Whole Foods plans to lay off several hundred corporate employees: Read the memo here
Amazon‘s Whole Foods is letting go some corporate employees as part of a planned reorganization of select teams, and as its parent company closely examines costs.
Whole Foods plans to reorganize certain global and regional support teams over the next two months, the company’s executive team wrote in a memo to employees on Thursday. As a result, the upscale grocer is laying off several hundred employees from those teams, a spokesperson confirmed. The cuts translate to about less than half of a percent of the company’s global workforce, a Whole Foods Market spokesperson said.
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“We often talk about how simplifying our work and improving how we operate is critical as we grow,” the executive team wrote in the memo. “We’ve made great progress in these areas through previous operational and organizational changes. As the grocery industry continues to rapidly evolve, and as we — like all retailers — have navigated challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic and continued economic uncertainty, it has become clear that we need to continue to build on these changes. With additional adjustments, we will be able to further simplify our operations, make processes easier, and improve how we support our stores.”
As part of the changes, Whole Foods, which operates across nine different regions, will shift to six regions. The move won’t result in any store closures or the letting go of any store or distribution center employees, according to the memo.
Whole Foods is tweaking its operational structure as it seeks to expand and better serve customers, the spokesperson said. The company has roughly 50 new stores in development, they added.
Amazon in 2017 spent $13.7 billion to acquire the upscale grocer, a move that sent shock waves through that industry. The retail giant acquired Whole Foods with the hopes of accelerating its multiyear push into selling groceries online and in physical stores.
Whole Foods has undergone other operational changes since Amazon acquired it. The company in 2021 merged its global and regional merchandising teams, and shifted its technology team to focus on software engineering, technical product and program manager roles, to “sustain our growth.”
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently hit pause on expansion of its Fresh supermarket chain amid a companywide effort to rein in expenses. It also shuttered some Fresh locations and Go cashierless convenience stores. Some employees in Amazon’s grocery unit were let go in a recent round of layoffs announced in January.
Still, Jassy has said he remains confident about Amazon’s potential to grow its grocery business. In his letter to shareholders last week, Jassy said the e-commerce giant “must find a mass grocery format that we believe is worth expanding broadly” to make a larger impact on brick-and-mortar grocery.
Here’s the full memo:
Improving Our Operating Structure to Better Support Our Stores
Dear Team Members,
We often talk about how simplifying our work and improving how we operate is critical as we grow. We’ve made great progress in these areas through previous operational and organizational changes. As the grocery industry continues to rapidly evolve, and as we — like all retailers — have navigated challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic and continued economic uncertainty, it has become clear that we need to continue to build on these changes. With additional adjustments, we will be able to further simplify our operations, make processes easier, and improve how we support our stores.
To achieve this, we will evolve our operating structure and make a few changes to certain Global and Regional Support teams over the next two months. We see great opportunity to advance our impact on the world, and these changes will help us fully capture that opportunity. These changes include:
- Shifting from nine to six regions with a more consistent number of stores per region. Moving to fewer regions of similar sizes will allow us to quickly make decisions, implement sustainable processes, and scale innovations. Ultimately, it will help us elevate the service we provide our customers, Team Members, and suppliers. As we redraw the lines of our regional map, some stores may become part of a new region, but this shift won’t result in any store or facility closures or change our commitment to maintaining local relevance in our stores. See our new regional map and leadership details below. Team Members can expect to hear from the leader of their future region early next week.
- Creating a unified, companywide Operations team by transitioning category-specific store operations support from regions to a single Field Support team within our Global Operations team. Additionally, we will alleviate supply chain management work from regions, transitioning these responsibilities to a new Supply Chain Performance Management function within our Global Supply Chain team. These changes will free up time for stores to focus on serving customers, while unifying communications and support around clear Operations priorities.
- Enhancing Team Member Services (TMS) support for Team Members and Leaders across the company by realigning TMS team structures. This will help eliminate a significant amount of transactional work, which will allow our TMS teams to focus more on supporting Team Member experience, growth, and development. This will also empower store leadership to operate with more agility and have more time to focus on priority initiatives.
- Adjusting structures and improving processes of several other Global Support teams to provide more effective, timely, and consistent support to stores and ensure support teams can focus on priority initiatives. We will begin sharing more information about Global Support team changes with respective teams today. We will also meet with store and facility leadership to discuss these updates in more detail.
These changes will impact our Team Members in different ways. Store and facility-based roles are not directly impacted, though there will be some adjustments to how support and store teams work together. There will be some reductions in headcount on certain Global and Regional support teams, and those impacted will receive more information today. While change is necessary and healthy for a sustainable business, it can also be very challenging, particularly when it affects the lives of Team Members. We are committed to supporting all impacted Team Members through these transitions.
As we simplify processes and improve how we operate, we will be able to quickly respond to evolving business needs, focus more on our most impactful work, and invest in new ways to serve all stakeholders. We are confident these changes will allow us to better support our stores, Team Members, and suppliers, elevate the customer experience, and position Whole Foods Market for continued growth. Most important, these changes will help ensure we deliver on our Purpose to nourish people and the planet for decades to come.
Sincerely, E-Team
In this photo illustration a Huawei logo is displayed on a smartphone with a Chinese flag in the background.
Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Beijing has banned semiconductor research firm TechInsights from working with or receiving data from Chinese entities, in a move that could add to the opaqueness of the country’s chip industry.
China’s Commerce Ministry, citing national security concerns, announced Thursday that TechInsights was designated an “unreliable entity,” which prohibits Chinese individuals or organizations from sharing information with the Canadian-based company.
TechInsights is well known in the global tech space for its in-depth coverage of Chinese-made chips and was among the first to report breakthroughs by companies like Huawei Technologies.
Beijing’s crackdown on TechInsights came less than a week after the firm revealed that a breakdown of Huawei’s latest artificial intelligence chips found components sourced from outside mainland China.
TechInsights didn’t respond to a request for comment from CNBC outside normal office hours, while Huawei didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry about TechInsights’ report.
The findings by TechInsights about Huawei’s latest “Ascend” AI chips were consistent with those from other research firms like SemiAnalysis, which said that the Chinese company relies on technology from memory chipmakers like Samsung Electronics and contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC).
These companies are under U.S. export controls, restricting them from selling their most advanced technologies to Chinese customers. Moreover, Huawei has been on a U.S. trade blacklist since 2019, barring chip makers that do business with the U.S. from working directly with it.
In response, Beijing and its chipmakers have stepped up efforts to build a self-sufficient semiconductor supply chain.
Huawei, one of China’s leading players in these efforts, has been developing alternatives to U.S. chip giant, Nvidia, though TechInsights’ latest findings may be seen by some as a knock on such efforts.
Despite its prominence in China’s chip space, few details are disclosed about Huawei’s chipmaking efforts outside of what third-party research firms uncover.
For example, reports have said that Huawei works closely with China’s leading chip foundry SMIC — a competitor of TSMC — though both companies have been silent about any collaboration since Huawei was placed on the U.S. trade blacklist.
Last year, TechInsights reportedly found that a Huawei product contained a chip component from TSMC, triggering questions about the effectiveness of U.S. export controls. The research firm’s latest findings on Huawei’s AI chip could further fuel such concerns.
Analysts say Chinese chip companies have exploited loopholes in U.S. restrictions and drawn on stockpiles of imported chips and components before certain restrictions kicked in.
Demonstrators hold a banner reading “Liberated Zone” during a protest at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington, on Aug. 19, 2025. Microsoft Corp. employees rallied at the company’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters in an effort to ratchet up pressure on the software maker to stop doing business with Israel over its war in Gaza.
David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A Microsoft engineer is resigning after 13 years at the software giant, claiming the company continues to sell cloud services to the Israeli military and that executives won’t discuss the war in Gaza.
Scott Sutfin-Glowski, a principal software engineer, informed colleagues at Microsoft on Thursday that this will be his last week at the company.
“I can no longer accept enabling what may be the worst atrocities of our time,” he wrote.
In the letter, he referred to a February Associated Press article that said the Israeli military had at least 635 Microsoft subscriptions, and he claimed the vast majority of them remain active.
Microsoft declined to comment.
Sutfin-Glowski’s announced departure comes a day after President Donald Trump said Israel and Hamas committed to the first phase of a peace plan two years into the latest conflict. The AP reported on Thursday, citing government officials, that the U.S. is sending roughly 200 troops to Israel to help support the ceasefire deal.
The conflict has been a matter of ongoing tension at Microsoft.
For months, employees have protested the company’s cloud business from the Israeli military. Five employees were fired.
In September, Microsoft said it had stopped providing certain services to a division of the Israeli Ministry of Defense, though it didn’t provide specifics. That decision came after Microsoft investigated an August report from The Guardian saying the Israeli Defense Forces’ Unit 8200 had built a system for tracking Palestinians’ phone calls.
Sutfin-Glowski said the company cut off communication systems that allowed employees to bring up their concerns regarding the Israeli military’s use of Microsoft products.
Outside a building at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, on Thursday, employees and community members opened up banners calling on the company to drop ties with Israel, according to a statement from No Azure for Apartheid. The group has been asking Microsoft to listen to the more than 1,500 employees who petitioned the company to endorse a ceasefire.
“Today, the ceasefire in Gaza finally takes effect after two years of genocide, but the atrocities, human rights abuses, war crimes, apartheid, and occupation continue,” Sutfin-Glowski wrote.
WATCH: Microsoft is trending toward a $5T market cap, says Wedbush’s Dan Ives
The tablet of the new Tesla Model 3.
Matteo Della Torre | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Tesla is facing a federal investigation into possible safety defects with FSD, its partially automated driving system that is also known as Full Self-Driving (Supervised).
Media, vehicle owner and other incident reports to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed that in 44 separate incidents, Tesla drivers using FSD said the system caused them to run a red light, steer into oncoming traffic or commit other traffic safety violations leading to collisions, including some that injured people.
In a notice posted to the agency’s website on Thursday, NHTSA said the investigation concerns “all Tesla vehicles that have been equipped with FSD (Supervised) or FSD (Beta),” which is an estimated 2,882,566 of the company’s electric cars.
Tesla cars, even with FSD engaged, require a human driver ready to brake or steer at any time.
The NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation opened a Preliminary Evaluation to “assess whether there was prior warning or adequate time for the driver to respond to the unexpected behavior” by Tesla’s FSD, or “to safely supervise the automated driving task,” among other things.
The ODI’s review will also assess “warnings to the driver about the system’s impending behavior; the time given to drivers to respond; the capability of FSD to detect, display to the driver, and respond appropriately to traffic signals; and the capability of FSD to detect and respond to lane markings and wrong-way signage.”
Tesla did not respond to a request for comment on the new federal probe. The company released an updated version of FSD this week, version 14.1, to customers.
For years, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has promised investors that Tesla would someday be able to turn their existing electric vehicles into robotaxis, capable of generating income for owners while they sleep or go on vacation, with a simple software update.
That hasn’t happened yet, and Tesla has since informed owners that future upgrades will require new hardware as well as software releases.
Tesla is testing a Robotaxi-brand ride-hailing service in Texas and elsewhere, but it includes human safety drivers or valets on board who either conduct the drives or manually intervene as needed.
In February this year, Musk and President Donald Trump slashed NHTSA staff as part of a broader effort to reduce the federal workforce, impacting the agency’s ability to investigate vehicle safety and regulate autonomous vehicles, The Washington Post first reported.
Read NHTSA’s Tesla FSD traffic safety violations investigation filings here.
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