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Amazon employees plan to walk off the job Wednesday in protest of the company’s recent return-to-office mandate, layoffs and its environmental record.

Approximately 1,900 employees worldwide are expected to walk out at 3 p.m. ET, with about 900 of those workers gathering outside the Spheres, the massive glass domes that anchor Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, according to employee groups behind the effort. The walkout is being organized in part by Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, an influential worker organization that has repeatedly pressed the e-retailer on its climate stance.

The group said employees are walking out to highlight a “lack of trust in company leadership’s decision making.” Amazon recently initiated the largest layoffs in its 29-year history, cutting 27,000 jobs across its cloud computing, advertising and retail divisions, among several others, since last fall. On May 1, the company ordered corporate employees to start working from the office at least three days a week, largely bringing an end to the remote work arrangements some employees had settled into during the coronavirus pandemic.

Amazon employees are walking off the job at a precarious time inside the company. Amazon just wrapped up its employee cuts, and it continues to reckon with the rough economy and slowing retail sales, leaving staffers on the edge that further layoffs could still be in store.

Employees had urged Amazon leadership to drop the return-to-office mandate and crafted a petition, addressed to CEO Andy Jassy and the S-team. Staffers said the policy “runs contrary” to Amazon’s positions on diversity and inclusion, affordable housing, sustainability, and focus on being the “Earth’s Best Employer.”

The backlash to the return-to-office mandate spilled over into an internal Slack channel, and employees created a group called Remote Advocacy to express their concerns.

Amazon employees who moved during the pandemic or were hired for a remote role have expressed concern about how the return-to-office policy will affect them, CNBC previously reported. Amazon’s head count ballooned over the last three years, and it hired more employees outside of its key tech hubs such as Seattle, New York and Northern California as it embraced a more distributed workforce.

The company had previously said it would leave it up to individual managers to decide what working arrangements worked best for their teams.

Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser said in a statement that the company has so far been pleased with the results of its return-to-office push.

“There’s more energy, collaboration, and connections happening, and we’ve heard this from lots of employees and the businesses that surround our offices,” Glasser added. “We understand that it’s going to take time to adjust back to being in the office more and there are a lot of teams at the company working hard to make this transition as smooth as possible for employees.”

Amazon says it has 65,000 corporate and tech employees in the Puget Sound region and roughly 350,000 corporate and tech workers worldwide.

Employees are also using the walkout to draw attention to concerns that Amazon isn’t meeting its climate commitments. They pointed to Amazon’s most recent sustainability report, which showed its carbon emissions jumped 40% in 2021 from 2019, the year it unveiled its “Climate Pledge” plan. Staffers also highlighted a report last year by Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting that found the company undercounts its carbon footprint by only counting product carbon emissions from the use of Amazon-branded goods, and not those it buys from manufacturers and sells directly to the consumer.

Glasser said Amazon follows guidance from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard in determining its Scope 3 emissions, or emissions generated from a company’s supply chain.

Additionally, Amazon recently eliminated one of its climate goals, called Shipment Zero, wherein the company pledged to make half of all its shipments carbon neutral by 2030. Amazon said it would focus on its broader Climate Pledge, which includes a provision to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2040, a decade later than its original Shipment Zero commitment.

“Our goal is to change Amazon’s cost/benefit analysis on making harmful, unilateral decisions that are having an outsized impact on people of color, women, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, and other vulnerable people,” the group said.

Glasser said Amazon continues to “push hard” to be net carbon zero across its business by 2040. The company remains on track to reach 100% renewable energy by 2025, he added.

“While we all would like to get there tomorrow, for companies like ours who consume a lot of power, and have very substantial transportation, packaging, and physical building assets, it’ll take time to accomplish,” Glasser said.

WATCH: Amazon employees protest about sudden return-to-office policy

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Whoop says FDA is ‘overstepping its authority’ with warning about blood pressure feature

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Whoop says FDA is 'overstepping its authority' with warning about blood pressure feature

The logo for the Food and Drug Administration is seen ahead of a news conference on removing synthetic dyes from America’s food supply, at the Health and Human Services Headquarters in Washington, DC on April 22, 2025.

Nathan Posner | Anadolu | Getty Images

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday published a warning letter addressed to the wrist wearable company Whoop, alleging it is marketing a new blood pressure feature without proper approvals.

The letter centers around Whoop’s Blood Pressure Insights (BPI) feature, which the company introduced alongside its latest hardware launch in May.

Whoop said its BPI feature uses blood pressure information to offer performance and wellness insights that inform consumers and improve athletic performance.

But the FDA said Tuesday that Whoop’s BPI feature is intended to diagnose, cure, treat or prevent disease — a key distinction that would reclassify the wellness tracker as a “medical device” that has to undergo a rigorous testing and approval processes.

“Providing blood pressure estimation is not a low-risk function,” the FDA said in the letter. “An erroneously low or high blood pressure reading can have significant consequences for the user.”

A Whoop spokesperson said the company’s system offers only a single daily estimated range and midpoint, which distinguishes it from medical blood pressure devices used for diagnosis or management of high blood pressure.

Whoop users who purchase the $359 “Whoop Life” subscription tier can use the BPI feature to get daily insights about their blood pressure, including estimated systolic and diastolic ranges, according to the company.

Whoop also requires users to log three traditional cuff-readings to act as a baseline in order to unlock the BPI feature.

Additionally, the spokesperson said the BPI data is not unlike other wellness metrics that the company deals with. Just as heart rate variability and respiratory rate can have medical uses, the spokesperson said, they are permitted in a wellness context too.

“We believe the agency is overstepping its authority in this case by attempting to regulate a non-medical wellness feature as a medical device,” the Whoop spokesperson said.

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High blood pressure, also called hypertension, is the number one risk factor for heart attacks, strokes and other types of cardiovascular disease, according to Dr. Ian Kronish, an internist and co-director of Columbia University’s Hypertension Center.

Kronish told CNBC that wearables like Whoop are a big emerging topic of conversation among hypertension experts, in part because there’s “concern that these devices are not yet proven to be accurate.”

If patients don’t get accurate blood pressure readings, they can’t make informed decisions about the care they need.

At the same time, Kronish said wearables like Whoop present a “big opportunity” for patients to take more control over their health, and that many professionals are excited to work with these tools.

Understandably, it can be confusing for consumers to navigate. Kronish encouraged patients to talk with their doctor about how they should use wearables like Whoop.

“It’s really great to hear that the FDA is getting more involved around informing consumers,” Kronish said.

FILE PHOTO: The headquarters of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is seen in Silver Spring, Maryland November 4, 2009. 

Jason Reed | Reuters

Whoop is not the only wearable manufacturer that’s exploring blood pressure monitoring.

Omron and Garmin both offer medical blood pressure monitoring with on-demand readings that fall under FDA regulation. Samsung also offers blood-pressure-reading technology, but it is not available in the U.S. market.

Apple has also been teasing a blood pressure sensor for its watches, but has not been able to deliver. In 2024, the tech giant received FDA approval for its sleep apnea detection feature.

Whoop has previously received FDA clearance for its ECG feature, which is used to record and analyze a heart’s electrical activity to detect potential irregularities in rhythm. But when it comes to blood pressure, Whoop believes the FDA’s perspective is antiquated.

“We do not believe blood pressure should be considered any more or less sensitive than other physiological metrics like heart rate and respiratory rate,” a spokesperson said. “It appears that the FDA’s concerns may stem from outdated assumptions about blood pressure being strictly a clinical domain and inherently associated with a medical diagnosis.”

The FDA said Whoop could be subject to regulatory actions like seizure, injunction, and civil money penalties if it fails to address the violations that the agency identified in its letter.

Whoop has 15 business days to respond with steps the company has taken to address the violations, as well as how it will prevent similar issues from happening again.

“Even accounting for BPI’s disclaimers, they do not change this conclusion, because they are insufficient to outweigh the fact that the product is, by design, intended to provide a blood pressure estimation that is inherently associated with the diagnosis of a disease or condition,” the FDA said.

WATCH: Watch CNBC’s full interview with FDA commissioner Dr. Marty Makary

Watch CNBC's full interview with FDA commissioner Dr. Marty Makary

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Amazon turns to rival SpaceX to launch next batch of Kuiper internet satellites

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Amazon turns to rival SpaceX to launch next batch of Kuiper internet satellites

United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying the first two demonstration satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper broadband internet constellation stands ready for launch on pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on October 5, 2023 in Cape Canaveral, Florida, United States.

Paul Hennessey | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

As Amazon chases SpaceX in the internet satellite market, the e-commerce and computing giant is now counting on Elon Musk’s rival company to get its next batch of devices into space.

On Wednesday, weather permitting, 24 Kuiper satellites will hitch a ride on one of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets from a launchpad on Florida’s Space Coast. A 27-minute launch window for the mission, dubbed “KF-01,” opens at 2:18 a.m. ET.

The launch will be livestreamed on X, the social media platform also owned by Musk.

The mission marks an unusual alliance. SpaceX’s Starlink is currently the dominant provider of low earth orbit satellite internet, with a constellation of roughly 8,000 satellites and about 5 million customers worldwide.

Amazon launched Project Kuiper in 2019 with an aim to provide broadband internet from a constellation of more than 3,000 satellites. The company is working under a tight deadline imposed by the Federal Communications Commission that requires it to have about 1,600 satellites in orbit by the end of July 2026.

Amazon’s first two Kuiper launches came in April and June, sending 27 satellites each time aboard rockets supplied by United Launch Alliance.

Assuming Wednesday’s launch is a success, Amazon will have a total of 78 satellites in orbit. In order to meet the FCC’s tight deadline, Amazon needs to rapidly manufacture and deploy satellites, securing a hefty amount of capacity from rocket providers. Kuiper has booked up to 83 launches, including three rides with SpaceX.

Space has emerged as a battleground between Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, two of the world’s richest men. Aside from Kuiper, Bezos also competes with Musk via his rocket company Blue Origin.

Blue Origin in January sent up its massive New Glenn rocket for the first time, which is intended to rival SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rockets. While Blue Origin currently trails SpaceX, Bezos last year predicted his latest venture will one day be bigger than Amazon, which he started in 1994.

Kuiper has become one of Amazon’s biggest bets, with more than $10 billion earmarked for the project. The company may need to spend as much as $23 billion to build its full constellation, analysts at Bank of America wrote in a note to clients last week. That figure doesn’t include the cost of building terminals, which consumers will use to connect to the service.

The analysts estimate Amazon is spending $150 million per launch this year, while satellite production costs are projected to total $1.1 billion by the fourth quarter.

Amazon is going after a market that’s expected to grow to at least $40 billion by 2030, the analysts wrote, citing estimates by Boston Consulting Group. The firm estimated that Amazon could generate $7.1 billion in sales from Kuiper by 2032 if it claims 30% of the market.

“With Starlink’s solid early growth, our estimates could be conservative,” the analysts wrote.

WATCH: Amazon launches first Kuiper internet satellites into space

Amazon launches first Kuiper internet satellites into space

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Bitcoin falls below $117,000 after Trump crypto bills are blocked before vote

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Bitcoin falls below 7,000 after Trump crypto bills are blocked before vote

Bitcoin falls as lawmakers grapple with crypto regulation bills: CNBC Crypto World

Bitcoin fell below the $117,000 level on Tuesday after cryptocurrency-related bills were blocked in the House of Representatives.

The price of bitcoin was last down 2.8% at $116,516.00, according to Coin Metrics. That marks a pullback from the day’s high of $120,481.86.

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Bitcoin/USD Coin Metrics, 1-day

The drop comes on the heels of multiple crypto-related bills failing to overcome a procedural hurdle in the House, with 13 Republicans voting with Democrats to block the motion in a 196-223 vote.

In recent days, bitcoin has been trading at all-time highs, spurred by institutional buying of bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) amid rising optimism that Congress would soon pass crypto legislation.

Stocks linked to crypto also came under pressure in late afternoon trading. Shares of bitcoin miners Riot Platforms and Mara Holdings closed down 3.3% and 2.3%, respectively. Others like crypto trading platforms Coinbase slid 1.5%. All were under pressure in extended trading.

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