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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at the company’s Ignite Spotlight event in Seoul on Nov. 15, 2022.

SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The job cuts in tech land are piling up, as companies that led the 10-year bull market adapt to a new reality.

Microsoft said Wednesday that it’s letting go of 10,000 employees, which will reduce the company’s headcount by less than 5%. Amazon also began a fresh round of job cuts that are expected to eliminate more than 18,000 employees and become the largest workforce reduction in the e-retailer’s 28-year history.

The layoffs come in a period of slowing growth, higher interest rates to battle inflation, and fears of a possible recession next year.

Layoffs in tech and banks will have a ripple effect in other industries, says Jason Greer

Here are some of the major cuts in the tech industry so far. All numbers are approximations based on filings, public statements and media reports:

Microsoft: 10,000 jobs cut

Microsoft is reducing 10,000 workers through March 31 as the software maker braces for slower revenue growth. The company also is taking a $1.2 billion charge.

“I’m confident that Microsoft will emerge from this stronger and more competitive,” CEO Satya Nadella announced in a memo to employees that was posted on the company website Wednesday. Some employees will find out this week if they’re losing their jobs, he wrote.

Amazon: 18,000 jobs cut

Earlier this month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company was planning to lay off more than 18,000 employees, primarily in its human resources and stores divisions. It came after Amazon said in November it was looking to cut staff, including in its devices and recruiting organizations. CNBC reported at the time that the company was looking to lay off about 10,000 employees.

Amazon went on a hiring spree during the Covid-19 pandemic. The company’s global workforce swelled to more than 1.6 million by the end of 2021, up from 798,000 in the fourth quarter of 2019.

Alphabet (Verily): 230 jobs cut

Google parent company Alphabet had largely avoided layoffs until January, when it cut 15% of employees from Verily, its health sciences division. Google itself has not undertaken any significant layoffs as of Jan. 18, but employees are increasingly growing worried that the ax may soon fall.

Crypto.com: 500 jobs cut

Crypto.com announced plans to lay off 20% of its workforce Jan. 13. The company had 2,450 employees, according to PitchBook data, suggesting around 490 employees were laid off. 

CEO Kris Marszalek said in a blog post that the crypto exchange grew “ambitiously” but was unable to weather the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire FTX without the further cuts.

“All impacted personnel have already been notified,” Marszalek said in a post.

Coinbase: 2,000 jobs cut

On Jan. 10, Coinbase announced plans to cut about a fifth of its workforce as it looks to preserve cash during the crypto market downturn.

The exchange plans to cut 950 jobs, according to a blog post. Coinbase, which had roughly 4,700 employees as of the end of September, had already slashed 18% of its workforce in June saying it needed to manage costs after growing “too quickly” during the bull market.

“With perfect hindsight, looking back, we should have done more,” CEO Brian Armstrong told CNBC in a phone interview at the time. “The best you can do is react quickly once information becomes available, and that’s what we’re doing in this case.”

Salesforce: 7,000 jobs cut

Salesforce is cutting 10% of its personnel and reducing some office space as part of a restructuring plan, the company announced Jan. 4. It employed more than 79,000 workers as of December.

In a letter to employees, co-CEO Marc Benioff said customers have been more “measured” in their purchasing decisions given the challenging macroeconomic environment, which led Salesforce to make the “very difficult decision” to lay off workers.

Salesforce said it will record charges of $1 billion to $1.4 billion related to the headcount reductions, and $450 million to $650 million related to the office space reductions.

Meta: 11,000 jobs cut

Facebook parent Meta announced its most significant round of layoffs ever in November. The company said it plans to eliminate 13% of its staff, which amounts to more than 11,000 employees.

Meta‘s disappointing guidance for the fourth quarter of 2022 wiped out one-fourth of the company’s market cap and pushed the stock to its lowest level since 2016.

The tech giant’s cuts come after it expanded headcount by about 60% during the pandemic. The business has been hurt by competition from rivals such as TikTok, a broad slowdown in online ad spending and challenges from Apple’s iOS changes.

Twitter: 3,700 jobs cut

Lyft: 700 jobs cut 

Lyft announced in November that it cut 13% of its staff, or about 700 jobs. In a letter to employees, CEO Logan Green and President John Zimmer pointed to “a probable recession sometime in the next year” and rising ride-share insurance costs.

For laid-off workers, the ride-hailing company promised 10 weeks of pay, health care coverage through the end of April, accelerated equity vesting for the Nov. 20 vesting date and recruiting assistance. Workers who had been at the company for more than four years will get an extra four weeks of pay, they added.

Stripe: 1,100 jobs cut

Online payments giant Stripe announced plans to lay off roughly 14% of its staff, which amounts to about 1,100 employees, in November. 

CEO Patrick Collison wrote in a memo to staff that the cuts were necessary amid rising inflation, fears of a looming recession, higher interest rates, energy shocks, tighter investment budgets and sparser startup funding. Taken together, these factors signal “that 2022 represents the beginning of a different economic climate,” he said.

Stripe was valued at $95 billion last year, and reportedly lowered its internal valuation to $74 billion in July.

Shopify: 1,000 jobs cut

In July, Shopify announced it laid off 1,000 employees, which equals 10% of its global workforce. 

In a memo to staff, CEO Tobi Lutke acknowledged he had misjudged how long the pandemic-driven e-commerce boom would last, and said the company is being hit by a broader pullback in online spending. Its stock price is down 78% in 2022.

Netflix: 450 jobs cut

Netflix announced two rounds of layoffs. In May, the streaming service eliminated 150 jobs after the company reported its first subscriber loss in a decade. In late June, it announced another 300 layoffs. 

In a statement to employees, Netflix said, “While we continue to invest significantly in the business, we made these adjustments so that our costs are growing in line with our slower revenue growth.” 

Snap: 1,000 jobs cut 

In late August, Snap announced it laid off 20% of its workforce, which equates to over 1,000 employees. 

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel told employees in a memo that the company needs to restructure its business to deal with its financial challenges. He said the company’s quarterly year-over-year revenue growth rate of 8% “is well below what we were expecting earlier this year.”

Robinhood: 1,100 jobs cut

Retail brokerage firm Robinhood slashed 23% of its staff in August, after cutting 9% of its workforce in April. Based on public filings and reports, that amounts to more than 1,100 employees.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev blamed “deterioration of the macro environment, with inflation at 40-year highs accompanied by a broad crypto market crash.”

Tesla: 6,000 jobs cut

In June, Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote in an email to all employees that the company was cutting 10% of salaried workers. The Wall Street Journal estimated the reductions would affect about 6,000 employees, based on public filings.

“Tesla will be reducing salaried headcount by 10% as we have become overstaffed in many areas,” Musk wrote. “Note this does not apply to anyone actually building cars, battery packs or installing solar. Hourly headcount will increase.”

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CNBC Daily Open: AI still under pressure — but some analysts see a year-end rally

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CNBC Daily Open: AI still under pressure — but some analysts see a year-end rally

People pose for pictures at the Wall Street Bull in New York’s Financial District on June 24, 2024 in New York City. 

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

The Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.84% Monday stateside as technology stocks were under pressure, with Apple, Meta and Oracle retreating more than 1% each.

Artificial intelligence lynchpin Nvidia performed worse, losing almost 2%. CEO Jensen Huang in October said the chipmaker had “half a trillion dollars” of business on the books for 2025 and 2026. When Nvidia reports its third-quarter earnings Wednesday stateside, investors will be combing through Huang’s comments for signs of strong 2026 growth, as suggested by that data point.

The problem with promises or expectations, especially for a company that is one of the two around which the artificial intelligence universe orbits (OpenAI being the other), is that any disappointment will be disproportionately painful.

“If they offer any even slightly muted guidance or forecast for demand for their chips, the market would take that poorly,” Baird investment strategist Ross Mayfield said.

Despite the recent sell-off in tech over concerns about high valuations and capital expenditure, some analysts think we could still end the year with a rally.

 “We continue to see a balance of bullish and bearish signals heading into year-end, but our stance remains that a year-end rally is likely,” Michael Graham, analyst at Canaccord Genuity, wrote in a Monday note.

Likewise, HSBC’s chief multi-asset strategist Max Kettner on Monday said the bank thinks “the probability of a melt-up into year-end – particularly in equities – is much greater” than a potential AI bubble popping.

If their predictions prove true, investors will have much to celebrate during the festive season — and we can worry about AI in the new year.

What you need to know today

Major U.S. indexes fall Monday stateside. Investors sold off technology names, furthering their downward trajectory. Alphabet shares, however, bucked the trend on news that Berkshire Hathaway has taken a stake in it. The pan-European Stoxx 600 lost 0.54%.

‘Half a trillion dollars’ of business for Nvidia. CEO Jensen Huang said in October that the chipmaker has $500 billion in orders for 2025 and 2026 combined. Analysts think Huang is signaling a strong forecast for 2026 sales.

Divided outlook on a December rate cut. In prepared remarks on Monday, Fed Governor Christopher Waller said he is focused on the labor market “after months of weakening.” But Vice Chair Philip Jefferson said there is a “need to proceed slowly.”

India announces energy deal with the U.S. Nearly 10% of New Delhi’s liquified petroleum gas will be imported from the U.S., said Hardeep Singh Puri, Indian union minister of petroleum and natural gas, on Monday. It’s a move to shore up ties with the White House.

[PRO] Bitcoin’s downward trend could portend trouble. The price of the cryptocurrency, which has been under pressure, is a “leading indicator” for U.S. stocks, an analyst told CNBC. But others think bitcoin still has tailwinds behind it even in the near term.

And finally…

A Swiss national flag on a ferry on Lake Geneva in Geneva, Switzerland, on Tuesday, Aug. 5, 2025. The Swiss president dashed to the US capital Tuesday in a last-minute attempt to prevent her American counterpart from imposing the highest tariff of any developed nation on Switzerland.  Photographer: Andrew Kravchenko/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

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Arm custom chips get a boost with Nvidia partnership

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Arm custom chips get a boost with Nvidia partnership

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, reacts during the 2025 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, October 31, 2025.

Kim Soo-hyeon | Reuters

Arm on Monday said that central processing units based on its technology will be able to integrate with AI chips using Nvidia’s NVLink Fusion technology.

The move will make it easier for customers of both companies who prefer a custom approach to their infrastructure — namely hyperscalers —to pair Arm-based Neoverse CPUs with Nvidia’s dominant graphics processing units.

It’s the latest example of Nvidia using dealmaking to partner with nearly every major technology company as it finds itself at the center of the AI industry. The announcement signals that Nvidia is opening up its NVLink platform to integrate with a wide variety of custom chips, instead of forcing customers to use its CPUs.

Nvidia currently sells an AI product called Grace Blackwell that pairs multiple GPUs with an Nvidia-branded Arm-based CPU. Other configurations include servers that use CPus from Intel or Advanced Micro Devices.

But Microsoft, Amazon and Google are all developing or deploying Arm-based CPUs in their clouds to give them more control over the set ups and reduce their costs.

Arm doesn’t make CPUs but it licenses its instruction set technology that those chips need. The company also sells designs that allow partners to more quickly build Arm-based chips.

As part of Monday’s announcement, Arm said that custom Neoverse chips will include a new protocol that’ll allow them to move data seamlessly with GPUs.

The CPU has historically been the most important part in a server. But generative AI infrastructure is based around the AI accelerator chip, which in most cases is an Nvidia GPU. As many as eight GPUs can be paird with a CPU in an AI server.

In September, Nvidia said it would invest $5 billion into Intel, the leading CPU maker. A key part of the deal was to enable Intel CPUs to integrate into AI servers using Nvidia’s NVLink technology.

Nvidia reached an agreement to buy Arm for $40 billion in 2020, but the deal failed in 2022 because of regulatory issues in the U.S. and U.K. Nvidia had a small stake in Arm, which is majority-owned by Softbank, as of February.

Meanwhile, Softbank liquidated its entire stake in Nvidia earlier this month and Softbank is backing the OpenAI Stargate project, which plans to use Arm technology in addition to chips from Nvidia and AMD.

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Nvidia's options pricing can swing 6-7% in either direction, says Susquehanna's Murphy

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Govini founder Eric Gillespie’s lawyer calls child sex chat ‘internet fantasy,’ not a crime

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Govini founder Eric Gillespie's lawyer calls child sex chat 'internet fantasy,' not a crime

Govini founder Eric Gillespie urged a person who he believed to be a dad offering his 10-year-old daughter to be sexually abused to use encrypted chat platforms, a Pennsylvania criminal complaint alleges.

“Signal is safer for er small talk,” Gillespie wrote to the purported father, who was actually an undercover law-enforcement agent, according to a transcript of a chat included in the criminal complaint obtained by CNBC.

Gillespie then wrote that Session, another commonly used end-to-end encrypted platform, is “fine but less secure” than Signal, the filing says.

While chatting in Session, he sent the agent multiple photos of a “recent playmate” wearing a diaper and made repeated graphic references to sex acts with children, court documents state.

Gillespie also wrote that he preferred young children: “best when they can’t talk.”

The charging documents note that users can delete media and messages sent in Session, and because of that, the agent could not get screenshots of media files sent by Gillespie.

The Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General said that the chat with the agent began in an online forum often used by people attempting to arrange meetings with children.

The men then moved their discussion to Session, according to the AG’s office, which last week said it had arrested and charged Gillespie with four felony counts, including unlawful sexual contact with a minor.

He is being held without bond.

His arrest came at a pivotal time for Govini, a defense contractor that is a key player in the U.S. military’s push to modernize.

Gillespie’s lawyer, David Shrager of Shrager Defense Attorneys, told CNBC that he “vigorously denies these charges.”

“In this case, two adults were lying to each other in an internet fantasy chat, where at least one of the participants was using AI,” Shrager said.

The criminal complaint notes that at one point in the conversation, the agent sent “A photo media file of an undercover female Agent age regressed with AI technology to appear approximately 10 years of age.”

That is the only mention of the use of artificial intelligence in the complaint.

“It’s easy to understand why people rush to judgment when they hear about these types of charges,” Shrager told CNBC.

The attorney said that he believes Gillespie will be exonerated.

Gillespie is scheduled to appear at a preliminary hearing on Thursday before Magisterial District Judge John Ditzler in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania.

Govini last week called Gillespie a “depraved individual” in a statement announcing his termination as executive chairman of the company’s board of directors.

Govini said that Gillespie “has no role with the company and is not a majority shareholder.”

“Since being terminated, he will not receive a paycheck,” the company said.

The company did not disclose the current level of Gillespie’s stake in Govini.

Earlier this year, Govini landed a nearly $1 billion contract with the Department of Defense and joined the U.S. Army’s Next Generation Command Control program.

In October, Govini announced a $150 million investment from Bain Capital.

Bain declined to comment on Gillespie’s arrest.

Gillespie was quoted prominently in a news release about Bain’s investment.

“I founded Govini to create an entirely new category of software built to transform how the U.S. government uses AI and data to make decisions,” Gillespie said at the time. “After methodically developing our proprietary technology, that vision is now a reality.”

Accel and Salesforce Ventures are also major investors in Govini. Neither company has responded to requests for comment.

Multiple people familiar with Govini, and who had personal contact with Gillespie, said that he had an active role at the company. Documents and text messages reviewed by CNBC support that claim.

One person, who asked not to be named in order to discuss internal communication, described Gillespie as the point man for key financial dealings.

In a statement responding to questions about his day-to-day involvement at the company, Govini said, “Mr. Gillespie had opinions and ideas and did not hesitate to share them.”

“In his capacity as Executive Chairman, he was aware of and consulted on the operations of the leadership team,” the company said.

Pentagon officials last week said that they are looking into Gillespie’s arrest and possible security issues.

CNBC asked the department if it is looking at possible actions related to the company’s status as a government contractor.

“While the Department cannot comment on individual security clearances in accordance with the Privacy Act, we take these allegations very seriously,” a senior Pentagon official said in a statement.

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