After Google scrapped its diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, hiring aspirations in February, CEO Sundar Pichai addressed the matter with his employees at a company all-hands meeting. 

“We believe in building a representative workforce,” Pichai said, according to audio obtained by CNBC. “We’re a global company, we have users around the world, and we think the best way to serve them well is by having a workforce that represents that diversity, and we’ll continue to do that.”

“At the same time, as a company we will always have to comply with local laws,” Pichai added. 

Among the most notable changes by Google thus far was with Melonie Parker, the company’s chief diversity officer. As of February, her title has been changed to vice president of Googler engagement.

Google’s approach to DEI is emblematic of changes that companies across the U.S. are making to their DEI programs in the wake of President Donald Trump’s election and initial actions in his return to the White House. 

Over the past decade, Silicon Valley and other industries used DEI programs to root out bias in hiring, promote fairness in the workplace and advance the careers of women and people of color – demographics that have historically been overlooked.

While DEI started as an umbrella acronym to even the playing field, it’s become a loaded term.

In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled against Harvard University’s affirmative action admission policies – a decision that had implications for how corporations hire. In one of his first acts of his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January to end the government’s DEI programs and put federal officials overseeing those initiatives on leave.

The order directs “all departments and agencies to take strong action to end private sector DEI discrimination, including civil compliance investigations.” The administration has targeted nearly 50 companies that it’s deemed to be in violation of its anti-DEI rules, Bloomberg reported in February.

Among the first of those targets is the Walt Disney Company. The Federal Communications Commission informed the company on Friday that it will begin an investigation into the DEI efforts at the media giant.

Trump has shown he’s willing to fault DEI policies for human tragedy.

Following a midair collision between an American Airlines regional jet and a Black Hawk military helicopter above Washington in January, Trump blasted the Biden administration’s DEI policies for the crash without citing any evidence. Trump claimed DEI “could have been” to blame for the deadliest plane crash in the U.S. since 2001.

“When you have the president blaming DEI for a plane crash, I think it makes sense that companies don’t want to be out there no matter how they define it internally,” Emerson said.

Despite DEI becoming such a divisive term, companies are not necessarily ending their efforts. They’re rebranding them. Many companies are continuing DEI work but using different language or rolling it under less charged terminology, like “learning” or “hiring.”

That’s when Google began getting rid of staffers who were in charge of recruiting people from underrepresented groups, CNBC reported. The company also let go of DEI leaders under Parker.

Amazon also reorganized its DEI group in 2023 and brought global teams under one umbrella named “Inclusive Experiences & Technology.” The company renamed the group to better represent the nature of the work, a company spokesperson told CNBC, adding that Amazon remains committed to building a diverse and inclusive company.

As part of that overhaul, Amazon’s Candi Castleberry changed her vice president title from “VP of Global Diversity Equity and Inclusion” to “VP of Inclusive Experiences & Technology.”

Tech’s DEI rollback has accelerated in 2025. 

Google, which has cloud-computing contracts with federal agencies, announced in February that it would retire its aspirational hiring targets following Trump’s executive orders. Google’s commitments for 2025 had included increasing the number of people from underrepresented groups in leadership by 30% and more than doubling the number of Black workers at non-senior levels.

“Our values are enduring, but we have to comply with legal directions depending on how they evolve,” Pichai told staffers at the February all-hands meeting.

He and Parker were answering a question from staffers about how the company’s DEI programs would be impacted given Trump’s recent executive orders.

“As a federal contractor, we have been reviewing all our programs, all our initiatives,” Parker said. “With regards to training, we’re going to deprecate, or stop or sunset, a number of our training programs that are focused on DEI.”

A spokesperson for Google did not clarify which of the company’s DEI programs have been cut.

Pichai went on to assure workers that Google would continue to support its employee resource groups. Those are employee-led networks within the company that focus on specific demographic or affinity groups, such as “Women@Google” and “Black Googler Network.”

Those comments, however, came before the Equality Employment Opportunity Commission published guidance in March that listed ERGs as a potential violation of Trump’s executive order if they are exclusionary. Google’s ERGs are open to all employees and do not exclude any protected groups, the company spokesperson told CNBC.

“Based on the current legal climate, we’re reviewing our DEI programs and making changes where needed,” the Google spokesperson said in a statement.

The sensitivity of the term DEI came to the forefront earlier this month at Austin’s annual South by Southwest conference. There, Google and Oracle had been slated to participate in a panel, originally titled “Successful Workplaces: Balancing Growth and Well-Being.” 

“Attendees will leave with actionable insights to align business success with a thriving workplace culture,” an early description of the panel noted. 

Oracle dropped out from the panel in February. That month, panel organizers informed participating companies that they were considering changing the focus of the conversation to the state of DEI in the workplace.

“The fact that the Trump administration took such an aggressive approach to DEI just made obvious, in our view, how timely this discussion was,” said panel organizer Luis Gramajo, founder of nonprofit Sunday Afternoon Foundation, which helped organize that particular SXSW panel.

The Google panelist dropped out in March after the panel’s name was officially changed to “Post-DEI Workplace: Tech Companies Managing Through Turmoil.”

“We went through I don’t know how many prep calls, we changed the title of this eight plus times, we lost people who were afraid to be on this panel,” said Chelsea Toler, one of the SXSW panelists and a co-founder at Logictry, an Austin startup.

Google was not informed of the change until late February, the company spokesperson told CNBC, adding that the panel’s new topic was outside of the employee’s role and experience.

“We had a couple different panelists back out because this conversation, which is so important, has become kind of nuclear at this point, which is wild,” said Diana Ransom, Inc. Magazine executive editor and the panel’s moderator, at the event.

Gramajo said he doesn’t begrudge any of the panelists or companies that pulled out of the panel.

“They are, as we all are, navigating an incredibly complex and uncertain time, where the rules are not clear,” he said.

Amazon has also pulled back on DEI. 

The company told staffers in December that it was halting some of its DEI programs as part of a broader review of those initiatives. It also eliminated references to inclusion and diversity in its annual report while altering a website to remove sections titled “Equity for Black people” and “LGBTQ+ rights.” 

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy characterized the DEI eliminations as being part of Amazon’s ongoing cost-cutting efforts. 

“If you look at us, kind of like a lot of other companies, particularly after George Floyd, and particularly because we’re so decentralized, we had a lot of programs in this area,” Jassy told staffers earlier this month, according to audio obtained by CNBC. “We had about 300 programs.” 

Amazon began evaluating its DEI programs “a couple years ago,” Jassy said. 

“We realized there were several of them where we weren’t getting enough value out of them for us to be investing in that way and those programs, we streamlined those,” Jassy said. “And in the programs where we were having a real impact, we doubled down.”

It’s unclear which programs Amazon cut and which it has expanded. 

Pew Research in 2023 found that 86% of workers say they have a neutral-to-favorable opinion about increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace. Paradigm, meanwhile, published a study last year which found that 73% of companies included diversity, equity  and inclusion in their company values, on par with 2023.

“The feeling of the moment doesn’t match a lot of the data I’m looking at,” Blanche-Sarellano said. 

The experts that spoke with CNBC said they’ve yet to lose any clients as a result of the DEI backlash. To the contrary, they said they are optimistic that organizations will be forced to be more thoughtful about their plans and do away with “performative” aspects of DEI that did little to move the needle.

Experts said one key example of performative actions were when companies signaled support for social media movements, like 2020’s Blackout Tuesday, without any meaningful action to follow. Another example were companies that added chief diversity officers to their ranks without giving them formalized decision-making power or budgets.

Among the changes happening now are companies shifting away from diversity reports, which tracked hiring based on different genders and ethnicities, and focusing instead on tracking the rates at which promotions and attrition happen, Emerson said. 

Companies are also changing how they have candidates apply for programs, Emerson said. With internships designed for specific ethnicities, for example, candidates might no longer simply check whether they are black or Hispanic but instead write an essay about their background, she said. 

Some experts are helping their clients calculate how much risk they may face by continuing DEI work under different names.

“There’s a lot of legal gray area right now,” Blanche-Sarellano said. “At the end of the day, they want to focus on investing in their employees, not spend all their resources on a lawsuit.”

Companies have to weigh the risk of regulatory compliance and the potential for public backlash against the cost of doubling down on DEI, said Y-Vonne Hutchinson, founder of ReadySet, a firm that helps clients “build adaptable organizations.”

“A lot of these companies have more diverse consumers,” she said. “They still have to think about what is going to make them money and viable businesses have to think about a global audience.”

ReadySet, for example, has what it calls a “DEI Risk Assessment Tool” which measures DEI risks across five dimensions: Legal and compliance, reputational, financial, cultural and workforce and operational risks. 

By changing the terminology that is used, companies can prevent their work from being susceptible to misunderstanding, said Emerson, adding that her firm Paradigm is advising companies to be more specific about what they want to achieve.

“We should be more precise in the language we use,” she said. 

But while some experts are encouraging companies to change their terminologies, others are advising those in the field to continue touting DEI. 

That was the case at the Post-DEI panel at SXSW. The panelists challenged the notion that they should stop using it.

“DEI means everybody has a fair and equitable opportunity to succeed,” said Fran Harris, an entrepreneur based in Austin. “We have to remind people what DEI is – it is the work. It’s not just an acronym. It’s the work of creating equal opportunities, period.”

Panelists encouraged attendees to not succumb to fear.

“In this country, when we stop using our voice because we’re scared, we’ve lost,” Logictry’s Toler said.

DNA testing has become a valuable tool for hobbyists and novice genealogists. For some, learning they are the 10th cousin of Paul Revere or the 15th great nephew four times removed of the last King of Prussia is worth the perceived risk of sharing a DNA sample. But what happens when the company harvesting the DNA goes bankrupt? 

That was the question posed to millions of Americans last week when 23andMe, the company that popularized consumer genetic testing and had early backing from Google, filed for bankruptcy, leading to a wave of calls for Americans to delete their DNA from the company’s database.

While it’s not 100 percent clear if the “delete your DNA” calls were warranted, privacy experts are alarmed, and Americans who had taken the genetic test took the advice to heart.

According to data from online traffic analysis company Similarweb, on March 24, the day of the bankruptcy announcement, 23andMe received 1.5 million visits to its website, a 526% increase from one day prior. According to Similarweb, 376,000 visits were made to help pages specifically related to deleting data, and 30,000 were made to the customer care page for account closure. The next day, that figure rose to 1.7 million visits, and rraffic to the delete data help page about 480,000.

Margaret Hu, professor of law and director of the Digital Democracy Lab at William & Mary Law School, thinks Americans made the right move. “This development is a disaster for data privacy,” said Hu. In her view, the 23andMe bankruptcy should serve as a warning as to why the federal government needs strong data protection laws.

In some states, Hu noted, the government is taking an active role in counseling consumers. The California Attorney General’s Office is urging Californians to delete their data and have 23andMe destroy saliva samples. But Hu says that is not enough, and such guidance should be provided to all U.S. citizens.

The potential national security implications of 23andMe’s data falling into the wrong hands are not new. In fact, the Pentagon had previously warned military personnel that these DNA kits could pose a risk to national security.

Exposing DNA collected from consumers is not a new issue for 23andMe, either. In 2023, almost 7 million people who took the genetic test were already exposed in a major 23andMe data breach. The company signed an agreement that involved a $30 million settlement and a promise of three years’ worth of security monitoring.

But Hu says the bankruptcy does make the company, and its data, especially vulnerable now.

Drug research and genetic testing data

One of the things notable about the consumer mindset in the early years of the popularization of genetic testing was that a majority of users opted into sharing their DNA for research purposes, as much as 80% in the years when 23andMe was growing rapidly. Then, as the market for consumer sale of the popular DNA test kits reached saturation sooner than many expected, 23andMe focused more on research and development partnerships with drug companies as a way to diversify its revenue.

Currently, when 23andMe sells genetic data to other research companies, most is used at an aggregate level, as part of millions of data points being analyzed as a whole. The company also strips out identifying data from the genetic data, and no registration information (like a name or email) is included. Data researchers do need, such as date of birth, is stored separately from genetic data, and shared with randomly assigned IDs.

Hu is among the experts concerned these practices could change under 23andMe or any new buyer. “In a time of financial vulnerability, companies such as pharmaceutical companies might see an opportunity to exploit the research benefits of the genetic data,” Hu said, adding that they might try to renegotiate prior contracts to extract more data from the company. “Will the next company that buys 23andMe do that?,” Hu said of its privacy policies.

In recent days, 23andMe has said it will try to find a buyer who shares its privacy values.

23andMe did not respond to a request for comment.

Over the years since 23andMe’s founding in 2006, many customers were willing to send in a swab to learn more about their family history. Lansing, Michigan resident Elaine Brockhaus, 70, and her family were excited to learn more about their lineage when they submitted samples of their DNA to 23andMe. But with the company now teetering in bankruptcy and privacy experts concerned about what happens to the millions of people with DNA samples stored, Brockhaus says the whole thing has “caused a bit of a ruckus in my family.”  

“We enjoyed some aspects of 23&Me,” Brockhaus said. “They continually refined and updated our heritage as more people joined, and they were better able to pinpoint genetically related groups,” Brockhaus said. She was able to learn more about health risk factors that were present or not present in her past.

Now, her family has come full circle in the 23andMe experience: some members were initially reluctant to go along, and now, Brockhaus says, everyone has deleted their accounts.

A unique company collapse, but everyday cyber risks

But Brockhaus continues to view 23andMe within a larger consumer health market where the risks are not new, and health information is being shared in all sorts of environments where security issues could arise. “Anyone sending ColoGuard or receiving medical results through the mail is taking a risk of exposure,” Brockhaus said. “Our very identities can be stolen with a few keystrokes. Of course, this does not mean that we should throw up our hands and agree to be victims, but unless we want to dig holes out back and live in them we have to be vigilant, proactive, but not panicked,” she added.

Jon Clay, vice president of threat intelligence at cybersecurity firm Trend Micro, says consumers of 23andMe do need to view the bankruptcy as a threat. In any sale process, if the data is not transferred and guarded in the most secure manner possible, “it is at risk of being used by malicious actors for a number of nefarious purposes,” he said.

Clay thinks 23andMe’s data is incredibly valuable to cybercriminals — not just because it’s permanent and personally identifiable, but also because it can be exploited for identity theft, blackmail, or even medical fraud.

“Cybercriminals can use it to target consumers with convincing scams and social engineering tactics, such as fraudulently claiming someone is a blood relative to another person or to send deceptive messages about their potential health risks,” Clay said. “Organizations who go bankrupt should ensure the security and privacy of their customer’s data is critical, and any sharing or selling of data to others should not be done,” he added.

But other experts say the lesson of 23andMe is less about the company’s collapse and the threat to privacy that created than serving as a reminder about the everyday cyber hazards related to personal information.

“When people start talking about personal data, they forget where their data is already sitting,” says Rob Lee, chief of research and head of faculty at SANS Institute, which specializes in helping businesses with information security and cyber issues. Whether it’s sending a blood sample into a private lab or getting rid of a laptop to upgrade to a new one, “your digital footprints are being left out there for people to find,” Lee said. “People don’t understand the scope, so there is a larger discussion out there, specifically around where does data go?”

With DNA information, there are certain basic legal factors people should weigh before swabbing themselves and sending the sample in.

According to Lynn Sessions, an expert on healthcare privacy and digital assets and partner at the law firm BakerHostetler, the federal law that covers patient information privacy, HIPAA, does not apply to this situation, and 23andMe would not be considered a HIPAA-covered entity, or business associate of one. But there are state laws that apply to genetic information that would be in play, such as in California.

Meredith Schnur, a managing director and cybersecurity leader at insurance company Marsh, thinks the risk from 23andMe’s bankruptcy for people who sent in their swabs is relatively low. “It doesn’t cause any additional consternation or heartburn,” Schnur said. “I just don’t think it opens up any additional risk that doesn’t already exist,” she said, adding that many people’s information is “already out there.”

Last week, a 23andMe co-founder, Linda Avey, blasted the company’s leadership. “Without continued consumer-focused product development, and without governance, 23andMe lost its way, and society missed a key opportunity in furthering the idea of personalized health,” Avey wrote in a social media post. “There are many cautionary tales buried in the 23andMe story,” Avey said.

The bankruptcy itself is the issue that is now hard for consumers to ignore, and until the sale process is completed, the questions will remain.

“When you’re in bankruptcy, data privacy values are not what you’re really thinking about. You’re thinking about selling your company to the highest bidder,” Hu said. That highest bidder, Hu says might take the genetic data and consumer profile data and link them together when selling it to others.

And that initial sale which includes the DNA of millions of people may only be the first of many transactions.

“It might sell it off, piece by piece, indiscriminately. And the buyer of that data might be a foreign adversary,” Hu said. “That is why this is not just a data privacy disaster. It’s also a national security disaster.”

A proposed class-action lawsuit against Elon Musk and his family office Excession can proceed in federal court, a judge ruled Friday, after the tech centi-billionaire sought to have the case dismissed.

The case is Rasella v. Musk (Case No. 1:22-cv-03026-ALC-GWG) in the Southern District of New York.

The lawsuit was brought by former Twitter shareholders who allege they lost money when the Tesla and SpaceX CEO was amassing a stake in the social network, but failed to disclose his purchases within a legally-mandated time frame.

The Oklahoma Firefighters Pension and Retirement System and other plaintiffs in the suit complained that they had sold shares of then publicly-traded Twitter at “artificially deflated prices,” while Musk obscured his own interest and stake in the company.

Elon Musk and Jared Birchall did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Musk’s attorneys have argued that while his disclosure was filed after an SEC-mandated deadline, this was merely an error and that the tech magnate did not commit nor intend securities fraud.

In his opinion, Judge Andrew L. Carter in the Southern District of New York wrote that the court agreed with plaintiffs that Musk’s failure to disclose he was snapping up shares of Twitter sent a “false pricing signal to the market.”

In his 43-page opinion, the judge also noted that Musk had posted a tweet on March 26, 2022 indicating he was thinking about buying a different social network, not Twitter, although he had already amassed millions of shares in Twitter as of March 25, 2022.

He wrote, it was “reasonable” to read Musk’s tweet “as a statement meant to misdirect the public to think that buying Twitter was just a fantasy.” The judge also wrote that, “it is more likely than not that Musk issued a material misleading representation,” with those tweets.

Musk ultimately bid on and led a leveraged buyout of Twitter in 2022 in a deal worth about $44 billion. He made sweeping changes to the business, the social platform and later renamed it X.

As previously reported, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a similar lawsuit against Musk over alleged failure to properly disclose purchases of Twitter stock in 2022 before he took over the company.

On Friday, Musk said another one of his ventures, xAI, was merging with the social network in an all-stock transaction, valuing the artificial intelligence business at $80 billion and the social media business at $33 billion.