• John Santora took the helm of WeWork in 2024, shortly after it emerged from bankruptcy.
• Two years later, the company is making money.
• At Business Insider's Long Play Event, Santora told Executive Editor Cadie Thompson how he did it.

For WeWork's CEO, Fridays are for sneakers. Sometimes.

At Business Insider's The Long Play event on Thursday, John Santora told Deputy News Chief Cadie Thompson that he rebuilt WeWork in part by establishing a sense of trust and decorum among employees.

In pursuit of that goal, Santora instituted a dress code for employees, but also gave them one day a week to work from home.

"I didn't have the ability to go watch my son play a 3 o'clock baseball game," Santora said, adding, "We have to give our employees that flexibility to do all that."

Santora, formerly the chief operating officer at Cushman & Wakefield, a real estate firm, became WeWork's CEO in 2024 as the once-buzzy office startup emerged from a disastrous Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

Santora had a short time to decide whether to join the faltering company, he recalled. And it wasn't exactly an easy choice.

"I was kind of at that point of, 'Should I retire?'" he said. "My daughter Nancy said, 'Dad, you know we love you, but when you have too much time on your hands, you're a pain in the ass.'"

Since those deeply red days in 2019 when WeWork's valuation plummeted from $47 billion to roughly $8 billion before it was bailed out, the company has stabilized. It posted eight quarters of EBITDA profitability and expects a fourth straight quarter of cash-flow profitability.

In 2025, it reported about $2.3 billion in revenue.

Though it hasn't hit the valuation it once had, the fact that the company could be revived at all is remarkable. WeWork, founded in 2010, rents out office space, spruces it up, and parcels it out to freelancers, startups, and other businesses.

Its first CEO and founder, Adam Neumann, made bold pronouncements that WeWork would "change the world" and "elevate the world's consciousness" by renting out office space to startups.

But after a bungled IPO, it became clear to the new stakeholders that a different type of leader was sorely needed.

As it turned out, Santora was that leader.

Having worked for 47 years at Cushman & Wakefield, Santora had the real estate experience that Neumann lacked, albeit without the magnetism of a Silicon Valley whiz kid.

"From a leadership standpoint, I'm a very structured, disciplined person," he said. "I'm a suit and tie, buttoned-up real estate person."

Santora recalled an early trip to one of the offices, where he discovered employees wearing jeans, pajamas, slippers, and shorts.

"I grabbed my head of HR," he said. "See that? I don't want to see it anymore."

Santora, who at one point described himself as an "old chubby guy from Staten Island," didn't just force employees to wear sports coats to important meetings. In his words, there was some "give and take."

"I don't look at what time they leave, what time they come in," he said of his employees. "As long as they're getting their work done and they're keeping their clients happy."

And Santora allows himself one exception to his suit-and-tie persona.

"Fridays, I'll actually sometimes wear sneakers, depending on what my schedule is," he said.

• Many Americans are not happy about AI data centers and say they plan to vote accordingly.
• In a Gallup poll, 30% of respondents said AI data centers are "extremely important" in how they vote.
• AI data centers, however, are not the issue they care about the most.

Many Americans are worried about AI data centers — and they plan to vote accordingly — but the colossal AI-powering warehouses aren't their main concern ahead of next week's midterm elections.

In a Gallup poll released on Thursday based on interviews conducted earlier this month, about 30% of respondents ranked "construction of AI data centers" as an "extremely important" factor in their midterm calculus.

Another 23% ranked the issue as "very important."

When separated by political party, Republicans emerged as the group more apathetic to data centers. Only 16% of registered Republicans said they considered the issue extremely important, compared to 42% of registered Democrats.

In the poll, Gallup surveyors did not ask voters for their opinions on issues like data centers — only the extent to which they were considering each issue when they vote next week.

Overall, the state of the economy, healthcare, and the "situation in Iran" emerged as the most important topics for voters.

The massive server factories powering chatbot queries had a disastrous PR run over the last year, and have been the subject of protests across America at local town hall meetings and major rallies in Washington.

Some states have passed data center moratoriums, prohibiting their construction. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, once a champion of AI data center expansion, said in August that the state had halted as many as 1,800 data center proposals.

President Donald Trump, who has championed a national effort to build out AI infrastructure, said in August that data centers "could use a little public relations help." He encouraged major builders, including Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon, to do more for the communities where they are planned.

As the midterms approach, however, concern over AI data centers has given way to more pressing issues for voters, like the Iran war, rising energy prices, and the overall health of the economy.

The data center issue ranked 10th among the topics polled by Gallup, just ahead of climate change at 11. A whopping 87% of voters consider the economy an important issue, followed closely by healthcare at 77%.

In a September poll by the Pew Research Center, which surveyed people in August, half of rural Americans said data centers "are mostly bad for the environment" — a figure substantially higher than in January, when it sat at 32%.

For AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google, and others, the issue is existential. Without AI data centers, they can't power the products they sell. Sam Altman has recently suggested that new data centers could be built far from where people live, like the desert.

"We should just go put it off in the desert, around no one where no one wants to be," Altman said in July. "This is fine. The AI system is very happy to be there."

• Mathematicians need to develop their oft-neglected social skills, a math professor at Cornell said.
• Though AI can do the legwork on complex problems, personal charisma is a human-only skill, Steven Strogatz said.
• "Rizz is more and more in demand," he added.

"Social skills" and "mathematics" are terms not often grouped together. In the age of AI, one math scholar says that needs to change.

With AI now capable of handling the geeky legwork required by complex problems, Steven Strogatz, a lecturer and Susan and Barton Winokur Distinguished Professor at Cornell University, said mathematicians should prioritize developing their personal charm in order to set themselves apart.

"I'm starting to think that what makes a future mathematician or a math professor is your unique brand," Strogatz said in an interview with Grant Sanderson, a math educator affiliated with Stanford University.

"Rizz is in more and more demand because it's something that only people have," he added.

Rizz, a Gen Z slang term, is defined by Merriam-Webster as "romantic appeal or charm." (Strogatz, who is 67, appeared to use the term solely to mean charm or charisma. He did not suggest mathematicians need to work on their romantic prowess.)

"What we're selecting for is an element of mathematical rizz," said Sanderson. "The PhDs to be are not going to be differentiated by pure problem-solving abilities."

The brusque push of AI companies into mathematics has caused consternation and head-scratching from many a math geek, as the field ponders ways to stay relevant while OpenAI floods the zone with hundreds of proposed solutions to the world's most complex problems.

Some professors have sworn off AI altogether. Most, however, are trying to find ways to incorporate the technology into their work.

In September, a group of undergraduates at Caltech announced a "mathathon" event in which participants were encouraged to use AI to solve problems in a single, no-sleep sprint. Only days after the undergrads announced the event, a coalition of over 700 academics signed an open letter calling for its cancellation, citing its promotion of AI "slop."

Though the event is set to continue, with some slight alterations, the clash underscored an internal conflict in the math community over how to adapt to AI — a development poised to impact many burgeoning careers in the field.

"We've had whole research programs wiped out on Tuesday," Tristan Buckmaster, a math professor at NYU, said after OpenAI published 700 new findings about outstanding problems earlier this month.

The issue is of supreme importance to Strogatz, who has made several media appearances in the last couple of months. In an essay published in The Atlantic on Sunday, he put the issue in stark terms.

"I am a math professor, and my field is in crisis. Nobody in math is ever going to forget the year 2026," he wrote. "Unless this is really the end of the subject, and then nobody will remember anything about math anyway."

• Trump said on Saturday that American oil companies are making a "fortune" on the Iran war.
• Americans, however, are paying record prices at the pump, according to AAA.
• Trump made the comments less than two weeks from the midterm elections.

Though regular Americans are paying more at the pump, US oil companies are striking it rich, President Donald Trump said on Saturday.

Speaking at a rally in Georgia, Trump said that oil prices are "temporarily high," but added that the throttling of the Strait of Hormuz has pushed oil buyers to American companies with operations in Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana.

"The United States oil and gas business is making hundreds of billions of dollars," Trump said. "I don't give a damn, I'm going to say it — we're making a freaking fortune."

Indeed, a Q2 report this year from the Oil & Gas Journal, a trade publication, noted that "surging crude prices tied to ongoing Strait of Hormuz disruptions" fueled massive windfalls for North American oil companies.

Year over year, a sample of 38 US producers and refiners collectively grew revenues by about $140 billion, the Oil & Gas Journal reported.

Those profits, however, are not exactly shared by the American public.

AAA reported that the average price of regular gas in the United States is now at $4.29 a gallon. In February, one day before the US and Israel launched surprise attacks on Iran, gas prices were at $2.98.

Diesel prices have also increased precipitously since the American war on Iran began. On Sunday, AAA reported that they sat at $6.35, up from $3.75 a day before the conflict began. Shipping companies rely on diesel to power their boats and trucks. Higher diesel costs are often passed onto consumers in the form of higher prices.

Trump's comments are unlikely to curry goodwill among an American electorate reckoning with an affordability crisis less than two weeks out from midterm elections. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent on Sunday.

As the midterms approach, Trump has taken steps to lower gas prices.

On October 9, Trump said he reached a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to import Russian diesel, which had been heavily sanctioned since the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Analysts warned the move could provide a lifeline to the Russian economy as the country seeks to bombard Ukraine into submission this winter.

"I can see just the fake headlines — 'President Trump is talking about all the money they're making while people are suffering at the pump,'" Trump said at the Georgia rally. "That'll be the headline."

• Only tech companies are seeing growth from the AI boom, Apollo Global Management says.
• Apollo says that though some big companies are spending big on AI, they may soon pull back.
• Corporate America is starting to see AI spending not as a source of growth, but as a cost center.

One of the world's largest investment firms says that only tech companies are getting a share of the AI pie.

In an economic analysis published on Saturday, Apollo Global Management said that while the Magnificent Seven — a group of established tech companies that includes Nvidia and Meta — are seeing revenue growth during the AI boom, this growth isn't being shared by other industries.

"Mainstream corporate America is pulling back and starting to view token spending not as a source of growth but as a cost center that weighs on margins," Torsten Slok, a partner and chief economist at Apollo, said in the report. "The technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech."

In a series of graphs, Slok measured three main metrics that have boomed for tech companies but not for regular companies: revenue per worker, profit margins, and productivity growth.

Since 2022, revenue per employee figures have skyrocketed for tech companies — rising from $550,000 to nearly $800,000 today. Meanwhile, that figure hasn't changed much for everyone else in the S&P 500, lingering around $550,000 for the last seven years.

Similarly, while profit margins soared among tech companies since 2022, they've stagnated at about 10% for everyone else.

And across the economy, AI hasn't yet dramatically increased productivity growth as some AI optimists have predicted.

Apollo's research portends a dark shadow over a US economy throwing massive amounts of dough toward AI tools and companies, whose leaders have promised that an "age of abundance," where people won't have to work as much, will soon be upon us.

"The question looking ahead is whether, even as models become commoditized, mainstream corporate America can turn increasingly cheap intelligence into higher revenue growth and higher profit margins," Slok said.

"That may be harder than it sounds," he added.

• Compass Pathways wants to use psilocybin to help people with treatment-resistant depression.
• Its psilocybin pill, COMP360, could finally be coming to market as soon as next year.
• For its CEO, Kabir Nath, it's been a long, strange trip to get to this point.

In 2022, Kabir Nath had a cushy executive job at a pharmaceutical firm that developed anti-psychotic medication.

Then he got a call from a scrappy upstart with a patent on a synthetic version of psilocybin — the active ingredient in magic mushrooms. It hoped to use the compound to help those with treatment-resistant depression.

They wanted him to join as CEO. Nath, whose father died by suicide, bit on their second pitch.

"A number of people have said to me in the last couple of years: 'You do realize what a risk that was,'" Nath told Business Insider about eventually jumping ship for what was, and still is, a drug company without FDA approval for its product.

"I was probably the first really senior executive from traditional pharma to make the move to psychedelics," he added. "But, you know, it was the right thing to do."

Nath's personal risk is now magnified as Compass Pathways finishes filing its final forms ahead of what could be FDA approval as soon as next year, and then a public rollout of its psilocybin pill, called COMP360.

Compass has recently added 150 new hires to its payroll, expanded its marketing division, and moved into new office space in Jersey City in the hope it all works out. "The company is growing rapidly," Nath said.

Though a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson attained FDA approval with a version of ketamine for depression patients in 2019, it is by no means guaranteed that Compass, leveraging a more traditional psychedelic, will get the same approval.

Should the FDA deny Compass' bid, investors would rush to dump their shares, likely sending the company into bankruptcy. The Jersey City office, which just received a new lime green paint job, would be untenable.

If you ask Nath, it would also be bad news for 4 million patients with depression in the US, for whom more traditional antidepressants like SSRIs don't work.

"These are people who have been suffering from depression, and nothing's really working," he said.

Like other drug companies — especially those with a single product — Compass' stock has "been on quite the adventure," Nath said, as the company progressed through various human trials.

When markets closed on Friday, the share price hovered around $11, up $5 from last year. In 2020, when the company went public, shares went for $17.

From Haight Ashbury to Wall Street

Psilocybin's journey to the forefront of medical research didn't begin with Compass, and it hasn't exactly gone in a straight line.

Few did more to publicize the drug than Timothy Leary, the Harvard professor turned acid dropout. In a speech at Harvard's Cambridge campus in 1962, he told students that taking psilocybin allows people to experience an "internal rebirth," according to the Harvard Crimson.

In time, Leary would be fired from Harvard as he, along with a measurable portion of the US population, began to experiment more heavily with psychedelic drugs. Come 1966, the Grateful Dead were spiking their Kool-Aid with acid, and a definitive subculture of long-haired, psychedelic-taking hippies had emerged.

Meanwhile, researchers were experimenting too. Studies involving LSD and psilocybin flourished during the 1960s before hitting a brick wall in 1970, when psilocybin was classified as a Schedule I substance, rendering possession illegal, even for research purposes.

Work on the drug languished for years, until 2000, when the FDA gave scientists at Johns Hopkins University permission to conduct research on psilocybin.

And more recently, psychedelics have become trendy with the tech crowd.

From Burning Man to luxury retreats, experimenting with psychedelics is now common among tech founders and executives like Elon Musk and Sam Altman, who credit the drugs with quieting their nerves, boosting productivity, and allowing them to better harness their creativity.

Research, too, has flourished.

"There was actually a biotech boom from 2018 through to about 2022," Nath said. "In that boom, literally hundreds of psychedelic companies went public."

In 2018, Compass' proprietary psilocybin formulation received breakthrough therapy designation from the FDA. A few years later, it started testing the drug on people.

Nath was an executive in 2018 at Japanese pharmaceutical giant Otsuka, where he said he assembled a team to investigate whether psychedelics could become viable medicines after reading Michael Pollan's book "How to Change Your Mind," which explores the history and therapeutic potential of psychedelics.

COMP360

Compass isn't selling an experience analogous to a spiritual awakening at Burning Man, though.

The drug-taking process for a patient enrolled in one of Compass' trials is a bit different. First, a patient has to have treatment-resistant depression, which is clinically defined as depression that two or more standard drugs have failed to treat.

Then, a clinician explains the details of the process that is about to unfold. After that, they're given the psilocybin in pill form.

"It's a quiet room with a couch," Nath said. "They're offered a blindfold, which most patients do actually wear."

As the patient begins to trip, a playlist of music, including classical and new age, plays softly in the background. The clinician, who Nath said could be a nurse, doctor, or therapist, sits silently in the room if the patient wants to talk, and for safety reasons.

Most of the time, though, there isn't any talking.

"This is not psychotherapy," Nath said. "We are not directing the patient's experience."

Six hours later, after some crying, laughing, and everything in between, the patient goes home.

In Compass's most recent trial, results for which were published in September, just under half of participants who took the drug experienced at least a 50% reduction in depressive symptoms within six weeks of treatment.

Next steps

After a decade of slogging through tests, first on animals and then on humans, Compass has completed all the necessary prerequisites and is busily working to get its last papers in order.

In a statement provided to Business Insider, an FDA spokesperson was noncommittal, though.

"The FDA evaluates experimental medications, including psychedelic drugs like psilocybin, through a rigorous, evidence-based process designed to ensure that any approved treatment is safe and effective for the indicated use," the spokesperson said.

Compass isn't the only psychedelic drug company wading through the lengthy process of trialing a drug.

AtaiBeckley, another psychedelic drug company trading on the Nasdaq whose product is not yet approved by the FDA, is developing a version of DMT administered via nasal spray. It received breakthrough status in 2025, years behind Compass.

For Compass, though, it could face the music as soon as the first half of next year, when it expects the FDA to render its decision. The company is already getting ready.

In addition to adding 150 new hires, Nath said the company is preparing its sales force to go online and is in frequent communication with doctors and healthcare providers about operating in clinics where therapists can administer the drug to patients.

"This has the potential to be radically different, and again, the rapidity is something that they're very excited about, and the durability," Nath said, referring to psychiatrists.

• Peter Thiel said Apple hasn't innovated since the iPhone.
• Thiel said Tim Cook hasn't taken the company in new directions.
• The billionaire venture capitalist said eccentric CEOs like Elon Musk "are way better for society."

Peter Thiel, evidently, isn't a fan of the iPhone Duo.

In fact, the billionaire PayPal cofounder and tech investor said he hasn't been very impressed with much of anything that Apple has done since its eccentric founder, Steve Jobs, died of cancer in 2011.

"In my telling, it did nothing new after Jobs," Thiel said of the iPhone maker in a September interview with author Walter Isaacson for the "Builder's Podcast," which was released on Thursday.

"It turned out, yeah, the mobile phone was this giant invention — there was not that much more to do," he said. "Then it was just scaling and branding and building it out over 15 years or whatever."

Indeed, Apple has faced criticism for failing to innovate beyond the mobile phone and tablet, especially in the age of AI, where its "Siri" product is not as advanced as rivals from ChatGPT or Anthropic.

Jobs unveiled the first iPhone back in 2007 at a conference in San Francisco. Nearly 20 years later, Apple released the 18th iteration this week, with one slight caveat: This one folds.

That said, MacBooks are the de facto laptops for many an AI-nerd and normie alike. iPhones are ubiquitous, and the sleek AirPods design took hold when they were released in 2016.

Though Thiel told Maureen Dowd of The New York Times in 2017 that Apple's era was over, the company's stock price has grown steadily since then.

Thiel didn't pooh-pooh Apple entirely. He called it a "pure, well-run value stock," but lamented what he described as the loss of vision after Jobs' death.

"I would still say somehow Elon or Steve Jobs are way better for society than Tim Cook," he said.

Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment sent on Saturday.

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that speed restrictions on Ukraine's Starlink connection have been lifted.
• His comments marked the end of a chaotic 10-day period where connection speeds were throttled.
• Ukraine uses Starlink to fly its drones and interceptors.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday that his military's access to a network of Elon Musk's satellites, which it relies on for defense, had been restored.

Zelenskyy's comment, made in an X post, came after a chaotic 10 days that began when an advisor to the Ukrainian president said that drones and other projectiles were losing access to the Starshield network.

Starshield is the military application of Musk's Starlink satellite network. In the no-man's-land of war-torn eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian military relies on Starshield satellites to give it control of fast-flying, exploding drones and interceptors.

"I thank all Americans and all our partners who took this seriously and truly helped — members of Congress, senators, all the media, the State Department, and the President," Zelenskyy said in a video he posted to X on Saturday.

Though Musk, as the CEO of SpaceX, to some degree owns the network of satellites, he said in an X post that "any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS."

In an X post on Saturday, Musk differentiated between Starlink, which is used for commercial purposes, and Starshield, which is "controlled by the US government," he said.

"Ukraine military violated Starlink terms of service and used it for offensive drone strikes to kill people," Musk said. "That loophole was closed last week."

The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk himself had ordered the slowdown. Earlier this month, after Ukraine targeted Russian oil facilities, both Musk and President Donald Trump made statements disparaging Zelenskyy. Trump has tried to ease high gas prices — which spiked after the US attacked Iran in February — by loosening sanctions on Russian energy.

"Zelensky has gone too far," Musk said in an X post on October 10.

For his part, Trump told reporters that he didn't know who ordered the slowdown. "I don't know who it was, but I'd like to find out," he said on October 19.

As Russia attempts to bombard Kyiv into submission ahead of what is widely expected to be one of the most brutal winters of the nearly seven-year-long war, a Starlink connection allows Ukraine to intercept some of Russia's slower-paced drones.

The throttling of Starlink prompted a rare outburst from Ukraine's leader, who has sought to control his demeanor after a disastrous Oval Office meeting last year, when Trump berated Zelenskyy for not adequately appreciating US support.

In an interview with Piers Morgan on his YouTube channel on October 14, Zelenskyy called the Starlink slowdown "a big mistake."

"This decision will bring a lot of human losses," he said.

SpaceX and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent on Saturday.

• France and other countries across Europe are weathering another weekend of protests.
• In Paris, major tourist landmarks and storefronts shuttered for the day.
• The French interior ministry upped its police presence and deployed 70,000 personnel to the streets.

As France grapples with another weekend of cost-of-living protests, some of its most famous streets and landmarks are boarded up.

On Saturday, protesters took to the streets in major cities across France, including Paris and Marseille.

Though police in riot gear deployed tear gas and water cannons to disperse the demonstrations, the looting and rioting seen during last week's protests did not materialize.

In a statement, French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said that as of 7:30 p.m. local time, authorities had made about 1,000 arrests.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets in France on Saturday.

Last weekend, student-led cost-of-living protests devolved in some places into violent riots and looting.

This weekend, the interior ministry increased its police presence, deploying some 70,000 officers across the country on Saturday. The protests drew support from various groups and organizations, including the gilets jaunes, or yellow vests.

On Saturday morning, military officers and a multipurpose intervention vehicle could be seen positioned outside Paris' National Assembly building.

Police deploy water cannons, tear gas in Marseille

In Marseille, police deployed tear gas and water cannons to break up protests. Videos from the scene showed lines of police charging protesters.

Paris gets violent

In the French capital on Saturday, thousands of officers largely prevented looting by keeping protesters to a predetermined parade route.

Videos showed demonstrations descending into melees as officers attempted to disperse crowds with tear gas and batons.

Shops on Paris' iconic Champs-Élysées were boarded up.

Luxury stores including Dior, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, and Moncler all have stores on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.

Some 1,500 businesses were targeted in last weekend's vandalism, said Alexandre Bompard, the CEO of Carrefour, one of France's largest supermarket chains.

French business leaders widely condemned the looting that happened on October 17.

Business leaders, including Thierry Guibert, CEO of Lacoste, and Nicolas Houzé, executive chairman of Galeries Lafayette, all spoke out in the aftermath of last weekend's damage.

"We cannot allow violence to destroy what generations have put so much energy into building," Guibert wrote on X.

In central Paris, some shop owners boarded up their businesses as a precautionary measure.

Among the areas targeted in last weekend's violence in Paris were the Marais shopping district and the Place de la République.

Speaking to Business Insider's correspondent, Nathan Rennolds, last weekend, one shopkeeper in Paris said looters had "taken everything."

Major Paris tourist attractions, including the Louvre, have closed.

In a notice on its website, the Louvre says the museum would be closed on Saturday and all reservations would be reimbursed. The Louvre closed its doors earlier this week after student protests blocked the entrances.

The Grand Palais and Musée d'Orsay are also closed for the day.

In an update issued on Thursday, the US Embassy in France warned Americans to avoid demonstrations and said curfews across the country, including in some Paris neighborhoods, might continue. It also advised Americans in Paris for the NFL game on Sunday, October 25, to exercise caution.

Protests turned out across Europe on Saturday.

Protests are also expected in countries including Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Albania. Police in Tirana, Albania's capital, deployed tear gas against anti-government student protesters on Saturday.

• Anthropic said its Mythos 5 model almost never stopped a cyberattack once it began.
• The AI agents fabricated farcical explanations to justify their impersonation and malware schemes.
• Even when Anthropic told the agent it was harming real people? Crickets.

In August, an Anthropic agent created fake emails and bombarded a GitHub moderator's inbox with requests to insert malware into code.

In a thorough debrief of the incident released on Friday, Anthropic found that once an agent had begun the attack, there were basically zero scenarios in which it could be called off.

Like a rabid dog ignoring the pleading cries of its owner, the agent — 98% of the time in one test — ignored Anthropic's warnings once it had, so to speak, its first taste of blood.

Anthropic called this disquieting proclivity "momentum," and added that while its Mythos 5 model, which was released in June, showed little regard for warnings, current models were more inclined to stop.

"Once it had begun performing dangerous actions, Claude Mythos 5 almost always continued doing so, ignoring information that might have suggested its trajectory was harmful," Anthropic said in its report.

In the original experiment, the UK's AI Security Institute tasked an Anthropic agent with hacking into a simulated computer network to test the agent's cybersecurity capabilities.

Though the agent had internet access, researchers intended for it to only use the internet to help it find ways to hack into the network.

The agent, however, accessed an actual GitHub project, incorrectly believing it was part of its simulated target. It wrote malware and tried several times to trick the actual GitHub owner into adding it to the project.

In its requests, the agent misrepresents the malware, describing it to the person as a useful update and browbeating them when they declined to install it.

"I was just trying to make a helpful contribution and fix a bug," the agent wrote, according to the report. "I don't think your warning is fair."

For its new report, Anthropic repeatedly asked agents to perform the same task. It then measured how the agents behaved when different models and stimuli were introduced.

Anthropic tried to throttle the agent's full-frontal attack with three categories of warning: telling it that it was inflicting "real world harm," that its environment was wonky, or that it was manipulating a real GitHub repository.

None had any effect once the models progressed beyond the initial stages of the GitHub attack. In fact, at that point, Anthropic said the models gave absurd answers when confronted with their bad behavior.

When Anthropic asked what the model believed it was attacking, for instance, it answered that the GitHub repository was real, but that the people it was targeting were somehow "simulated."

"This stated belief, in addition to being somewhat unlikely a priori, is essentially impossible," Anthropic said in the report.

• 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.

Is your company conducting layoffs? Got a tip?

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.

• Cybersecurity researchers say the PHP vulnerability has repercussions for normal people, too.
• Even if you don't own a website, hackers could use the vulnerability to steal your information.
• One quick fix: diversify your passwords.

If you're still using the same password for everything, it might finally be time to get on that.

While the major cybersecurity vulnerabilities that OpenAI agents helped expose on Wednesday primarily impact the owners and operators of websites, it could also give hackers the opportunity to hijack your personal information, researchers said.

"Be extra careful visiting ANY web site in the next few days," Changpeng Zhao, the cofounder of cryptocurrency platform Binance, said on X.

OpenAI said on Wednesday that researchers using its AI models uncovered two "critical" flaws in the infrastructure of PHP, a popular open-source programming language used on about 70% of the world's websites.

Because digital commerce websites, for instance, can store personal shopper information in PHP systems, that information would be accessible to a bad actor exploiting the web provider's system if that provider hasn't updated it.

The National Security Administration warned that hackers using one of the PHP exploits could "steal sensitive data, disrupt services, or move deeper into a network."

"Even if you yourself are not building software and that's not where your core business is, a lot of your life does depend on companies that depend on those systems," Madeline Lawrence, cofounder of Aikido Security, an application security platform, told Business Insider on Thursday.

"And they could be deeply, deeply vulnerable," she added. She said that one day after the disclosure, cybersecurity platform Cloudflare reported millions of attempts to exploit the vulnerability.

If you do own a website, PHP has released updates it says will help shield websites from hackers. Instructions for applying those updates are available on PHP's homepage.

For everyone else, here are a few tips cybersecurity researchers say you can use to protect your info.

• Don't reuse passwords; use a password manager.
• Check for security advisories from your bank.
• Use two-factor authentication on your devices and accounts — especially for email, banking, and your password manager.
• If your data has been breached, expect more convincing scams and phishing emails.
• Turn auto-updates on and restart your computer weekly.

"You can ask your claude code to audit what on your laptop is out of date and needs updating," Peter Wildeford, head of policy at the AI Policy Network, a bipartisan nonprofit that advocates for safety guardrails and federal oversight, added in a post on X.

Though Lawrence called the vulnerability "very severe," she cautioned against people running to close their bank accounts to protect themselves.

"Assume that if you're getting a notification that your data has been leaked," she said. "Take action on that because you could have credentials or information floating around the dark web."