Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, speaks at the Google I/O developer conference.
Andrej Sokolow | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
Google on Tuesday offered buyouts to employees across several of its divisions, including those within its knowledge and information and central engineering units as well as marketing, research and communications teams, CNBC has learned.
Knowledge and information, or K&I, is the unit that houses Google’s search, ads and commerce divisions. The buyouts Tuesday are the company’s latest effort to reduce headcount, which Google has continued to do in waves since laying off 12,000 employees in 2023.
CNBC could not confirm how many employees were impacted by the latest round of buyouts. The Information reported earlier that the company offered buyouts to employees in the search and ads unit.
The “voluntary exit program” applies to U.S.-based employees, and some teams are also mandating office returns for remote workers who live within 50 miles of an office, the company confirmed. They will be expected to assume a hybrid work schedule “in order to bring folks more together in-person.”
“Earlier this year, some of our teams introduced a voluntary exit program with severance for U.S.-based Googlers, and several more are now offering the program to support our important work ahead,” Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini wrote in an emailed statement to CNBC.
K&I has approximately 20,000 employees. The unit underwent a re-organization in October that resulted in Google executive Nick Fox taking over the helm. Fox sent out a memo on Tuesday saying that employees who are not meeting expectations may want to take the buyout and that those who are excited by their work and doing well to remain with the company.
“I want to be very clear: If you’re excited about your work, energized by the opportunity ahead, and performing well, I really (really!) hope you don’t take this! We have ambitious plans and tons to get done,” Fox wrote, according to the memo which was reviewed by CNBC. “On the other hand, this VEP offers a supportive exit path for those of you who don’t feel aligned with our strategy, don’t feel energized by your work, or are having difficulty meeting the expectations of your role.”
The buyouts come after finance chief Anat Ashkenazi in October said that one of her top priorities would be to drive more cost cutting as Google expands its spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure in 2025.
So far this year, the company’s “Platforms and Devices” unit and “People Operations” have also offered voluntary buyouts. Additionally, Google has demanded that some remote employees return to the office if they want to keep their jobs and avoid being part of broader cost cuts at the company, CNBC reported in April.
Google is also overhauling a popular internal learning platform to focus on teaching employees how to use modern AI tools in their work in a shift away from some of its nice-to-have programs to more business-essential offerings, CNBC reported Tuesday.
The replica of the ARM is an electronic chip board during a collaborative ceremony launching a partnership between Malaysia and ARM Holdings in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on March 5, 2025.
Hari Anggara | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Arm Holdings shares dipped as much as 9% in after-hours trading on the company’s first-quarter earnings results Wednesday.
Here’s how the company did, compared with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG:
Earnings per share: 35 cents vs. 35 cents expected.
Revenue: $1.05 billion vs. $1.06 billion expected.
The company said it expects second-quarter revenue in the range of $1.01 billion to $1.11 billion, which was in line with $1.05 billion expected by analysts tracked by LSEG.
ARM is a chip technology firm that sells architecture for making chips that power billions of devices, including Apple and Qualcomm‘s chips.
During the quarter, Samsung launched the Galaxy Flip 7 based on the Exynos 2500, built on Arm’s compute subsystem platform.
CEO Rene Haas said in an interview with Reuters that the company was “consciously deciding to invest more heavily,” suggesting the company is considering designing its own processors.
Cristiano Amon, CEO & President, Qualcomm, on Centre Stage during day one of Web Summit 2024 at the MEO Arena in Lisbon, Portugal.
Shauna Clinton | Sportsfile | Getty Images
Qualcomm reported fiscal third-quarter earnings on Wednesday that beat Wall Street expectations and provided a stronger-than-expected guide for the current quarter. Qualcomm shares slid in extended trading.
Here’s how the chipmaker did for the quarter ending June 29 compared to LSEG consensus expectations:
Earnings per share: $2.77 adjusted versus $2.71 expected
Revenue: $10.37 billion versus $10.35 billion expected
In the current quarter, Qualcomm said it expected $2.85 per share at the midpoint of adjusted earnings on $10.7 billion in revenue at the midpoint. Analysts polled by LSEG were expecting $2.83 in adjusted earnings per share on $10.35 billion in revenue.
Net income during the quarter ending in June was $2.66 billion, or $2.43 per share, versus $2.13 billion, or $1.88 per share a year ago.
Qualcomm’s most important business is selling chips for smartphones under its Snapdragon brand, including the central processor and modem for high-end devices made by Samsung. It also provides modems to Apple. Its handset chip business reported $6.33 billion in revenue during the quarter, just shy of Wall Street expectations of $6.44 billion.
Qualcomm expects to lose Apple as a customer for its modem business in the coming years. But the company has been working to diversify its business by making chips for other devices, including Windows PCs and Meta‘s Quest virtual-reality headsets and Meta Ray-Bans smart glasses.
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Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon highlighted the company’s work with Meta in a short interview on Wednesday.
He said that making chips for devices like Meta’s Ray-Bans smart glasses was a good example of the chipmaker’s AI strategy, which was to embrace “personal AI,” or AI applications that run on devices, not the cloud.
Qualcomm reports its Meta revenues under its “Internet of Things” division, which had $1.68 billion in revenue during the quarter.
Amon referenced Mark Zuckerberg‘s AI vision statement Wednesday that focused on “personal superintelligence,” saying “the upside we had in the quarter within IoT is what we do in with smart glasses.”
CFO Akash Palkhiwala said that Meta had stronger-than-expected chip consumption during the quarter.
On Monday, Ray-Ban parent EssilorLuxottica said that sales of the smart glasses more than tripled on an annual basis.
“Mark put out a video today, just with a very clear vision of how they see personal AI and super intelligence evolving, and we are a key part of making that division happen,” Palkhiwala said.
Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are powered by a Qualcomm chip. Qualcomm, Samsung and Google are working on smart glasses, according to Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Amon also said Qualcomm would start to provide data about how much its chip business is growing without Apple — about 15% this year, he said.
Qualcomm is also looking to expand into data centers and sell versions of its chips that can be used for deploying artificial intelligence, Amon said on a call with an analysts. He said that Qualcomm was already in discussions with a major cloud company — called a hyperscaler — to supply AI chips. He said that Qualcomm could start to see revenues in its fiscal 2028.
“While we are in the early stages of this expansion, we are engaged with multiple potential customers,” Among said. “We are currently in advanced discussions with a leading hyperscaler.”
The company’s automotive business has been highlighted by Amon as one of the biggest growth opportunities for the company, but in the third quarter, it grew 21% to $984 million, below the 24% growth rate of the company’s IoT business.
Qualcomm’s other major division is QTL, which includes licensing fees for technology that Qualcomm developed and patented, including parts of the 5G standard. Overall, QTL revenues rose 11% to $1.32 billion.
Qualcomm said it spent just under $1 billion on cash dividends and $2.8 billion repurchasing 19 million shares of its stock during the quarter.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg presents Orion AR Glasses as he makes a keynote speech during the Meta Connect annual event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Sept. 25, 2024.
Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters
Meta’s Reality Labs, the unit tasked with building the futuristic metaverse, continues bleeding money.
The social media company reported its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday and revealed that Reality Labs logged an operating loss of $4.53 billion while recording $370 million in sales during the period. Analysts were projecting that unit to post a second-quarter operating loss of $4.99 billion while generating $381 million in sales.
The Reality Labs division oversees the Quest line of virtual reality headsets in addition to the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, which are jointly developed with the French-Italian eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica. Meta wants Reality Labs to create cutting-edge products similar to the prototype Orion augmented reality glasses that could underpin a new, immersive computing platform.
But developing VR, AR and other new devices is an expensive endeavor, with the Reality Labs division logging nearly $70 billion in cumulative losses since late 2020. Meta in April said Reality Labs recorded an operating loss of $4.2 billion during the first quarter while bringing in $412 million in sales.
Although the Quest VR headsets haven’t become breakout hits, the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are showing signs of success.
EssilorLuxottica on Monday said Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses sales more than tripled year over year for the first half of 2025. The eyewear giant and Meta debuted in June the new Oakley Meta smart glasses, which is the latest product spawned from their partnership.
Meta said in April that an undisclosed number of Reality Labs employees who were part of its Oculus Studios VR and AR software unit were laid off.