• Take-Two's CEO says his 13,000 employees share a collective goal: make the world's best entertainment.
• His philosophy to get there? A formulaic pay program aligned with that mission, empathetic listening, and direct CEO access.
• Take-Two Interactive is getting set to launch its hotly-anticipated GTA 6 in November.

Strauss Zelnick is relentlessly focused on making "the best entertainment on earth." There's no confusion about that mission among his employees, he said.

"I have 13,000 colleagues," the Take-Two Interactive CEO said at Business Insider's The Long Play event in New York City on Thursday. "100% of them can and will tell you exactly what I just said."

His management philosophy — "establish a mission, establish a strategy, and promulgate collective culture" — is about to get its biggest test in years.

Take-Two is the publisher behind popular games like "Red Dead Redemption" and "NBA 2K," and, on November 19, they'll launch a new "Grand Theft Auto." The wildly popular series hasn't had a new mainline installment since 2013 and has delayed its launch twice in an effort to meet the studio's exacting standards. GTA 6 is central to Take-Two's forecast for at least $8 billion in net bookings for fiscal 2027.

Zelnick has run the company since 2007. To align employee incentives with Take-Two's big expectations, he believes compensation should be based on a formula aligned with the company's mission — not left to manager discretion.

"I personally believe that discretionary compensation programs are toxic," he said, adding that they create "politics and get you the wrong results, especially over time."

"So, we're all formulaic," he said. "You perform, the company performs — you get paid. You perform, the company doesn't perform — you don't get paid. Company performs, you don't perform — if you still have your job, you get paid."

Zelnick also said he has no chief of staff, is available on Slack 24/7, and shares his cellphone number with employees.

"If you're not president of the United States, you have no reason to have a chief of staff," he said.

That doesn't mean he will swoop in and override an employee's manager, said Zelnick, who considers himself an empathetic listener. He said workers should feel heard — and that he will try to help them solve a problem.

Still, he doesn't believe his formula at Take-Two is necessarily the right approach for every leader.

"Leadership comes in all flavors," he said. "You have to be your own kind of leader, and I don't think anyone should adopt my skills, because you're not me."

• A former Anthropic employee wrote a Substack post about his 8-month stint at the then-new AI lab.
• It offers a rare look at Anthropic's early, safety-obsessed culture that the author said left him burned out.
• He describes a visit from the FBI and fresh croissants in an ugly office.

Anthropic's executives raced to build a safe AI — and one former employee said that pursuit left him feeling burned out and disillusioned.

In a lengthy Substack post, Ivan Vendrov, who worked as a member of the AI lab's technical staff from late 2022 to mid-2023, described an intense workplace, where fears of AI catastrophe clashed with the urge to build safe AGI for commercial use.

Vendrov began the post by saying his account should not be taken as gospel. He said he recalled the events "from memory," wrote the "gist of the dialogue rather than the exact words used," and that the post is "merely the experience of one guy in a junior role during a short window of time."

Still, it's a remarkable look into the early days of one of the world's preeminent AI companies, with a named employee explaining how the company's formative period created a highly particular workplace.

It also comes days after Anthropic filed to go public. Anthropic declined to comment on this story.

Equity, the FBI, and a sushi dinner

Vendrov, whose LinkedIn says he now works at Midjourney, wrote that he was weighing contract offers from OpenAI and Anthropic in 2022.

He says he decided to join Anthropic after lunch with one of the AI company's cofounders, who said they were already chatting with regulators in Washington.

A recruiter asked whether he wanted to pledge two-thirds of his equity to charity.

"All the co-founders have made the pledge," Vendrov recalled the recruiter saying. He wrote that he was unsure whether the job offer was contingent on his agreement, so he said yes.

Anthropic's S-1 filing describes an employee donation-matching program, where workers can pledge a "meaningful portion" of their equity awards. The company reported that 50% of its employees are included in the program.

Vendrov described a cramped, ugly office. He said it was stocked with fresh croissants and, later, a popular masseuse came twice a week. He said he was never able to schedule a massage because it was always fully booked.

There was a visit from the FBI once, he wrote. The agent warned that Anthropic was "probably already the target of multiple foreign intelligence agencies."

Anthropic also hosted a sushi chef in the office, Vendrov wrote — but the luxe experience was met with resistance. The following day, he said a cofounder wrote in the company Slack that it set the wrong tone.

"We're not here to get rich and eat caviar," they said, per Vendrov's memory, before pitching future dinners of rice and beans.

The burnout

Vendrov's post detailed sleepless nights, walks with other stressed-out colleagues, and moments where he felt he couldn't be honest about his emotions with colleagues.

Eight months after signing his contract offer, Vendrov said he wrote a resignation letter. As he drafted the letter, he said he thought about describing his doubts to the company, but worried it would create doubt in colleagues who were "smarter than me, more competent than me, more solidly well-intentioned than me."

Instead, he said he praised Anthropic as an "unbelievably good organization."

Vendrov did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings says Silicon Valley execs are like airlines, banks, and Big Pharma.
• They're all powerful and hugely consequential. They're also widely disliked, he said.
• Americans have lost love for tech CEOs — and new movies are highlighting the execs' darkest hours.

Reed Hastings thinks the tech industry has some Big Pharma energy.

During an interview with "On with Kara Swisher," released on Monday, the Netflix founder and former co-CEO responded to questions about the unpopularity of Silicon Valley executives.

"Well, think of pharma," he said. "Pharma is hated by the general public, and to my eyes, is continuing to do amazing and positive work. But people hate the high drug prices, and so pharma is deeply hated."

Hastings also said that drug companies have developed "remarkable" products — like the COVID vaccines — but still draw public ire.

"Did people fall in love with those companies? They did not."

He also compared tech execs to banking and airline bosses: powerful, consequential, and largely disliked.

Swisher raised the question as Hollywood is highlighting some of tech's ugliest chapters in movie theaters across America. A24's "You Can See Everything" has blown up the box office — it's a documentary following former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes in the weeks before she reports to prison. Aaron Sorkin's "The Social Reckoning" dramatizes whistleblowing at Meta. Alex Gibney's "Musk" tracks the rise of Elon Musk's political influence. And Luca Guadagnino's "Artificial," a biopic about a biopic that focuses on OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, is out on Christmas.

Hastings said that tech's yearslong tumble out of public favor is not particularly unusual. Large industries always invite skepticism.

"That's the natural state of how much of the public thinks about business," he said.

Still, Hastings, who sits on Anthropic's board, said that Silicon Valley companies still have one potential PR golden goose.

"We've got to actually cure some diseases," he said. "That'll help."

• Have an AI agent? Need a hammer? Home Depot is thinking about how to make that palatable for the retailer.
• Angie Brown, the company's CIO, spoke to Business Insider about agents, the PHP cyber scramble, and AI fixes.
• She also talked about Home Depot's involvement in Project Glasswing, which grants access to Anthropic's Mythos Preview.

Home Depot wants to roll out the welcome mat for your AI agent — so long as it's wearing a name tag and acting on your behalf.

During a sit-down interview with Business Insider, Angie Brown, the company's executive vice president and chief information officer, said the retailer wants to support AI agents that can search and buy products on a customer's behalf. But Home Depot needs to be sure of two things first.

"We want to know you're not a bot, and we actually want to know if it's you," she said. "That's something that Muse is working on right now, to self-identify."

Her comments are the latest glimpse into how legacy retailers — and their tech staff — are thinking about the possible next generation of online shopping.

Recently, several Silicon Valley companies have launched consumer-focused AI agents, such as Meta's Muse and Spear Street Technology's Instinct AI. They promise agents capable of scanning the internet, comparing products, filling carts, and buying items with little to no intervention from the person who sent them.

Their rollout has been met with varying levels of resistance and buy-in from online retailers. Amazon barred Muse from shopping on its marketplace, saying the bots didn't properly identify themselves. Several other retailers — including Walmart, Best Buy, Sephora, and Shopify — have announced integrations or openness to AI agents. In October, Meta announced that it co-developed a personal agent protocol with Sierra AI to standardize AI agent identification.

Brown said Home Depot is open to the idea of AI agents, but the retailer doesn't want to lose its connection with loyal customers.

Frequent Home Depot shoppers, such as contractors and remodelers, are part of the company's Pro Rewards platform, where they're eligible for discounts. The retailer doesn't "want to lose contact with the customer," she said.

"That's the next evolution," Brown added, confirming that Home Depot is in active conversations with Meta about how Muse should introduce itself to websites. "There's openness on both sides, because they want it to grow."

Home Depot is already using AI to defend itself

Brown said Home Depot is deploying AI amid a recent wave of cybersecurity worries.

Last week, companies around the world raced to patch critical vulnerabilities in PHP, a programming language used in an estimated 70% of websites. The flaws were discovered with help from OpenAI and prompted US cybersecurity officials to urge affected organizations to update their systems or, in some cases, take them offline.

Brown, whose remit includes Home Depot's cybersecurity, called the hours after the warning a "little hectic," but said the company's main website was not affected.

"We had a couple of operating units — companies we've bought and things like that that are a little bit smaller — that had to plug a few vulnerabilities," she said, including an internal job application system that was taken down "in the middle of the day for about an hour to patch."

Otherwise, she said, the company was largely spared from the sudden tech anxieties.

Home Depot, Brown confirmed to Business Insider, has joined Anthropic's Project Glasswing, an initiative that gives selected companies access to Claude Mythos Preview to help secure critical software. She said the company was not granted access in the project's first wave, "despite our best efforts, and calling a lot of friends." Those slots were largely reserved for banks and cybersecurity firms, not major retailers.

The Anthropic models "found a few things" for Home Depot to fix in its code — but the agents also found a few "false positives," Brown said.

Home Depot, she said, has long ranked cybersecurity vulnerabilities, but AI is leading the company to rethink its desired time to deploy a fix.

"The speed to fix a vulnerability has to be driven down to hours," she said.

• OpenAI said its models found that a commonly held computer science hypothesis was wrong.
• Hours later, Anthropic agreed.
• Here's how techies and mathematicians in the internet's nerdiest corners are responding.

Turns out, OpenAI might be really good at computers.

On Monday, the company said it punctured the Exponential Time Hypothesis, or ETH, the nearly 30-year-old belief in the computer science community that some logic problems get overwhelmingly time-consuming as they grow. Hours later, Anthropic released its own research refuting ETH.

OpenAI said it had asked a group of outside computer scientists to organize an open review of its claim. The researchers have highlighted that their involvement is not an endorsement.

If the AI labs' announcements hold, they would likely reopen the hunt for increasingly capable algorithms — something that computer scientists had largely assumed couldn't get much better.

The ultra-nerdy claim has been a huge topic of conversation across social media and in techie circles. Here's how some of the thought leaders have reacted to OpenAI's announcement:

Ryan Williams, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT

Williams, one of the three independent algorithm design experts who are researching OpenAI's claims, has not certified the company's results.

He wrote on X that, if OpenAI's claim turns out to be true, the fresh findings "should make every computer scientist put at least a little more weight on the possibility of P = NP," making the company closer to another potential $1 million Millennium Prize Problem.

In more practical terms, Williams said the claimed breakthrough could lead to "faster algorithms."

He has previously said that he doesn't believe in ETH.

Gary Marcus, emeritus professor at NYU

Marcus, a frequent AI skeptic, wrote that this could be "a big deal if correct," on X.

John D. Cook, Ph.D. and tech consultant in applied mathematics

In a blog post, Cook said OpenAI's claims — while impressive — didn't finally answer computer science's biggest open question.

"The status of P = NP is still unknown," he wrote. "While 3-SAT does not take exponential time, it still takes more than polynomial time as far as anyone knows."

Joshua Fonseca Rivera, AI Safety Research Fellow at Anthropic

Rivera wrote on X that OpenAI's fresh claim was a reminder that humans could have underestimated a computer's intelligence.

"The bitter lesson should make this unsurprising," he wrote. "I know this logically, but... wow, we really don't know anything."

Timothy Gowers, professeur titulaire at Collège de France and Fields Medal-winning mathematician

Gowers wrote a blunt take on X about the development: "Very surprising and consequential that it is false."

Dan Shipper, CEO at Every

Shipper, the AI-pilled chief executive at a tech startup, wrote on X what everyone else was thinking…

"I regret not getting a Ph.D. in frontier math," he said. "(Not that I ever considered getting one but still)."

• Anthropic filed its S-1 on Monday, revealing the company's internal financials.
• Investors, researchers, and tech onlookers shared their thoughts.
• Some applied S-1 learnings to their own industries, like startups and venture capital.

Anthropic is ready to IPO. Analysts and onlookers are weighing in.

On Monday, the AI lab filed its hotly anticipated S-1 paperwork. The prospectus offered an inside look at Anthropic's financials: a net loss of about $42 billion in 2025 and revenue of $4.6 billion. It plans to trade under the ticker symbol ANT.

The S-1 sets the stage for a blockbuster IPO. Here's what smart people are saying about Anthropic's filing:

Sarah Guo, founder of Conviction

Venture capitalist Sarah Guo opened her X post with a big "CONGRATS" to Anthropic on the S-1 filing.

Guo shared her first takeaways: the inflection in operating profit, the focus on novel discovery, the mismatch between consumption-based revenue and long-term compute obligations, and more.

"I am curious to see how 1) a company with strong mission changes - or doesn't - how it operates under quarterly public inspection and 2) how public opinion may change when retail owns a piece of the upside," Guo wrote.

Gary Marcus, emeritus professor at NYU

Gary Marcus, one of the AI industry's most outspoken critics, wrote on X that Anthropic provided financial statements through June 30 — but omitted a full Q3 update.

He predicted that the company's economics had not improved, and alleged that Anthropic was "trying to skirt the truth."

Earlier this month, Business Insider reported that Anthropic told investors it generated $16.8 billion in third-quarter revenue, up 45% from the prior quarter.

Ann Bordetsky, founder of Elora Capital

Ann Bordetsky was a partner at New Enterprise Associates' technology practice before founding her own firm, Elora Capital. She wrote on X that the S-1 was a "juicy read."

The filing will set "a (high) bar for how capital markets evaluate AI startups," Bordetsky wrote.

Harrison Rolfes, Senior Late-Stage Research Analyst at PitchBook

In a note sent to Business Insider, Harrison Rolfes said Anthropic's filing shows just how fast the company is growing — and just how expensive that growth is.

His main positive highlight: the $11.6 billion in revenue in the second quarter. His big worries: the $321.4 billion in future lease payments that haven't begun yet, and the $265.6 billion in fixed minimum purchase commitments.

"The compute commitments are enormous, and the suppliers are also lenders," Rolfes wrote, pointing to financing arrangements with Google, Amazon, and Broadcom. "The price range, Q3 revenue and the total compute commitment are still blank, so the next amendment should fill in a lot."

Finally, Rolfes said it's important for investors to note that Anthropic's founders retain outsize voting power. Put plainly, "public shareholders won't control the company," he wrote.

Sam Ro, financial journalist and founder of TKer

Sam Ro, a financial journalist and former Business Insider reporter, wrote in his Substack that Anthropic's longwinded AI risk section shouldn't make investors fret.

If AI really does create an existential catastrophe, he wrote, "having money might not be your biggest concern."

He also said it's anybody's guess whether Anthropic's stock price will rise or fall after it opens on the market.

The company hasn't been consistently profitable, he said, but "a company's valuation depends less on what it earned (or lost) in the past and more on what it's expected to earn in the years to come."

Gavin Baker, managing partner at Atreides Management

On X, Gavin Baker wrote that Anthropic's annual recurring revenue has "likely gone vertical," even after the company cut prices on its AI tokens.

"I am shocked, absolutely shocked," he wrote. "$100b plus in year-end ARR looks possible again."

Jacob Bourne, analyst at eMarketer

Jacob Bourne, an analyst at EMARKETER, a sister company to Business Insider, wrote in an email that Anthropic's filing comes as investors are increasingly wary of debt-fueled AI infrastructure projects.

"Anthropic's decision to press ahead is particularly noteworthy given its own warnings about AI risks, signaling a willingness to face heightened public scrutiny," he wrote.

Bourne also said the S-1 comes as the cost of developing frontier models remains "eye-watering." It's all evidence that companies are turning to public markets for fresh investments "to remain at the cutting edge of AI development," he wrote.

SemiAnalysis

SemiAnalysis, the research firm founded by Dylan Patel, posted the "most mind blowing stat" it had seen in the S-1. It cited Anthropic's raised capital, compared to its cash and investments.

Anthropic is "growing at a rapid pace" and "profitable on an operating income basis as of the June quarter," SemiAnalysis wrote.

"This is likely the most efficient scaling of a business in the history of capitalism," the firm wrote.

Brad Gerstner, CEO of Altimeter Capital

Brad Gerstner heaped his praise on Anthropic. He congratulated the team on "another important milestone!"

Altimeter will partner with Anthropic through "major participation in the IPO on top of our existing ownership," Gerstner wrote. He used an American flag and a rocket emoji.

Gerstner's venture capital firm is a longtime investor in Anthropic, co-leading the AI lab's Series H in May.

Matt Murphy, partner at Menlo Ventures

During an interview on CNBC, Matt Murphy, one of Anthropic's earliest investors, said he's increasingly bullish on the AI lab.

"You wait your entire 25-year career to find a technology wave like this," he said. "To be able to have invested in the leader early is just phenomenal."

Vivek Gopalan, partner at 8VC

Vivek Gopalan is an investor at 8VC, the venture capital firm cofounded by Joe Lonsdale. He posted a graph from Anthropic's S-1 showing rising revenue per dollar of compute.

"You need to believe that this is monotonic and increasing," Gopalan wrote.

Dan Shipper, CEO of Every

Dan Shipper had "big news" to share: a joke about Anthropic's ever-present safety focus. He celebrated that the S-1 "doesn't say 'or it might kill / unemploy everyone' in the first paragraph!"

The CEO of Every, an AI agent startup, called it a "win for humanity."

Dadisi Olutosin, cofounder and CTO of DealView AI

Dadisi Olutosin said on LinkedIn on Monday that Anthropic’s IPO filing raised a question for potential investors: “When does an extraordinary company become an overpriced investment?”

Olutosin wrote that at a reported valuation of $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion, buyers would pay about 101 times the company’s trailing revenue, compared with roughly 20.5 times the revenue pace at which Series H investors bought in.

“Innovation can transform an industry,” Olutosin said. “That doesn’t make every entry price attractive.”

Sinan Aral, MIT professor and cofounder of Milemark Capital

Sinan Aral said Anthropic’s potential valuation could make it one of the world’s most valuable companies, but that its infrastructure commitments also pose a “tremendous economic risk.”

Aral told CNBC's "Squawk Box" show on Monday that he has questions about what the AI lab’s margins and profitability would look like as it spends hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure. Aral also said there are many risks described in the company’s S-1, including the possibility that its products could act on their own.

“The question is, where is the enduring value?” Aral said. “And I think the enduring value is going to come from companies that can demonstrate enterprise profitability, productivity, and actual value add rather than just providing intelligence.”

Nick Moran, general partner at New Stack Ventures

Nick Moran wrote on LinkedIn said Anthropic’s $80.7 billion loss in the first half of 2026 was largely an accounting story.

“Anthropic lost $80 billion on paper mostly because it became more valuable,” he wrote.

Moran said the bigger question for investors is the price they’ll pay. While Anthropic’s revenue growth remained “spectacular,” Moran wrote, it slowed from the second quarter to the third as the company sought a higher valuation.

“The loss is an accounting story. The multiple is the real one,” Moran wrote. "Institutional and retail demand is real. I wouldn't be surprised to see it end up on the higher end of the range."

Brian Sozzi, executive editor of Yahoo Finance

Brian Sozzi wrote on LinkedIn that he has three takeaways from Anthropic’s IPO prospectus: the banks leading the offering, the AI lab’s adjusted profits, and its warning about risks to humanity.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are the lead underwriters and “will be cleaning up here on fees,” Sozzi wrote on LinkedIn, adding that Anthropic was profitable on an adjusted operating and net basis in the first six months of the year.

Chamath Palihapitiya, venture capitalist and "All-In" podcast co-host

Venture capitalist and "All-In" podcast host Chamath Palihapitiya praised Anthropic in a brief X post after the S-1 dropped.

"Ant is an amazing business…," Palihapitiya wrote in a Monday noon X post.

The VC has previously been critical about Anthropic, advising consulting firms not to deploy Anthropic and OpenAI's products.

"If you are running a consulting business and you are deploying Anthropic or OpenAI directly into your organization (I'm looking at you PwC and Accenture) you are letting the fox into the hen house," Palihapitiya wrote on X in May.

Anish Acharya, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz

Anish Acharya, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, said his earlier predictions about Anthropic's financials have largely held true, calling it a gross-margin-positive profile and "obviously a tremendous business."

Acharya's post on Monday was a repost of a September post, in which he laid out some predictions for Anthropic.

He said in the earlier post, "Overall I think the market underweights how sophisticated anthropic has been in aligning its business interests with its technical and mission interests."

Aaron Levie, CEO and cofounder of Box

Aaron Levie, the CEO of enterprise cloud company Box, said the industry is still in the early stages of AI adoption, as most companies have not started using AI agents in full force.

As deploying agents increases token consumption, the average Fortune 500 customer's spending on Anthropic products could rise, he said in a Monday X post.

"This S-1 gives you a sense of both the strength of the frontier lab business model - even amidst massive competition - and how early we are in the build out of AI," Levie wrote.

• Home Depot's CIO says digital shelf labels won't mean different prices for different shoppers.
• The retailer sees the tags as a way to show delivery timing and help pick online orders.
• It comes as consumers and lawmakers worry about electronic shelves tying in dynamic pricing.

Buying a screwdriver at Home Depot?

Well, you and your next-door neighbor should be paying the same price for the same product on the same day.

Angie Brown, the home improvement retailer's executive vice president and chief information officer, told Business Insider that it's exploring a larger rollout of its electronic shelf labels, or ESLs — the small digital placards that large retailers have been using to replace paper price tags.

When asked if those wireless-updatable tags could introduce dynamic pricing, Brown responded, "Absolutely not."

Instead, The Home Depot uses those tags to accurately inform customers when their store expects the next delivery of a specific product, Brown said.

"We love being able to show you on the sign, 'You can get this as soon as the next day,'" she said. "And we want that to be right."

Why those little shelf electronic labels have caused so much worry

Several major brands — including Walmart, Kroger, Best Buy, and Whole Foods — have rolled out electronic shelf labels in their stores.

Consumers have scrutinized the rollout amid fears that stores could quickly raise prices during busy shopping periods or use customer data to show different prices to separate shoppers.

Some state lawmakers have responded to that anxiety, too. New Jersey passed a yearlong moratorium on new implementation of the tech. Maryland passed legislation requiring grocery stores to keep electronically displayed prices unchanged for a full business day.

Concerns have prompted retailers to get ahead of dynamic pricing concerns: Walmart's CEO, John Furner, for example, wrote a memo in September to customers and employees, explicitly stating that the technology wouldn't be used to adjust prices.

"We don't set different prices based on who you are or the time of day, and we won't," he wrote. "We price the product, not the person."

Target also shared a similar statement this month, saying that the company "does not use personal information to raise prices."

Electronic signs in Home Depot

Home Depot has been testing the technology for years. In its 2020 annual report, the retailer said it had initially used electronic shelf-label capabilities in the appliances section before trying them in additional merchandising departments.

Brown said Home Depot sees the labels as a tool for store operations, not a new pricing strategy.

As stores increasingly double as fulfillment hubs for delivery workers and pickup orders, she said, ESLs can light up to help gig workers and employees quickly locate a product — an update that Walmart rolled out in its stores earlier this month.

She also said the company is not using the technology in its garden department.

There are two important caveats.

First, Home Depot sells several commodities, such as building materials and garden goods. Brown said the ESLs will reflect the individual commodity markets.

Second, Home Depot's Pro customers can receive bulk discounts when they cross purchasing thresholds. Brown said those prices are set by transparent rules, not by a shopper's personal data.

Still, for everyone else walking through a Home Depot aisle, she said, the promise is simpler: The price one customer sees should be the same price another customer sees.

"Those are the use cases we're interested in, not in changing price more often because we have electronic shelf labels," she said. "We've never talked about changing our pricing strategy if we were to roll out ESLs."

• It looks unassuming, but the Subaru Trailseeker is ridiculously fun to drive. And fast.
• Technically, Subaru classifies this car as a midsize SUV. (Sure, Jan.)
• It's the Subaru-iest of all the vehicles built in partnership with Toyota.

American parking lots are awash with a sea of sameness. There's just a bunch of basic SUVs and pickup trucks.

That makes the wagon-ish 2026 Subaru Trailseeker EV a real eye-catcher. Unlike the homogeneous crossovers rolling up to elementary school pickup lines today, it gets a stretched, long-roof profile and carries a Subaru badge. It looks like a proper successor to the Subaru wagons of yore, like the 2000s Outbacks and Legacys.

Technically, Subaru sees this differently. They classify the Trailseeker as an all-electric midsize SUV — and they do have a point with its 8.5 inches of ground clearance and easy-to-slide-into seats.

But, I mean, come on, look at this thing.

That's a wagon in my book.

I drove the Trailseeker's top Touring trim for about 450 miles to see if it was a worthy antidote to America's great car-design flattening. My tester — complete with premium blue paint, a panoramic glass roof, and radiant leg warmers in the front seat (yes, you read that right) — stickered at $48,400.

And it was pretty wild.

This wagon — sorry, SUV — can really move

I've driven around 80 cars in my career as an auto journalist: EVs, muscle cars, sports cars, big trucks, premium luxury vehicles, etc.

The Trailseeker easily makes my personal list of top 10 fastest vehicles. It can launch from standing to 60 mph in about 4.4 seconds and produces 375 horsepower.

Get behind the steering wheel of this family-wagon-shaped car, and you feel that power at all times. On my highway-dominant drive from New York City to the Washington, DC, area, it quickly dashed by slower traffic and 18-wheelers.

The speed doesn't come at the expense of efficiency or refinement, either.

The Trailseeker returned about 3.7 miles per kWh, giving the battery about 270 miles of juice. While it was whipping past cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, I could still hear back-seat passengers when they spoke.

And, speaking of the back seat, the Trailseeker's long body gives rear passengers an almost comical amount of legroom. Fold those seats down, and my panoramic-roof tester has up to 71.8 cubic feet of cargo space, in case you have to move some furniture around, too.

Its biggest red flag was charging.

I saw speeds peak around 127 kW, which is pretty middling in today's EV age. Subaru says the car can accept up to 150 kW.

Let's compare that to the much higher-priced (but similarly shaped) Lucid Gravity, which is considered America's fastest-charging EV. That one can accept up to 420 kW, adding up to 200 miles of range in under 12 minutes.

My initial fast-charge of the Trailseeker — a top-off kind of stop while I grabbed a coffee — took 21 minutes, charging the car from 49% to 77%.

Is it Subaru-y enough?

Subaru didn't build the Trailseeker alone.

It's the product of Subaru's expanding EV partnership with Toyota. The two companies now sell three closely related EV pairs: Subaru's Solterra, Uncharted, and Trailseeker correspond with Toyota's bZ, C-HR, and bZ Woodland. Next year, the companies are launching mechanically similar three-row EVs, too, with the Toyota Highlander and the Subaru Getaway.

The Trailseeker is easily the Subaru-iest of the bunch, and it's not just because of its wagon-y looks. It gets a dose of Subaru's adventure-seeking vibe, including standard Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive, X-Mode settings for snow and mud, roof rails, and a 3,500-pound towing capacity.

That outdoorsy tuning comes with a trade-off. The Trailseeker felt noticeably firm over broken pavement, especially at lower speeds.

A wagon comeback? Don't hold your breath.

You want a wagon now, right? Isn't this thing so cool?

Well, I'm teasing you. Good luck finding a Trailseeker.

Right now, Subaru has only a 9.7-day supply of the model in dealer lots, per CarGurus data shared with Business Insider. That's well under the industry average of about 70 days' worth of supply.

Kevin Roberts, CarGurus's director of economic and market intelligence, says the low supply isn't a product of high demand. In September, the automaker only sold 849 units, just 1.6% of all Subaru sales in America.

Rather, the low supply is part of an ongoing trend of automakers slowly shipping 2027 model-year vehicles to lots.

As the calendar turns, Roberts says there's little momentum for the wagon body type: "This segment has accounted for less than 1% of new car sales," he said, adding that "the traditional wagon has become increasingly rare in today's new car market."

So, no, the Trailseeker probably isn't about to resurrect the American station wagon.

That's a shame. After 450 miles in one, I'm increasingly convinced that good ones could win over American drivers.

• Legacy carmakers continue to report slumping sales in China.
• Volvo is the latest. It's planning 2,500 global job cuts to save about $530 million.
• America is a problem, too. Tariffs, crushed EV incentives, and Polestar's exit also hurt.

China's merciless car market is taking a bite out of Volvo.

On Friday, the Swedish luxury automaker said revenue in China fell by almost 50% over the past year. The company said, like many legacy premium automakers, it's facing increasing "hypercompetition" from Chinese competitors.

Volvo plans to cut 2,500 jobs globally in response, it said, including roughly 2,000 in Sweden. That's part of an effort to slash costs by about $530 million.

"We continue to operate in a very tough environment with strong external challenges: de-globalisation, hypercompetition and climate change," CEO Håkan Samuelsson said in a statement.

It's the latest stark example of the increasing pressure on legacy automakers in China. Several big-name car companies — including Volkswagen, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz — have recently reported slowing sales from their Chinese dealerships.

Volvo is majority-owned by Geely Auto Group, a Chinese automaking conglomerate.

The company said the reductions will be made by a combination of ending consultant contracts, natural attrition, and targeted employee exit packages.

China is not Volvo's only problem. The company also said that US tariffs and the loss of Washington's consumer incentives for electrified cars squeezed margins. Volvo previously bet heavily on a rapid consumer transition to electric vehicles, aiming for an all-electric portfolio by 2030. It's since walked back that goal to include plug-in hybrid vehicles.

The automaker also said that Polestar — its EV offshoot that is exiting the US market — also posted losses.

Volvo's answer is to get more local: the automaker said it would introduce two fresh cars tailored specifically for the Chinese market by the middle of next year. Those cars will be developed in close collaboration with Geely and will include a Chinese tech stack and advanced driver-assist technologies "to make them fully competitive in China."

• Companies including Meta, Amazon, and Visa have said they're trimming staff this year.
• Many firms, like Wix and Block, have cited the rise of AI as a reason they need fewer staff.
• See the list of companies letting workers go in 2026.

Big companies are still cutting jobs in 2026.

So far this year, dozens of major brands have laid off employees, continuing a trend of significant workforce reductions across a broad range of industries, including tech, media, finance, and retail.

While prominent brands continue to announce cuts, the broader economy shows that unemployment hasn't spiked. Economists frequently describe the environment as low-fire, low-hire.

The big change is AI.

Several companies, including Block, Coinbase, and Standard Chartered, have cited the impact of artificial intelligence as a key reason for the layoffs.

A World Economic Forum survey last year found that some 41% of companies worldwide expected to reduce their workforces in the next five years because of the rise of artificial intelligence. The survey also found that jobs in big data, fintech, and AI are expected to double by 2030.

Last year, Business Insider tracked layoffs at around 65 major companies, including Amazon, Meta, Paramount, and Starbucks. In 2026, we'll continue to track additional job cuts based on company announcements, WARN notices, and our own reporting.

Here are the companies with job cuts underway in 2026, listed in alphabetical order.

Amazon is laying off thousands of employees

Amazon said in January that it would eliminate around 16,000 corporate roles globally.

Beth Galetti, senior vice president of people experience and technology, described the January move in a company memo as part of broader efforts to cut back on bureaucracy inside the company.

The cuts followed mass layoffs from October 2025, when the tech and retail giant shed 14,000 roles.

In May, Amazon's Selling Partner Services team slashed additional jobs as it continued to reshape its organization.

"Following a recent review, we've made the difficult decision to eliminate a relatively small number of roles in our Selling Partner Services team," a spokesperson told Business Insider.

American Express is cutting 5% of its workforce

American Express took a $336 million restructuring charge as it plans to cut around 5% of its workforce, the company announced during its third-quarter earnings call.

It employed around 77,000 people by the end of 2025, meaning the layoffs could impact between 3,000 and 4,000 employees.

On the earnings call, the company also highlighted how AI has changed its internal structure.

"There's been a lot of talk about how companies are using AI to increase productivity, automate processes, and generally make their organizations more efficient," Stephen Squeri, Amex's CEO, said during an October earnings call. "We're using AI to do all of those things too."

Angi is cutting 350 jobs

Angi, the popular contractor listing site once known as Angie's List, said in January that it was cutting around 350 jobs "to reduce operating expenses and optimize the organizational structure in support of long-term growth." The company also said it's making the cuts "in light of AI-driven efficiency improvements."

In a January 7 SEC filing, Angi said that the cuts would save between $70 million and $80 million in annual spending. The layoffs will cost the company between $22 million and $30 million, according to the filing.

Atlassian is cutting 1,600 employees

Atlassian, the enterprise software company and maker of Confluence, said on March 11 that it will be cutting about 10% of its workforce as it invests in AI to reshape its organization.

CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said in a statement that about 1,600 employees will be affected by the cuts.

"We fundamentally believe people and AI create the best outcomes. Our approach is not 'AI replaces people,'" Cannon-Brookes said. "But it would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn't change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas. It does."

The company expects to incur $225 million and $236 million in restructuring charges, according to an SEC filing.

Barclays cuts 5,000 jobs

Barclays, the British financial institution, disclosed plans to cut around 5% of its workforce.

Anna Cross, the Group Finance Director of Barclays, said on an October 22 earnings call that the company expects more than GBP 1 billion in efficiency savings in 2027, which will involve reducing its head count by 5,000 full-time employees.

Cross said that 60% of affected workers are related to "support functions, including fewer developers as AI makes our people more productive."

The company reported Q3 pretax profit of GBP 2.3 billion — about $3 billion — up 12% from the same quarter a year earlier.

Barclays CEO, C.S. Venkatakrishnan, said that the company is moving to "drive even greater cost efficiency through deep technological transformation, reducing the unit cost of product, manufacturing, service and innovation."

British American Tobacco cuts 9,000 jobs

British American Tobacco said it will cut 9,000 jobs by the end of the year, about one-fifth of its workforce. The cuts will not impact the US arm of its business.

"We are building a future-ready organisation that is more agile, cost disciplined and technology enabled," CEO Tadeu Marroco said in the statement.

The company, whose cigarette portfolio includes brands like Lucky Strike and Dunhill, has stepped up its push in recent years into smoke-free alternatives, such as nicotine pouches and vapes.

Citi's job cuts continue this year

Citi will cut more jobs this year as part of its plan to reduce its workforce by 10%, or 20,000 employees.

In a statement on January 13, the bank said that it will continue to reduce head count in 2026.

"These changes reflect adjustments we're making to ensure our staffing levels, locations and expertise align with current business needs," a spokesperson for Citi said.

The plan was detailed in the company's January 2024 earnings report and could save the bank as much as $2.5 billion.

Cloudflare lays off 20% of its global workforce

Cybersecurity company Cloudflare on May 7 said it plans to cut roughly 20% of its global workforce, affecting more than 1,100 employees.

In an internal memo, Cloudflare executives said the company's use of AI has climbed more than 600% over the past three months, and that the rapid shift has forced the company to reconsider its structure.

"We want to be clear that this decision is not a reflection of the individual work or talent of those leaving us," Cloudflare executives wrote in the May 7 memo. "Instead, we are reimagining every internal process, team, and role across the company."

The company's shares fell more than 14% in extended trading following the announcement.

Coinbase is cutting 14% of staff

The CEO of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, said in a letter to staff on May 5 that 14% of its staff would be cut, largely because of AI.

"AI is changing how we work. Over the past year, I've watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks," wrote. "The pace of what's possible with a small, focused team has changed dramatically, and it's accelerating every day."

Armstrong said this would mean fewer layers and faster decisions in the company. No pure managers, he said — all leaders will now be required to get stuck in and "get their hands dirty."

"AI is bringing a profound shift in how companies operate, and we're reshaping Coinbase to lead in this new era," he added.

Crypto.com laid off 12% of its workforce

Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek said in March that the company laid off 12% of its workforce, including "roles that do not adapt in our new world."

"Companies that move immediately and pair the best AI tools with top-performers will achieve a level of scale and precision that was previously impossible," Marszalek wrote in a post on X. "This is where we must go."

Dell cut 10% of its workforce

Dell cut its workforce by 10% for the third year in a row, the company said in its annual filing with the SEC.

As of January 31, 2026, the company had 97,000 employees, down 11,000 from the same time last year. The decline includes both layoffs and attrition, Business Insider reported.

eBay is expected to lay off 6% of its employees

eBay is set to eliminate about 800 jobs globally, making up 6% of its workforce. The company told Business Insider that it's taking steps to better align with its strategic priorities.

"We are grateful for the contributions of the employees impacted and are committed to supporting them with care and respect," a company spokesperson said in a statement.

Epic Games is cutting 20% of its workforce

Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, said in March that it would lay off more than 1,000 people — about 20% of its workforce — as engagement with the game declined.

CEO Tim Sweeney said in a memo that the layoffs "aren't related to AI."

"To the extent it improves productivity, we want to have as many awesome developers developing great content and tech as we can," Sweeney said.

Estée Lauder is deepening its cuts, now to as many as 10,000 roles

Estée Lauder said in its May earnings report that it will deepen its previously announced cuts, which are now expected to affect up to 10,000 jobs.

More than two-thirds of the reductions are in cashier and demonstration roles at lower-performing retail and department stores.

Etsy

Etsy said August 5 that it is laying off about 220 employees, roughly 12% of its workforce.

"We will be saying goodbye to approximately 220 colleagues across the company, with most of the changes concentrated in Product & Engineering," the company's CEO, Kruti Patel Goyal, told staffers in a memo.

The company also reported its second-quarter financial results on Wednesday.

While Goyal's memo made no mention of AI or its potential threat to jobs, she said that the cuts were a preemptive move.

"The answer is that today's decisions aren't a reflection of this quarter or even this year, but of where Etsy needs to go next," she wrote.

Expedia laid off some employees

Expedia confirmed to Business Insider that it had laid off some employees on January 26 and had also posted new job openings. It's unclear how many of its workers were affected by the cuts.

"We are eliminating roles as well as opening some new roles as we remain disciplined about assessing the skills we need for the future," an Expedia Group spokesperson said in a statement. "We are also simplifying our structure and reducing organizational layers to move faster and with more accountability. These are not easy decisions, and we are grateful for the contributions of our colleagues who are impacted."

Freshworks is cutting 11% of staff

The San Mateo, California-based software company said in its early May earnings report that it would cut 11% of its staff in the second quarter. The company had about 4,500 employees at the end of 2025.

The cuts aim "to streamline the Company's organizational efforts and product development process" and increase AI across the company, according to the filing.

On an earnings call, CEO Dennis Woodside said about half the company's code comes from AI.

"Like many other software companies, that is definitely changing how we build products, how fast we can build products, and the amount of people that we need to build products," he said.

The company's stock slumped 35% from May 2025 to May 2026.

General Motors is axing 600 salaried employees

General Motors is cutting 600 salaried employees from its global IT division.

A spokesperson said the layoffs would enable it to "better position the company for the future," by ensuring GM has employees with expertise in AI-native development, data engineering, analytics, cloud engineering, prompt engineering, and AI workflows.

GoPro is laying off 145 employees

On April 7, GoPro said it would lay off about 145 employees as it tries to cut operating costs and restructure operations.

The layoffs make up 23% of its global headcount of 631 employees, the camera maker said in a regulatory filing.

The cuts will start in the second quarter of the year and will largely be completed by the end of 2026. The restructuring is expected to result in a charge of $11.5 million to $15 million.

The company cut about 15% of its staff in August 2024 to cut costs.

Groupon is reducing up to 400 positions globally

Groupon said on May 21 that it would cut up to 400 roles globally as part of a restructuring plan, according to a financial filing. It previously said it planned to rebuild as an "AI-native company."

The cuts are expected to happen by the end of the third quarter of 2026. Groupon is looking to generate $10 million to $12 million in gross savings in 2026.

"Up to half of this year's savings will be reinvested into AI infrastructure, talent density, and the tools and teams building the next version of the company," a spokesperson told Business Insider.

Groupon had 1,734 employees worldwide at the end of 2025, according to its annual report.

Heineken has a multi-year plan to reduce its workforce

Heineken is cutting 5,000 to 6,000 roles over the next two years to boost productivity and bring down costs, according to its latest full-year earnings report.

The company told Business Insider that the divisions and regions where the layoffs are due to take place are yet to be confirmed.

Heineken said in its 2025 report that it faced "subdued consumer sentiment" in the Americas, alongside a "challenging year" for brewers in Europe.

Intuit is laying off 17% of its workforce

Financial software company Intuit announced on May 20 that it would be cutting 17% of its full-time workforce.

The company shared a memo from CEO Sasan Goodarzi to employees that listed five reasons for the culling, including reducing management layers, focusing roles on "high impact work," and closing down two of its offices.

"These changes are a necessary evolution to reduce complexity and architect an organization that operates with the velocity required to fuel our growth engines," Goodarzi wrote in the memo, shared in a blog post on Intuit's website.

Laid-off employees in the US would receive 16 weeks of base pay, plus two additional weeks of pay for every year they have worked at Intuit.

The company said in a May 20 earnings report that restructuring costs from the layoffs would be about $300 million to $340 million.

Kenvue cuts 3.5% of workforce

Consumer healthcare brand Kenvue, which produces Tylenol, plans to cut 3.5% of its staff. Kenvue had about 22,000 employees globally, per its latest annual report.

The company wrote in a mid-February SEC filing that its board aimed to reduce complexity and drive operational efficiencies.

The company's layoffs and restructuring efforts are expected to cost $250 million in 2026, per the filing.

LinkedIn is laying off staff and 'scale back' other investments

LinkedIn CEO Daniel Shapero told employees on May 13 that it was laying off employees, and those in affected roles would receive a calendar invite. The jobs included positions in the Microsoft-owned company's Global Business Organization, marketing, engineering, and product teams.

"We need to reinvent how we work, with agile teams focused on our highest priorities, and by shifting investments toward areas such as infrastructure to fulfill our mission and vision over the long term," Shapero said in the memo.

Shapero also said LinkedIn would "scale back" investments in areas like marketing campaigns, customer events, and underutilized office space.

Lululemon laid off 100 part-time employees at its customer service center

The athleisure giant said it laid off 100 part-time employees to "strengthen the business." The affected roles are in the company's North American contact center.

"After careful consideration, we have made the decision to transition our North America GEC to a full-time employee staffing model. As a result, approximately 100 part-time positions in our GEC have been impacted," a Lululemon spokesperson said.

Meta lays off workers at Reality Labs and other divisions

Meta began laying off employees across multiple teams on March 25, including Reality Labs, Facebook, recruiting, sales, and global operations.

The cuts come as the company ramps up spending on AI infrastructure and talent, alongside broader cost-cutting efforts. Meta said the changes are part of ongoing restructuring to better align teams with company goals, while exploring other roles for affected employees where possible.

Meta first began preparing to slash jobs within its Reality Labs division, the unit responsible for Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse ambitions, in January, three people familiar with the matter told Business Insider at the time.

Two employees said that teams working on virtual reality headsets and Horizon Worlds, the company's VR social network, would be disproportionately affected.

Meta has shifted away from virtual reality in recent years in favor of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on beefing up its AI capabilities.

Nike laid off workers in two rounds

Nike is cutting roughly 1,400 jobs, mostly from tech, as part of a broader push to streamline operations and revive growth.

In a memo to staff on April 23 obtained by Business Insider, Chief Operating Officer Venkatesh Alagirisamy said the layoffs are tied to the company's "win now" turnaround plan, which focuses on improving culture, product, marketing, marketplace strategy, and in-person retail. He described the effort as entering its "final stretch."

This is Nike's second layoff in 2026. Nike said on January 26 that it planned to lay off 775 employees across Tennessee and Mississippi, citing efforts to "streamline" its distribution center operations.

"We are sharpening our supply chain footprint, accelerating the use of advanced technology and automation, and investing in the skills our teams need for the future," Nike said in a statement to Business Insider.

Oracle's headcount fell 13% in a year

Oracle's workforce shrank by roughly 21,000 employees, or 13%, over the past year, bringing its headcount to 141,000 as of May 31, according to a 10-K filing released on June 22.

"The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce," Oracle wrote in the filing.

Oracle also disclosed that restructuring costs surged in fiscal 2026. The company spent $1.84 billion on severance and other exit costs, up from $374 million in the prior year.

The reduction in workforce comes as Oracle continues to invest heavily in AI infrastructure.

Papa Johns is restructuring

Papa Johns said it is laying off 7% of its corporate staff amid a broader restructuring.

The pizza chain said it will also close 300 locations in North America through 2027, starting with 200 this year.

"Optimizing our restaurant portfolio and strategically closing underperforming restaurants are among the most impactful actions we can take to improve restaurant profitability and fleet health," Papa Johns CFO Ravi Thanawala said during the company's fourth quarter earnings call on February 26.

Patreon, a creator economy company, laid off 20% of staff in July

Patreon announced layoffs in July.

The creator economy company is laying off 93 employees — roughly 20% of the company — per a memo its CEO, Jack Conte, shared publicly.

Conte wrote that the "market in which we operate has undergone profound change over the last 6 months," and that Patreon needs to cut costs to "remain a stable, dependable rock for our creators."

Pinterest is expected to lay off 15% of its workforce

Pinterest announced a global restructuring plan that includes layoffs affecting less than 15% of its workforce, according to a January securities filing. The cuts come with reductions in office space.

"We are making organizational changes to further deliver on our AI-forward strategy, which includes hiring AI-proficient talent," a Pinterest spokesperson said.

"As a result, we've made the difficult decision to say goodbye to some of our team members. We are grateful for their service and supporting them with separation packages and benefits," they added.

Saks laid off 16% of its corporate staff, among other job cuts

Saks Global, the beleaguered parent company of Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, and Bergdorf Goodman, conducted several rounds of layoffs as it closed stores and trimmed its corporate staff

In April, the company cut about 16% of its corporate staff, representing less than 4% of its total workforce.

"Following the strategic actions we've taken to secure long-term financial stability, sharpen our focus on luxury and full-price selling, optimize our operational footprint, and exit non-core businesses, we are right-sizing our corporate organization to align with our go-forward strategy," a Saks spokesperson told Business Insider.

The cuts followed Saks's closure of dozens of stores and fulfillment centers in the first quarter, resulting in layoffs.

Saks filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January.

Sprout Social cut 20% of staff — about 260 employees

Sprout Social — a social media management program — announced on July 15 that it will cut 260 jobs, or about 20% of its workforce.

In a letter about the reduction in force, CEO Ryan Barretto said the cuts were due to rapid industry changes.

"This decision is not a reflection of their talent or commitment," Barrett said. "We made this decision because we believe it was the right one for Sprout's future. Our industry, and software more broadly, is changing quickly, and the way companies need to operate and invest has changed with it."

Affected staff will be offered a 12-week severance package, plus an additional week of pay for every year of tenure, fully-paid health benefits for six months, and a cash payment equal to the value of their equity shares that would have vested in the next 90 days.

Standard Chartered plans to eliminate 15% of corporate functions over the next 4 years

Standard Chartered plans to cut 15% of corporate function roles over the next four years, the company said on May 19.

The bank, headquartered in London, credited AI as a driver for the reductions.

"It is not cost-cutting, but it is replacing, in some cases, lower-value human capital with the financial capital and the investment capital that we are putting in," CEO Bill Winters said in a media briefing, Reuters reported.

The company added in a statement: "We are combining the best human talent with AI, investing to support our people into higher-value roles."

T-Mobile cut some jobs

T-Mobile cut some staff in early 2026, though the scope of the layoffs is unclear. Some workers posted on LinkedIn saying they'd been affected by the changes in January.

"As the next step in our evolution, we're making some changes while continuing to hire to ensure we have the right focus, structure, and momentum to keep changing the industry through innovation and our long-standing focus on customers," T-Mobile told Business Insider in a statement.

Tailwind cut 3 of its 4 engineers

Tailwind, a popular web tool, said it cut three of its four engineers in January, citing an AI-driven decline in revenue.

"75% of the people on our engineering team lost their jobs here yesterday because of the brutal impact AI has had on our business," CEO Adam Wathan wrote in a GitHub comment on January 6 that made waves in the tech community.

Target is cutting 500 roles from its distribution and regional offices

Target confirmed to Business Insider in February that it would cut 100 district office roles and 400 supply chain positions. It plans to invest instead in additional labor hours at stores to improve the shopping experience and return to growth.

The store improvement effort is a signature priority of the retailer's new CEO, Michael Fiddelke, who started on February 1.

In November, Fiddelke said the company intends to invest an additional $1 billion in capital expenditures for 2026, an increase of 25% from 2025.

TikTok lays off 250 employees

TikTok is laying off 250 employees and closing an office in Nashville, according to documents filed with the Department of Labor and Workforce Development in Tennessee.

A spokesperson for TikTok US Data Security, a joint venture established in January 2026 to oversee TikTok's US operations, said closing the office will "streamline our operations and better align our teams for long-term growth."

The Nashville office will close in October, according to the documents.

UPS said it will eliminate 30,000 jobs

UPS CEO Brian Dykes told analysts during the company's fourth-quarter earnings call that the company plans to reduce its operational workforce by 30,000 in 2026.

"This will be accomplished through attrition, and we expect to offer a second voluntary separation program for full-time drivers," Dykes said.

He told analysts that the company has identified 24 buildings for closure in the first half of 2026 and will continue to evaluate additional buildings for closure.

Verizon is selling 274 retail stores, affecting about 3,000 workers

Verizon said in July that it would transition 274 retail stores into franchise locations as part of ongoing changes at the telecom giant.

The company said about 2,500 retail workers and 500 corporate roles would be cut, and that typically around 70% of store employees accept jobs under the new franchisees.

The move comes two months after Verizon laid off several hundred corporate employees, or about 1% of its head count, as the company reallocates workers across its overall business.

Volvo is cutting 2,500 global jobs

Volvo's CEO, Håkan Samuelsson, said the luxury automaker is facing "a very tough environment with strong external challenges," including a fierce Chinese car market, US tariffs, and continued high-priced investments in a new lineup of electric vehicles.

The company said it is cutting 2,500 employees globally — including 2,000 in Sweden — to save around $530 million in response to those headwinds.

Volvo is also ending consultant contracts and planning some targeted employee exits, the company said in a press release.

Walmart said it would cut or relocate 1,000 corporate jobs

Walmart told employees on May 12 that it would cut or relocate about 1,000 corporate jobs to address redundancies and duplicate roles.

Suresh Kumar, Walmart's chief technology and development officer, and Daniel Danker, executive vice president of AI acceleration, product, and design, announced the changes in a memo.

"We've made changes to simplify how the work is organized, make ownership clearer, and better align roles to the work and skills we need going forward," the memo said.

The move follows Walmart's May 2025 decision to cut 1,500 corporate roles as part of an effort to "remove layers and complexity."

The company employed 2.1 million people as of January.

WiseTech is cutting 30% of its workforce

Logistics software maker Wisetech is cutting 2,000 jobs, or 30% of its staff, citing AI-driven efficiency gains.

In a conference call on February 25, CEO Zubin Appoo embraced AI and said that it means more productivity, in less time, and from fewer employees. The Sydney-based company employed about 7,000 people, according to its annual report released in October.

"I am prepared to say this clearly: the era of manually writing code as the core act of engineering is over," Appoo said. AI is "unlocking levels of efficiency gains across WiseTech that were previously out of reach."

Wix CEO said the company is set to cut 20% of its workforce

Wix, which provides website-building software, is reducing its workforce by 20%, the CEO told employees in a memo published on X on May 28.

The Israel-headquartered company employs about 5,300 workers.

CEO Avishai Abrahami cited the "fast evolution of AI capabilities" as a reason for the cuts and said the company needed to become a "faster, leaner, and flatter organization."

Workday is cutting jobs

Workday is cutting about 400 jobs, and said on February 4 that the move will help the enterprise software company redirect resources toward priority areas.

The layoffs will primarily affect customer-facing roles that are "non-revenue generating," Workday said in a regulatory filing.

The cuts represent roughly 2% of its workforce and are expected to result in about $135 million in charges in the fiscal fourth quarter, which ended in January.

Workday announced a larger round of layoffs about a year ago, citing the need to invest more heavily in strategic areas such as AI. The company reported about 20,600 employees as of late October.

Visa is cutting roughly 7% of its workforce

Global payment technology company Visa confirmed to Business Insider that it's cutting about 2,600 jobs.

That's roughly 7% of the company's employee footprint.

"To capture the opportunities ahead and best position Visa to lead this transformation, we must continue evolving how we work," CEO Ryan McInerney wrote to staff in an internal memo, according to Bloomberg. "AI is also helping to accelerate this evolution and shape the way work gets done at Visa."

Zillow cut 500 employees

Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman announced on August 4 that the company was cutting 500 employees as part of "organizational changes."

As of December, Zillow had around 7,000 employees, so the changes are affecting about 7% of its workforce.

"These changes are about ensuring we have a disciplined cost structure and getting more efficient, with the right people in the right positions," Wacksman said in a blog post.

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Dropbox is cutting roughly 200 workers

Dropbox announced on October 28 that it is cutting roughly 200 roles, or 9% of its global workforce.

"Delivering on that strategy requires concentrating our resources on the priorities that will have the greatest potential for customer impact and growth," Dropbox co-CEO Ashraf Alkarmi wrote in an email to employees.

Alkarmi said while Dropbox was profitable, it had to make "hard choices."

The affected roles are in the company's Engineering, Product, Design, and G&A teams. Alkarmi also wrote in the email that Dropbox's chief technology officer, Ali Dasdan, would be spending down.