Flexport founder publicly slams his handpicked successor for excessive hiring, rescinds offers
Ryan Petersen, chief executive officer of Flexport, participates in a panel discussion during the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., on Wednesday, May 4, 2022.
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Two days after returning to run Flexport, founder Ryan Petersen said on Friday that his logistics company will rescind 55 offer letters and look to lease out office space across the U.S. as it tries to get its “house in order.”
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Petersen wrote that the company “can’t just give out cash.” In reclaiming the top position at Flexport, Petersen is displacing his handpicked successor, former Amazon executive Dave Clark, a little more than a year into his tenure.
Petersen offered a harsh assessment of Clark’s growth strategy, questioning why the company had “over 200 open roles” on its website, and noting that all those have been canceled other than “a handful of roles” tied to what Petersen calls the most important projects.
“I am deeply sorry to those people who were expecting to join our company and won’t be able to at this time. It’s messed up,” Petersen wrote. “But no way around it, we have had a hiring freeze for months I have no ideas why more than 75 people were signed to join.”
Flexport’s hiring page still listed more than 100 open roles as of Friday morning.
Clark’s sudden departure marked a surprising turn for a company that’s been viewed for several years as one of the hottest startups in the Bay Area. Flexport ranked 10th in CNBC’s latest Disruptor 50 list and has been valued at $8 billion by prominent venture firms, including Andreessen Horowitz and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.
The former head of Amazon’s giant worldwide consumer business, Clark was expected to travel to Seattle for a meeting with clients to launch an unspecified “fuelled solution” for small and medium businesses. The event’s launch page had featured Clark’s name as recently as Wednesday, the day his departure was announced, according to archived versions of the page.
Petersen said in his posts that the company remained fiscally sound, with more than $1 billion in net cash, but said it remained “far from profitable.” The company would also move to lease out unoccupied office space across the country, in Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York, Petersen said.
Petersen pushed back against criticism that the board had been asleep at the wheel.
“We were on it,” Petersen wrote in response to a post. “Just trusting in the growth plan which hasn’t come through. It’s all good I know how to grow this business. But gotta get costs in line first.”
Teresa Carlson, a key hire of Clark’s who served as Flexport’s president and chief commercial officer, announced she was no longer with the company in a LinkedIn post on Thursday. Carlson was a vice president at Amazon’s cloud-computing unit, and held high-level posts at Microsoft and Splunk.
Petersen founded Flexport in 2013, aiming to reinvent how companies monitor and control all stages of the supply chain through real-time tracking of inventory across air, land, and sea.
Flexport didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
WATCH: Lingering inventory and supply chain issues should ease by 2024
Intel snapped a losing streak of six straight quarterly losses and returned to profitability in the third quarter.
In its first earnings report since the Trump administration acquired a 10% stake in the company, the U.S. chipmaker posted strong revenue, noting robust demand for chips that it expects to continue into 2026.
Client computing revenue, which includes chips for PCs and laptops, grew 5% year over year, benefiting from PC market stabilization and artificial intelligence PC prospects.
CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in a call with analysts Thursday that artificial intelligence “is a strong foundation for sustainable long-term growth as we execute.”
The chip strength and demand were bright spots, but there were areas of concern as well, with the company’s foundry business still needing a big break.
Here are three takeaways from the chipmaker’s Q3 report:
Cash flow
“We significantly improved our cash position and liquidity in Q3, a key focus for me since becoming CEO in March,” Tan said on a call with analysts Thursday.
Intel landed an $8.9 billion investment from the U.S. government in August, along with $2 billion from Softbank, but has not yet received the $5 billion tied to a deal with Nvidia. The company expects that deal to close by the end of Q4.
With all of those transactions completed, plus the Altera sale, Intel will have $35 billion in cash on hand, CFO David Zinser told CNBC.
The U.S. government is the company’s biggest shareholder, and Intel stock is up more than 50% since Aug. 22, when Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced the deal.
“Like any shareholder, we have to keep in touch with them,” Zinser said of the U.S. stake. “We don’t tell them how the numbers are going before the quarter. We generally talk to them like Fidelity,” another Intel shareholder.
Intel 3-month stock chart.
Foundry
The firm’s foundry remains a work in progress.
Revenue fell 2% over the year before, and it has yet to land a major customer.
Intel now has two fabs running 18A nodes, which are designed for AI and high-performance computing applications.
“We are making steady progress on Intel 18A,” Tan said of its latest chip technology. “We are on track to bring Panther Lake to market this year.”
Zinser said the more advanced 14A nodes won’t be put in supply until the company has “real firm demand.”
Old stuff still selling
Zinser said the company’s older chipmaking processes, or nodes, have continued to do well, “and that was probably the part that was more unexpected.”
Zinser said the chipmaker met some of the central processing unit (CPU) demand with inventory on hand, but they will be behind in Q1, “probably Q2 and maybe in Q3.”
The supply crunch has been with older Intel 10 and 7 manufacturing technologies.
Many customers are opting for less advanced hardware to refresh their operating systems, demonstrating enterprises aren’t waiting for cutting-edge chips when proven technology gets the job done.
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