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A logo of US company’s Meta is displayed during the Vivatech technology startups and innovation fair, at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, on May 22, 2024.

Julien De Rosa | Afp | Getty Images

A former Meta staffer who was placed on a “Do Not Hire” list after he stalked and harassed one of the company’s employees found himself rehired by the tech giant after it gutted its talent and recruitment department, a lawsuit filed Tuesday says. 

The suit, filed in New York Supreme Court on behalf of Meta employee James Napoli, accuses the company of violating New York City’s human rights law and negligence for hiring the person back. It also accuses the company of retaliation after it allegedly sidelined Napoli and took him off big projects when he raised concerns that the person had been rehired.

“I had spoken to my employer about this … on numerous occasions and I was told that he would not be able to enter our offices, that he would not be hired again, and then like, all of a sudden, this guy is reaching out to me [on Meta’s internal messaging system],” Napoli, a marketing leader who works out of Meta’s New York City office, told CNBC in an interview. “I trusted that my employer would be able to keep me safe, right? Because stalkers and harassers are also workplace hazards. … And this isn’t just a hazard for me, this is a dangerous individual that was let back into the workplace.” 

The lawsuit comes after CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in March 2023 that Meta would be reducing the size of its recruiting team as part of a larger strategy to cut 21,000 jobs, remove layers of middle management and operate more efficiently.

Although Wall Street has responded favorably to Meta’s cost-cutting plans, layoffs in the company’s customer service and trust and safety teams have made it harder for the social networking giant to respond to concerns from small businesses and influencers, as well as state and local election officials who use Facebook and Instagram, CNBC has previously reported.

In the aftermath of Meta’s cost-cutting efforts and ensuing layoffs, attorneys for Napoli say in the lawsuit that the company is relying “more heavily on hiring employees through outside contractors” and employs “far fewer recruiters to screen applicants,” which has negatively impacted their ability to properly catch red flags.

“Meta’s employment practices are apparently so chaotic, reckless, and ineffectual that the company fails to keep track of the most fundamental data point in its workplace – the dangerous people who pose a severe risk to Meta’s own employees,” the lawsuit, filed by attorneys Carrie Goldberg and Peter Romer-Friedman, states. “Yet Meta tells the public and public officials that the company has the ability to safeguard the personal data of billions of children and adults on their platforms.”

Meta has previously dealt with similar allegations that it’s employed workers who have engaged in stalking and related activity. For example, in 2018, the company said it fired a security engineer who allegedly used internal data to stalk women online.

Meta didn’t immediately respond to request for comment on the lawsuit filed Tuesday.

‘Do Not Hire’ list

The person accused of stalking Napoli, identified only by the initials “G.F.” in the complaint, was a member of Meta’s marketing team before he was laid off in November 2022 when the company cut 13% of its staff as part of a larger restructuring. 

Before the layoffs, G.F. and Napoli occasionally saw each other in meetings but were no more than “work acquaintances,” Napoli said. After G.F. lost his job, he reached out to Napoli for support and asked him to get a coffee. During that meeting, the accused stalker started making “disturbing” comments, the filing states. 

“[He] told me that he hears voices, God talks to him, and God had been talking to him about me since April of that year, and he sent me a list of documents that were his like journal entries over the months,” Napoli recalled.

Napoli “immediately” reported the incident to his manager and to HR, and says at first he was concerned for G.F.’s well-being. But over the next year, Napoli says, the situation escalated. 

G.F. began sending Napoli up to 30 messages a day, contacting his family members and referencing Napoli’s partner, friends and even his dog, Luigi, in messages. 

“I am being mind tortured with an A.I tech which I don’t know where it’s coming from and I am feeling like my love for you is being used for experiences I didn’t agree for, while I am being told by spirits that you and I are the two messengers,” G.F. wrote in one message to Napoli, according to the complaint. 

G.F. found out where Napoli lived and “personally delivered a large ream of disturbing writings and drawings” to the apartment, forcing Napoli and his partner to move, the lawsuit says. 

“It really felt like I was drowning for a long time because there was just nothing that I could do to escape. … It was really terrifying,” said Napoli. “I was worried about going out, I was worried about my dog, I was worried about my partner, because they were all mentioned by this person.” 

Napoli reported G.F. to the police and considered getting a restraining order, but under New York state law orders of protection are only available to people who have an intimate or familial relationship to their stalker, the lawsuit states. 

In September 2023, Napoli informed Meta that the stalking had increased “in both frequency and severity,” and the HR department assured him that G.F. was on the company’s “Do Not Hire” list and its “No Entry” list, which identifies people who shouldn’t be permitted into company buildings.

But just four months later, the company hired G.F. back to a contractor position after he apparently slipped through the cracks in the hiring process, the lawsuit says. Napoli learned his accused stalker was back at Meta when G.F.’s name popped up on Workplace, the company’s internal messaging system. Napoli says he received a message from G.F. stating that he’d been rehired and would be seeing him at meetings and events. 

“To have all of that come back after I was guaranteed that I would be kept safe, it was really harrowing,” said Napoli. “I immediately went to [HR]… they let me know that they were equally stunned. They didn’t have an answer as to how it happened, and they let me know that they would investigate.” 

Terminated again

For the next month, Napoli says he “lived in terror of interacting with G.F. at work” until Meta notified him that G.F. had been terminated. However, after G.F. lost his job a second time, his “stalking and harassment of Mr. Napoli significantly amplified and became more creative, sexually violent, and obsessive,” the lawsuit states.

As Napoli grappled with the continued stalking, he also faced what the lawsuit says was retaliation at Meta for complaining to his managers and to HR about the decision to rehire G.F.

Napoli had been tapped to lead an artificial intelligence marketing push at Meta, but says that in response to his complaints, those projects were taken away and he found himself sidelined with reduced responsibilities. 

In his complaint, Napoli is asking for damages but didn’t specify an amount. He also asked the court to enter judgements that would prohibit G.F. from being rehired at Meta and prohibit the company from “engaging in any further discriminatory or retaliatory acts” against Napoli. 

“I want to be able to do my job, and I want to be able to do my job without feeling like the shoe is going to drop,” said Napoli. “I am very passionate about my work, and I take a lot of pride in my work, and that is really all I want to be able to do.” 

Napoli said he decided to tell his story because he wants Meta to make reforms that would prevent something like this from happening again. 

“It doesn’t seem to me as though there are the right processes in place to stop this from happening to … me or to someone else,” said Napoli. “Everybody deserves a safe workplace.” 

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Cybersecurity firm Netskope files to go public on the Nasdaq

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Cybersecurity firm Netskope files to go public on the Nasdaq

Sanjay Beri, chief executive officer and founder of Netskope Inc., listens during a Bloomberg West television interview in San Francisco, California.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Cloud security platform Netskope will go public on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “NTSK,” the company said in an initial public offering filing Friday.

The Santa Clara, California-based company said annual recurring revenue grew 33% to $707 million, while revenues jumped 31% to about $328 million in the first half of the year.

But Netskope isn’t profitable yet. The company recorded a $170 million net loss during the first half of the year. That narrowed from a $207 million loss a year ago.

Netskope joins an increasing number of technology companies adding momentum to the surge in IPO activity after high inflation and interest rates effectively killed the market.

So far this year, design software firm Figma more than tripled in its New York Stock Exchange debut, while crypto firm Circle soared 168% in its first trading day. CoreWeave has also popped since its IPO, while trading app eToro surged 29% in its May debut.

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Netskope’s offering also coincides with a busy period for cybersecurity deals.

The year’s two biggest technology deals include Alphabet’s $32 billion acquisition of Wiz and Palo Alto Networksambitious plan to buy Israeli identity security company CyberArk for $25 billion.

Founded in 2012, Netskope made a name for itself in its early years in the cloud access security broker space. The company lists Palo Alto Networks, Cisco, Zscaler, Broadcom and Fortinet as its major competitors.

Netskope’s biggest backers include Accel, Lightspeed Ventures and Iconiq, which recently benefited from Figma’s stellar debut.

Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan are leading the offering. Netskope listed 13 other Wall Street banks as underwriters.

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Meta set to unveil first consumer-ready smart glasses with a display, wristband next month

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Meta set to unveil first consumer-ready smart glasses with a display, wristband next month

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech at the Meta Connect annual event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on Sept. 25, 2024.

Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters

Meta is planning to use its annual Connect conference next month to announce a deeper push into smart glasses, including the launch of the company’s first consumer-ready glasses with a display, CNBC has learned.

That’s one of the two new devices Meta is planning to unveil at the event, according to people familiar with the matter. The company will also launch its first wristband that will allow users to control the glasses with hand gestures, the people said.

Connect is a two-day conference for developers focused on virtual reality, AR and the metaverse. It was originally called Oculus Connect and obtained its current moniker after Facebook changed its parent company name to Meta in 2021.

The glasses are internally codenamed Hypernova and will include a small digital display in the right lens of the device, said the people, who asked not to be named because the details are confidential.

The device is expected to cost about $800 and will be sold in partnership with EssilorLuxottica, the people said. CNBC reported in October that Meta was working with Luxottica on consumer glasses with a display.

Meta declined to comment. Luxottica, which is based in France and Italy, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Meta began selling smart glasses with Luxottica in 2021 when the two companies released the first-generation Ray-Ban Stories, which allowed users to take photos or videos using simple voice commands. The partnership has since expanded, and last year included the addition of advanced AI features that made the second generation of the product an unexpected hit with early adopters. 

Luxottica owns a number of glasses brands, including Ray-Ban, and licenses many others like Prada. It’s unclear what brand Luxottica will use for the glasses with AR, but a Meta job listing posted this week said the company is looking for a technical program manager for its “Wearables organization,” which “is responsible for the Ray-Ban AR glasses and other wearable hardware.”

In June, CNBC reported that Meta and Luxottica plan to release Prada-branded smart glasses. Prada glasses are known for having thick frames and arms, which could make them a suitable option for the Hypernova device, one of the people said. 

Meta Connect 2024 kicks off

Last year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg used Connect to showcase the company’s experimental Orion AR glasses.

The Orion features AR capabilities on both lenses, capable of blending 3D digital visuals into the physical world, but the device served only as a prototype to show the public what could be possible with AR glasses. Still, Orion built some positive momentum for Meta, which since late 2020 has endured nearly $70 billion in losses from its Reality Labs unit that’s in charge of building hardware devices.

With Hypernova, Meta will finally be offering glasses with a display to consumers, but the company is setting low expectations for sales, some of the sources said. That’s because the device requires more components than its voice-only predecessors, and will be slightly heavier and thicker, the people said.

Meta and Ray-Ban have sold 2 million pairs of their second-generation glasses since 2023, Luxottica CEO Francesco Milleri said in February. In July, Luxottica said that revenue from sales of the smart glasses had more than tripled year over year.

As part of an extension agreement between Meta and Luxottica announced in September, Meta obtained a stake of about 3% in the glasses company according to Bloomberg. Meta also gets exclusive rights to Luxottica’s brands for its smart glasses technology for a number of years, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC in June.

Although Hypernova will feature a display, those visual features are expected to be limited, people familiar with the matter said. They said the color display will offer about a 20 degree field of view — meaning it will appear in a small window in a fixed position — and will be used primarily to relay simple bits of information, such as incoming text messages. 

Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s technology chief, said earlier this month that there are advantages to having just one display rather than two, including a lower price.

“Monocular displays have a lot going for them,” Bosworth said in an Instagram video. “They’re affordable, they’re lighter, and you don’t have disparity correction, so they’re structurally quite a bit easier.”

‘Interact with an AI assistant’

Other details of Meta’s forthcoming glasses were disclosed in a July letter from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol to a lawyer representing Meta. While the letter redacted the name of the company and the product, a person with knowledge of the matter confirmed that it was in reference to Meta’s Hypernova glasses.

“This model will enable the user to take and share photos and videos, make phone calls and video calls, send and receive messages, listen to audio playback and interact with an AI assistant in different forms and methods, including voice, display, and manual interactions,” according to the letter, dated July 23.

The letter from CBP was part of routine communication between companies and the U.S. government when determining the country of origin for a consumer product. It refers to the product as “New Smart Glasses,” and says the device will feature “a lens display function that allows the user to interface with visual content arising from the Smart Features, and components providing image data retrieval, processing, and rendering capabilities.”

CBP didn’t provide a comment for this story.

The Hypernova glasses will also come paired with a wristband that will use technology built by Meta’s CTRL Labs, said people familiar with the matter. CTRL Labs, which Meta acquired in 2019, specializes in building neural technology that could allow users to control computing devices using gestures in their arms. 

The wristband is expected to be a key input component for the company’s future release of full AR glasses, so getting data now with Hypernova could improve future versions of the wristband, the people said. Instead of using camera sensors to track body movements, as with Apple’s Vision Pro headset, Meta’s wristband uses so-called sEMG sensor technology, which reads and interprets the electrical signals from hand movements.

One of the challenges Meta has faced with the wristband involves how people choose to wear it, a person familiar with the product’s development said. If the device is too loose, it won’t be able to read the user’s electrical signals as intended, which could impact its performance, the person said. Also, the wristband has run into issues in testing related to which arm it’s worn on, how it works on men versus women and how it functions on people who wear long sleeves.

The CTRL Labs team published a paper in Nature in July about its wristband, and Meta wrote about it in a blog post. In the paper, the Meta team detailed its use of machine learning technology to make the wristband work with as many people as possible. The additional data collected by the upcoming device should improve those capabilities for future Meta smart glasses.

“We successfully prototyped an sEMG wristband with Orion, our first pair of true augmented reality (AR) glasses, but that was just the beginning,” Meta wrote in the post. “Our teams have developed advanced machine learning models that are able to transform neural signals controlling muscles at the wrist into commands that drive people’s interactions with the glasses, eliminating the need for traditional—and more cumbersome—forms of input.”

Bloomberg reported the wristband component in January.

Meta has recently started reaching out to developers to begin testing both Hypernova and the accompanying wristband, people familiar with the matter said. The company wants to court third-party developers, particularly those who specialize in generative AI, to build experimental apps that Meta can showcase to drum up excitement for the smart glasses, the people said.

In addition to Hypernova and the wristband, Meta will also announce a third-generation of its voice-only smart glasses with Luxottica at Connect, one person said.

That device was also referenced by CBP in its July letter, referring to it as “The Next Generation Smart Glasses.” The glasses will include “components that provide capacitive touch functionality, allowing users to interact with the Smart Glasses through touch gestures,” the letter said.

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Google shares rise on report of Apple using Gemini for Siri

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Google shares rise on report of Apple using Gemini for Siri

Google CEO Sundar Pichai gestures to the crowd during Google’s annual I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California on May 20, 2025.

Camille Cohen | Afp | Getty Images

Alphabet shares rose on a Friday report that Apple is in early discussions to use Google’s Gemini AI models for an updated version of the iPhone-maker’s Siri assistant.

The company’s shares rose more than 3% on the Bloomberg report, which said Apple recently inquired of Google about the potential for the search giant to build a custom AI model that would power a new Siri that could launch next year. Google’s flagship AI models Gemini have consistently been atop key benchmarks for artificial intelligence advancements while Apple has struggled to define its own AI strategy.

The reported talks come as Google faces potential risk to its lucrative search deals with Apple. This month, a U.S. judge is expected to rule on the penalties for Google’s alleged search monopoly, in which the Department of Justice recommending eliminating exclusionary agreements with third parties. For Google, that refers to its search position on Apple’s iPhone and Samsung devices — deals that cost the company billions of dollars a year in payouts.

The Android maker has said its Gemini models will become the default assistant on Android phones. Google this year has showed Gemini doing capabilities that go beyond Siri’s capabilities, such as summarizing videos. 

Craig Federighi, who oversees Apple’s operating systems, said at last year’s developer conference that the iPhone maker would like to add other AI models for specific purposes into its Apple Intelligence framework. Federighi specifically mentioned Google, whose Gemini can now hold conversations with users and handle input that comes from photos, videos, voice or text. Apple is also exploring partnerships with Anthropic and OpenAI as it tried to renew its AI roadmap, according to a June Bloomberg report.

Documents revealed during Google’s remedy trial showed executives from Apple were involved in the negotiations over using Google’s Gemini for a potential search option.

Google declined to comment. 

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