AI might be reading your Slack messages: ‘A lot of this becomes thought crime’
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Cue the George Orwell reference.
Depending on where you work, there’s a significant chance that artificial intelligence is analyzing your messages on Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom and other popular apps.
Huge U.S. employers such as Walmart, Delta Air Lines, T-Mobile, Chevron and Starbucks, as well as European brands including Nestle and AstraZeneca, have turned to a seven-year-old startup, Aware, to monitor chatter among their rank and file, according to the company.
Jeff Schumann, co-founder and CEO of the Columbus, Ohio-based startup, says the AI helps companies “understand the risk within their communications,” getting a read on employee sentiment in real time, rather than depending on an annual or twice-per-year survey.
Using the anonymized data in Aware’s analytics product, clients can see how employees of a certain age group or in a particular geography are responding to a new corporate policy or marketing campaign, according to Schumann. Aware’s dozens of AI models, built to read text and process images, can also identify bullying, harassment, discrimination, noncompliance, pornography, nudity and other behaviors, he said.
Aware’s analytics tool — the one that monitors employee sentiment and toxicity — doesn’t have the ability to flag individual employee names, according to Schumann. But its separate eDiscovery tool can, in the event of extreme threats or other risk behaviors that are predetermined by the client, he added.
CNBC didn’t receive a response from Walmart, T-Mobile, Chevron, Starbucks or Nestle regarding their use of Aware. A representative from AstraZeneca said the company uses the eDiscovery product but it doesn’t use analytics to monitor sentiment or toxicity. Delta told CNBC that it uses Aware’s analytics and eDiscovery for monitoring trends and sentiment as a way to gather feedback from employees and other stakeholders, and for legal records retention in its social media platform.
It doesn’t take a dystopian novel enthusiast to see where it could all go very wrong.
Jutta Williams, co-founder of AI accountability nonprofit Humane Intelligence, said AI adds a new and potentially problematic wrinkle to so-called insider risk programs, which have existed for years to evaluate things like corporate espionage, especially within email communications.
Speaking broadly about employee surveillance AI rather than Aware’s technology specifically, Williams told CNBC: “A lot of this becomes thought crime.” She added, “This is treating people like inventory in a way I’ve not seen.”
Employee surveillance AI is a rapidly expanding but niche piece of a larger AI market that’s exploded in the past year, following the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot in late 2022. Generative AI quickly became the buzzy phrase for corporate earnings calls, and some form of the technology is automating tasks in just about every industry, from financial services and biomedical research to logistics, online travel and utilities.
Aware’s revenue has jumped 150% per year on average over the past five years, Schumann told CNBC, and its typical customer has about 30,000 employees. Top competitors include Qualtrics, Relativity, Proofpoint, Smarsh and Netskope.
By industry standards, Aware is staying quite lean. The company last raised money in 2021, when it pulled in $60 million in a round led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Compare that with large language model, or LLM, companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic, which have raised billions of dollars each, largely from strategic partners.
‘Tracking real-time toxicity’
Schumann started the company in 2017 after spending almost eight years working on enterprise collaboration at insurance company Nationwide.
Before that, he was an entrepreneur. And Aware isn’t the first company he’s started that’s elicited thoughts of Orwell.
In 2005, Schumann founded a company called BigBrotherLite.com. According to his LinkedIn profile, the business developed software that “enhanced the digital and mobile viewing experience” of the CBS reality series “Big Brother.” In Orwell’s classic novel “1984,” Big Brother was the leader of a totalitarian state in which citizens were under perpetual surveillance.
“I built a simple player focused on a cleaner and easier consumer experience for people to watch the TV show on their computer,” Schumann said in an email.
At Aware, he’s doing something very different.
Every year, the company puts out a report aggregating insights from the billions — in 2023, the number was 6.5 billion — of messages sent across large companies, tabulating perceived risk factors and workplace sentiment scores. Schumann refers to the trillions of messages sent across workplace communication platforms every year as “the fastest-growing unstructured data set in the world.”
When including other types of content being shared, such as images and videos, Aware’s analytics AI analyzes more than 100 million pieces of content every day. In so doing, the technology creates a company social graph, looking at which teams internally talk to each other more than others.
“It’s always tracking real-time employee sentiment, and it’s always tracking real-time toxicity,” Schumann said of the analytics tool. “If you were a bank using Aware and the sentiment of the workforce spiked in the last 20 minutes, it’s because they’re talking about something positively, collectively. The technology would be able to tell them whatever it was.”
Aware confirmed to CNBC that it uses data from its enterprise clients to train its machine-learning models. The company’s data repository contains about 6.5 billion messages, representing about 20 billion individual interactions across more than 3 million unique employees, the company said.
When a new client signs up for the analytics tool, it takes Aware’s AI models about two weeks to train on employee messages and get to know the patterns of emotion and sentiment within the company so it can see what’s normal versus abnormal, Schumann said.
“It won’t have names of people, to protect the privacy,” Schumann said. Rather, he said, clients will see that “maybe the workforce over the age of 40 in this part of the United States is seeing the changes to [a] policy very negatively because of the cost, but everybody else outside of that age group and location sees it positively because it impacts them in a different way.”
But Aware’s eDiscovery tool operates differently. A company can set up role-based access to employee names depending on the “extreme risk” category of the company’s choice, which instructs Aware’s technology to pull an individual’s name, in certain cases, for human resources or another company representative.
“Some of the common ones are extreme violence, extreme bullying, harassment, but it does vary by industry,” Schumann said, adding that in financial services, suspected insider trading would be tracked.
For instance, a client can specify a “violent threats” policy, or any other category, using Aware’s technology, Schumann said, and have the AI models monitor for violations in Slack, Microsoft Teams and Workplace by Meta. The client could also couple that with rule-based flags for certain phrases, statements and more. If the AI found something that violated a company’s specified policies, it could provide the employee’s name to the client’s designated representative.
This type of practice has been used for years within email communications. What’s new is the use of AI and its application across workplace messaging platforms such as Slack and Teams.
Amba Kak, executive director of the AI Now Institute at New York University, worries about using AI to help determine what’s considered risky behavior.
“It results in a chilling effect on what people are saying in the workplace,” said Kak, adding that the Federal Trade Commission, Justice Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have all expressed concerns on the matter, though she wasn’t speaking specifically about Aware’s technology. “These are as much worker rights issues as they are privacy issues.”
Schumann said that though Aware’s eDiscovery tool allows security or HR investigations teams to use AI to search through massive amounts of data, a “similar but basic capability already exists today” in Slack, Teams and other platforms.
“A key distinction here is that Aware and its AI models are not making decisions,” Schumann said. “Our AI simply makes it easier to comb through this new data set to identify potential risks or policy violations.”
Privacy concerns
Even if data is aggregated or anonymized, research suggests, it’s a flawed concept. A landmark study on data privacy using 1990 U.S. Census data showed that 87% of Americans could be identified solely by using ZIP code, birth date and gender. Aware clients using its analytics tool have the power to add metadata to message tracking, such as employee age, location, division, tenure or job function.
“What they’re saying is relying on a very outdated and, I would say, entirely debunked notion at this point that anonymization or aggregation is like a magic bullet through the privacy concern,” Kak said.
Additionally, the type of AI model Aware uses can be effective at generating inferences from aggregate data, making accurate guesses, for instance, about personal identifiers based on language, context, slang terms and more, according to recent research.
“No company is essentially in a position to make any sweeping assurances about the privacy and security of LLMs and these kinds of systems,” Kak said. “There is no one who can tell you with a straight face that these challenges are solved.”
And what about employee recourse? If an interaction is flagged and a worker is disciplined or fired, it’s difficult for them to offer a defense if they’re not privy to all of the data involved, Williams said.
“How do you face your accuser when we know that AI explainability is still immature?” Williams said.
Schumann said in response: “None of our AI models make decisions or recommendations regarding employee discipline.”
“When the model flags an interaction,” Schumann said, “it provides full context around what happened and what policy it triggered, giving investigation teams the information they need to decide next steps consistent with company policies and the law.”
WATCH: AI is ‘really at play here’ with the recent tech layoffs
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at the Axel Springer building in Berlin on Oct. 17, 2023. He received the annual Axel Springer Award.
Ben Kriemann | Getty Images
Among the thousands of Microsoft employees who lost their jobs in the cutbacks announced this week were 830 staffers in the company’s home state of Washington.
Nearly a dozen game design workers in the state were part of the layoffs, along with three audio designers, two mechanical engineers, one optical engineer and one lab technician, according to a document Microsoft submitted to Washington employment officials.
There were also five individual contributors and one manager at the Microsoft Research division in the cuts, as well as 10 lawyers and six hardware engineers, the document shows.
Microsoft announced plans on Wednesday to eliminate 9,000 jobs, as part of an effort to eliminate redundancy and to encourage employees to focus on more meaningful work by adopting new technologies, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. The person asked not to be named while discussing private matters.
Scores of Microsoft salespeople and video game developers have since come forward on social media to announce their departure. In April, Microsoft said revenue from Xbox content and services grew 8%, trailing overall growth of 13%.
In sales, the company parted ways with 16 customer success account management staff members based in Washington, 28 in sales strategy enablement and another five in sales compensation. One Washington-based government affairs worker was also laid off.
Microsoft eliminated 17 jobs in cloud solution architecture in the state, according to the document. The company’s fastest revenue growth comes from Azure and other cloud services that customers buy based on usage.
CEO Satya Nadella has not publicly commented on the layoffs, and Microsoft didn’t immediately provide a comment about the cuts in Washington. On a conference call with analysts in April, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said the company had a “focus on cost efficiencies” during the March quarter.
WATCH: Microsoft layoffs not performance-based, largely targeting middle managers
Technology
IPO market gets boost from Circle’s 500% surge, sparking optimism that drought may be ending
Jeremy Allaire, CEO and co-founder of Circle Internet Group, the issuer of one of the world’s biggest stablecoins, and Circle Internet Group co-founder Sean Neville react as they ring the opening bell, on the day of the company’s IPO, in New York City, U.S., June 5, 2025.
NYSE
For over three years, venture capital firms have been waiting for this moment.
Tech IPOs came to a virtual standstill in early 2022 due to soaring inflation and rising interest rates, while big acquisitions were mostly off the table as increased regulatory scrutiny in the U.S. and Europe turned away potential buyers.
Though it’s too soon to say those days are entirely in the past, the first half of 2025 showed signs of momentum, with June in particular producing much-needed returns for Silicon Valley’s startup financiers. In all, there were five tech IPOs last month, accelerating from a monthly average of two since January, according to data from CB Insights.
Highlighting that group was crypto company Circle, which more than doubled in its New York Stock Exchange debut on June 5, and is now up sixfold from its IPO price for a market cap of $42 billion. The stock got a big boost in mid-June after the Senate passed the GENIUS Act, which would establish a federal framework for U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins.
Venture firms General Catalyst, Breyer Capital and Accel now own a combined $8 billion worth of Circle stock even after selling a fraction of their holdings in the offering. Silicon Valley stalwarts Greylock, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital are set to soon profit from Figma’s IPO, after the design software vendor filed its public prospectus on Tuesday. Since its $20 billion acquisition agreement with Adobe was scrapped in late 2023, Figma has been one of the most hotly anticipated IPOs in startup land.
It’s “refreshing and something that we’ve been waiting for for a long time,” said Eric Hippeau, managing partner at early-stage venture firm Lerer Hippeau, regarding the exit environment. “I’m not sure that we are confident that this can be a sustained trend yet, but it’s been very encouraging.”
Another positive sign for the industry the past couple months was the performance of artificial infrastructure provider CoreWeave, which went public in late March. The stock was relatively stagnant for its first month on the market but shot up 170% in May and another 47% in June.
For venture firms, long considered the lifeblood of risky tech startups, IPOs are essential in order to generate profits for the university endowments, foundations and pension funds that allocate a portion of their capital to the asset class. Without handsome returns, there’s little incentive for limited partners to put money into future funds.
After a record year in 2021, which saw 155 U.S. venture-backed IPOs raise $60.4 billion, according to data from University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter, every year since has been relatively dismal. There were 13 such offerings in 2022, followed by 18 in 2023 and 30 last year, collectively raising $13.3 billion, Ritter’s data shows.
The slowdown followed the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate-hiking campaign in 2022, meant to slow crippling inflation. As the lower-growth environment extended into years two and three, venture firms faced increasing pressure to return cash to investors.
‘Backlog of liquidity’
In its 2024 yearbook, the National Venture Capital Association said that even with a 34% increase in U.S. VC exit value last year to $98 billion, that number is 87% below the 2021 peak and less than half the average for the four years from 2017 through 2020. It’s a troubling dynamic for the 58,000 venture-backed companies that have raised a total of $947 billion from investors, according to the annual report, which is produced by the NVCA and PitchBook.
“This backlog of liquidity drought risks creating a ‘zombie company’ cohort — businesses generating operational cash flow but lacking credible exit prospects,” the report said.
Other than Circle, the latest crop of IPOs mostly consists of smaller and lesser-known brands. Health-tech companies Hinge Health and Omada Health are valued at about $3.5 billion and $1 billion, respectively. Etoro, an online trading platform, has a market cap of just over $5 billion. Online banking provider Chime Financial has a higher profile due largely to a years-long marketing blitz and is valued at close to $11.5 billion.
Meanwhile, the highest valued private companies like SpaceX, Stripe and Databricks remain on the sidelines, and AI highfliers OpenAI and Anthropic continue to raise massive amounts of cash with no intention of going public anytime soon.
Still, venture capitalists told CNBC that there are plenty of companies with the financial metrics to be public, and that more of them are readying for the process.
“The IPO market is starting to open and the VC world is cautiously optimistic,” said Rick Heitzmann, a partner at venture firm FirstMark in New York. “We are preparing companies for the next wave of public offerings.”
There are other ways to make money in the meantime. Secondary sales, a process that involves selling private shares to new investors, are on the rise, allowing early employees and investors to get some liquidity.
And then there’s what Mark Zuckerberg is doing, as he tries to position his company at the center of AI innovation and development.
Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., during the Meta Connect event on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Last month, Meta announced a $14 billion bet on Scale AI, taking a 49% stake in the AI startup in exchange for poaching founder Alexandr Wang and a small group of his top engineers. The deal effectively bought out half of the stock owned by investors, leaving them with the opportunity to make money on the rest of their holdings, should a future acquisition or IPO take place.
The deal is a big win for Accel, which led Scale AI’s Series A round in 2017, and is poised to earn more than $2.5 billion in the transaction. Index Ventures led the Series B in 2018, and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund led the Series C the following year at a valuation of over $1 billion.
Investors now hope the Federal Reserve will move toward a rate-cutting campaign, though the central bank hasn’t committed to one. There’s also ongoing optimism that regulators will make going public less burdensome. Last week, Reuters reported, citing sources familiar with the matter, that U.S. stock exchanges and the SEC have discussed loosening regulations to make IPOs more enticing.
Mike Bellin, who heads consulting firm PwC’s U.S. IPO practice, said he anticipates a diversity of IPOs across sectors in the second half of the year. According to data from PwC, pharma and fintech were among the most active sectors for deals through the end of May.
While the recent trend in IPO activity is an encouraging sign for investors, potential roadblocks remain.
Tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty delayed IPO plans from companies including Klarna and StubHub in April. Neither has provided an update on when they plan to debut.
FirstMark’s Heitzmann said the path forward is “not at all clear,” adding that he wants to see a strong quarter of economic stability and growth before confidently saying that the market is wide open.
Additionally, other than CoreWeave and Circle, recent tech IPOs haven’t had big pops. Hinge Health, Chime and eToro have seen relatively modest gains from their offer price, while Omada Health is down.
But virtually any activity beats what VCs were experiencing the last few years. Overall, Hippeau said recent IPO trends are generally encouraging.
“There’s starting to be kind of light at the end of the tunnel,” Hippeau said.
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