Three weeks after Flexport founder Ryan Petersen fired Dave Clark as CEO and returned to run his supply chain software startup, the company has ousted its chief financial officer, and its human resources chief has resigned, CNBC has learned.
Flexport informed CFO Kenny Wagers last week that he was being let go, according to people familiar with the situation. His last day is Friday.
Stuart Leung, Flexport’s head of finance, is expected to be named CFO, said the people, who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter. Leung has worked at Flexport for seven years in various operations, logistics and finance roles, and is viewed as a close confidant of Petersen’s.
Petersen, who founded Flexport a decade ago and built it into a Silicon Valley darling valued at $8 billion by prominent investors, reclaimed the top position at the company on Sept. 6, after he and the board forced Clark to resign. Clark, who spent 23 years at Amazon and became a top member of Jeff Bezos’ leadership team, was hired by Petersen a year ago, in part to help the company move towards an IPO, sources said.
Clark and Petersen worked as co-CEOs of Flexport starting last September, and Clark took over as the company’s sole CEO in March. Petersen became a venture partner at Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, one of Flexport’s top backers.
Jennifer Boden, Flexport’s vice president of people tech and employee experience, is also leaving the company, the sources said. Boden took over the role earlier this month after her predecessor, Darcie Henry, was let go from Flexport.
A Flexport spokesperson confirmed the personnel moves, and said that Michael Brown will take on a new role as Head of Restructuring and CEO Initiatives, but declined comment on possible layoffs.
“Kenny Wagers made a tremendous impact at Flexport, and we are grateful for his contributions steering Flexport as one of the fastest-growing companies during his tenure. We wish Kenny the best as he pursues his next opportunities. Stuart Leung will become Flexport’s Chief Financial Officer and report to Ryan Petersen, CEO, effective immediately. Stuart has been with Flexport for nearly seven years having held vital senior leadership roles in finance, sales, and operations. As CFO, he will focus on leading Flexport’s return to profitability and growth.
“Michael Brown will take on the role of SVP, Head of Restructuring and CEO Initiatives. In this newly created role, he will focus on restructuring the business to be more customer-centric and leading our return to profitability. Jennifer Boden will be leaving Flexport to pursue new opportunities. We thank Jennifer for her leadership and wish her all the best in her future endeavors.”
Petersen has fired many of the executives Clark recruited from Amazon, including Henry, as well as Teresa Carlson, who was the company’s president; Tim Collins, who served as executive vice president of global operations; and Kelly Cheeseman, a vice president and chief of staff.
Flexport launched in 2013 as a digitally focused freight forwarder, and recently has moved to become an end-to-end supply chain services company, acquiring fulfillment provider Deliverr from Shopify in May. In addition to Founders Fund, the company has also raised capital from Andreessen Horowitz and SoftBank.
While Flexport’s business was thriving during the Covid e-commerce boom, it’s been hit hard over the past year as global economic tumult has led to a dramatic slump in global freight movements.
In a series of posts on X, many of which were subsequently deleted, Petersen publicly excoriated Clark and his plans for growth at the company. He said Flexport would rescind 55 offer letters, and look to lease out office space.
Prior to the Clark saga, executives had been working on an IPO timeline and were targeting a 2025 debut, according to an internal document viewed by CNBC. Now the company is in cost-cutting mode, and is expected to announce more layoffs in the coming weeks, the people said.
In January, Flexport laid off about 20% of the company’s workforce, or roughly 640 employees.
Altimeter Capital CEO Brad Gerstner said Thursday that he’s moving out of the “bomb shelter” with Nvidia and into a position of safety, expecting that the chipmaker is positioned to withstand President Donald Trump’s widespread tariffs.
“The growth and the demand for GPUs is off the charts,” he told CNBC’s “Fast Money Halftime Report,” referring to Nvidia’s graphics processing units that are powering the artificial intelligence boom. He said investors just need to listen to commentary from OpenAI, Google and Elon Musk.
President Trump announced an expansive and aggressive “reciprocal tariff” policy in a ceremony at the White House on Wednesday. The plan established a 10% baseline tariff, though many countries like China, Vietnam and Taiwan are subject to steeper rates. The announcement sent stocks tumbling on Thursday, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq down more than 5%, headed for its worst day since 2022.
The big reason Nvidia may be better positioned to withstand Trump’s tariff hikes is because semiconductors are on the list of exceptions, which Gerstner called a “wise exception” due to the importance of AI.
Nvidia’s business has exploded since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, and annual revenue has more than doubled in each of the past two fiscal years. After a massive rally, Nvidia’s stock price has dropped by more than 20% this year and was down almost 7% on Thursday.
Gerstner is concerned about the potential of a recession due to the tariffs, but is relatively bullish on Nvidia, and said the “negative impact from tariffs will be much less than in other areas.”
He said it’s key for the U.S. to stay competitive in AI. And while the company’s chips are designed domestically, they’re manufactured in Taiwan “because they can’t be fabricated in the U.S.” Higher tariffs would punish companies like Meta and Microsoft, he said.
“We’re in a global race in AI,” Gerstner said. “We can’t hamper our ability to win that race.”
YouTube on Thursday announced new video creation tools for Shorts, its short-form video feed that competes against TikTok.
The features come at a time when TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is at risk of an effective ban in the U.S. if it’s not sold to an American owner by April 5.
Among the new tools is an updated video editor that allows creators to make precise adjustments and edits, a feature that automatically syncs video cuts to the beat of a song and AI stickers.
The creator tools will become available later this spring, said YouTube, which is owned by Google.
Along with the new features, YouTube last week said it was changing the way view counts are tabulated on Shorts. Under the new guidelines, Shorts views will count the number of times the video is played or replayed with no minimum watch time requirement.
Previously, views were only counted if a video was played for a certain number of seconds. This new tabulation method is similar to how views are counted on TikTok and Meta’s Reels, and will likely inflate view counts.
“We got this feedback from creators that this is what they wanted. It’s a way for them to better understand when their Shorts have been seen,” YouTube Chief Product Officer Johanna Voolich said in a YouTube video. “It’s useful for creators who post across multiple platforms.”
CEO of Meta and Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attend the inauguration ceremony before Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th U.S. president in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025.
Saul Loeb | Via Reuters
Technology stocks plummeted Thursday after President Donald Trump’s new tariff policies sparked widespread market panic.
Apple led the declines among the so-called “Magnificent Seven” group, dropping nearly 9%. The iPhone maker makes its devices in China and other Asian countries. The stock is on pace for its steepest drop since 2020.
Other megacaps also felt the pressure. Meta Platforms and Amazon fell more than 7% each, while Nvidia and Tesla slumped more than 5%. Nvidia builds its new chips in Taiwan and relies on Mexico for assembling its artificial intelligence systems. Microsoft and Alphabet both fell about 2%.
The drop in technology stocks came amid a broader market selloff spurred by fears of a global trade war after Trump unveiled a blanket 10% tariff on all imported goods and a range of higher duties targeting specific countries after the bell Wednesday. He said the new tariffs would be a “declaration of economic independence” for the U.S.
Companies and countries worldwide have already begun responding to the wide-sweeping policy, which included a 34% tariff on China stacked on a previous 20% tax, a 46% duty on Vietnam and a 20% levy on imports from the European Union.
China’s Ministry of Commerce urged the U.S. to “immediately cancel” the unilateral tariff measures and said it would take “resolute counter-measures.”
The tariffs come on the heels of a rough quarter for the tech-heavy Nasdaq and the worst period for the index since 2022. Stocks across the board have come under pressure over concerns of a weakening U.S. economy. The Nasdaq Composite dropped nearly 5% on Thursday, bringing its year-to-date loss to 13%.
Trump applauded some megacap technology companies for investing money into the U.S. during his speech, calling attention to Apple’s plan to spend $500 billion over the next four years.