Latest news with #AIinvestments
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Amazon CEO tells employees to expect cuts to white-collar jobs because of AI
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that generative AI is changing the company's workflow. He said that in addition to "efficiency gains," he expects that AI could mean white-collar job cuts. It's unclear exactly how widespread the reduction in force could be — or when it will happen. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has a blunt new message about AI: It is going to "reduce" the company's workforce in the next few years. "As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done," Jassy said in a memo posted to the Amazon website. "We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs." "It's hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company," he continued. Amazon currently employs about 1.5 million workers, according to its website. It is unclear how many employees, or in which sectors, would be affected by AI-driven job cuts. Business Insider previously reported that the company is freezing its hiring budget for its retail business this year. In a March earnings call, the company announced it would spend $100 billion on capital expenditures, mostly driven by AI investments and data centers, Business Insider reported. Jassy is not the first executive to suggest that advancements in AI will likely translate to job cuts in their businesses. The conversations around these types of reductions in force have become increasingly common — and less hypothetical. Allison Kirkby, CEO of the British telecom giant BT, warned that AI may lead to further job cuts at the firm after BT in 2023 announced plans to eliminate as many as 55,000 roles by 2030, Business Insider previously reported. In late May, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei suggested AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs. Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said earlier this month that he expects the impact of AI on white-collar jobs to be so significant that it will lead to a recession. "It does not matter if you are a programmer, designer, project manager, data scientist, lawyer, customer support rep, salesperson, or a finance person — AI is coming for you," Micha Kaufman, the the CEO and founder of the freelance-job site Fiverr, wrote in an April email to employees that he shared on LinkedIn. Jassy had some advice for workers in his statement about how to navigate the changing professional landscape, describing AI as "the most transformative technology since the Internet." "As we go through this transformation together, be curious about AI, educate yourself, attend workshops and take trainings, use and experiment with AI whenever you can, participate in your team's brainstorms to figure out how to invent for our customers more quickly and expansively, and how to get more done with scrappier teams," Jassy said. "Those who embrace this change, become conversant in AI, help us build and improve our AI capabilities internally and deliver for customers, will be well-positioned to have high impact and help us reinvent the company." When reached by Business Insider, an Amazon spokesperson declined to comment further on Jassy's remarks. Read the original article on Business Insider
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Nvidia, American Express join the FinOps Foundation
This story was originally published on CIO Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily CIO Dive newsletter. The FinOps Foundation onboarded American Express, Nvidia, AMD, ServiceNow and Snowflake Wednesday. The five companies joined the cloud cost management organization as premier members and will send representatives to the group's FinOps X conference in June, according to the announcement. The Foundation expanded the scope of its IT cost-control efforts to include data center and software services spending as well as public cloud in March. The nonprofit trade group, which is part of the Linux Foundation, plans to release version 1.2 of FOCUS, its FinOps Open Cost and Usage Specification framework, in June. The addition of chipmakers Nvidia and AMD to the FinOps Foundation's ranks coincides with growing enterprise scrutiny of AI investments. 'FinOps is now ubiquitous in the enterprise landscape for public cloud and FinOps teams are being asked by leadership to bring the benefits to other areas such as AI and SaaS,' J.R. Storment, executive director of the FinOps Foundation, said in the announcement. Cloud modernization carried the unexpected sting of spiraling bills for many on the migration path. FinOps practitioners fought back, forging a cost-optimization alliance between finance and IT to rein in overspend and rationalize usage. The FinOps Foundation brought technology service vendors together with cloud consumers to help standardize billing practices and ease cost management processes. The new members join a robust roster of users and providers, including hyperscale giants AWS, Microsoft and Google cloud. The organization's 51-member governing board includes technology executives from Capital One, JPMorgan Chase and Mastercard, as well as representatives from Accenture, PwC and SAP. Snowflake is the first cloud-based data and AI platform provider to become a premier member of the FinOps Foundation, the organization said Wednesday. Rising costs associated with data storage and analytics have become a persistent pain point for enterprises as AI adoption spreads, according to a February Wasabi Technologies report. The aim of FinOps is to curb unnecessary spending, which doesn't necessarily equate with reduced cloud usage, Jay Litkey, SVP of cloud and FinOps at Flexera and a governing board member of the FinOps Foundation, told CIO Dive in April. Indeed, the practice often leads to increased cloud consumption, as stakeholders tie cost to value, he said. The foundation's newest members anticipate a similar trend to take hold in SaaS and AI usage. 'Establishing proper FinOps for AI has become critical for business success,' AJ Nish, senior manager for product and engineering at Nvidia, said in the announcement. 'We're joining the FinOps Foundation as a premier member to help define industry standards, drive accountability through metrics and ensure customers maximize both performance and value from their AI infrastructure investments.' Recommended Reading Financial firms plan to increase software spending this year Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Reuters
09-05-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Anthropic says DOJ's proposal in Google search could chill AI investment
May 9 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Justice's proposals in an antitrust case against Alphabet's Google (GOOGL.O), opens new tab risk chilling artificial intelligence investments, AI startup and Google partner Anthropic said in a court filing on Friday.
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Big Tech earnings show why the hottest trade became the safest
This is The Takeaway from today's Morning Brief, which you can sign up to receive in your inbox every morning along with: The chart of the day What we're watching What we're reading Economic data releases and earnings The Big Tech trade is alive and well. That's one lesson from this earnings season, in which the market's biggest tech companies are outperforming the rest of the S&P 500 despite tariff woes — or perhaps because of them — making what has been the market's hottest trade also now its safest. Investors were reminded of that dynamic as they put up impressive earnings beats. Excluding Nvidia (NVDA), which is set to report at the end of this month, earnings from the other six members of the "Magnificent Seven" surpassed consensus estimates by 16%, according to data from Bank of America published Monday. That's well above the more modest 4% beat that the rest of the benchmark index has registered so far. This solid earnings showing from the tech giants has also lifted the S&P as a whole, which is set to exceed estimates for first quarter EPS by 12% over last year, according to BofA's equity and quant strategy team led by Savita Subramanian. Sure, the tech sector is well off its highs from February. A gut punch from DeepSeek served as a painful reality check and offered an opening for an "I told you so" moment from market observers who have been critical of sky-high valuations. But what's followed has been a push for US tech supremacy that appears to have bolstered the case for AI investments. "Hyperscalers confirmed an intact AI investment cycle," the Bank of America note read. True even if capital expenditures growth from these so-called hyperscalers is slowing. During this earnings season, Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT) reiterated their spending plans. Meta (META) raised its full-year capital expenditure estimate. And Amazon (AMZN) highlighted that its AI business revenue continues to grow by triple digits year over year. Overall, capex for the hyperscaler group grew by 62% this quarter compared to the same period last year, according to the note, with capex projected to rise by 35% for the year. Sign up for the Yahoo Finance Morning Brief Subscribe By subscribing, you are agreeing to Yahoo's Terms and Privacy Policy We wrote last week that the outlooks from Big Tech leaders would be even more important to the overall market than is typical. With uncertainty stemming from Trump's tariff proposals still leaving investors and companies uneasy, this isn't exactly a business-as-usual moment. In many respects, forging ahead with ambitious plans in times of uncertainty is an outsized marker of success.
