Craig Newmark made his fortune off a website, founded in 1995, that served as an early online bulletin board and looks like it hasn’t been updated in two decades.
That website, Craigslist, is still cranking along, featuring apartment listings, an active jobs board and items for sale. But the privately held company has long been surpassed in value by the likes of Airbnb, LinkedIn and Facebook Marketplace, which all face Wall Street’s demands for growth and profit.
Though Newmark’s internet company may be outdated, his concerns about where the industry is headed are most certainly not. Since the 2015 debut of Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the entrepreneur has donated many millions of dollars to various causes involving media and technology.
Most recently, his organization contributed $3 million to help fund a new artificial intelligence and education initiative from Common Sense Media, the nonprofit told CNBC this week.
“While I tried to pay some attention to what was going on, just everything caught me by surprise,” Newmark said, referring to the current boom of generative AI and all the new and intelligent chatbots.
Newmark, 70, spoke to CNBC as he was recovering from a minor heart procedure he went through in late August. The heart ablation required Newmark to lay on his back “the whole time in the wrong position” and he “woke up with a lot of back pain,” he said.
More than the surgery, Newmark wanted to talk about the hospital food.
“Hospital pudding is really good,” he said. “And since they served my lunch cold, I asked them and got more containers of pudding.”
Newmark, who ran his business out of San Francisco but now lives with his wife in New York, said the hospital stay didn’t cause him to reflect much on mortality, as he’d already addressed such existential issues when he decided to simplify his life by giving away much of his Craigslist riches.
Newmark’s foundation has principally focused on donating to organizations and causes pertaining to journalism, combating misinformation, countering online harassment, cybersecurity issues, and supporting veterans and military families.
The rapid evolution of AI and its potential hazards have recently caught Newmark’s attention, and his money.
The goal of Common Sense’s AI project is to provide an AI ratings system for parents, educators, policymakers and regulators so they can evaluate what makes certain tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT safe or unsafe for children. Additionally, the nonprofit is offering online AI literacy courses intended to help parents and educators teach basic AI fundamentals to children.
The full scope of AI’s capabilities and potential for societal harm became more clear to Newmark by the time companies began “modifying search engines to use generative AI.”
“I realized that if a search engine was using sources that weren’t reliable, if the sources were about lying to people, that would create a big, ethical problem, and you really don’t want a news source of any sort to knowingly lie,” Newmark said.
Newmark is concerned that bad actors will use generative AI to more easily amplify and spread disinformation. At the same time, he’s worried that tech companies, particularly in social media, “aren’t even trying anymore to get rid of stuff they know is dishonest,” he said.
Tech companies like Meta, Amazon and X (formerly known as Twitter) recently laid off numerous trust and safety workers as part of major cost-cutting initiatives, but have said that the downsizing won’t affect the safety of their platforms.
‘Bad uses’ of the internet
Meanwhile, AI has the potential to profoundly affect society, like the internet and the printing press before it, Newmark said. That’s an area where he has notable expertise. Craigslist was both hugely disruptive to newspapers and their classified ads sections, and has been a site that’s attracted criminals and scammers.
Few people predicted the “bad uses” of the internet, which has allowed nefarious actors to “mostly lie to people in large numbers,” Newmark said.
“I guess the profits to be made in being a really good professional liar, those profits have greatly increased because the internet is a big amplifier,” Newmark said. “It’s everyone’s printing press, and you get to use it as a printing press, whether your intentions are good or bad.”
Newmark said he became interested in language-generating software like ChatGPT in the early 1970s, “when people were beginning to talk about language understanding and neural networks.” However, he says, “I didn’t really understand it.”
Now the technology is here and spreading rapidly.
Newmark said he doesn’t want to name names when it comes to the organizations he fears are creating the most societal discontent through AI, because he’s previously been scarred for getting that specific.
“In the past when I’ve pointed out major problems, I’ve learned the hard way that I’m no match for someone who lies for a living,” Newmark said. “So, I’m allowing myself to be chickens—.”
Rather, he said he relies on “people who are both braver and smarter” to call public attention to those matters.
“Protecting kids when it comes to AI is a big issue,” Newmark said, regarding his donation to Common Sense Media. “I have no idea how I would go about getting started, but I know where to put my money where my mouth is.”
Why Common Sense?
“A lot of groups and politicians talk about protecting kids,” Newmark said. “But these guys are the real deal, and so I’m helping them.”
Misinformation and journalism
Newmark acknowledged that the topics of misinformation, journalism and content moderation have become more polarized and politicized of late. House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, alleged that tech companies unfairly censor conservative speech, and he’s undertaken a “censorship investigation” to probe suspected ties between the executive branch and certain technologists and researchers.
Several academics previously told CNBC that the politicized landscape has led to some organizations cutting back on funding research into combating misinformation for fear of being publicly criticized.
“Some people are backing off, some people are getting braver. Again, I’m not very brave,” Newmark said. He highlighted the Knight Foundation and Ford Foundation as organizations that are “doing brave things.”
Within journalism, Newmark’s most high-profile endeavor is the City University of New York’s Craig Newmark Graduate School in Journalism. The program was renamed in 2018 after Newmark endowed the school with a $20 million gift, though he made prior contributions in 2016 and 2017.
He also donated $20 million in 2018 to help fund The Markup, which describes itself as a “nonprofit newsroom that investigates how powerful institutions are using technology to change our society.” That project quickly became controversial after founding Editor-in-Chief Julia Angwinsaid she’d been fired over email by co-founder and Executive Director Sue Gardner.
Still, Newmark says both the CUNY journalism school and The Markup have been successful, while other efforts “have not been successful, and I’m being discreet about them because I’m still trying to help before I have much sterner talks.”
He pegs his philanthropy success rate at “70% or 80%, which is good, but it’s not 100.”
In terms of where he spends his time online, Newmark said he still posts on X, primarily to promote and highlight the work of teachers. However, he said the site is losing its effectiveness as it leans toward showing people algorithmically recommended posts.
Thilina Kaluthotage | Nurphoto | Getty Images
“As a social network, Twitter does seem to be gone,” Newmark said, adding that he’s trying out rivals like Bluesky, Mastodon and Meta’sThreads.
In particular, Newmark said he likes “like the spirit of Mastodon and Bluesky,” which he likened to the early days of the internet when it took a long time for websites to build devoted audiences.
“The audience development is very slow,” Newmark said. “Twitter and everything else grew slowly and the other sites are growing slowly, and yet we are impatient and we want to see network effects now.”
Cybersecurity is another area of focus for Newmark. He pointed to a recent $100 million commitment announced in March to a collection of organizations working on cyber-related issues, like combating the spread of ransomware and creating methods for tech and security companies to share threat information.
He said the total number will probably exceed $100 million, because he’s already “broken through $80 million.”
In June, Newmark’s philanthropy arm also pledged to donate $100 million to multiple organizations supporting veterans and military members, who “sometimes have to choose between decent housing or feeding their families,” Newmark said. He called the treatment of that community “a national security matter.”
“There’s nothing virtuous in that,” Newmark said about his donations, noting that he doesn’t spend his money on “yachts or fast cars.”
“It’s more satisfying to give it away,” Newmark said. “Again, that’s not pious or altruistic. It’s just what I was taught in Sunday school.”
Amazon Web Services Inc. signage at the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California, on March 20, 2025.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Amazon Web Services, a leader in the cloud infrastructure market, reported a major outage on Monday, taking down numerous big-name websites.
AWS cited an “operational issue” affecting “multiple services” and said it was “working on multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery,” in an update at 2:01 a.m. PDT. More than 70 of its own services were affected.
Shortly afterward, AWS said it was seeing “significant signs of recovery.”
By 3:35 a.m. PDT, the issue had been “fully mitigated,” AWS said in an update, adding that most AWS service operations “are succeeding normally now.”
“Some requests may be throttled while we work toward full resolution,” it said, noting some services were continuing to work through a backlog.
British government websites Gov.uk and HM Revenue and Customs were also experiencing issues, per Downdetector.
A government spokesperson told CNBC: “We are aware of an incident affecting Amazon Web Services, and several online services which rely on their infrastructure. Through our established incident response arrangements, we are in contact with the company, who are working to restore services as quickly as possible.”
Lloyds Banking Group confirmed some of its services were affected and asked customers “to bear with us” while it works to restore them. Some 20 minutes later, it added that services were coming back online.
Some United and Delta customers reported on social media that they couldn’t find their reservations online, check in or drop bags.
Other social media users cited disruption across cloud-based games, including Roblox and Fortnite, while crypto exchange Coinbase said many users were unable to access the service due to the outage.
Graphic design tool Canva said it was “experiencing significantly increased error rates which are impacting functionality on Canva. There is a major issue with our underlying cloud provider.”
Generate AI search tool Perplexity is also affected. “The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it,” CEO Aravind Srinivas said in a post on X.
It’s not the first time major companies have been affected by a technical issue; in July 2024, a faulty software upgrade by cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike revealed just how fragile global technology infrastructure is when it caused Microsoft Windows systems to go dark, creating millions of dollars worth of chaos and grounding thousands of flights in the process. It also affected hospitals and banks.
“There’s no sign that this AWS outage was caused by a cyber attack – it looks like a technical fault affecting one of Amazon’s main data centres,” Rob Jardin, chief digital officer at cybersecurity company NymVPN said in a statement. “These issues can happen when systems become overloaded or a key part of the network goes down, and because so many websites and apps rely on AWS, the impact spreads quickly.”
“This incident is a reminder that cybersecurity isn’t only about defending against threats – it’s also about resilience. Businesses should plan for technical failures as seriously as they do for cyber attacks, ensuring they have redundancy, backup systems, and multi-cloud strategies to keep services running when the unexpected happens,” he added.
— CNBC’s Leslie Josephs contributed to this report.
Thomas Fuller | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
A judge ordered that X and xAI’s lawsuit accusing Apple and OpenAI of trying to maintain monopolies in artificial intelligence markets must remain in federal court in Fort Worth, Texas, despite “at best minimal connections” to that geographic area by any of the companies.
Judge Mark Pittman, in a sharply ironic four-page order on Thursday, encouraged the companies to relocate their headquarters to Fort Worth, given their preference for the antitrust lawsuit to be heard there.
Pittman’s order implicitly aims at the tendency of some plaintiffs of a conservative bent to file lawsuits in the Fort Worth division of the U.S. Northern District of Texas courts to increase their chances of winning favorable rulings from the two active judges there, both of whom were appointed by Republicans.
Those plaintiffs have included X and Tesla, both controlled by mega-billionaire Elon Musk, who, until earlier this year, was a top advisor to President Donald Trump.
Pittman was appointed by Trump, but has been critical of the practice of targeting lawsuits to specific judicial districts, known as forum-shopping.
In his order on Thursday, Pittman said that the Fort Worth division’s docket is two to three times busier than the docket of the Dallas division, which has more judges.
Pittman’s order noted that neither Apple nor OpenAI has a strong connection to Fort Worth, other than several Apple stores.
“And, of course, under that logic, there is not a district and division in the entire United States that would not be an appropriate venue for this lawsuit,” Pittman wrote.
X Corp. is headquartered in Bastrop, Texas — roughly 200 miles south of Fort Worth — while both Apple and OpenAI are headquartered in California. Musk’s xAI acquired his social media company X in March in an all-stock transaction.
“Given the present desire to have venue in Fort Worth, the numerous high-stakes lawsuits previously adjudicated in the Fort Worth Division, and the vitality of Fort Worth, the Court highly encourages the Parties to consider moving their headquarters to Fort Worth,” the judge wrote.
“Fort Worth has much more going for it than just the unique artwork on the fourth floor of its historic federal courthouse,” Pittman said.
The judge had asked the three companies to explain why the case belonged in the Fort Worth court.
But neither Apple nor OpenAI requested that the case be moved before the judge’s Oct. 9 deadline, Pittman noted in the order.
Read more CNBC politics coverage
Still, Pittman opted to keep the case in the Fort Worth division.
“The fact that neither Defendant filed a motion to transfer venue serves as a consideration for the Court,” the judge wrote. “And the Court ‘respect[s]’ Plaintiffs’ choice of venue.”
“But the Court does not make its decision lightly or without reservations. This case contains at best minimal connections to the Fort Worth Division of the Northern District of Texas,” Pittman wrote. “Possibly one of the strongest points made by Plaintiffs is the mere fact that ‘Apple sell[s] iPhones [in this Division] (and many other products) and OpenAI offer[s] ChatGPT nationwide.'”
“After more than a decade of service presiding over thousands of cases in three different courts, the undersigned continues to feel strongly that ‘[v]enue is not a continental breakfast; you cannot pick and choose on a Plaintiffs’ whim where and how a lawsuit is filed,'” the judge sniped.
But Pittman noted that he had little, if any, choice in the decision to keep the suit in his courthouse.
The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, whose jurisdiction includes federal courts in Texas, has raised “the standard for transferring venue to new heights,” Pittman wrote.
Last year, the 5th Circuit twice slapped down orders by Pittman to transfer to Washington, D.C., a lawsuit by trade groups representing large banks challenging a rule issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which capped credit card late fees at $8 per month.
The 5th Circuit said Pittman’s court “clearly abused its discretion” in trying to move the case.
OpenAI declined to comment to CNBC, referring a reporter to its public filings in the lawsuit. X and Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Musk’s X and xAI sued Apple and OpenAI in August, alleging the companies of an “anticompetitive scheme” to maintain monopolies in artificial intelligence markets.
The lawsuit accused Apple of favoring OpenAI’s ChatGPT on its App Store rankings and deprioritizing other competitors, such as xAI’s Grok.
Earlier this month, a judge in Washington, D.C., blocked Musk’s request to move the Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit over his alleged improper disclosure of his stake in Twitter to Texas. Musk renamed Twitter to X after purchasing the company.
More companies are announcing AI-driven layoffs from Salesforce to Accenture.
Twenty20
From tech to airlines, large global companies have been slashing staff as the real-world impact of artificial intelligence plays out, spooking employees. But critics say AI has become an easy excuse for firms looking to downsize.
Last month, tech consultancy firm Accenture announced a restructuring plan that includes quick exits for workers that aren’t first able to reskill on AI. Days later, Lufthansa said it was going to eliminate 4,000 jobs by 2030 as it leans on AI to increase efficiency.
The headlines are grim, but Fabian Stephany, assistant professor of AI and work at the Oxford Internet Institute, said there might be more to job cuts than meets the eye.
Previously there may have been some stigma attached to using AI, but now companies are “scapegoating” the technology to take the fall for challenging business moves such as layoffs.
“I’m really skeptical whether the layoffs that we see currently are really due to true efficiency gains. It’s rather really a projection into AI in the sense of ‘We can use AI to make good excuses,'” Stephany said in an interview with CNBC.
Companies can essentially position themselves at the frontier of AI technology to appear innovative and competitive, and simultaneously conceal the real reasons for layoffs, according to Stephany.
“There might be various other reasons why companies are having to get rid of part of their workforce … Duolingo or Klarna are really prime candidates for this because there has been overhiring during Corona [Covid-19 pandemic] as well,” the professor said.
Some companies that flourished during the pandemic “significantly overhired” and the recent layoffs might just be a “market clearance.”
“It’s to some extent firing people that for whom there had not been a sustainable long term perspective and instead of saying “we miscalculated this two, three years ago, they can now come to the scapegoating, and that is saying ‘it’s because of AI though,'” he added.
This pattern has sparked conversation online. One founder, Jean-Christophe Bouglé even said in a popular LinkedIn post that AI adoption is at a “much slower pace” than is being claimed and in large corporations “there’s not much happening” with AI projects even being rolled back due to cost or security concerns.
“At the same time there are announcements of big layoff plans ‘because of AI.’ It looks like a big excuse, in a context where the economy in many countries is slowing down, despite what the incredible performance of stock exchanges suggest,” said Bouglé, who co-founded Authentic.ly.
Feeding the fear of AI
Jasmine Escalera, a careers expert, said this concealment is “feeding the fear of AI” with employees globally concerned about their jobs being replaced as a result of AI.
“So we already know that employees are scared because companies are not being honest, open and communicative about how they’re implementing AI,” Escalera told CNBC Make It. “Now companies are openly stating ‘We’re doing this [layoffs] because of AI’ so it’s feeding the frenzy.”
Escalera said big companies need to be more responsible as they set the tone for what’s the norm in business decision making and avoid greenlighting “bad behavior.”
A Salesforce spokesperson clarified to CNBC that the company deployed its own AI agent, Agentforce, which reduced the number of customer support cases and eliminated the need to “backfill support engineer roles,” they said.
“We’ve successfully redeployed hundreds of employees into other areas like professional services, sales, and customer success,” the Salesforce spokesperson added.
Klarna directed CNBC to its co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski’s comments on X where he explained that the company shrank its workforce from 5,500 to 3,000 people in two years but “AI is only part of that story.”
Siemiatkowski linked the workforce reduction to slimming down its analytics team to one “success team,” with many then leaving by natural attrition as well as the reduction of the company’s customer success team.
Lufthansa and Accenturedeclined to comment on the matter and did not share any further details on their AI restructuring strategy. Duolingo did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Mass AI layoffs are not here
The Budget Lab, a non-partisan policy research center at Yale University, released a report on Wednesday which showed that U.S. labor has actually been little disrupted by AI automation since the release of ChatGPT in 2022.
The lab examined U.S. labor market data from November 2022 to July 2025 using a “dissimilarity index” which measured how much the occupational mix—the share of workers in different jobs—has shifted since AI’s debut and compared it to other technological shifts such as the introduction of computers and the internet.It found that AI hasn’t yet caused widespread job losses.
Additionally, New York Fed economists released research in early September which showed that AI use amongst firms “do not point to significant reductions in employment” across the services and manufacturing industry in the New York–Northern New Jersey region.
It found that 40% of service firms said they were using AI this year, up from 25% last year, while manufacturing firms saw a similar jump from 16% last year to 26% this year, but very few were using AI to layoff workers.
Only 1% of the services firm reported AI as the reason for laying off workers in the past six months, down from 10% that had laid off workers using AI in 2024. Meanwhile, 12% of services firms said AI made them hire less workers in 2025.
By contrast, 35% of services firms have used AI to retrain employees and 11% have hired more as a result.
Stephany said there isn’t much evidence from his research that shows large levels of technological unemployment due to AI.
“Economists call this structural unemployment, so the pie of work is not big enough for everybody anymore and so people will lose jobs definitely because of of AI, I don’t think that this is happening on a mass scale,” he said.
He added that concerns about technology putting an end to human work can be seen throughout history.
“It reoccurred this century alone a dozen times, you can go back to ancient times where Roman emperors put hold to certain machines because they were worried about this and always the contrary happened. The machine made companies, industries more productive.
“It allowed for the emergence of entirely new jobs. If you think about the internet 20 years ago, nobody would have known what a social media influencer is, what an app developer is because it didn’t exist.”
Read more about companies conducting AI layoffs below: