The Pulse #151: Amazon layoffs – AI or economy to blame?
Also: OpenAI becomes for-profit and takes on Chrome, NVIDIA the biggest Big Tech by a distance, Citibank annoys premium customers for weeks with disastrous product rollout, and more
The Pulse is a series covering events, insights, and trends within Big Tech and startups. Notice an interesting event or trend? Hit reply and share it with me.
Today, we cover:
Amazon layoffs: AI or economy to blame? Amazon is doing more mass layoffs, claiming it wants to be more nimble. But are job losses really about US economic fears, and how Amazon’s retail business will be affected?
Industry pulse. Meta lays off 600 people from its AI division while hiring for another AI unit, $100K H1B fee will not apply to new grads, more AWS and Azure cloud outages, DEI costs the Python Software Foundation $1.5M, Citi blocks premium customers for weeks, and more.
OpenAI becomes for-profit, and takes on Chrome. Years overdue, OpenAI has finally changed its org structure to the for-profit model it’s been operating as. It has also launched Atlas, an AI browser meant to take on Chrome.
NVIDIA the biggest in Big Tech by a distance. NVIDIA is worth as much as Google and Meta combined, and is starting to expand from “just” selling GPUs to direct relationships with large companies such as Palantir, Eli Lilly, and Nokia.
1. Amazon layoffs: AI or economy to blame?
Online retail giant Amazon unexpectedly announced 14,000 job cuts earlier this week. The massive round of layoffs at the company follows other mass redundancies in recent years: