Meta announces end of DEI programs. Read the internal memo
Meta on Friday told employees that its plans to end a number of internal programs designed to increase the company’s hiring of diverse candidates, the latest dramatic change ahead of President-elect Donald Trump‘s second White House term.
Janelle Gale, Meta’s vice president of people, made the announcement on the company’s Workplace internal communications forum.
Among the changes, Meta is ending the company’s “Diverse Slate Approach” of considering qualified candidates from underrepresented groups for its open roles. The company is also putting an end to its diversity supplier program and its equity and inclusion training programs.
Gale also announced the disbanding of the company’s diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, team, and she said that Meta Chief Diversity Officer Maxine Williams will move into a new role focused on accessibility and engagement.
Several Meta employees responded to Gale’s post with comments criticizing the new policy.
“If you don’t stand by your principles when things get difficult, they aren’t values. They’re hobbies,” one employee posted in a comment that got reaction from more than 600 colleagues.
The DEI policy change follows a number of sweeping policy reversals by the social media company this month. Last week, Meta replaced global affairs head Nick Clegg with Joel Kaplan, a veteran at the company with longstanding ties to the Republican Party. On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg announced a new speech policy that included bringing an end to the company’s third-party fact-checking program.
Axios was first to report the DEI changes at the social media company. Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Below is Gale’s full internal memo, which CNBC obtained.
Hi all,
I wanted to share some changes we’re making to our hiring, development, and procurement practices. Before getting into details, there is some important background to lay out:
The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing. The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI. It reaffirms long standing principles that discrimination should not be tolerated or promoted on the basis of inherent characteristics. The term “DEI” has also become charged, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others.
At Meta, we have a principle of serving everyone. This can be achieved through cognitively diverse teams, with differences in knowledge, skills, political views, backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences. Such teams are better at innovating, solving complex problems and identifying new opportunities which ultimately helps us deliver on our ambition to build products that serve everyone. On top of that, we’ve always believed that no one should be given — or deprived — of opportunities because of protective characteristics, and that has not changed.
Given the shifting legal and policy landscape, we’re making the following changes:
- On hiring, we will continue to source candidates from different backgrounds, but we will stop using the Diverse Slate Approach. This practice has always been subject to public debate and is currently being challenged. We believe there are other ways to build an industry leading workforce and leverage teams made up of world-class people from all types of backgrounds to build products that work for everyone.
- We previously ended representation goals for women and ethnic minorities. Having goals can create the impression that decisions are being made based on race or gender. While this has never been our practice, we want to eliminate any impression of it.
- We are sunsetting our supplier diversity effort within our broader supplier strategy. This effort focused on sourcing from diverse-owned businesses; going forward, we will focus our efforts on supporting small and medium sized businesses that power much of our economy. Opportunities will continue to be available to all qualified suppliers, including those who are part of the supplier diversity program.
- Instead of equity and inclusion training programs, we will build programs that focus on how to apply fair and consistent practices that mitigate bias for all, no matter your background.
- We will no longer have a team focused on DEI. Maxine Williams is taking on a new role at Meta focused on accessibility and engagement.
What remains the same are the principles we’ve used to guide our People Practices:
- We serve everyone. We are committed to making our products accessible, beneficial and universally impactful for everyone.
- We build the best teams with the most talented people. This means sourcing people from a range of candidate pools but never making hiring decisions based on protected characteristics, (e.g., race, gender, etc.). We will always evaluate people as individuals.
- We drive consistency in employment practices to ensure fairness and objectivity for all. We do not provide preferential treatment, extra opportunities or unjustified credit to anyone based on protected characteristics. Nor will we devalue impact based on these characteristics.
- We build connection and community. We support our employee communities, people who use our products and those in the communities. We operate our employee community groups (MRGs) continue to be open to all.
Meta has the privilege to serve billions of people every day. It is important to us that our products are accessible to all, and useful in promoting economic growth and opportunity around the world. We continue to be focused on serving everyone and building a multi-talented, industry-leading workforce from all walks of life.
WATCH: Meta is returning to free speech tradition, says Facebook’s former chief privacy officer Chris Kelly
Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank Group Corp., speaks during the company’s annual general meeting in Tokyo, Japan, on Friday, June 27, 2025.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Intel and SoftBank announced on Monday that the Japanese conglomerate will make a $2 billion investment in the embattled chipmaker.
SoftBank will pay $23 per share for Intel’s common stock, which closed on Monday at $23.66. The shares rose about 6% in extended trading to $25.
The investment makes SoftBank the fifth-biggest Intel shareholder, according to FactSet. It’s a vote of support for Intel, which hasn’t been able to take advantage of the artificial intelligence boom in advanced semiconductors and has spent heavily to stand up a manufacturing business that’s yet to secure a significant customer.
“Masa and I have worked closely together for decades, and I appreciate the confidence he has placed in Intel with this investment,” Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan said in a statement, referring to SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son.
Intel shares lost 60% of their value last year, their worst performance in the company’s more than half-century on the public market. The stock is up 18% in 2025 as of Monday’s close.
Tan took over as Intel CEO in March after his predecessor, Pat Gelsinger, was ousted in December.
Intel has been a major topic of discussion in Washington of late, due to the company’s role as the only American company capable of manufacturing the most advanced chips.
However, Intel’s foundry business, which is designed to manufacture chips for other companies, has yet to secure a major customer, a critical step towards stabilization and expansion. Last month, Intel said it would wait to secure orders before committing to certain future investment in its foundry.
Tan met with President Donald Trump last week after the president had called for the CEO’s resignation. The U.S. government is considering taking an equity stake in Intel, according to reports.
SoftBank, meanwhile, has become an increasingly large player in the global chip and AI markets.
In 2016, SoftBank acquired chip designer Arm in a deal worth about $32 billion at the time. Today the company is worth almost $150 billion. Arm-based chips are part of Nvidia’s systems that go into data centers.
And in March of this year, SoftBank announced plans to acquire another chip designer, Ampere Computing, for $6.5 billion.
SoftBank was also part of President Trump’s Stargate announcement in January, along with OpenAI and Oracle.
The three companies committed to invest an initial $100 billion and up to $500 billion over the next four years in the AI infrastructure project. Two months later, SoftBank led a $40 billion investment into OpenAI, the largest private tech deal on record.
“This strategic investment reflects our belief that advanced semiconductor manufacturing and supply will further expand in the United States, with Intel playing a critical role,” Son said in a statement.
Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks, looks on during the closing bell at the Nasdaq Market in New York City on March 25, 2025.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
Palo Alto Networks reported better-than-expected quarterly results and issued upbeat guidance for the current period. The cybersecurity software vendor said Nir Zuk, who founded the company in 2005, is retiring from his role as chief technology officer.
The stock rose about 6% in extended trading.
Here’s how the company did compared to LSEG estimates:
- Earnings: 95 cents adjusted vs. 88 cents expected
- Revenue: $2.54 billion vs. $2.5 billion expected.
Revenue in the fiscal fourth quarter rose 16% from about $2.2 billion last year, the company said in a statement. Net income fell to about $254 million, or 36 cents per share, from about $358 million, or 51 cents per share, in the year-ago period.
The company also issued upbeat guidance for the fiscal first quarter. Earnings per share will be between 88 cents and 90 cents, Palo Alto said, topping an 85-cents estimate from StreetAccount.
For the full year, Palo Alto said revenue will range from $10.48 billion to $10.53 billion on adjusted earnings of $3.75 to $3.85 per share. Both estimates exceeded Wall Street’s projections.
Palo Alto said that for the fiscal first quarter, remaining purchase obligations, which tracks backlog, will range between $15.4 billion and $15.5 billion, surpassing a $15.07 billion estimate.
Last month, the company announced plans to buy Israeli identity security provider CyberArk for $25 billion. It’s the largest deal Palo Alto has made since its founding, and most ambitious in an acquiring spree that ramped up after CEO Nikesh Arora took the helm of the company in 2018.
Shares sold off sharply after the news broke and have yet to recover previous highs. The stock is down about 3% this year as of Monday’s close.
“We look for great products, a team that can execute in the product, and we let them run it,” Arora told CNBC following the announcement. “This is going to be a different challenge, but we’ve done well 24 times, so I’m pretty confident that our team can handle this.”
Lee Klarich, the company’s product chief, will replace Zuk as CTO and fill his position on the board.
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