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Security officers block entrance doors after pro-Palestinian protesters attempted to enter the Microsoft Build conference at the Seattle Convention Center Arch building in Seattle, Washington on May 19, 2025.

Jason Redmond | Afp | Getty Images

At Microsoft’s annual Build conference on Tuesday, Executive Vice President Jay Parikh’s keynote was interrupted by an employee protesting the company’s contracts with the Israeli government. The protester at the Seattle Convention Center was quickly whisked away by security guards, including some undercover agents dressed like attendees.

More than 800 miles south in Mountain View, California, security guards lined the mainstage of Google I/O, where Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai was set to speak. At the entrance to the developers conference, roughly two dozen black-clad guards rifled through bags, opening up lipstick cases and pulling out items, including women’s feminine products, and confiscating over-the-counter pain medications.

The vibe is different during this year’s tech conference season. Tensions were already elevated after the October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel and the extended bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip that followed. But they’ve heightened in recent months as artificial intelligence technologies advance at a rapid rate and an AI arms race has entered the most sensitive parts of society.

Additionally, there’s the aftermath of the fatal shooting in December of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in midtown Manhattan as the executive was on way on his way to an investor event.

“We definitely have seen an uptick in the request for security, specifically in the last six to nine months,” said Richard Dossett, client relations manager for American Global Security, which works with tech companies. “There have also been a lot of protests and civil upheaval, especially in Fortune 500 companies, with the landscape at the moment, so they want extra security to make sure they’re not going to be hassled.”

Security firms and industry experts told CNBC that technology companies’ increased work with governments has contributed to an uptick in security needs. AI companies in recent months have been walking back bans on military use of their products and entering into deals with defense industry giants and the Defense Department.

Companies are responding to increased outrage in part by trying to quell internal dissent. Google last year expanded its list of prohibited discussion topics to include international issues, territorial disputes, national policy events and military conflicts.

A demonstrator is removed from the audience as they interrupt a presentation by Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella at the Microsoft Build 2025 conference in Seattle, Washington on May 19, 2025.

Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images

For Microsoft, this week’s protests had recent precedent.

In April, former employees interrupted the company’s 50th anniversary celebrations, calling Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman a “war profiteer.” Ibtihal Aboussad, then a software engineer in the company’s AI division, walked toward the stage at the event in Redmond, Washington saying, “You claim that you care for using AI for good, but Microsoft sells AI weapons to the Israeli military.”

Employees at the company had previously formed a group called No Azure for Apartheid, following the creation of similar movements at Google and Amazon directed at opposing work with the Israeli government.

Parikh, who runs the newly created CoreAi group at Microsoft, heard that specific message during his Build speech this week.

“Jay!” yelled the worker from the audience. “How dare you talk about AI when my people are suffering! Cut ties! No Azure for apartheid! 

CEO Satya Nadella was interrupted during his keynote by an employee named Joe Lopez.

“Satya! How about you show how Microsoft is killing Palestinians?” Lopez screamed. “How about you show the Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure.”

Another employee followed, “As a Microsoft worker, I refuse to be complicit in this genocide. Free Palestine!” That employee was later fired, as was Lopez.

‘Turbulent world’

Kenneth Bombace, CEO of Global Threat Solutions, said tech companies “have had robust security but I would say it has picked up in the last year or so, or even more recently.”

“It’s sort of a turbulent world we live in, politically and otherwise right now,” said Bombace, whose firm provides clients with protection and investigative services.

Following the protests at Build, Microsoft employees reported that emails with the words Gaza, Palestine or genocide wouldn’t send, and expressed concern they were being blocked by the company, according to screenshots, recordings and documents viewed by CNBC.

Microsoft didn’t respond to a request for comment about the heightened security. Regarding the email issue, a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement that some messages were being “sent to tens of thousands of employees and we have taken measures to try and reduce those emails to those that have not opted in.”

Pro-Palestinian protesters blocked the Google I/O developer conference entrance to protest Google’s Project Nimbus and Israeli attacks on Gaza and Rafah, at its headquarters in Mountain View, California, United States on May 14, 2024.

Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu | Getty Images

Google didn’t provide a comment about its security presence at I/O, but a spokesperson pointed to the list of prohibited items at Shoreline Amphitheater, where the conference took place.

Google had a similar situation at its developer conference last year, when dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters rallied outside with red paint on signs and clothing to signify blood. Banners and signs read “Don’t Be Evil” and “Stop fueling genocide.”

The demonstrators demanded the tech giant withdraw from its Project Nimbus contract, a $1.2 billion deal to provide AI technology to the Israeli government.

“We won’t stop ’til Nimbus is dropped,” protesters chanted.

Bombace said that as tech companies collaborate with governments, they “have to meet certain security standards.”

“We’re providing services right now in response to activity based on the conflict in Gaza,” Bombace said. Social media companies, he said, “have a whole unique footprint of issues because of the nature of their business and the things that are being posted on their platforms.”

Last year, during a keynote speech in New York from a Google executive, an employee in the company’s cloud division protested publicly, proclaiming “I refuse to build technology that powers genocide.” The hired event security forced him out of the building and the company later fired him. Google ended up terminating more than 50 employees after a series of protests against Project Nimbus last year.

Police officers and security guards stand guard at Google’s annual developer conference.

Jennifer Elias

Dossett said he’s also noticed an uptick in protesters trying to gain access to corporate campus buildings to record videos or take pictures to get their messages to the public. 

“When people try to invade a company’s space and film it on camera and it goes viral — that’s something other companies see and think ‘we don’t want that to happen to us,'” Dossett said. “It could affect their brand but largely, it’s been about safety of the people.”

At Build, Microsoft’s use of undercover guards plays into a growing trend, experts said.

“They’ll be in the crowd and say ‘we have a suspicious male who’s wearing a white shirt in row three,'” Bombace said. “There’s a lot that goes on that the average person doesn’t recognize and that’s good.”

It’s not just at conferences and on campuses where companies are taking extra measures for protection.

Google lifted Pichai’s security costs by 22% in 2024 to $8.27 million. At least a dozen S&P 500 companies have highlighted increased security costs, Reuters reported last month, based on an analysis of recent disclosures. Bombace said the AI arms race is a big reason for companies to boost spending in that area.

“It’s a race right now and that leads to increased security,” Bombace said. He added that to foreign adversaries, “technology becomes the No. 1 target.”

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Meta’s big AI spending blitz will continue into 2026

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Meta's big AI spending blitz will continue into 2026

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech at the Meta Connect annual event, at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, U.S. September 25, 2024.

Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to continue his company’s artificial intelligence spending blitz well into the next year as rival tech giants do the same.

Zuckerberg told analysts Wednesday during a second-quarter earnings call that AI’s rapid pace of progress has informed much of Meta’s recent business decisions, including the company’s $14.3 billion June investment into the data-annotating startup Scale AI as part of a revamped AI strategy involving a wave of high-profile hires.

AI’s swift advancement warrants that Meta have “the absolute best and most elite talent-dense team” that can access the resources they need from a “leading compute fleet,” Zuckerberg said about the AI Superintelligence team he assembled for his company this summer. Whatever these top-tier AI researchers build can then be implemented throughout Facebook, Instagram and the rest of the company’s family of apps, he said.

“When we take a technology, we’re good at driving that through all of our apps and our ad systems,” Zuckerberg said. “There’s no other company that is as good as us at kind of taking something and getting it in front of billions of people.”

Those AI endeavors, however, come at a cost.

Meta on Wednesday said it expects its total expenses for 2025 to come in the range of $114 billion and $118 billion, raising the low end of its previous outlook of between $113 billion and $118 billion. And while Meta is still planning out next year, the company said its AI initiatives will “result in a 2026 year-over-year expense growth rate that is above the 2025 expense growth.”

Other tech giants are also spending heavy on AI projects and talent.

Alphabet said last week during its earnings report that it is raising its 2025 capital expenditures forecast to $85 billion, which is $10 billion higher from its prior forecast. Microsoft said Wednesday that its fiscal first-quarter capital expenditures will be $30 billion, ahead of analyst expectations of $24.23 billion.

For now, investors are OK with Meta’s big AI investments, with the company’s shares up nearly 12% in after-hour trading on Wednesday. It helps that Meta reported strong second-quarter earnings that beat on the top and bottom while providing third-quarter sales guidance that topped Wall Street expectations.

It also helps that Zuckerberg said AI drove “greater efficiency and gains across our ad system,” likely reassuring worried investors that Meta’s big AI spending is leading to some immediate results.

And while the company’s Reality Labs unit continues bleeding money, posting an operating loss of $4.53 billion in the second quarter, the surprise hit of the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses seems to have quelled investor discontent for the time being.

“I continue to think that glasses are basically going to be the ideal form factor for AI, because you can let an AI see what you see throughout the day, hear what you hear, talk to you,” Zuckerberg said. “Once you get a display in there, whether it’s the kind of wide holographic field of view, like we showed with Orion, or just a smaller display that might be good for displaying some information, that’s going to unlock a lot of value, where you can just interact with an AI system throughout the day.”

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Elon Musk’s plan to build Boring Co. tunnels in Nashville sparks partisan feud

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Elon Musk's plan to build Boring Co. tunnels in Nashville sparks partisan feud

Elon Musk has expanded a number of his companies within Texas, including Tesla, SpaceX, the Boring Co. and Neuralink. Tesla broke ground on a lithium refinery in Texas earlier this year with Governor Greg Abbott in attendance.

Christophe Gateau | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

Elon Musk’s tunneling venture, The Boring Company, announced plans earlier this week to build a 10-mile underground loop in Nashville, in coordination with Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Lee, who put out a press release praising the project.

Democratic lawmakers in Nashville are demanding answers on the plans, while the state’s Republican leaders have jumped at the chance to partner with Musk. A state commission is holding an emergency meeting and public hearing Thursday morning to discuss a “no cost/mutual benefit” lease arrangement that’s been proposed to help the company get the tunnels started.

“We are aware of the state’s conversations with the Boring Company, and we have a number of operational questions to understand the potential impacts on Metro and Nashvillians,” Freddie O’Connell, Nashville’s mayor, said in an e-mailed statement.

Based in Pflugerville, Texas, The Boring Co. is poised to take over a chunk of public property about the size of a football field in downtown Nashville. The commission that’s meeting on Thursday includes Tennessee’s governor, speaker of the house, speaker of the senate and secretary of state. Members of the public were invited to give testimony but with less than a week’s notice.

On Monday, The Boring Co. and state officials divulged that Musk’s venture would dig its tunnels under state-owned roadways in order to “connect downtown and the Convention Center to Nashville International Airport with a transit time of approximately 8 minutes.”

It’s called the Music City Loop, and the project marks Musk’s latest effort to bolster his budding business empire in Tennessee. His artificial intelligence startup xAI, the parent of social media platform X, is building data centers and a power plant in Memphis, on the western side of the state.

The governor’s office said on Monday that the Nashville project would come “at zero cost to taxpayers” and would be “entirely privately funded,” though no details were provided about whether or what type of cost-benefit analysis, environment, safety or traffic assessment had been completed by the state before agreeing to the deal.

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Musk became a major force in Republican politics last year, when he spent almost $300 million to help reelect President Donald Trump before working for the Trump administration in the first few months of this year. Musk brought The Boring Co. CEO Steve Davis with him to lead Trump’s DOGE initiative, slashing federal agencies, regulations and personnel.  

Justin Jones, a Democratic state representative in Nashville, told CNBC on Wednesday that his district had not been able to participate in any public comment period, and hadn’t seen any environmental impact report or health assessment related to the Music City Loop or its construction.

‘Not allowed to be here’

On Wednesday evening, The Boring Co. held a recruiting event, with Davis in attendance, at the parking lot where the company expects the state to grant it a no-cost lease. Jones went to the event hoping to discuss the jobs that Musk’s company is looking to create in his district, the lawmaker told CNBC.

“The CEO is here and the other members of their team, but they sent someone out to tell me that I’m not allowed to be here,” Jones said in a text message, sharing a video of his interaction with The Boring Co. employees at the event.

On Monday, Jones arrived to a separate company event at the Nashville airport only to have authorities claim he lacked proper credentials to attend.

Jones told CNBC that state officials explained to him that only state-level authorizations would be required for The Boring Co. project to begin because the tunnels would go under state roads, and would not require the use of taxpayer funds.

“We’re not even being informed where or what exactly these tunnels are going to run through,” Jones said. “Tomorrow they’re voting to give away state land for no cost. But giving away land obviously has a cost.”

The governor’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment regarding Jones’ concerns. Representatives for The Boring Co. weren’t immediately available to comment.

The Boring Co. has previously built tunnels in Las Vegas, including an initial two miles to carry visitors to different exhibit halls around the Las Vegas Convention Center. Tesla drivers travel through the tunnels to pick up and drop off passengers, who book their rides using an app.

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The initial loop cost Nevada taxpayers about $50 million and has been criticized for a lack of pedestrian entrances, walkways and platforms, and its limitations relative to a subway system. The Boring Co. was previously fined by the Nevada Occupational Safety and Health Administration for repeated violations and worker injuries in Las Vegas.

The Musk-owned company also abandoned plans to build tunnels in other locations, including Chicago.

One particular concern in Nashville is that the city is prone to flooding with an average annual rainfall of around 50 inches, according to the National Weather Service, which compares to around 4 inches in Las Vegas. The city’s Metro Water Services previously arranged, with federal support, to purchase homes from residents in vulnerable areas at reduced prices, and convert the land there to green spaces.

The Boring Co. has no experience building in areas with that kind of rainfall and flooding concern.

The public hearing to discuss whether the state will give the parking lots to The Boring Co. in a no-cost, mutual benefit lease agreement starts at 8 a.m. local time on Thursday at Cordell Hull State Office Building, according to a copy of the agenda on the state government’s website.

In Memphis, xAI has faced a community backlash over its use of natural gas-burning turbines which power its data center and supercomputer there. The facility, housed in a former home appliance factory, is responsible for training xAI’s controversial chatbot Grok.

The NAACP and other environmental and public health advocates are suing xAI, saying the company exacerbated air pollution in the area, harmed majority-Black communities who live near their facilities, and violated the Clean Air Act. An xAI spokesperson said at the time the groups announced their intent to sue that the company takes “our commitment to the community and environment seriously.”

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Samsung’s profit more than halves, missing expectations as chip business plunges 94%

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Samsung's profit more than halves, missing expectations as chip business plunges 94%

Headquarters of Samsung in Mountain View, California, on October 28, 2018.

Smith Collection/gado | Archive Photos | Getty Images

Samsung Electronics on Thursday reported a second-quarter operating profit of 4.7 trillion Korean won, missing expectations, weighed by a 93.8% profit slump in its chip business.

While Samsung’s second-quarter operating profit beat its own forecast of around 4.6 trillion won, it was a steep drop from the 10.44 trillion won recorded in the same period last year.

The South Korean technology giant posted a quarterly revenue of 74.6 trillion won, up slightly from 74.07 trillion won a year earlier and beating its forecast of 74 trillion won. 

Here are Samsung’s second-quarter results compared with LSEG SmartEstimate, which is weighted toward forecasts from analysts who are more consistently accurate:

  • Revenue: 74.6 trillion won ($53.5 billion) vs. 74.43 trillion won 
  • Operating profit: 4.7 trillion won vs. 5.33 trillion won

Shares of Samsung fell by as much as 1.79% in early trading.

Notably, its Device Solutions division, which encompasses its memory chip, semiconductor design and foundry business units, recorded a 93.8% drop in operating profit year over year.

Samsung Electronics’ chip business posted an operating profit of 400 billion won in the second quarter, plunging from 6.45 trillion won in the same period last year. Chip revenue fell to 27.9 trillion won, from 28.56 trillion won last year. 

“Inventory value adjustments in memory and one-off costs related to the impacts of export restrictions related to China in non-memory had an adverse effect on profit,” the company said in a statement.

However, speaking in an earnings call, Samsung’s chief financial officer Soon-cheol Park voiced some optimism for the company in the near term.

“Despite ongoing global economic concerns driven by uncertain trade policies and geopolitical tensions, the IT industry appears poised for a gradual recovery fueled by increasing momentum in AI and robotics,” he said.

“In this context, we anticipate a rebound in our performance in the second half, following a bottoming out in the second quarter, with the earnings expected to improve steadily as the year progresses,” he added.

Foundry hopes, memory woes

Samsung’s foundry business could receive a boost in the following quarters from a $16.5 billion contract to supply chips to a major company in a deal announced on Monday. 

While Samsung did not initially disclose the counterparty, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that it was his American electric vehicle maker, and that the so-called AI6 chips would be made at Samsung’s upcoming fab in Taylor, Texas.  The deal could be even larger than what’s been announced, Musk added. 

The main aim of the Tesla deal for Samsung could be attracting other potential customers to its foundry business, Nam Hyung Kim, research partner and equity research analyst at Arete, told CNBC.

However, “production costs at the Taylor site are expected to be significantly higher than those in Korea,” he said, adding that it is far too early to conclude the deal will improve Samsung’s position against market leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

Samsung’s foundry business is currently at a “critical juncture between survival and profitability,” Neil Shah, vice president of research at Counterpoint Research, said in a pre-earnings statement.

Samsung, meanwhile, has been dealing with increased competition in its memory business, which makes chips used to store data in everything from servers to consumer devices such as smartphones and laptops. The company has traditionally been the market leader in the space.

But Samsung’s strength in memory is being threatened as it falls behind rival SK Hynix in high bandwidth memory, or HBM — a type of memory used for artificial intelligence computing. 

A report from Counterpoint Research earlier this month found that SK Hynix had caught up with Samsung’s memory revenues in the second quarter, with both now vying for the top position in the global memory market. 

In the second half of the year, Samsung said it plans to proactively meet the growing demand for high-value-added and AI-driven products and continue to strengthen competitiveness in advanced semiconductors.

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