Microsoft lays off 300 employees; Meta to fully automate advertising; Coinbase breach linked to India

The Hindu

2 days ago

Microsoft lays off 300 employees
Microsoft has laid off a little over 300 employees in its latest rounds of layoffs to reduce unneeded layers of management. The company did not make an official statement but confirmed the news to the GeekWire outlet. Media outlets also reported the update from the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) in Washington that showed 305 Microsoft employees were laid off on June 2. The latest round of layoffs comes just after Microsoft laid off around 6,000 employees last month.
While the larger, previous layoffs round affected jobs worldwide, the most recent round of layoffs seems to be largely affecting employees based in the U.S. state of Washington. Microsoft has also fired several employees who protested against the company's tech partnership with the Israeli administration, after they disrupted company events to gather support for besieged Palestinians.
Meta to fully automate advertising
By the end of 2026, Meta aims to let brands and companies use its all-in-one AI solutions in order to create advertisements for users, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. This would let brands simply provide a picture of their product and their budget, then letting Meta generate a complete multimedia ad within the specific budget, that could then be used to target some of its 3.43 billion unique active users globally, per the report.
While Meta has not yet made a formal announcement regarding the new offering, CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously highlighted how advertisers require AI in order to reach users at mass while also measuring their results. More brands are exploring AI-enhanced advertisements in order to reach a greater number of users while spending far less, but there are still concerns about maintaining the brand's integrity and transparently promoting a product without potentially alienating customers.
Coinbase breach linked to India
The security breach at the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase that came to light last month involved multiple other points of failure in the company's global employment system, according to sources. In particular, there are allegations related to an India-based employee of the U.S. outsourcing firm TaskUs, whom other employees claimed was caught taking unauthorised photos of the contents of her work computer with her personal phone. This took place in the city of Indore, per sources, and could have been a way for the hackers to get information about Coinbase's customers. However, more than 200 TaskUs employees were later laid off.
The investigations are ongoing, with Coinbase having promised affected customers who were scammed via social engineering attacks that they would be compensated.