Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 10

Google conducted massive layoffs last year, which is going to cost the company billions of dollars in severance packages and costs related to layoffs.

More specifically, Alphabet's earnings report for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2023 stated the company was expecting to shell out $700 million in severance costs this quarter. Alphabet, Google's parent company, continued with the layoffs at the company behind the world's largest search engine, with additional layoffs occurring in January 2024 that amounted to hundreds of workers across core engineering and hardware teams.

Furthermore, Google conducted layoffs in January 2023, and according to Business Insider, the company "recorded employee severance and related charges of $2.1 billion for the twelve months ended December 31, 2023." During this time period, in January 2023, the company laid off 6% of its total workforce, or 12,000 employees. Affected staff or former staff, were paid during the 60-day-minimum WARN notification period, with the offer of severance of at least 16 weeks' salary + two weeks of severance for every year they worked at the company.

Tesla stock slid 13.2% on Thursday after the company released its 4th quarter earnings report, which revealed the company missed several of its internal estimates.

The massive loss in Musk's total value can be attributed to Tesla's stock price sliding to 180.38 on Thursday, and according to Forbes, the Tesla CEO lost $17 billion more than any other billionaire. For those that don't know, Musk owns 21% of Tesla, so when Tesla's stock price dips, so does Musk's total net worth, which is estimated to be around $203.6 billion - $20 billion more than LVMH's Bernard Arnault. Notably, Musk's net worth was a staggering $320 billion in November 2021, which made him the first person ever to obtain such a fortune.

Tesla's quarterly financial report revealed the company missed some targets, including total revenue. Tesla reported top-line revenue of $25.17 billion against the expected $25.87 billion. Furthermore, Tesla's revenue increased by 3% compared to a year ago, with the company also telling shareholders it expects its "vehicle volume growth rate may be notably lower than the growth rate achieved in 2023 as our teams work on the launch of the next-generation vehicle at Gigafactory Texas."

TSMC has just announced its plans for 1nm process node production, where the company plans to build a new state-of-the-art fabrication plant in Taiwan to handle the influx of next-gen chip orders.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) reaching the "holy grail" of semiconductor leadership with its 1nm process node will only continue its dominance in the field, leaving both Samsung and Intel in their (1nm) dust. The new cutting-edge facility is expected to be developed in Chiayi County in southern Taiwan.

It's expected that TSMC's advanced new 1nm fabrication plant would cost somewhere up to 1 trillion won (around $32 billion USD) and should be built at the Southern Taiwan Science Park (STSP). It's expected to take up close to 100 hectares, divided into a "60/40 ratio," where the facilities will handle both semiconductor and IC packaging production in the same facility.

James "Jimmy" Donaldson, more commonly known as MrBeast, is the biggest YouTuber in the world, and now reports indicate he's in talks for a massive deal over at Amazon.

Donaldson is known for his philanthropy and often out-of-this-world videos, such as spending 50 hours in prison, 7 days buried alive, recreating the viral Squid Game series, and so much more. With MrBeast being such a massive name in the entertainment industry, it's no surprise that everyone wants in on the action. According to a new report, MrBeast is currently in the final stages of a deal with Amazon to bring his content to the streaming service Prime Video for a whopping $100 million.

The deal was first reported by Puck News, which mentions that MrBeast will continue to make YouTube content with part of the deal for the series to have the first episode air on MrBeast's YouTube Channel before it moves over to Prime Video. Currently, it is unclear if that will continue throughout the entire series or if this is a once-off just for promotion, though we will get more information when the series is officially announced.

Unless you're living under a rock, you know what eBay is, and it turns out the staff over at eBay aren't very fond of critics.

Unfortunately for them, the behavior of former staff at the company has landed them in $3 million dollars of hot water to resolve criminal charges against a couple who wrote a critical newsletter about the company in 2019.

"The company's conduct in 2019 was wrong and reprehensible," CEO Jamie Iannone stated, "From the moment eBay first learned of the 2019 events, eBay cooperated fully and extensively with the law enforcement authorities."

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has aired out some of the company's dirty laundry on the social media platform X, formerly called Twitter, as the company's CEO has called for more control before he expands Tesla's presence in AI and robotics.

Musk took to X to write that he simply is "uncomfortable" growing Tesla's AI and robotics capabilities without having 25% of voting control, which would be enough for him to remain "influential, but not so much that I can't be overturned". Musk went as far as to say that unless he is given that control, he would "prefer to build products outside of Tesla". Currently, Musk has about a 13% stake in Tesla, equating to a whopping $206 billion of Musk's $230+ billion net worth.

In the past, Musk has described Tesla as not an electric car company but an AI and robotics company that happens to make electric cars. It seems that Musk wants to pump the breaks on development in both of those areas, whether it be autonomous driving or robotics, until he is given this 25% voting power. Musk added in a follow-up post that if he had 15% voting power or lower, "the for/against ratio to override me makes a takeover by dubious interests too easy."

A new report by RespawnFirst has detailed a lawsuit by Take-Two Interactive that believes Remedy Entertainment's logo too closely resembles Take-Two's own trademarked logos, such as Rockstar Games.

Remedy applied for its current trademark back in May 2013 with the UK Intellectual Property Office, which was then publicly published in June 2023. In September of the same year Take-Two filed an opposition against the logo, claiming there is a chance the public could become confused between Remedy's logo and Rockstar Games' logo. `

Notably, this isn't the first time Take Two has gone after another company within the gaming industry over trademarks, as Hazelight came under fire when it attempted to file a trademark for "It Takes Two". The dispute between the two companies ended in Hazelight having to abandon its trademark. It doesn't stop there, as Take-Two have also gone after modders within the Grand Theft Auto community; AI-powered story mod for GTA V = shut down, Grand Theft Auto IV Definitive Edition Mod = shut down, and many more.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang is celebrating in a big way right now, with The Economic naming him the "Best CEO of 2023" after the explosive dominance of NVIDIA's fleet of AI GPUs.

The Economist took a look at the performance of the leaders of the largest companies in the S&P 1200 index, which looks at the big economies except for China and India. The list doesn't include any CEO that hasn't been in their position for less than three years, ranking the list of executives by the returns they generated for their shareholders relative to their sector's average.

On the list of the top 10 bosses, included Canadian mining firm Cameco and American homebuilder PulteGroup, which were left out of the left. A few other CEOs were left out of the group, leaving five "superstar chief executives" for 2023. At the top of that list was NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, which delivered an astounding 172.9% shareholder return; second under Huang was Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta.

The last twelve months have been absolutely phenomenal for semiconductor companies, which just enjoyed their best year in over a decade.

Bloomberg reports that the huge numbers were driven by the insatiable demand of artificial intelligence (AI) chips, with the site reporting the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Index rising 65% in 2023, which represents the biggest single-year gain for the index since 2009.

All of the stocks except for a single one in the 30-member index skyrocketed in 2023, with a single massive standout on the index: NVIDIA. The company had amazing sales throughout 2023, mostly driven by their extensive AI GPUs. Shares more than tripled, giving NVIDIA the title of the first chipmaker to hit a market capitalization of over $1 trillion.

LG has plenty to show off at CES 2024 next week, with new TVs, speakers, gaming monitors and more... including its new LG Styler clothing care solution. Check it out:

The new LG Styler clothing care solution features a handheld, high-pressure steamer, the Dynamic Moving Hanger, and Dual TrueSteam technology, the company says its latest Styler delivers faster and more effective clothes-refreshing cycles with improved drying, dehumidification, and de-wrinkling performance.

We have a first for the LG Styler lineup, with its new model featuring a handheld, high-pressure steamer that makes it even easier to remove wrinkles from shirts and other garments, which saves the trouble (and time) of using a separate iron. LG Styler owners can hang their wrinkled clothes inside of the door, take out the steamer attached to the bottom of the Styler itself, and start the steam process with a simple press of a button.