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Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, attends the inauguration of a new hub in France dedicated to the artificial intelligence sector, at the Google France headquarters in Paris, France, on Feb. 15, 2024.

Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters

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.”

Paradigm’s CEO Joelle Emerson is an advocate for diversity and inclusion.

Source: Paradigm

DEI by any other name

Joelle Emerson has worked since 2014 as a consultant for several hundred clients on workplace performance as well as diversity and inclusion strategies, but last year, she changed the language used to describe her digital platform Paradigm.

Whereas before Paradigm marketed itself as helping clients “harness the power of diversity and inclusion to create a culture where everyone can do their best work and thrive,” the company’s website now states that its solutions “create an inclusive, high-performance culture where everyone can do their best work and thrive.”

Paradigm began using DEI in 2020 after the term proliferated in the corporate response to protests across the country in the wake of George Floyd’s death. 

“We started using that a lot on our websites so that companies searching for ‘DEI’ could find us,” Emerson told CNBC. “Pre-election, as we were seeing a lot of the backlash, we reduced our use of the acronym because I didn’t think it would be the best description of what we do.”

Devika Brij, who does similar work through her Brij The Gap consulting firm, detailed her efforts to distinguish her work in a newsletter sent out in February titled “Tailored Career and Leadership Development Isn’t DEI.” For companies like Brij’s, the re-branding is critical to the future of their business – some of Brij’s clients have slashed their DEI budgets by as much as 90% since 2023, she said at the time. 

It’s not just consulting firms that are rebranding DEI. 

JPMorgan in March announced that it will replace “equity” with “opportunity” in a rebrand of its DEI program. Walmart in November said it was shifting from DEI to saying “Walmart for everyone.” Among Fortune 100 companies, there was a 22% decrease in the use of terms like “DEI” and “diversity” and a 59% increase in terms like “belonging” between 2023 and 2024, according to Paradigm. 

Google kills diversity hiring targets, reviewing other DEI programs

Emerson said 2023 marked the turning point for DEI in Silicon Valley. 

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.

Melonie Parker speaks on stage during The 37th Annual Hispanic Heritage Awards at The Kennedy Center on Sept. 5, 2024 in Washington, DC. 

Paul Morigi | Getty Images

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 CEO Andy Jassy looks on during an Amazon Devices launch event in New York City, U.S., February 26, 2025. 

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

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. 

Continuing the work

“The acronym of DEI is completely unhelpful,” said Aubrey Blanche-Serrallano, vice president of equitable operations at Culture Amp, a human resources platform. “Diversity is incredibly valuable and important, but that specific acronym obscures a lot of what we’re talking about.” 

For all the backlash toward DEI in Washington, recent studies show that this type of work remains popular among workers and companies. 

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.”

Y-Vonne Hutchinson, chief executive officer of ReadySet, speaks during the Bloomberg Breakaway CEO Summit in New York, U.S., on Tuesday, June 18, 2019. 

Mark Kauzlarich | Bloomberg | Getty Images

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.

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‘AI may eat software,’ but several tech names just wrapped a huge week

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'AI may eat software,' but several tech names just wrapped a huge week

A banner for Snowflake Inc. is displayed at the New York Stock Exchange to celebrate the company’s initial public offering on Sept. 16, 2020.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

MongoDB’s stock just closed out its best week on record, leading a rally in enterprise technology companies that are seeing tailwinds from the artificial intelligence boom.

In addition to MongoDB’s 44% rally, Pure Storage soared 33%, its second-sharpest gain ever, while Snowflake jumped 21%. Autodesk rose 8.4%.

Since generative AI started taking off in late 2022 following the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the big winners have been Nvidia, for its graphics processing units, as well as the cloud vendors like Microsoft, Google and Oracle, and companies packaging and selling GPUs, such as Dell and Super Micro Computer.

For many cloud software vendors and other enterprise tech companies, Wall Street has been waiting to see if AI will be a boon to their business, or if it might displace it.

Quarterly results this week and commentary from company executives may have eased some of those concerns, showing that the financial benefits of AI are making their way downstream.

MongoDB CEO Dev Ittycheria told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday that enterprise rollouts of AI services are happening, but slowly.

“You start to see deployments of agents to automate back office, maybe automate sales and marketing, but it’s still not yet kind of full force in the enterprise,” Ittycheria said. “People want to see some wins before they deploy more investment.”

Revenue at MongoDB, which sells cloud database services, rose 24% from a year earlier to $591 million, sailing past the $556 million average analyst estimate, according to LSEG. Earnings also exceeded expectations, as did the company’s full-year forecast for profit and revenue.

MongoDB CEO Dev Ittycheria on Q2 results: The opportunity in front of us is massive

MongoDB said in its earnings report that it’s added more than 5,000 customers year-to-date, “the highest ever in the first half of the year.”

“We think that’s a good sign of future growth because a lot of these companies are AI native companies who are coming to MongoDB to run their business,” Ittycheria said.

Pure Storage enjoyed a record pop on Thursday, when the stock jumped 32% to an all-time high.

The data storage management vendor reported quarterly results that topped estimates and lifted its guidance for the year. But what’s exciting investors the most is early returns from Pure’s recent contract with Meta. Pure will help the social media company manage its massive storage needs efficiently with the demands of AI.

Pure said it started recognizing revenue from its Meta deployments in the second quarter, and finance chief Tarek Robbiati said on the earnings call that the company is seeing “increased interest from other hyperscalers” looking to replace their traditional storage with Pure’s technology.

‘Banger of a report’

Reports from MongoDB and Pure landed the same week that Nvidia announced quarterly earnings, and said revenue soared 56% from a year earlier, marking a ninth-straight quarter of growth in excess of 50%.

Nvidia has emerged as the world’s most-valuable company by selling advanced AI processors to all of the infrastructure providers and model developers.

While growth at Nvidia has slowed from its triple-digit rate in 2023 and 2024, it’s still expanding at a much faster pace than its megacap peers, indicating that there’s no end in sight when it comes to the expansive AI buildouts.

“It was a banger of a report,” said Brad Gerstner CEO of Altimeter Capital, in an interview with CNBC’s “Halftime Report” on Thursday. “This company is accelerating at scale.”

Read more CNBC tech news

Data analytics vendor Snowflake talked up its Snowflake AI data cloud in its quarterly earnings report on Wednesday.

Snowflake shares popped 20% following better-than-expected earnings and revenue. The company also boosted its guidance for the year for product revenue, and said it has more than 6,100 customers using Snowflake AI, up from 5,200 during the prior quarter.

“Our progress with AI has been remarkable,” Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy said on the earnings call. “Today, AI is a core reason why customers are choosing Snowflake, influencing nearly 50% of new logos won in Q2.”

Autodesk, founded in 1982, has been around much longer than MongoDB, Pure Storage or Snowflake. The company is known for its AutoCAD software used in architecture and construction.

The company has underperformed the broader tech sector of late, and last year activist investor Starboard Value jumped into the stock to push for improvements in operations and financial performance, including cost cuts. In February, Autodesk slashed 9% of its workforce, and two months later the company settled with Starboard, adding two newcomers to its board.

The stock is still trailing the Nasdaq for the year, but climbed 9.1% on Friday after Autodesk reported results that exceeded Wall Street estimates and increased its full-year revenue guidance.

Last year, Autodesk introduced Project Bernini to develop new AI models and create what it calls “AI‑driven CAD engines.”

On Thursday’s earnings call, CEO Andrew Anagnost was asked what he’s most excited about across his company’s product portfolio when it comes to AI.

Anagnost touted the ability of Autodesk to help customers simplify workflow across products and promoted the Autodesk Assistant as a way to enhance productivity through simple prompts.

He also addressed the elephant in the room: The existential threat that AI presents.

“AI may eat software,” he said, “but it’s not gonna eat Autodesk.”

WATCH: Autodesk CEO on Q2 earnings

Autodesk CEO on Q2 earnings beat, M&A strategy and activist pressure

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Meta changes teen AI chatbot responses as Senate begins probe into ‘romantic’ conversations

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Meta changes teen AI chatbot responses as Senate begins probe into 'romantic' conversations

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg departs after attending a Federal Trade Commission trial that could force the company to unwind its acquisitions of messaging platform WhatsApp and image-sharing app Instagram, at U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 15, 2025.

Nathan Howard | Reuters

Meta on Friday said it is making temporary changes to its artificial intelligence chatbot policies related to teenagers as lawmakers voice concerns about safety and inappropriate conversations.

The social media giant is now training its AI chatbots so that they do not generate responses to teenagers about subjects like self-harm, suicide, disordered eating and avoid potentially inappropriate romantic conversations, a Meta spokesperson confirmed.

The company said AI chatbots will instead point teenagers to expert resources when appropriate.

“As our community grows and technology evolves, we’re continually learning about how young people may interact with these tools and strengthening our protections accordingly,” the company said in a statement.

Additionally, teenage users of Meta apps like Facebook and Instagram will only be able to access certain AI chatbots intended for educational and skill-development purposes.

The company said it’s unclear how long these temporary modifications will last, but they will begin rolling out over the next few weeks across the company’s apps in English-speaking countries. The “interim changes” are part of the company’s longer-term measures over teen safety.

TechCrunch was first to report the change.

Last week, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said that he was launching an investigation into Meta following a Reuters report about the company permitting its AI chatbots to engage in “romantic” and “sensual” conversations with teens and children.

Read more CNBC tech news

The Reuters report described an internal Meta document that detailed permissible AI chatbot behaviors that staff and contract workers should take into account when developing and training the software.  

In one example, the document cited by Reuters said that a chatbot would be allowed to have a romantic conversation with an eight-year-old and could tell the minor that “every inch of you is a masterpiece – a treasure I cherish deeply.”

A Meta spokesperson told Reuters at the time that “The examples and notes in question were and are erroneous and inconsistent with our policies, and have been removed.”

Most recently, the nonprofit advocacy group Common Sense Media released a risk assessment of Meta AI on Thursday and said that it should not be used by anyone under the age of 18, because the “system actively participates in planning dangerous activities, while dismissing legitimate requests for support,” the nonprofit said in a statement.

“This is not a system that needs improvement. It’s a system that needs to be completely rebuilt with safety as the number-one priority, not an afterthought,” said Common Sense Media CEO James Steyer in a statement. “No teen should use Meta AI until its fundamental safety failures are addressed.”

A separate Reuters report published on Friday found “dozens” of flirty AI chatbots based on celebrities like Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway and Selena Gomez on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

The report said that when prompted, the AI chatbots would generate “photorealistic images of their namesakes posing in bathtubs or dressed in lingerie with their legs spread.”

A Meta spokesperson told CNBC in a statement that “the AI-generated imagery of public figures in compromising poses violates our rules.”

“Like others, we permit the generation of images containing public figures, but our policies are intended to prohibit nude, intimate or sexually suggestive imagery,” the Meta spokesperson said. “Meta’s AI Studio rules prohibit the direct impersonation of public figures.”

WATCH: Is the A.I. trade overdone?

The 'Halftime' Investment Committee debate whether the AI trade overdone

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Tesla asks for $243 million verdict to be tossed in fatal Autopilot crash suit

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Tesla asks for 3 million verdict to be tossed in fatal Autopilot crash suit

Dillon Angulo, 33, looks at a roadside memorial sign reading “Drive Safely In Memory Naibel Benavidez” next to the site of a car crash where a Tesla driver using Autopilot killed her, and left him catastrophically injured in 2019, on Aug. 12, 2025, in Key Largo, Florida.

Eva Marie Uzcategui | The Washington Post | Getty Images

Tesla has filed a motion to appeal the verdict in a product liability and wrongful death lawsuit that could cost the company $242.5 million if it is not reduced or overturned.

Elon Musk‘s automaker has asked for the verdict to be tossed or for a new trial in Florida’s Southern district court.

Gibson Dunn, which is representing Tesla in the appeal, argued that compensatory damages in the case should be steeply reduced from $129 million to $69 million at most. That would result in Tesla having to pay a $23 million award if the prior verdict holding the company partially liable for the crash stands up.

The firm also argued that punitive damages should be eliminated or reduced to, at most, three times compensatory damages due to a statutory cap in the state of Florida.

The suit focused on a fatal crash that occurred in 2019 in Key Largo, Florida, in which George McGee was driving his Tesla Model S sedan while using the company’s Enhanced Autopilot, a partially automated driving system.

While driving, McGee dropped his mobile phone and scrambled to pick it up. He said during the trial that he believed Enhanced Autopilot would brake if an obstacle was in the way.

Read more CNBC tech news

McGee’s Model S accelerated through an intersection at just over 60 miles per hour, hitting a nearby empty parked car and its owners, who were standing on the other side of their vehicle.

The collision killed 22-year-old Naibel Benavides and severely injured her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo.

A jury in a Miami federal court earlier this month said that Tesla should compensate the family of the deceased and the injured survivor, paying a $242.5 million portion of a total $329 million in damages that they decided were appropriate.

In their motion to appeal, Tesla’s lawyers argue that the Model S vehicle had no design defects, and that even alleged design defects could not be blamed for the crash, which they say was caused entirely by the driver.

“For as long as drivers remain at the wheel, any safety feature may embolden a few reckless drivers while enhancing safety for countless others,” the appeal states. “Holding Tesla liable for providing drivers with advanced safety features just because a reckless driver overrode them cannot be reconciled with Florida law.”

Tesla did not respond to a request for additional comment.

Brett Schreiber, lead trial counsel for the plaintiffs in this case, said in a statement that he believes the court will uphold the prior verdict, which should not be seen as “an indictment of the autonomous vehicle industry, but of Tesla’s reckless and unsafe development and deployment of its Autopilot system.”  

“The jury heard all the facts and came to the right conclusion that this was a case of shared responsibility but that does not discount the integral role Autopilot and the company’s misrepresentations of its capabilities played in the crash,” he said.

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