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.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivers remarks next to U.S. President Donald Trump at an ‘Investing in America’ event in Washington, D.C., on April 30, 2025.
Leah Millis | Reuters
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will meet with President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday, CNBC’s Megan Cassella reported.
The meeting comes as Nvidia rose slightly on Thursday, becoming the first company to close a trading day with a market cap over $4 trillion, beating Apple and Microsoft to the symbolic milestone. Nvidia touched the mark briefly on Wednesday during trading.
Trump praised Nvidia stock in a social media post Thursday morning.
“NVIDIA IS UP 47% SINCE TRUMP TARIFFS. USA is taking in Hundreds of Billions of Dollars in Tariffs,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “COUNTRY IS NOW ‘BACK.'”
An Nvidia representative declined to comment, and it was unclear what the meeting is about, but Nvidia has been grappling with export controls on its artificial intelligence chips implemented by the Trump administration in April for national security reasons.
At the time, the U.S. government told Nvidia that its previously-approved H20 processor — intended exclusively for the Chinese market — would require an export license. Huang previously told investors that requirement effectively cut off Nvidia’s sales to China with “no grace period.” The AI chipmaker said that it would miss $8 billion in planned orders for the chip in the company’s July quarter.
“The $50 billion China market is effectively closed to U.S. industry,” Huang told investors on an earnings call in May.
Nvidia also faces another potential restriction on AI chip exports after the Trump administration cancelled a planned rule by former President Joe Biden called the “AI diffusion rule.” The Trump administration promised newer, simpler restrictions later this year on which countries could receive Nvidia’s technology.
Ex-CNN anchor Don Lemon‘s lawsuit against tech billionaire Elon Musk and his social network X over the cancellation of their partnership can proceed to trial, a San Francisco judge ruled this week.
Musk’s team had tried to get the case moved to a Texas court and tried to convince the judge to strike the complaint altogether.
Attorneys for Musk and X didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In an order Tuesday, Judge Harold Kahn said Lemon and his attorneys plausibly alleged, among other claims, that X and Musk had committed “fraud by false promise” and that there was “an implied contract” between them.
Lemon filed the suit in August 2024 after X canceled a partnership with the broadcast journalist a few hours after he taped a tense interview with Musk, who owns X. The interview preceded a planned premiere of Lemon’s new show on Musk’s social network.
During the interview, Lemon pressed Musk on several contentious topics he had posted about or amplified on X. Musk had boosted the so-called “great replacement theory,” and other bigoted tropes and falsehoods, including posts that claimed there was a “Hispanic invasion” of immigrants to the U.S.
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Lemon also pressed Musk about content moderation on X, and a reported surge in antisemitic content on the platform that occurred after Musk acquired it as Twitter in a $44 billion leveraged buyout in late 2022.
Musk made sweeping changes after taking over the site, firing huge numbers of personnel and reversing account bans for users who had been booted from the platform after posting hate speech or inciting violence.
Musk, who characterized himself as a free speech “absolutist” also restored the account of President Donald Trump. The site had permanently banned Trump from the platform in January 2021 following the attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol.
Lemon’s case against Musk and X Corp. is in San Francisco Superior Court. A date has not been set for the trial.
Musk and X have faced a litany of other lawsuits over non-payment to vendors and over failure to provide severance as promised to laid-off employees from Twitter.
Lemon was fired from CNN in 2023 following reports that he mistreated coworkers and made sexist remarks on-air, including about politician Nikki Haley. Lemon later apologized for the Haley comments.
Bitcoin climbed to new all-time high on Thursday, building on its previous record reached just a day earlier, as investors jumped into risk assets and liquidated short positions.
The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by about 2% at $113,459.16. Earlier, it rose as high as $113,863.18.
On Thursday afternoon, bitcoin saw about $318 million in short liquidations across centralized exchanges in a 24 hour period, according to CoinGlass. When traders use leverage to short bitcoin and the cryptocurrency’s price rises, they buy bitcoin back from the market to close their positions, which pushes the price up and causes more positions to be liquidated.
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