Early Google exec Urs Holzle to step down from executive management role amid cloud shakeup

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2 years ago

July 12, 2023

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Urs Holzle, senior vice president of technical infrastructure at Google Inc., speaks during the company’s Cloud Next ’18 event in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Tuesday, July 24, 2018.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Google employee No. 8 Urs Holzle will step back from management after 24 years of leading technical teams, CNBC has learned.

Most recently leading technical infrastructure for Google Cloud and reporting directly to CEO Thomas Kurian, Holzle oversaw an organization that consisted of more than 12,000 full-time employees.

In the transition, Holzle will be classified as an “individual contributor,” which means he will be working independently and no longer managing employees.

Holzle has been a pivotal figure within Google since its early days. In infrastructure, the company has claimed his team reduced the energy used by Google data centers to less than 50% of the industry average.

In an email to employees Tuesday, Holzle said he will focus on a small number of technical assignments at a time as well as advising. Part of that will include articulating technical AI processes, facilitating discussions and encouraging quicker decision making, his memo stated.

His email went on to say this is one of the most interesting and impactful years in a long time and that he’s been wanting to do more technical work.

The move comes amid a shakeup within the company’s cloud organization, according to an email from Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian viewed by CNBC.

Chris Vonderhaar will lead Cloud Supply Chain and Operations and will leave Amazon Web Services after 13 years at the company, where his most recent role was vice president of AWS Data Center Community. Ben Treynor Sloss, vice president of engineering at Google Cloud, will begin reporting directly to Kurian. Kurian noted a couple of other shifts.

Kurian’s note said making technical decisions more quickly is more important than ever.

A Google spokesperson confirmed the moves but did not provide comment.

Google faces pressure to continue growing cloud revenue after the unit reported its first profitable quarter in April. The company also faces competition from Amazon and Microsoft in both cloud offerings and artificial intelligence.

In a separate reorganization among Google’s artificial intelligence and research teams in April, Jeff Dean, who long ran Google’s AI efforts, also became classified as an “individual contributor” and given a new title as “chief scientist.”

The move also comes as Google calls for limiting remote work as it tries to get employees to return to physical offices. Holzle sparked internal controversy in 2021 after announcing he’d move to New Zealand while the company started asking employees to come back to the office, resulting in workers complaining the company had a double-standard for higher-ups.

In recent all-hands meetings, more company executives have made physical appearances.

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ServiceNow in talks to acquire cybersecurity startup Armis in potential $7 billion deal, Bloomberg reports

Published

4 hours ago

December 14, 2025

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ServiceNow in talks to acquire cybersecurity startup Armis in potential billion deal, Bloomberg reports

Software company ServiceNow is in advanced talks to buy cybersecurity startup Armis, which was last valued at $6.1 billion, Bloomberg reported.

The deal, which could reach $7 billion in value, would be ServiceNow’s largest acquisition, the outlet said, citing people familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.

The acquisition could be announced as soon as this week, but could still fall apart, according to the report.

Armis and ServiceNow did not immediately return a CNBC request for comment.

Armis, which helps companies secure and manage internet-connected devices and protect them against cyber threats, raised $435 million in a funding round just over a month ago and told CNBC about its eventual plans for an IPO.

Armis CEO Yevgeny Dibrov and CTO Nadir Izrael.

Courtesy: Armis

CEO and co-founder Yevgeny Dibrov said Armis was aiming for a public listing at the end of 2026 or early 2027, pending “market conditions.”

Armis’s decision to be acquired rather than wait for a public listing is a common path for startups at the moment. The IPO markets remain choppy and many startups are choosing to remain private for longer instead of risking a muted debut on the public markets.

Founded in 2016, Armis said in August it had surpassed $300 million in annual recurring revenues, a milestone it achieved less than a year after reaching $200 million in ARR.

Its latest funding round was led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives’ growth equity fund, with participation from CapitalG, a venture arm of Alphabet. Previous backers have included Sequoia Capital and Bain Capital Ventures.

Read the complete Bloomberg article here.

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Here are 4 major moments that drove the stock market last week

Published

20 hours ago

December 13, 2025

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Here are 4 major moments that drove the stock market last week

Technology

Oracle says there have been ‘no delays’ in OpenAI arrangement after stock slide

Published

2 days ago

December 12, 2025

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Oracle says there have been 'no delays' in OpenAI arrangement after stock slide

Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk appears on a media tour of the Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas, on Sept. 23, 2025.

Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Oracle on Friday pushed back against a report that said the company will complete data centers for OpenAI, one of its major customers, in 2028, rather than 2027.

The delay is due to a shortage of labor and materials, according to the Friday report from Bloomberg, which cited unnamed people. Oracle shares fell to a session low of $185.98, down 6.5% from Thursday’s close.

“Site selection and delivery timelines were established in close coordination with OpenAI following execution of the agreement and were jointly agreed,” an Oracle spokesperson said in an email to CNBC. “There have been no delays to any sites required to meet our contractual commitments, and all milestones remain on track.”

The Oracle spokesperson did not specify a timeline for turning on cloud computing infrastructure for OpenAI. In September, OpenAI said it had a partnership with Oracle worth more than $300 billion over the next five years.

“We have a good relationship with OpenAI,” Clay Magouyrk, one of Oracle’s two newly appointed CEOs, said at an October analyst meeting.

Doing business with OpenAI is relatively new to 48-year-old Oracle. Historically, Oracle grew through sales of its database software and business applications. Its cloud infrastructure business now contributes over one-fourth of revenue, although Oracle remains a smaller hyperscaler than Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

OpenAI has also made commitments to other companies as it looks to meet expected capacity needs.

In September, Nvidia said it had signed a letter of intent with OpenAI to deploy at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia equipment for the San Francisco artificial intelligence startup. The first phase of that project is expected in the second half of 2026.

Nvidia and OpenAI said in a September statement that they “look forward to finalizing the details of this new phase of strategic partnership in the coming weeks.”

But no announcement has come yet.

In a November filing, Nvidia said “there is no assurance that we will enter into definitive agreements with respect to the OpenAI opportunity.”

OpenAI has historically relied on Nvidia graphics processing units to operate ChatGPT and other products, and now it’s also looking at designing custom chips in a collaboration with Broadcom.

On Thursday, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan laid out a timeline for the OpenAI work, which was announced in October. Broadcom and OpenAI said they had signed a term sheet.

“It’s more like 2027, 2028, 2029, 10 gigawatts, that was the OpenAI discussion,” Tan said on Broadcom’s earnings call. “And that’s, I call it, an agreement, an alignment of where we’re headed with respect to a very respected and valued customer, OpenAI. But we do not expect much in 2026.”

OpenAI declined to comment.

WATCH: Oracle says there have been ‘no delays’ in OpenAI arrangement after stock slide