Amazon packages move on a conveyer belt at a fulfillment center in England.
Nathan Stirk | Getty Images
Amazon is planning to hike pay for its operations workers in the U.K. and add 15,000 new staff ahead of the holidays, as the e-commerce giant prepares itself for a wave of demand ahead of Christmas.
The company said Monday that it would increase base pay for its frontline operations workers, who pick, pack, store and ship items in its warehouses, to between £11.80 ($14.39) and £12.50 per hour, depending on location.
The pay increase extends to part-time, temporary and seasonal roles, as well as full-time positions, and will come into effect from Oct. 15.
By April 2024, Amazon said the company will be increasing pay further for its workers to between £12.30 and £13 per hour, depending on their location.
Meanwhile, more than 15,000 additional seasonal workers will be hired at Amazon sites across the U.K., the company said.
Amazon said the move represents a £170 million investment from the online retail giant in pay.
Amazon also says this means that minimum starting pay in its U.K. operations will have increased by 20% in two years, or 50% since 2018.
“We have some of the most talented colleagues around, and we’re proud to offer them competitive wages and benefits, as well as fantastic opportunities for career development, all in a safe and modern work environment,” said John Boumphrey, Amazon’s U.K. country manager.
“These are just some of the reasons people want to work at Amazon – whether it’s their first job, a seasonal role or an opportunity for them to advance their career.”
In a response to the move Monday, the GMB Union said the development would bring “little comfort” to Amazon workers facing poverty pay, unsafe working conditions and workplace surveillance.
“Amazon has spent millions fighting their own workers over union rights and fair pay,” Rachel Fagan, a GMB organizer, said in a statement Monday.
“GMB members have forced a pay rise from one of the world’s most powerful corporations – but Amazon can and must do better.”
A rising push for unionization
Amazon is seeking to appease workers at its core warehouse operations, who have been protesting over what they describe as meager levels of pay and poor working conditions.
In coordination with GMB Union, they also submitted a bid to become a legally recognized union, which would have marked a first for the company in the U.K.
The move also comes amid a rising push for unionization among Amazon workers.
Workers at an Amazon site in Coventry, a city in the U.K., staged the first formal industrial action in the country in January. The workers are unhappy about the wage increases they have received which they say are not enough.
The employees have demanded formal union recognition which would give them the ability to collectively bargain with the Amazon over wages.
Earlier this year, however, the Amazon workers pushing for union recognition were dealt a blow in their bid to unionize when an independent arbitration committee sided with Amazon in determining that the workers lacked the required support to achieve union status.
The efforts from unions have so far failed to galvanize a wave of unionization globally as many had hoped.
It follows a similar step from Amazon to boost hiring by 250,000 in the U.S. in preparation for the wave of additional demand over the holiday shopping season. The retail giant typically staffs up around the peak holiday shopping season, bringing on hordes of temporary workers so it can better keep up with demand.
FILE PHOTO: Ariel Cohen during a panel at DLD Munich Conference 2020, Europe’s big innovation conference, Alte Kongresshalle, Munich.
Picture Alliance for DLD | Hubert Burda Media | AP
Navan, a developer of corporate travel and expense software, expects its market cap to be as high as $6.5 billion in its IPO, according to an updated regulatory filing on Friday.
The company said it anticipates selling shares at $24 to $26 each. Its valuation in that range would be about $3 billion less than where private investors valued Navan in 2022, when the company announced a $300 million funding round.
CoreWeave, Circle and Figma have led a resurgence in tech IPOs in 2025 after a drought that lasted about three years. Navan filed its original prospectus on Sept. 19, with plans to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “NAVN.”
Last week, the U.S. government entered a shutdown that has substantially reduced operations inside of agencies including the SEC. In August, the agency said its electronic filing system, EDGAR, “is operated pursuant to a contract and thus will remain fully functional as long as funding for the contractor remains available through permitted means.”
Cerebras, which makes artificial intelligence chips, withdrew its registration for an IPO days after the shutdown began.
Navan CEO Ariel Cohen and technology chief Ilan Twig started the company under the name TripActions in 2015. It’s based in Palo Alto, California, and had around 3,400 employees at the end of July.
For the July quarter, Navan recorded a $38.6 million net loss on $172 million in revenue, which was up about 29% year over year. Competitors include Expensify, Oracle and SAP. Expensify stock closed at $1.64on Friday, down from its $27 IPO price in 2021.
Navan ranked 39th on CNBC’s 2025 Disruptor 50 list, after also appearing in 2024.
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, speaking with CNBC’s Jim Cramer during a CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer event at the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 7th, 2025.
Kevin Stankiewicz | CNBC
Shares of Amazon, Nvidia and Tesla each dropped around 5% on Friday, as tech’s megacaps lost $770 billion in market cap, following President Donald Trump’s threats for increased tariffs on Chinese goods.
With tech’s trillion-dollar companies occupying an increasingly large slice of the U.S. market, their declines send the Nasdaq down 3.6% and the S&P 500 down 2.7%. For both indexes, it was the worst day since April, when Trump said he would slap “reciprocal” duties on U.S. trading partners.
After market close on Friday, Trump declared in a social media post that the U.S. would impose a 100% tariff on China and on Nov. 1 it would apply export controls “on any and all critical software.”
Amazon, Nvidia and Tesla all slipped about 2% in extended trading following the post.
The president’s latest threats are disrupting, at least briefly, what had been a sustained rally in tech, built on hundreds of billions of dollars in planned spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure.
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In late September, Nvidia, which makes graphics processing units for training AI models, became the first company to reach a market cap of $4.5 trillion. Nvidia alone saw its market capitalization decline by nearly $229 billion on Friday.
OpenAI counts on Nvidia’s GPUs from a series of cloud suppliers, including Microsoft. OpenAI is only seeing rising demand.
In September it introduced the Sora 2 video creation app, and this week the company said the ChatGPT assistant now boasts over 800 million weekly users. But Microsoft must buy infrastructure to operate its cloud data centers. Microsoft’s market cap dropped by $85 billion on Friday.
The sell-off wiped out Amazon’s gains for the year. That stock is now down 2% so far in 2025. It competes with Microsoft to rent out GPUs from its cloud data centers, but it doesn’t have major business with OpenAI. The online retailer is now worth $121 billion less than it was on Thursday.
“There continues to be a lot of noise about the impact that tariffs will have on retail prices and consumption,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told analysts in July. “Much of it thus far has been wrong and misreported. As we said before, it’s impossible to know what will happen.”
Tesla, which introduced lower-priced vehicles on Tuesday, saw its market capitalization sink by $71 billion.
The automaker reports third-quarter results on Oct. 22, with Microsoft earnings scheduled for the following week. Nvidia reports in November.
Google parent Alphabet and Facebook owner Meta fell 2% and almost 4%, respectively.
Govini, a defense tech software startup taking on the likes of Palantir, has blown past $100 million in annual recurring revenue, the company announced Friday.
“We’re growing faster than 100% in a three-year CAGR, and I expect that next year we’ll continue to do the same,” CEO Tara Murphy Dougherty told CNBC’s Morgan Brennan in an interview. With how “big this market is, we can keep growing for a long, long time, and that’s really exciting.”
CAGR stands for compound annual growth rate, a measurement of the rate of return.
The Arlington, Virginia-based company also announced a $150 million growth investment from Bain Capital. It plans to use the money to expand its team and product offering to satisfy growing security demands.
In recent years, venture capitalists have poured more money into defense tech startups like Govini to satisfy heightened national security concerns and modernize the military as global conflict ensues.
The group, which includes unicorns like Palmer Luckey’s Anduril, Shield AI and artificial intelligence beneficiary Palantir, is taking on legacy giants such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, that have long leaned on contracts from the Pentagon.
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Dougherty, who previously worked at Palantir, said she hopes the company can seize a “vertical slice” of the defense technology space.
The 14-year-old Govini has already secured a string of big wins in recent years, including an over $900-million U.S. government contract and deals with the Department of War.
Govini is known for its flagship AI software Ark, which it says can help modernize the military’s defense tech supply chain by better managing product lifecycles as military needs grow more sophisticated.
“If the United States can get this acquisition system right, it can actually be a decisive advantage for us,” Dougherty said.
Looking ahead, Dougherty told CNBC that she anticipates some setbacks from the government shutdown.
Navy customers could be particularly hard hit, and that could put the U.S. at a major disadvantage.
While the U.S. is maintaining its AI dominance, China is outpacing its shipbuilding capacity and that needs to be taken “very seriously,” she added.