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Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai during the Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, on May 10, 2023.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Alphabet executives, donning Halloween costumes, faced questions from concerned employees at an all-hands meeting on Wednesday, following comments on the company’s earnings call suggesting that more cost cuts are coming.

“There is a reality to it,” said Brian Ong, vice president of Google recruiting, according to a recording of the meeting reviewed by CNBC. “We are hiring less than we did a couple of years ago.”

Ong, who was specifically responding to a question about retention and promotion opportunities, added that fewer positions are open and geographic hiring has changed, “so you may see fewer roles available where you are.”

A Google spokesperson declined to comment.

The meeting came after Alphabet reported better-than-expected third-quarter earnings and revenue Tuesday, sparking a rally in the stock. On a call with investors, CFO Anat Ashkenazi, who recently succeeded Ruth Porat, proclaimed she wanted to “push a little further” with cost savings across the company.

Google’s chief scientist, Jeff Dean, wore a starfish costume to the meeting, while Ashkenazi sported a jersey of former Indiana Pacers star Reggie Miller. CEO Sundar Pichai wore a black t-shirt that read “ERROR 404 COSTUME NOT FOUND” with an image of a pixelated dinosaur.

Ashkenazi said one of her key priorities in the new role would be to make more cuts as Google expands its spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure in 2025.

It’s a theme that began in 2023, when the economy and market turned, and has continued since. Google has been restructuring its workforce to move more quickly in the AI arms race, where it faces increased competition. That’s included layoffs, organizational shake-ups, and has led to workers feeling a “decline in morale,” as CNBC previously reported.

Over the last couple of months, Google has made cuts to its marketing, cloud and security teams in Silicon Valley, as well as in its trust and safety unit.

Google is far from alone. Dropbox this week announced it will lay off 20% of its global workforce, while Amazon continues shuttering various projects. Within Google, employees have expressed concern that the company is preparing for more layoffs, possibly after the end of the year, according to internal correspondence viewed by CNBC.

Alphabet is one of the best valued Magnificent 7 stocks says Jake Dollarhide

Pichai joked that the quarterly call was perfect preparation for Ashkenazi ahead of the company meeting.

“I was telling Anat yesterday, earnings calls are a piece of cake compared to TGIF the next day,” Pichai said, to laughs from attendees.

Some employee comments and questions included praise for “another great quarter,” success in chip advancements and improvements in Google’s hit AI note-taking tool NotebookLM. However, other questions expressed fear of what greater cost efficiencies would mean for the workforce.

“What exactly was meant by the comments on further efficiencies in headcount”? one question asked, pointing to Ashkenazi’s comments from the call.

Ashkenazi didn’t share any more details but said employees are “one of the most important assets we have.” She said that the company is investing in people and that it hired 1,000 new graduates in the third quarter.

‘Extraordinary period of capex advancement’

Pichai, who’s been preaching efficiency for almost two years, chimed in to echo past sentiment.

“If you have to do something new and it’s going to take 10 people, if you can find a way to do it with eight people by making smart trade-offs somewhere and aligning teams better, that’s an example of finding efficiencies in headcount as well,” Pichai said.

In response to another question about ongoing layoffs and reorganizations and what might be coming in the future, Pichai said, “If we are making companywide decisions, we’ll definitely let you know.”

He said the company is spending heavily on AI at the moment, but the need to ramp up those expenses won’t last forever.

“We are going through an extraordinary period of capex advancement,” Pichai said. “When you have these technology shifts, at the earlier stages, you invest disproportionately and then the curve gets better and that’s the transition as an industry we are working through.”

He added that not all of the cuts are decided on by top executives.

“It’s not like all of these decisions are centrally done at a company level,” he said. “And so, at the scale of our company, there could be moments where there are small groups of people impacted.”

Ashkenazi on Tuesday mentioned that one way to get more cost efficiency is by using AI internally. The company said 25% of new code is now generated by AI.

In response to a question about productivity, Brian Saluzzo, head of “Core” developers, said that while the 25% refers to low-level tasks, leadership is in the midst of “expanding to more complex areas” within the company.

“Core” refers to the teams that build the technical foundation underlying Google’s flagship products. In May, CNBC reported that Google laid off more than 200 employees from its Core engineering teams, in a reorganization that included rehiring some roles in India and Mexico.

Pichai followed up by saying, “In this transition moment, across all functions, everywhere in the company, it’s worth challenging us to think where we can use AI to be more productive.”

He added that through 2025, the workforce should “strive to do more” and “help customers around the world take those learnings as well.”

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Marvell plunges 19% as outlook falls short of high expectations

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Marvell plunges 19% as outlook falls short of high expectations

Matt Murphy, CEO of Marvell Technology.

Scott Mlyn | CNBC

Marvell Technology shares plummeted more than 19% after the chipmaker’s guidance fell short of some elevated buyside estimates.

For the first fiscal quarter, the chipmaker said it expects sales of about $1.88 billion. That was just ahead of the $1.87 billion expected by analysts polled by LSEG. However, the outlook fell short of some buyside expectations calling for around $2 billion in revenue, disappointing investors after the stock soared 83% in 2024.

The results fueled some concerns about Marvell’s partnership with Amazon Web Services on its Trainium AI chip, and the potential lack of upside for Marvell’s custom application-specific integrated circuits business.

“Solid numbers missed the high watermark set by the rest of the AMZN supply chain,” wrote Barclays analyst Tom O’Malley in a note after the report. “While the company continues to sound good re: the future of their ASIC prospects, the AMZN numbers near term are a bit lower, which is the real sticking point for a market punishing anything not perfect in AI.”

Marvell is known for creating customized chips and hardware used in data centers, networking and infrastructure. The company has benefited from the artificial intelligence boon that has lifted the sector, but chipmakers now face elevated expectations for financial performance.

For the fourth quarter, Marvell reported adjusted earnings per share of 60 cents and revenue of $1.82 billion. That was slightly ahead of the earnings per share estimate of 59 cents and $1.80 billion revenue prediction, according to LSEG.

Data centers revenue came in at $1.37 billion, beating the $1.36 billion average estimate.

Other semiconductor stocks slumped alongside Marvell, with the VanEck Semiconductor ETF last down 4%. AI chip leader Nvidia and Broadcom dropped more than 5% each. Taiwan Semiconductor fell nearly 4%.

— CNBC’s Kristina Partsinevelos contributed reporting.

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Amazon cloud launches service for helping game companies with streaming

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Amazon cloud launches service for helping game companies with streaming

Attendees walk through an exposition hall at AWS re:Invent, a conference hosted by Amazon Web Services, in Las Vegas on Dec. 3, 2024.

Noah Berger | Getty Images

Amazon’s cloud unit said Thursday that it’s launching a service to allow video game publishers to stream their games online.

GameLift Streams will deliver games to any device with a browser that supports the WebRTC standard, Amazon said in a blog post. That includes smart TVs, phones, tablets and PCs. One way the service can be used is to rapidly distribute titles in development to testers, and then securely remove access later.

“Lots of AAA games are using the service in that regard,” Chris Lee, general manager and head of immersive technologies at Amazon Web Services, told CNBC. A handful of companies, such as Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive, invest heavily in top-flight games with high production quality.

AWS generates a considerable amount of its revenue from core services such as renting out access to server and storage space, with data centers located around the world. But the company has hundreds of other services available to software developers. For the past decade, AWS has served as Amazon’s main profit engine.

Jackbox Games, a developer of casual games such as “Quiplash” and “Fibbage,” plans to rely on GameLift Streams to release a game-streaming service that will provide access to many of its titles. Jackbox’s games are currenlty available for an upfront fee.

Evan Jacover, Jackbox’s technology chief, said his company looked into building its own technology for streaming but decided to go with AWS after learning of its plans.

“It’s not a core competency at Jackbox Games,” Jacover said, adding the startup had a proof of concept, or POC. “We got a POC up, but it wasn’t efficient to get it really working well.”

Jackbox’s goal is to release an early ad-supported version of its service in the first half of the year, with more games and a subscription option to follow. Because the company’s games aren’t heavy on graphics, they don’t have major latency concerns and can work well on streaming.

Amazon GameLift Streams supports 1080p resolution at 60 frames per second.

“That’s kind of the sweet spot when we talk to customers,” Lee said.

Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Sony’s PlayStation 5 Pro can go up to 4K resolution and 120 frames per second, accommodating more advanced video. But modern game consoles cost hundreds of dollars.

The cost of GameLift Streams is based on which Nvidia graphics processing units customers use, along with consumption of storage for game data. Games can run on Windows or Linux. No modifications are required to integrate the service, the blog post said.

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Growth in AWS is key to Amazon's earnings story, says Truist Securities' Youssef Squali

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More trifold smartphones are popping up after Huawei’s $3,600 splash

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More trifold smartphones are popping up after Huawei's ,600 splash

BARCELONA — China’s Huawei isn’t the only smartphone maker adding a third display to its devices.

At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) trade show in Barcelona, a number of firms were showing off their display technology innovations.

The South Korean tech giant Samsung revealed its new “trifold” concept devices at the event: the Flex G and Flex S.

The Flex G has three screens and folds flat inwards and outwards, a bit like a book. The Flex S, on the other hand, has a more zigzag-like shape. It’s meant to resemble an “S” — hence the name.

The Flex S is another concept device Samsung showed off at MWC. It folds in a more zigzag-like way to make an “S” shape.

Ryan Browne | CNBC

It comes after Chinese tech giant Huawei last month launched its new Mate XT, a 3,499 euro ($3,678.56) smartphone with three screens, in international markets.

Samsung stressed that its Flex G and S models were only concept devices — so don’t expect to find them on shelves anytime soon.

Still, it’s a sign of where smartphone makers are seeing the next wave of innovation.

‘Sea of sameness’

The smartphone market has hit something of a plateau over recent years, with many models not straying far from the standard form factor of a bar-shaped device.

'Sea of sameness': Are smartphone makers out of ideas?

Apple set the tone for what the devices in our pockets would look like when it launched the first iPhone in 2008. But smartphone makers are now trying to pull the market out of this so-called “sea of sameness.”

On Tuesday, British consumer tech startup Nothing launched its new Phone (3a), a 329-euro ($356.28) budget model with a quirky design and LED light system that lights up when you get calls or notifications.

Nothing co-founder Akis Evangelidis — who is planning a move to India as the startup plans an aggressive expansion push in the country — told CNBC the company is trying to shake up the smartphone market with something more fun and unique.

Using the Indian market as an example, Evangelidis said: “People are walking away from pure functional needs when it comes to product. They aspire to brands that have more of an emotional benefit, and I think that’s where the opportunity is.”

Innovating on display

However, although smartphone makers have been aggressively working to release new folding devices, the category remains a relatively niche area of the market.

Plus, folding phones can represent a big jump for the average consumer.

For one, they tend to be bulkier than non-folding phones because of the additional screen. And they’re not cheap, either. According to data from market research firm IDC, the average selling price of folding phones is nearly three times higher than that of normal smartphones — roughly $1,218 vs. $421 for non-folding phones.

While the foldable phone market grew 6.4% year-over-year to 19.3 million units, the category “represents only 1.6% of total global shipments,” according to Francisco Jeronimo, vice president EMEA for devices at IDC.

Nevertheless, this year at MWC, phone companies showed they’re getting better at developing folding phones that can better cater to everyday users.

For example, Oppo showed off its new Find N5 device this week. It only has two screens, but it’s a lot thinner than competing folding phones, such as Samsung’s Galaxy Fold 6.

Samsung currently holds the leading position in the global foldables segment. In 2024, it commanded a 32.9% share of the market. Huawei was close behind, with 23.1%, while Motorola was the third-biggest folding phone manufacturer with 17% market share. 

And despite the punchy prices, these companies are betting consumers will be willing to pay for a more premium-grade experience.

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