IBM will halt hiring in non-customer-facing positions that could be carried out by artificial intelligence, the company’s CEO Arvind Krishna told Bloomberg.  Krishna said the job cuts will primarily affect roles such as human resources. “I could easily see 30% of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period,” he said. If 30% of the company’s HR department were cut that would mean a loss of roughly 7,800 jobs.  IBM explained that nobody currently in these roles will be fired, but any positions vacated wouldn’t be filled if AI could take on the responsibility. Ear ..read more

The Federal Trade Commission has warned technology companies in the United States it intends to crack down on overstated artificial intelligence claims.  The FTC, which promotes consumer rights, has released a statement telling tech companies to “keep your AI claims in check,” as an increasing number of startups use “AI powered” in marketing material without going into detail of how it works.  The agency wrote that when a company says “powered by artificial intelligence” or a version of that phrase, “one thing is for sure: it’s a marketing term.”  “And at the FTC, one thing we k ..read more

AMD reported better than expected earnings this week, bucking the trend as fellow chipmakers struggle.  The company’s fourth quarter results beat Wall Street expectations for both sales and profit, but did warn of a 10% decline in year-on-year sales in the current quarter. AMD’s earnings per share for Q$ stood at $0.69, adjusted, beating expectation of $0.67 per share. Revenue was reported at $5.6 billion, compared to $5.5 billion expected.  For Q1 2023, however, the outlook was not so rosy. AMD expects sales of $5.3 billion, just under analyst estimates of $5.47 billion. AMD’s outlo ..read more

The U.S. Justice Department and eight states have sued Google this week, claiming the company had illegally abused a monopoly over the technology behind online advertising.  Google’s anti-competitive actions “weakened if not destroyed competition in the ad tech industry,” according to the U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.  The lawsuit is the first major move by the Justice Department against a big tech company since President Joe Biden took office and asks the courts to force Google to sell a large part of its ad tech suite of products.  The lawsuit claimed Google had “corr ..read more

Activist investor Elliott Investment Management has taken a substantial stake in Salesforce, amid job cuts and a hefty fall in share price at the software company.  According to multiple reports, Elliott took a multi-billion dollar stake in Salesforce. The investor often pushes for strategic changes and seeks board representation. Elliott has previously targeted the likes of Twitter, where it demanded the ousting of then CEO Jack Dorsey, Pinterest, Citrix and AT&T.  San Francisco-based Salesforce had a market capitalization of $151 billion at close of trading on Friday, down from ..read more

Microsoft will lay off 10,000 employees as part of cost-cutting measures, the company said in a securities filing this week.  The company became the latest tech giant to announce massive job losses, as growing economic uncertainty continues to loom over the industry.  Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos the company was not immune to the global economic struggles. “No one can defy gravity and gravity here is inflation-adjusted economic growth,” he told WEF founder Klaus Schwab. Facebook owner Meta, Amazon, Salesforce, and Twitter have all ..read more

Microsoft is reportedly planning to invest $10 billion in OpenAI, the company behind the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT.  A report from Semafor suggests the investment is part of a funding round with other investors that would value the AI company at $29 billion.  The deal would see Microsoft take a 75% share of OpenAI’s profits until it makes back its investment, at which point the tech giant would take a 49% stake in the company.  OpenAI’s ChatGPT has enthralled the tech world with its natural language processing model, which means it can generate text that can read like ..read more

Retailers in the United States enjoyed record-setting online sales on Black Friday, despite concerns over inflated prices and a looming recession.  Consumers spent $9.12 billion on Friday, according to Adobe Analytics, an increase of 2.3% from last year, and beating the previous record of $9.03 billion set in 2020.  The Adobe Analytics report also revealed the changing ways people are shopping and paying for goods online. The number of shoppers taking advantage of “buy now, pay later” services was up 78% from the same period last year, and 48% of online sales were made using smartpho ..read more

Adobe has announced it will acquire the design platform Figma in a deal worth around $20 billion in cash and stock.  Figma, which creates cloud-based design software that enables collaboration in real time, was a direct competitor to Adobe, and was valued at $10 billion in its last funding round in 2021.  The company, which was founded in 2012, includes Index Ventures, Greylock partners and Kleiner Perkins among its investors, and expects to generate more than $400 million in annual recurring revenue this year, according to CNBC.  “Together, Adobe and Figma will reimagine the fu ..read more

Shares of video communications company Zoom fell 16% on Tuesday after the company missed revenue estimates for the second quarter.  Zoom reported $1.10 billion in revenue for the three months ending June, falling short of analyst expectations of $1.12 billion. Net income was $45.7 million or 15 cents a share. After adjusting for stock compensation and other factors, the company’s earnings stood at $1.05 a share, down from $1.36 a share last year.  CFO Kelly Steckelberg said in a statement that the strong U.S. dollar and performance in the online business of the company had negatively ..read more