Google offers ‘voluntary’ buyouts to hardware and platform teams
Google’s Senior Vice President Hardware, Rick Osterloh, speaks during a launch event in San Francisco, October 4, 2017.
Stephen Lam | Reuters
Google is offering buyouts to employees in its “Platforms and Devices” unit ahead of expected cuts.
That unit includes more than 25,000 full-time employees who work on Android, Chrome, ChromeOS, Google Photos, Google One, Pixel, Fitbit and Nest, according to internal documents reviewed by CNBC. The voluntary exit enrollment applies to full-time employees in the U.S. It’s unclear how many of the unit’s full-time workers are based in the U.S.
“This gives eligible P&D Googlers in my direct-reporting org the ability to voluntarily leave the company with a severance package,” wrote Rick Osterloh, senior vice president of Platforms and Devices, in a memo to employees Thursday that was viewed by CNBC.
The buyouts are a signal of expected cuts within Google as it continues prioritizing artificial intelligence. In October, new CFO Anat Ashkenazi said one of her top priorities would be to drive more cost cutting as Google expands its spending on AI infrastructure in 2025.
“Any organization can always push a little further and I’ll be looking at additional opportunities,” she said, referring to cost cutting.
A Google spokesperson confirmed the buyout program to CNBC, saying it comes after the company combined its Android and Pixel divisions last April.
“There’s tremendous momentum on this team and with so much important work ahead, we want everyone to be deeply committed to our mission and focused on building great products, with speed and efficiency,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
The “voluntary exit plan” may be a fit for employees who are struggling to meet the demands of their jobs, the unit’s hybrid work environment or whose passions don’t align with the division’s mission and goal, Osterloh said. The program is the “right next step” for the unit as it aims to “operate with more efficiency and velocity,” Osterloh added.
Employees have until Feb. 20 to enroll in the exit program. Those who volunteer will find out whether they’ve been accepted on March 25, a memo states.
‘Offering buyouts first is what we asked for’
Some employees praised Google’s decision to offer buyouts rather than immediately laying off employees, according to internal posts viewed by CNBC.
“The P&D email portends layoffs, which sucks but offering buyouts first is what we asked for, is the right thing to do, and Rick deserves a lot of credit for delivering,” one employee said in an internal post that received hundreds of upvotes.
Employees this week were circulating an internal petition titled “job security” ahead of expected cost cuts, CNBC reported Tuesday. One of their asks was for the company to offer voluntary buyouts before conducting layoffs.
Last week, Google said it would be acquiring some of the engineering team from HTC Vive, one of the top virtual-reality headset makers, to “accelerate the development of the Android XR platform across the headset and glasses ecosystem.”
In August, Google announced new AI features for Android devices and directly installed them in its homegrown Pixel devices, a move that put its AI in front of consumers before Apple could introduce its Apple Intelligence AI suite of features to iPhone users.
Though Platforms and Device is not the juggernaut moneymaker that Google’s search ads business is, the division’s revenue rose to $10.66 billion in the third quarter, up nearly 28% from $8.34 billion the year prior. Google reported total revenue of $88.27 billion that quarter.
Google, like other tech companies, faces the potential risk of rising hardware costs if President Donald Trump’s blanket tariffs go into effect. Trump is expected to reveal more details on which specific tariffs will be placed on imports from China, Canada, and Mexico in the coming days.
In January 2024, Google laid off some employees from its hardware and central engineering teams, as well as workers in Google Assistant, its voice-activated software product.
Tech news outlet 9to5Google first reported some of details of the unit’s voluntary exit program.
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Dado Ruvic | Reuters
Dina Powell McCormick, who was a member of President Donald Trump’s first administration, has resigned from Meta’s board of directors.
Powell McCormick, who previously spent 16 years working at Goldman Sachs, notified Meta of her resignation on Friday, according to a filing with the SEC. The filing did not disclose why McCormick was stepping down from Meta’s board, but said her resignation was effective immediately.
Meta does not plan on replacing her board role, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named due to confidentiality. Powell McCormick is considering a potential strategic advisory role with Meta, but nothing has been decided, the person said.
Powell McCormick joined Meta’s board in April along with Stripe co-founder and CEO Patrick Collison. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement at the time that the two executives “bring a lot of experience supporting businesses and entrepreneurs to our board.”
Powell McCormick served as a deputy national security advisor to President Trump during his first stint in office and was also an assistant secretary of state during President George W. Bush’s administration.
She is married to Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa, who took office in January.
Powell McCormick is the vice chair, president and head of global client services at BDT & MSD Partners, which formed in 2023 after the merchant bank BDT combined with Michael Dell’s investment firm MSD.
With her departure, Meta now has 14 board members, including UFC CEO Dana White, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan and former Enron executive John Arnold.
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Technology
Musk’s $56 billion Tesla pay package must be restored as court rules cancellation was too extreme
Elon Musk‘s 2018 CEO pay package from Tesla, worth some $56 billion when it vested, must be restored, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled Friday.
“We reverse the Court of Chancery’s rescission remedy and award $1 in nominal damages,” the judges wrote in their opinion.
In the decision, the Delaware Supreme Court judges said a lower court’s decision to cancel Musk’s 2018 pay plan was too extreme a remedy and that the lower court did not give Tesla a chance to say what a fair compensation ought to be.
The decision on the appeal in this case, known as Tornetta v. Musk, likely ends the yearslong fight over Musk’s record-setting compensation.
Musk’s net worth is currently estimated at around $679.4 billion, according to the Forbes Real Time Billionaires List.
Dorothy Lund, a professor at Columbia Law School, told CNBC that while the Friday opinion may restore the 2018 pay plan for Musk, it leaves the rest of the lower court’s decision unaddressed and intact.
“The court had previously decided that Musk was a controlling shareholder of Tesla and that the Tesla board and he arranged an unfair pay plan for him,” she said. “None of that was reversed in this decision.”
“We are proud to have participated in the historic verdict below, calling to account the Tesla board and its largest stockholder for their breaches of fiduciary duty,” lawyers representing plaintiff Richard J. Tornetta said in an e-mailed statement.
Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Delaware Supreme Court issued the order per curiam with no single judge taking credit for writing the opinion and no dissent noted.
Musk’s 2018 CEO pay package from Tesla, comprised of 12 milestone-based tranches of stock, was unprecedented at the time it was proposed. After it was granted, the pay plan made Musk the wealthiest individual in the world.
Tesla shareholder Tornetta sued Tesla, filing a derivative action in 2018, accusing Musk and the company’s board of a breach of their fiduciary duties.
Delaware’s business-specialized Court of Chancery decided in January 2024 that the pay plan was improperly granted and ordered it to be rescinded.
In her decision, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick also found that Musk “controlled Tesla,” and that the process leading to the board’s approval of his 2018 pay plan was “deeply flawed.”
Among other things, she found the Tesla board did not disclose all the material information they should have to investors before asking them to vote on and approve the plan.
After the earlier Tornetta ruling, Musk moved Tesla’s site of incorporation out of Delaware, bashed McCormick by name in posts on his social network X, formerly Twitter, where he has tens of millions of followers, and called for other entrepreneurs to reincorporate outside of the state.
Tesla also attempted to “ratify” the 2018 CEO pay plan by holding a second vote with shareholders in 2024.
In November, Tesla shareholders voted to approve an even larger CEO compensation plan for Musk.
The 2025 pay plan consists of 12 tranches of shares to be granted to the CEO if Tesla hits certain milestones over the next decade and is worth about $1 trillion in total. The new plan could also increase Musk’s voting power over the company from around 13% today to around 25%.
Shareholders had also approved a plan to replace Musk’s 2018 CEO pay if the Tornetta decision was upheld on appeal. That plan is now nullified.
As CNBC previously reported, a law firm that currently represents Tesla in this appeal penned a bill to overhaul corporate law in Delaware earlier this year. The bill was passed by the Delaware legislature in March, and if it had applied retroactively, it could have affected the outcome of this case.
Read the Delaware Supreme Court’s ruling here.
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