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Ruth Porat, chief financial officer of Alphabet Inc., speaks during a news conference at Michigan Central Station in Detroit, Michigan, on Friday, Feb. 4, 2022.

Jeff Kowalsky | Bloomberg | Getty Images

A string of Google executives have changed their roles in the span of several months, in a shift that has sidelined many of company’s remaining old guard.

The changes encompass high-profile executives such as finance chief Ruth Porat, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and employee No. 8, Urs Hölzle, among others. Some say they have left their roles for a new challenge and others have left to seek opportunities in artificial intelligence.

In February, Wojcicki — one of the most prominent women in Silicon Valley — announced that she was stepping back after nine years at the helm of the Google-owned platform that grew to be the world’s most popular video service. She had been at Google for more than 25 years, after famously lending her garage to Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to use as their first office.

While she’ll still be in an advisory role at Google, she said she wanted to “start a new chapter.”

Wojcicki wasn’t the only executive to leave YouTube. Robert Kyncl, the chief business officer for 12 years, stepped away to become CEO of Warner Music Group at the beginning of the year. 

In March, CapitalG founder and longtime Google employee David Lawee stepped down from his role after 17 years at Alphabet, saying he wanted to explore new areas of interest and spend more time with his family.

Hölzle, who has long overseen Google’s technical infrastructure and was its eighth employee, said he would be stepping back from management after 24 years of leading technical teams, CNBC reported in July. Hölzle will be classified as an “individual contributor,” which means he will be working independently and no longer managing employees. 

Also in July, Porat announced that she will step down as Alphabet‘s chief financial officer after eight years and take a new role as president and chief investment officer. When asked about the timing of the move, Porat, who was previously Morgan Stanley‘s CFO, said she wanted to take on a different set of challenges.

Porat will also be engaged with policymakers to “recognize the importance of technology” and on issues including employment, economic, competitiveness and infrastructure expansion,” the company said.

“We have a steady and experienced leadership team, many of whom have been with the company for well over a decade, ” said Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini in statement about the shifts. “We also have a strong bench of leaders at Google who can smoothly transition when people who’ve had long and successful careers here decide to pursue new opportunities inside and outside the company.”

Searching for itself in an AI-first world

As Google looks for replacements for executives like Porat, it’s also searching for its own identity in a pivotal moment in the company’s history.

The company was caught flat-footed last fall when OpenAI launched its AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT, and suddenly found itself in a rare spot where its core search business was threatened.

Industry observers wondered if users could simply get answers from an AI-powered chatbot, how long would they keep entering queries into a search engine? It was an ironic moment for the search giant, given that CEO Sundar Pichai had been talking up the company’s “AI-first” strategy since 2016, with little to show externally.

In June, Google execs admitted to employees that users are “still not quite happy” with the search experience, CNBC reported. Search boss Prabhakar Raghavan and engineering VP HJ Kim spent several minutes pledging to do a better job to employees while Pichai noted that it’s still the most trusted search engine.

Geoffrey Hinton, known as “The godfather of AI” and one of the most respected voices in the field, told The New York Times in May that he was leaving the company after a decade to warn the world about the potential threat of AI, which he said is coming sooner than he previously thought. 

Shortly before that, amid a reorganization in Google’s AI teams, the company promoted the CEO of its DeepMind subsidiary, Demis Hassabis, to lead AI for the entire company, and former McKinsey exec James Manyika to become Google’s senior vice president of technology and society and to oversee Google Research.

Google’s AI head, Jeff Dean, who’s been at the company since 1999, became a chief scientist as part of the change. The company called it a promotion, but it effectively took him out of a large leading role in AI to be an individual contributor, reportedly helping oversee Gemini, one of its critical large language models.

The company is also cutting costs, another rarity, while the core search product faces changing user behavior, ad pullbacks and an AI boom that requires increasing investment, all amid a slowing economy and investor calls to reduce spending.

It’s also staring down multiple federal lawsuits, including an imminent antitrust trial set to begin in September that alleges Google illegally maintained a monopoly by cutting off rivals from search distribution channels.

More like other big companies, some employees say

Employees’ perceptions of the company have also changed in recent years.

While potential employees still consider Google a top place to work with extremely competitive perks, it has grown to be more bureaucratic than in its earlier days.

This perception shift has created a “fragile moment” for Google amid the pressure from OpenAI and Microsoft, argued former Google employee Praveen Seshadri in a Medium post that went viral earlier this year.

“I have left Google understanding how a once-great company has slowly ceased to function,” wrote Seshadri in his blog post that detailed the challenges of Google’s growing bureaucracy.

“Like mice, they are trapped in a maze of approvals, launch processes, legal reviews, performance reviews, exec reviews, documents, meetings, bug reports, triage, OKRs, H1 plans followed by H2 plans, all-hands summits, and inevitable reorgs.”

Former Waze CEO Noam Bardin, who quit Google in 2021, shared Seshadri’s post on LinkedIn. In a blog post a couple years earlier, Bardin had written that employees aren’t incentivized to build Google products.

“The problem was me — believing I can keep the startup magic within a corporation, in spite of all the evidence showing the opposite,” he wrote in his critique of the company.

Like Seshadri and Bardin, a number of AI specialists have left the company, saying it had grown too bureaucratic to get things done.

Eight AI researchers who created “Transformers,” an integral part of the infrastructure behind ChatGPT and other chatbots, have left the search giant since 2017 — many of them going on to start their own companies. Five of them left in 2021 alone.

Llion Jones, who departed Google this month to start his own company focused on AI, told CNBC’s Jordan Novet, “the bureaucracy had built to the point where I just felt like I couldn’t get anything done.”

Other AI researchers at Google have made similar complaints in recent months. Several have gone on to start their own companies focused on AI, where they have more agency over vision and speed.

In February, longtime product exec Clay Bavor said after 18 “wonderful years” at Google, he was leaving to start an artificial intelligence company with former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor. “We share an obsession with recent advances in AI, and we’re excited to build a new company to apply AI to solve some of the most important problems in business,” Bavor wrote at the time.

“We’ve made intentional efforts throughout the year to move quickly with nimble teams,” said Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini. “For instance, products like Bard and SGE [Search Generative Experience] are being developed by small, fast-moving teams that have been built for these high-priority efforts.”

Despite its efforts, the company faced criticism from investors and its own employees when it quickly tried to announce its ChatGPT competitor Bard, which it started opening up to the wider public in March. While the rollout’s reputation has rebounded after several updates and a successful developer conference, the company still has yet to launch SGE to the wider public.

The company has also become less flexible as it strives to get employees back into the office.

Google recently cracked down on its hybrid three-day-a-week office policy to include badge tracking, and noted attendance will be included in performance reviews, CNBC previously reported. Additionally, employees who already received approval for remote work may now have that status reevaluated.

There’s also a new emphasis on cost-cutting that has taken some employees by surprise.

Even if the company had been considered slower moving, at least it had been considered secure — commonly known as a place where employees could “rest and vest.” That changed with the company’s first-ever mass layoffs in January, where Alphabet abruptly announced it was eliminating about 12,000 jobs, or 6% of its workforce, in an overnight email. Some employees reportedly arrived at work to discover their badges no longer worked. It then declined to pay out the remainder of employees’ approved leave time.

While the company included competitive severance packages, some employees lost trust in leadership, who had long encouraged employees to be kind, humble and open-minded, or “Googley.”

The company has also reduced spending on real estate, even asking employees in its cloud unit to share desks. It’s also cut down on desktop PCs and equipment refreshes for employees. It started cutting travel and events late last year.

In an all-hands meeting last September, employees voted to ask Pichai why the company is “nickel-and-diming employees” with some of its cutbacks on perks and travel.

Google’s culture can still be enjoyable even if some things, like certain swag items, are getting taken away, the CEO argued.

“I remember when Google was small and scrappy,” Pichai said. “We shouldn’t always equate fun with money. I think you can walk into a hardworking startup and people may be having fun and it shouldn’t always equate to money.” 

Pichai’s statement touched a nerve. Yes, many people joined Google so their work would immediately have an impact of many more users than other companies. It’s still considered one of the top places to work, with opportunities to tackle some of the industry’s biggest problems. But, alongside all that, money and perks had flowed generously, regardless of the speed at which projects moved.

Now, the company faces its biggest challenge yet, which falls on the shoulders of Pichai and the next guard — trying to recreate the magic of its early days along with delivering revenue while being under more pressure than ever.

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Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

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Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

Chief executive officer of Google Sundar Pichai.

Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.

As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.

“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”

The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup. 

Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.

“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.

Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.

This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.

Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.

The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.

WATCH: Google pushes “AI Mode” on homepage

Google pushes "AI Mode" on homepage

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Nvidia’s Jensen Huang sells more than $36 million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

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Nvidia's Jensen Huang sells more than  million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.

Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unloaded roughly $36.4 million worth of stock in the leading artificial intelligence chipmaker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.

Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.

Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.

The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.

Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.

Read more CNBC tech news

The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.

On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.

Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.

Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.

WATCH: Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports

Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports

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Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

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Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

Elon Musk meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington DC, USA on February 13, 2025.

Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images

Tesla will open a showroom in Mumbai, India next week, marking the U.S. electric carmakers first official foray into the country.

The one and a half hour launch event for the Tesla “Experience Center” will take place on July 15 at the Maker Maxity Mall in Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai, according to an event invitation seen by CNBC.

Along with the showroom display, which will feature the company’s cars, Tesla is also likely to officially launch direct sales to Indian customers.

The automaker has had its eye on India for a while and now appears to have stepped up efforts to launch locally.

In April, Tesla boss Elon Musk spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss collaboration in areas including technology and innovation. That same month, the EV-maker’s finance chief said the company has been “very careful” in trying to figure out when to enter the market.

Tesla has no manufacturing operations in India, even though the country’s government is likely keen for the company to establish a factory. Instead the cars sold in India will need to be imported from Tesla’s other manufacturing locations in places like Shanghai, China, and Berlin, Germany.

As Tesla begins sales in India, it will come up against challenges from long-time Chinese rival BYD, as well as local player Tata Motors.

One potential challenge for Tesla comes by way of India’s import duties on electric vehicles, which stand at around 70%. India has tried to entice investment in the country by offering companies a reduced duty of 15% if they commit to invest $500 million and set up manufacturing locally.

HD Kumaraswamy, India’s minister for heavy industries, told reporters in June that Tesla is “not interested” in manufacturing in the country, according to a Reuters report.

Tesla is looking to recruit roles in Mumbai, job listings posted on LinkedIn . These include advisors working in showrooms, security, vehicle operators to collect data for its Autopilot feature and service technicians.

There are also roles being advertised in the Indian capital of New Delhi, including for store managers. It’s unclear if Tesla is planning to launch a showroom in the city.

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