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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

Microsoft employees are concerned that the company has been blocking Outlook emails containing the words “Palestine,” “Gaza,” “genocide,” “apartheid” and “IOF off Azure,” even if they’re including those terms in an HR complaint, according to screenshots, recordings and documents viewed by CNBC.

Employees said they started noticing the change Wednesday just before noon PST, batch-testing emails with the terms in question and emails without them. Only the ones without such terms appeared in their outboxes, suggesting those containing the terms weren’t received, according to materials viewed by CNBC and three sources familiar with the matter.

The people asked not to be named in order to speak freely.

One employee with the word “apartheid” in their email signature, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said they sent a typical work-related email around 11:30 a.m. PST on Wednesday successfully. The person said that just before noon on the same day, their emails wouldn’t go through — ostensibly due to their email signature.

On internal message boards, messages seen by CNBC showed employees asking why their emails with the word “Israel” may go through but not the word “Palestine,” as well as “Gaza” and other terms. Modifications like “P4lestine” did go through, according to their tests.

One employee asked on an internal message board, “Is the company abandoning the inclusivity initiative or is this only targeting Palestinians and their allies?”

The Verge was first to report on the potential email block.

In a message seen by CNBC, Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s chief communications officer, responded to an employee post, writing: “To clarify, emails are not being blocked or censored, unless they are being sent to large numbers of random distribution groups. There can be a small delay and the team is working to make that as short as possible.”

“Over the past couple of days, a number of emails have been sent to tens of thousands of employees across the company and we have taken measures to try and reduce those emails to those that have not opted in,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement.

But employees told CNBC that even when they attempted to send relatively mundane, solely work-related emails to small groups of colleagues, the emails still didn’t go through if they contained those terms.

Another employee who spoke on condition of anonymity said that when they attempted to send a report to HR containing one of the terms in question, they did not receive the auto-response typically confirming receipt until more than 24 hours later. The message also didn’t show up in the online HR portal until more than 24 hours later.

Some emails were delivered after being delayed by seven hours or more, according to the group No Azure for Apartheid. The group suggested manual reviews of such emails were taking place before they were delivered.

Microsoft protests

Microsoft has seen a growing number of protests at recent events over the Israeli military’s use of the company’s AI products. Protesters have also sent emails to the company’s executives outlining their concerns.

At Microsoft’s Build developer conference in Seattle this week, protesters interrupted executives during keynote speeches and sessions.

On Tuesday, protesters interrupted the Microsoft Build session on best AI security practices, singling out Sarah Bird, Microsoft’s head of responsible AI, who was co-hosting the session with Microsoft AI security chief Neta Haiby.

Haiby was formerly a member of the Israel Defense Forces, according to a Tumblr page viewed by CNBC.

“Sarah Bird, you are whitewashing the crimes of Microsoft in Palestine,” Hossam Nasr, an organizer with the group No Azure for Apartheid, said.

Nasr was one of the Microsoft employees terminated last year after planning a vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza.

Earlier on Tuesday during another Microsoft Build session, an unnamed Palestinian tech worker disrupted a speech by Jay Parikh, Microsoft’s head of CoreAI.

“Jay, you are complicit in the genocide in Gaza,” the tech worker, who did not wish to share their name for fear of retaliation, said. “My people are suffering because of you. How dare you. How dare you talk about AI when my people are suffering. Cut ties with Israel.”

The worker then called to “free Palestine” and said, “No Azure for apartheid,” a nod to the group and its petition.

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

On Monday, Microsoft software engineer Joe Lopez interrupted CEO Satya Nadella’s keynote speech onstage, saying, “Satya, how about you show them how Microsoft is killing Palestinians? How about you show them how Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure?”

Lopez was later fired, according to a document viewed by CNBC that stated the reason as, “misconduct resulting in the violation of both company policy and our expectations of a respectful workplace.”

The document said Lopez would be ineligible to return to Microsoft as an employee, contractor, or in any other capacity, including an employee of a Microsoft partner, customer or other third party.

At Microsoft’s 50th anniversary event last month, two Microsoft software engineers publicly protested the use of the company’s AI by the Israeli military during executive presentations. The roles of both employees, Ibtihal Aboussad and Vaniya Agrawal, were terminated soon after, according to documents viewed by CNBC.

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Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

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Google hires Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan, others in latest AI talent deal

Chief executive officer of Google Sundar Pichai.

Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.

As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.

“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”

The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup. 

Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.

“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.

Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.

This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.

Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.

The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.

WATCH: Google pushes “AI Mode” on homepage

Google pushes "AI Mode" on homepage

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Nvidia’s Jensen Huang sells more than $36 million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

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Nvidia's Jensen Huang sells more than  million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.

Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unloaded roughly $36.4 million worth of stock in the leading artificial intelligence chipmaker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.

Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.

Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.

The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.

Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.

Read more CNBC tech news

The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.

On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.

Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.

Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.

WATCH: Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports

Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports

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Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

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Tesla to officially launch in India with planned showroom opening

Elon Musk meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Blair House in Washington DC, USA on February 13, 2025.

Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty Images

Tesla will open a showroom in Mumbai, India next week, marking the U.S. electric carmakers first official foray into the country.

The one and a half hour launch event for the Tesla “Experience Center” will take place on July 15 at the Maker Maxity Mall in Bandra Kurla Complex in Mumbai, according to an event invitation seen by CNBC.

Along with the showroom display, which will feature the company’s cars, Tesla is also likely to officially launch direct sales to Indian customers.

The automaker has had its eye on India for a while and now appears to have stepped up efforts to launch locally.

In April, Tesla boss Elon Musk spoke with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss collaboration in areas including technology and innovation. That same month, the EV-maker’s finance chief said the company has been “very careful” in trying to figure out when to enter the market.

Tesla has no manufacturing operations in India, even though the country’s government is likely keen for the company to establish a factory. Instead the cars sold in India will need to be imported from Tesla’s other manufacturing locations in places like Shanghai, China, and Berlin, Germany.

As Tesla begins sales in India, it will come up against challenges from long-time Chinese rival BYD, as well as local player Tata Motors.

One potential challenge for Tesla comes by way of India’s import duties on electric vehicles, which stand at around 70%. India has tried to entice investment in the country by offering companies a reduced duty of 15% if they commit to invest $500 million and set up manufacturing locally.

HD Kumaraswamy, India’s minister for heavy industries, told reporters in June that Tesla is “not interested” in manufacturing in the country, according to a Reuters report.

Tesla is looking to recruit roles in Mumbai, job listings posted on LinkedIn . These include advisors working in showrooms, security, vehicle operators to collect data for its Autopilot feature and service technicians.

There are also roles being advertised in the Indian capital of New Delhi, including for store managers. It’s unclear if Tesla is planning to launch a showroom in the city.

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