The Verge’s latest insights into the ideas shaping the future of work, finance, and innovation. Here you’ll find scoops, analysis, and reporting across some of the most influential companies in the world. Our coverage also includes interviews with innovators and policy makers at the frontiers of business and technology on Editor-in-Chief Nilay Patel’s Decoder; a behind-the-curtain look at Silicon Valley with Alex Heath’s Command Line; and exclusive reporting on Microsoft’s strategy in Tom Warren’s Notepad.
Bloomberg reports the Luxembourg office will fire 370 employees, around 8.5 percent of the 4,370 staff. Amazon announced 14,000 global layoffs in October.
The tiny European tax haven only has a population of 680,000, and these are its biggest layoffs in two decades — but still leave Amazon the fifth largest employer in the country.
CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar on how ChatGPT became an “existential moment” for Stack Overflow.
Netflix may be the frontrunner now, but the war for Warner Bros. could end in a number of different ways.
SpaceX is planning to go public at a valuation that would make it the biggest listing of all time, Bloomberg reports. “The Elon Musk-led company is targeting a valuation of about $1.5 trillion for the entire company” and while they’re saying they plan for next year, it’s a Musk company so you know what that means: “the timing could slip until 2027.” SpaceX expects $15 billion in 2025 revenue, and $22 billion to $24 billion in 2026, mostly due to Starlink.
As Ted Sarandos and David Ellison play out a public spat over whose turn it is to play with Warner Bros., while trying to impress Trump and the regulators along the way, just remember that the real winners at the end will be HBO Max subscribers.
sam flynn:
It’s really fun how we all get to sit around and watch these idiots toss gold bars back and forth across Trump’s desk while waiting to see if an HBO Max subscription will be $80 or $100 a month this time next year.
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Since Netflix announced that it was the frontrunner to buy Warner Bros., David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance has been getting more hostile in its bids to own the legacy studio. But Semafor reports that Paramount’s tactics have raised eyes in Washington, where some think Ellison is banking on favoritism from Trump’s Justice Department.
After a string of exec departures from Apple, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported a few days ago that Srouji, who oversees the chips that have helped iPhones, Macs, and other devices lead their categories, had discussed leaving for another company.
Today, Gurman reports the exec sought to calm employees, sending a message to his division that said “I love my team, and I love my job at Apple, and I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon.”
In the story I wrote about CoreWeave, analyst Gil Luria told me the company has “to keep borrowing more and more because they spend more money than they can get, structurally. They have to continue to borrow to pay interest on the last loan.” Aren’t you glad Nvidia helped them go public?
After launching a hostile bid for the entertainment giant, Paramount’s Ellison told CNBC that Netflix’s deal to buy part of WBD would create a company with “unprecedented market power:”
When you combine the number one streamer with the number three streamer, that creates a company that has unprecedented market power, north of 400 million subscribers. The next largest competitor is Disney, with just under 200 million. That’s bad for Hollywood, that’s bad for the creative community, that’s bad for consumers.
Square’s Willem Avé on AI automation, investing in crypto, and what it’s like working for Jack Dorsey.
Warner Bros. has a long history of bad buyouts and mergers, but maybe Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos has been watching a little too much Arrested Development on his own platform.
Bebopper:
Arrested Development but it might work for us .gif
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Despite Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos’ efforts to woo the president last month, Trump said on Sunday that plans to combine the streamer with Warner Bros. “could be a problem.” Trump said that Netflix already has a “very big market share,” which will “go up by a lot” if the $83 billion buyout goes ahead.
WB has a checkered history of acquisitions, but joining forces with Netflix would elevate it to a new level of prominence.
Alex Karp — the CEO of Palantir, the not-a-surveillance company put forward by Elon Musk’s DOGE to supply the US government with software that allows ICE to track immigrants — is very offended that anyone would suggest he is running a surveillance company.
Also, please “speak up” because “everyone” who thinks he’s a fascist is speaking up, said Karp, who famously wrote a dissertation on the rhetoric of fascism. I wonder why he’s so sensitive!
Multiple sales teams lowered how much salespeople are expected to grow annual sales of Foundry and other AI products, reports The Information, citing sources who called the move “rare.”
Even as its overall cloud business has boomed, the report says that over 80 percent of one US Azure sales team failed to grow Foundry sales by the “ambitious” 50 percent target last year, so in July, the company lowered this year’s goal to 25 percent.
Update: CNBC reports that an unnamed spokesperson denied the report, saying Microsoft has not lowered quotas or targets for its salespeople.
The Italian software company just announced billion-dollar deals to purchase AOL and Vimeo, and now it has reached an agreement to acquire Eventbrite for $500 million. Bending Spoons has added several other digital businesses to its portfolio in recent years, including Evernote, Meetup, Filmic, WeTransfer, and TapeACall.
Along with pro-AI, pro-pollution, and pro-surveillance plans, the spending bill signed in July introduced investment accounts for children with $1,000 contributed for US citizens born from 2025 through 2028. Today, Michael and Susan Dell announced they would also contribute:
Through our charitable funds, we are thrilled to be contributing $6.25 billion to seed 25 million additional accounts with $250 each. These deposits will reach the accounts of most children age 10 and under who were born prior to the qualifying date for the federal newborn contribution. Children older than 10 may benefit, too, if funds remain available after initial sign-ups.
IBM was early, you might argue too early, to AI. Now, CEO Arvind Krishna thinks big bets like Watsonx and quantum computing will start to pay off.
Fresh off a settlement with the DOJ over its software allegedly enabling landlord collusion to raise rents, RealPage is now suing the state of New York over a new law that bans algorithmic rent pricing, claiming it violates the company’s First Amendment rights.
RealPage is seeking a judgment and injunction against a recently adopted statute that seeks to prohibit the use of math and publicly available information to provide advice or recommendations to RealPage’s customers who own and manage rental housing properties. Among other things, the statute seeks to ban software that uses public data about rental or lease terms to advise or recommend market-appropriate rent prices for rental housing properties.
Samsung promoted its head of consumer hardware to co-CEO, joining Young Hyun Jun, head of the memory business. Roh led mobile since 2020, taking on TVs and appliances in an acting role this year, which is now permanent too.
The shuffle follows the death of former co-CEO Jong-Hee Han in March.
[Samsung Newsroom]
Everyone expected drama after Ubisoft delayed its financials at the last minute — a sale, a disruption to the Tencent deal, something else!? — but the reality is less thrilling.
Bloomberg reports Ubisoft “improperly booked sales from a partnership as revenue,” requiring it to correct its accounts and putting it in breach of a loan agreement.
Honestly, that’s insulting.
Last week, Ubisoft delayed releasing its most recent earnings report and asked European markets to stop trading its shares. This week, the company says it’ll release the report before trading opens on November 21st. So whatever’s going on over there, we’ll find out soon enough.
After CEO Sam Altman was fired and then unfired from OpenAI, Larry Summers was added to OpenAI’s board to replace the board members that had nixed Altman. In recently-released email messages, Summers seeks advice from Epstein on pursuing a woman he describes as a “mentee.” Hm!
Ring’s ‘chief inventor’ on AI, lost dogs, and why cameras aren’t dystopian.
American Telephone & Telegraph says it has deployed the $23 billion worth of mid-band spectrum it acquired from EchoStar to nearly 23,000 cell sites in the continental US, which is now boosting 5G download speeds “by up to 80 percent.” Ya’ll seeing a difference?
The Nvidia-backed data center company is part of a growing ecosystem of so-called neoclouds propping up the AI industry and its insatiable hunger for compute.
Despite a $50 price hike to offset Trump’s tariffs, Sony shipped 3.9 million PS5 units globally in the recent quarter (up slightly from 3.8 million last year) with help from Ghost of Yōtei sales that reached 3.3 million after just one month. Lifetime shipments now sit at 84.2 million consoles after five years, putting it roughly in line with the PS4.
[Sony]
