm Kinship Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Databricks Ventures, Atlassian Ventures, T.Capital, Hubspot Ventures, DST Global, EQT Global, Creandum and Evantic also participated.
The fresh funds take Lovable’s total raised in 2025 to over $500 million.
“Lovable has done something rare: built a product that enterprises and founders both love,” said Laela Sturdy, managing partner at CapitalG in a statement accompanying the announcement.
“The demand we’re seeing from Fortune 500 companies signals a fundamental shift in how software gets built.”
Lovable’s platform uses AI models from providers like OpenAI and Anthropic to help users build apps and websites using text prompts, without technical knowledge of coding.
The startup reported $200 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in November, just under a year after achieving $1 million in ARR for the first time. It was founded in 2023 by Anton Osika and Fabian Hedin.
Vibe coding startups have seen big interest from VCs in recent times, as investors bet on their promise of drastically reducing the time it takes to create software and apps.
In the U.S., Anysphere, which created coding tool Cursor, raised $2.3 billion at a $29.3 billion valuation in November. In September, Replit hit a $3 billion price tag after picking up $250 million and Vercel closed a $300 million round at a $9.3 billion valuation.
The Micron logo is seen displayed at the 8th China International Import Expo.
Sheldon Cooper | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Micron Technology‘s stock jumped 15% after the company signaled robust demand for its memory chips and blew away fiscal first-quarter estimates.
During an earnings call with analysts, Micron, which makes memory storage used for computers and artificial intelligence servers, said data center needs have fueled greater demand for its products.
Micron said it expects the total addressable market for high-bandwidth memory to hit $100 billion by 2028, growing at a 40% compounded annual growth rate. Management also upped its capital expenditures guidance to $20 billion from $18 billion.
“We are more than sold out,” said business chief Sumit Sadana. “We have a significant amount of unmet demand in our models and this is just consistent with an environment where the demand is substantially higher than supply for the foreseeable future.
Micron topped Wall Street estimates for the fiscal first quarter and issued blowout guidance.
The company reported adjusted earnings of $4.78 per share on $13.64 billion in revenue, surpassing LSEG estimates for earnings of $3.95 per share and $12.84 billion in sales.
Revenues in the current quarter are expected to hit about $18.70 billion, blowing past the $14.20 billion expected by LSEG. Adjusted earnings are forecast to reach $8.42, versus expectations of $4.78 per share.
JPMorgan upped its price target on the stock following the results, citing the favorable pricing setup, while Bank of America upgraded shares to a buy rating.
Morgan Stanley called the results the best revenue and net income upside in the “history of the U.S. semis industry” outside of Nvidia.
“If AI keeps growing as we expect, we believe that the next 12 months are going to have broader coat tails to the AI trade than just the processor names and memory would be the biggest beneficiary,” analysts wrote.
WATCH: Micron shares spike on better-than-expected quarterly results
Micron year-to-date stock chart.
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