Jeff Lawson, chief executive officer of Twilio Inc., during the Singapore FinTech Festival in Singapore, on Friday, Nov. 17, 2023.
Lionel Ng | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Software provider Twilio said Monday it would lay off roughly 5% of its workforce, or around 400 employees, citing underachievement in the growth of a unit that activist investors have targeted.
Shares of Twilio were flat on the news.
According to a letter from CEO Jeff Lawson attached to a regulatory filing, the cuts are part of a broader plan to streamline Twilio’s offerings. The company is also sunsetting its Programmable Video product as part of the plan.
The cuts will strike deepest in Twilio’s Data & Applications unit, the same unit that activist investors at Legion Partners and Anson Funds are pushing Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson to divest. Legion Partners declined to comment.
“Last year, we made the decision to invest, ahead of growth, in go-to-market for Segment,” Lawson said in a letter to staff, referring to a Twilio offering that is part of its data & applications group. “Unfortunately, that bet hasn’t led to the growth outcome we’d hoped for.”
Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, speaks during an unveiling event in New York on Feb. 26, 2025.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Tuesday that he’s working to root out bureaucracy from within the company’s ranks as part of an effort to reset its culture.
Speaking at Amazon’s annual conference for third-party sellers in Seattle, Jassy said the changes are necessary for the company to be able to innovate faster.
“I would say bureaucracy is really anathema to startups and to entrepreneurial organizations,” Jassy said. “As you get larger, it’s really easy to accumulate bureaucracy, a lot of bureaucracy that you may not see.”
A year ago, as part of a mandate requiring corporate employees to work in the office five days a week, Jassy set a goal to flatten organizations across Amazon. He called for the company to increase worker-to-manager ratios by at least 15% by the end of the first quarter of this year.
Jassy also announced the creation of a “no bureaucracy email alias” so that employees can flag unnecessary processes or excessive rules within the company.
Amazon has received about 1,500 emails in the past year, and the company has changed about 455 processes based on that feedback, Jassy said.
The changes are linked to Jassy’s broad strategy to overhaul Amazon’s corporate culture and operate like the “world’s largest startup” as it looks to stay competitive.
Jassy, who took the helm from founder Jeff Bezos in 2021, has been on a campaign to slash costs across the company in recent years. Amazon has laid off more than 27,000 employees since 2022, and axed some of its more unprofitable initiatives. Jassy has also urged employees to do more with less at the same time that the company invests heavily in artificial intelligence.
Transforming Amazon into a startup-like environment isn’t an easy task. The company operates sprawling businesses across retail, cloud computing, advertising, and other areas. It’s the U.S. second-largest private employer, with more than 1.5 million employees globally.
“You have to keep remembering your roots and how useful it is to be scrappy,” Jassy said.
The StubHub logo is seen at its headquarters in San Francisco.
Andrej Sokolow | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
Online ticket platform StubHub is pricing its IPO at $23.50, CNBC’s Leslie Picker confirmed on Tuesday.
The pricing comes at the midpoint of the expected range that the company gave last week. At $23.50, the pricing gives StubHub a valuation of $8.6 billion. StubHub will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “STUB.”
The San Francisco-based company was co-founded by Eric Baker in 2000, and was acquired by eBay for $310 million seven years later. Baker reacquired StubHub in 2020 for roughly $4 billion through his new company Viagogo, which operates a ticket marketplace in Europe.
StubHub has been trying to go public for the past several years, but delayed its public debut twice. The most recent stall came in April after President Donald Trump‘s “Liberation Day” tariffs roiled markets.
The company filed an updated prospectus in August, effectively restarting the process to go public.
The IPO market has bounced back in recent months after an extended dry spell due to high inflation and rising interest rates. Klarna made its debut on the NYSE last week after the online lender also delayed its IPO in April. Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss’ Gemini, stablecoin issuer Circle, Peter Thiel-backed cryptocurrency exchangeBullish and design software company Figma have all soared in their respective debuts.
At the top of the pricing range StubHub offered last week, the company would have been valued at $9.2 billion. StubHub had sought a $16.5 billion valuation before it began the IPO process, CNBC previously reported.
StubHub said in its updated prospectus that first-quarter revenue increased 10% from a year earlier to $397.6 million. Operating income came in at $26.8 million for the period.
The company’s net loss widened to $35.9 million from $29.7 million a year ago.
In this photo illustration, the logo of TikTok is displayed on a smartphone screen on April 5, 2025 in Shanghai, China.
Vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Tuesday extended the deadline for ByteDance to divest TikTok’s U.S. business, which will be owned by an investor consortium that includes Oracle and Silver Lake, CNBC’s David Faber reported.
It’s the fourth time Trump has extended the deadline. The extension, as described in an executive order, precludes the Department of Justice from enforcing a national security law that would effectively ban TikTok in the U.S. until Dec. 16.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent revealed on Monday that a “framework deal” had been reached involving TikTok. Under the national security law, which would have come into effect on Wednesday, app store operators like Apple and Google and internet service providers would be penalized for providing services to TikTok’s U.S. operations if a deal was not reached.
Under the framework deal, about 80% of TikTok’s U.S. business would be owned by an investor consortium that includes Oracle, Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz, the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday reported. As part of the arrangement, existing U.S. users would need to shift to a new app, according to report.
Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected on Friday to discuss the terms of the TikTok-related deal that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent revealed on Monday.
The deal, which is expected to close in the next 30 to 45 days, includes new investors, existing ByteDance investors and will result in Oracle maintaining its cloud computing agreement with TikTok, CNBC’s David Faber reported earlier on Tuesday.
Bessent said Tuesday during CNBC’s Squawk Box that Trump was willing to let TikTok “go dark,” which spurred China to agree to a deal. The Treasury Secretary said that the deal’s commercial terms had already been finalized “in essence” since March or April, but China put the deal on hold following Trump’s tough tariffs and trade policies.
“We were able to reach a series of agreements, mostly for things we will not be doing in the future that have no effect on our national security,” Bessent said Tuesday.
A senior White House official said in a statement that, “Any details of the TikTok framework are pure speculation unless they are announced by this administration.”