Doug Gurr, Amazon’s former U.K. head, has been appointed chair of the Competition and Markets Authority.
David M. Benett | Getty Images for Amazon
LONDON — The British competition regulator tapped a top former Amazon executive as its new chair after facing accusations from Prime Minister Keir Starmer of stifling growth.
The Competition and Markets Authority announced late Tuesday that Doug Gurr, who was previously country manager for Amazon U.K. and president of Amazon China, would serve as its interim chair replacing Marcus Bokkerink.
The move follows a meeting between CMA Chief Executive Sarah Cardell and other regulators with British Finance Minister Rachel Reeves to deliver ideas on how to stimulate growth. Regulators were told to “tear down the barriers hindering business and refocus their efforts on promoting growth.”
Cardell thanked Bokkerink for his leadership since taking the role of chair in 2022, telling CNBC Wednesday: “He has tirelessly championed consumers, competition and a level playing field for business, as well being steadfastly committed to openness and stakeholder engagement across the U.K.”
“The CMA has a critical role to play supporting the government’s growth mission. I welcome the appointment of Doug Gurr as the CMA’s new interim chair and look forward to working closely with him as we drive growth, opportunity and prosperity for the U.K.,” she added via emailed comments.
The government wants to see regulators like the CMA “supercharging the economy with pro-business decisions that will drive prosperity and growth, putting more money in people’s pockets,” U.K. Business and Trade Minister Jonathan Reynolds said in a statement.
Reeves said the decision to replace Bokkerink was taken because the CMA needed to be led by someone who shared the government’s “strategic direction.”
“He recognised it was time for him to move on and make way for somebody who does share the mission and the strategic direction that this government are taking,” she said, speaking at a Bloomberg event Wednesday at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
Push to take growth ‘seriously’
Last year, Prime Minister Starmer told investors he wanted to make sure that “every regulator in this country — especially our economic and competition regulators — takes growth as seriously as this room does,” suggesting a dissatisfaction with the work of the CMA.
The U.K. has faced criticisms more broadly from technology executives and investors over a number of regulatory decisions, including an intervention into Microsoft’stakeover of video game publisher Activision Blizzard and its decision to force Meta’s Facebook to divest GIF database Giphy.
“The announcement of the new Chair of the CMA cannot be pure coincidence, coming as it does at the same time as the UK Government is banging the drum for its growth agenda and calling regulators to account for their own policies on stimulating growth,” said Alex Haffner, a competition partner at Fladgate.
“Mr Gurr has been appointed on an interim basis suggesting this is not about succession planning and far more a reaction to current events. His background is also unashamedly commercial as opposed to the consulting one of his predecessor,” Haffner added.
Gurr’s appointment as the CMA’s chair comes after the regulator received new powers to regulate large technology firms under the new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCC), which seeks to prevent anti-competitive behavior in digital markets.
It can designate large companies that have a significant amount of market power in a certain digital activity as having “Strategic Market Status.” The CMA now has the power to impose changes to prevent potential anti-competitive behavior from any firm that is given Strategic Market Status.
The chip giant’s talismanic leader trumpeted “off the charts” chip sales and dismissed talk of an “AI bubble,” and for a while, the tide lifted all boats.
“There’s been a lot of talk about an AI bubble,” Huang said during an earnings call this week. “From our vantage point, we see something very different.”
The buzz from the blowout report quickly reversed, sending the AI winners deeply into the red — and few beneficiaries were left unscathed.
Every member of the Magnificent 7, except for Alphabet, was tracking for a losing week, with Nvidia, Amazon and Microsoft staring down the biggest losses.
Amazon and Microsoft have led the group’s drop lower, falling about 6% this week. Meanwhile, Alphabet has gained nearly 8%. The search giant is also the only megacap of the group on pace for November gains thanks to a boost from the launch of Gemini 3.
Oracle, which is another major Nvidia customer, slumped about 10%. The chipmaker also supplies major model developers such as OpenAI and Anthropic.
CoreWeave, which buys and rents out Nvidia’s chips in data centers, initially soared on the chipmaker’s earnings report, but swiftly reversed course. The company’s stock is looking at an 8% blow this week.
AI fever was cooling in the runup to Nvidia’s earnings report on Wednesday, and investors looked to the print to alleviate fears that the AI bubble was on shaky ground. Since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, the stock has helped power the market to new all-time highs.
Major investors, including Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio told CNBC Thursday that the market is definitely in a bubble.
Much of the worries have stemmed from a boom in capital expenditures spending to support AI, with few signs of a payoff in view for many of the players.
Investor Michael Burry recently accused some of the biggest cloud and infrastructure providers of understating depreciation expenses and estimating a longer life cycle for their chips, calling it “one of the more common frauds of the modern era.”
Shares of the software analytics company, which supplies AI tools to the government and businesses, are down 11% this week. The stock has shed nearly a quarter of its value this month.
The Amazon Puget Sound Headquarters is pictured on Oct. 28, 2025 in Seattle, Washington.
Stephen Brashear | Getty Images
Amazon‘s 14,000-plus layoffs announced last month touched almost every piece of the company’s sprawling business, from cloud computing and devices to advertising, retail and grocery stores. But one job category bore the brunt of cuts more than others: engineers.
Documents filed in New York, California, New Jersey and Amazon’s home state of Washington showed that nearly 40% of the more than 4,700 job cuts in those states were engineering roles. The data was reported by Amazon in Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, filings to state agencies.
The figures represent a segment of the total layoffs announced in October. Not all data was immediately available because of differences in state WARN reporting requirements.
In announcingthe steepest round of cuts in its 31-year history, Amazon joined a growing roster of tech companies that have slashed jobs this year even as cash piles have mounted and profits soared. In total, there have been almost 113,000 job cuts at 231 tech companies, according to Layoffs.fyi, continuing a trend that began in 2022 as businesses readjusted to life after the Covid pandemic.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has been on a multiyear mission to transform the company’s corporate culture into one that operates like what he calls “the world’s largest startup.” He’s looked to make Amazon leaner and less bureaucratic by urging staffers to do more with less and cutting organizational bloat.
Andy Jassy, chief executive officer of Amazon.com Inc., speaks during an unveiling event in New York, US, on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The company said it’s also shifting resources to invest more in artificial intelligence. The technology is already poised to reshape Amazon’s white-collar workforce, with Jassy predicting in June that its corporate head count will shrink in the coming years alongside efficiency gains from AI.
Human resources chief Beth Galetti, in her memo announcing the layoffs, focused on the importance of innovating, which the company will now have to do with fewer people, specifically engineers.
“This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before,” Galetti wrote. “We’re convinced that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business.”
Amazon said in a statement that AI is not the driver behind the vast majority of the job cuts, and that the bigger goal was to reduce bureaucracy and emphasize speed.
Jassy said on Amazon’s earnings call last month that the cuts were in response to a “culture” issue inside the company, spurred in part by an extended hiring spree that left it with “a lot more layers” and slower decision-making.
The layoffs impacted a mix of software engineer levels, but SDE II roles, or mid-level employees, were disproportionately affected, the WARN filings show.
The AI boom is making software development jobs harder to come by as companies adopt coding assistants or so-called vibe coding platforms from vendors like Cursor, OpenAI and Cognition. Amazon has released its own competitor called Kiro.
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‘Significant role reductions’
More than 500 product managers and program managers were eliminated as part of the layoffs, based on records from the states with WARN notices, representing more than 10% of the total. Senior manager and principal level roles were also swept up in the cuts, the filings show.
Amazon’s video game division was targeted in the company’s latest layoff wave, California WARN filings show. Steve Boom, vice president of Audio, Twitch and Games, told staffers in a memo viewed by CNBC that “significant role reductions” would occur in its San Diego and Irvine, California, game studios, as well as within its central publishing team.
Game designers, artists and producers made up more than a quarter of the total cuts in Irvine, and they were roughly 11% of staffers laid off at Amazon’s San Diego offices, according to filings.
The company also told staffers it’s halting much of its work on big-budget, or triple A, game development, specifically around massively multiplayer online, or MMO, games, Boom wrote. Amazon has released MMOs including Crucible and New World. It was also developing an MMO based on “Lord of the Rings.”
Beyond its gaming division, Amazon also significantly cut back its visual search and shopping teams, according to multipleemployee postson LinkedIn. The unit is responsible for products like Amazon Lens and Lens Live, AI shopping tools that enable users to find products via their camera in real time or images saved to their device. The company rolled out Lens Live in September.
The team was primarily based in Palo Alto, California, and Amazon’s WARN filings indicate that software engineers, applied scientists and quality assurance engineers were heavily impacted across its offices there.
Amazon’s online ad business, one of its biggest profit centers, was downsized as well. More than 140 ad sales and marketing roles were eliminated across Amazon’s New York offices, accounting for about 20% of the roughly 760 positions cut, according to state documents viewed by CNBC.
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Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:
1. Hero to zero
Stock investors didn’t end up getting the post-Nvidia earnings market bounce they hoped for. After opening yesterday’s trading session higher, stocks took a dramatic midday tumble, once again casting doubt on the artificial intelligence trade.
Here’s what to know:
Nvidia shares gave up their 5% post-earnings gain, ending the session down more than 3% despite the chipmaker’s blockbuster quarterly results and guidance. The AI darling’s stock is on track to finish the week down 5%.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average swung more than 1,100 between its session highs and lows. All three major averages closed solidly in the red, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite ending the day down 2.15%.
Meanwhile, the CBOE Volatility Index — better known as Wall Street’s fear gauge — ended the session at a level not seen since April.
Before stocks’ midday reversal, Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio told CNBC that “we are in that territory of a bubble,” but that you don’t need to sell stocks because of it.
The three major indexes are all on track to end the week in the red.
A ‘Now Hiring’ sign is posted outside of a business on Oct. 3, 2025 in Miami, Florida.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images
The belated September jobs report was finally released yesterday, and the headline number was much hotter than economists expected with an increase of 119,000 jobs. On the other hand, the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%, its highest level since 2021.
The chance of a rate cut at the Federal Reserve’s next meeting remained low after the report, according to the CME FedWatch Tool. But the odds flipped this morning after New York Fed President John Williams said he sees “room for a further adjustment” in interest rates, reviving hopes of a December cut.
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3. Better than yours
Merchandise on display in a Gap store on November 21, 2024 in Miami Beach, Florida.
Joe Raedle | Getty Images
Gap‘s “Milkshake” ad brought all the shoppers to the store. The retailer’s viral “Better in Denim” campaign with girl group Katseye helped drive comparable sales up 5% in its third quarter, beating analyst expectations.
The Old Navy and Banana Republic parent also surpassed Wall Street’s estimates on both the top and bottom lines, sending shares rising 4.5% in overnight trading. Athleta was the notable outlier, with the athleisure brand’s sales falling 11%.
Gap’s report comes at the end of a busy week for retail earnings. As CNBC’s Melissa Repko reports, one key theme of this quarter’s results has been that value-oriented retailers are winning favor with shoppers across income brackets.
4. AI in D.C.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office at the White House on Oct. 6, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images
The White House is putting together an executive order that would thwart states’ individual AI laws. A draft obtained by CNBC shows the order would focus on staging legal challenges and blocking federal funding for states to ensure their compliance.
The draft would work to the advantage of many AI industry leaders who have pushed back on a state-by-state approach to the technology’s regulation. A White House official told CNBC that any discussion around the draft is speculation until an official announcement.
Joby Aviation is taking air taxi competitor Archer Aviation to court. In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, Joby accused Archer of using information stolen by a former employee to “one-up” a deal with a real estate developer.
Joby alleges that George Kivork, its former U.S. state and local policy lead, took files and information before jumping to the competitor in an act of “corporate espionage.” Archer called the case “baseless litigation” and said it’s “entirely without merit.”
The Daily Dividend
Here are our recommendations for stories to circle back to this weekend:
— CNBC’s Liz Napolitano, Tasmin Lockwood, Melissa Repko, Jeff Cox, Sarah Min, Emily Wilkins, Mary Catherine Wellons and Samantha Subin contributed to this report. Josephine Rozzelle edited this edition.