Tech Roundup: Meta’s job cuts, Twitter’s upheaval drive sector’s erratic exercise

With Massive Tech layoffs going down, extra Twitter drama and politicians going after TikTok, there was greater than sufficient happening within the tech sector this week to maintain buyers’ heads on a continuous swivel.

Oh, and there have been the mid-term elections that managed to seize some consideration all via the week, too.

Effectively, Fb’s Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) put an finish to the rumors about its job-cut plans, when Chief Govt Mark Zuckerberg mentioned the social-media big would lay off 11,000 staff, or virtually 13% of its 87,000-person workforce. Zuckerberg mentioned he was “accountable” for driving the corporate in a path that led it having to implement the largest job cuts in its 18-year historical past.

Together with Meta (META) shedding 1000’s of jobs, Zuckerberg mentioned the corporate would proceed with a hiring freeze into the primary quarter of subsequent yr, and would search for extra methods to chop prices within the months forward. Wall Road obtained behind Zuckerberg’s plans, and mentioned he lastly “will get it” with reference to the troublesome steps the corporate is taking.

Whereas Meta’s (META) job cuts began kicking into gear, Elon Musk continued to boost extra eyebrows within the wake of his acquisition of Twitter barely two weeks in the past.

The Tesla (TSLA) chief govt held what was described as an “emergency” assembly at Twitter amid quite a few govt departures and layoffs of roughly 3,700 staff, or half of the corporate’s workforce. Musk additionally despatched phrase out to Twitter staff that what had been known as “without end” distant work was over, and people wanting to maintain their jobs needed to put in not less than 40 hours every week in a Twitter workplace.

In the meantime, a Securities and Alternate Fee submitting confirmed that Musk had offered $4B price of Tesla (TSLA) inventory over the past week.

TikTok, the short-form video app owned by Chinese language firm ByteDance (BDNCE) got here below hearth from U.S. legislators. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Consultant Mike Gallagher (R-WI), collectively filed laws calling for TikTok to be banned within the U.S. as a result of ByteDance’s alleged connections to the Chinese language authorities and navy, and the app’s entry to U.S. residents’ private data.

And talking of China…Foxconn, which makes iPhones for Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) at a number of large manufacturing services in China, mentioned it can take steps to “tweak” manufacturing to keep away from disruptions within the making of the iPhone 14, specifically, as the vacation procuring season kicks into gear.

Foxconn additionally mentioned it could launch a four-fold growth of its workforce at its iPhone plant in India over the following two years.

Apple (AAPL) additionally mentioned that it’s going to make investments $450M to energy the brand new Emergency SOS system out there on the iPhone 14. Apple (AAPL) mentioned nearly all of the funding will go to GlobalStar (GSAT), the corporate that operates the satellites that Apple (AAPL) makes use of for its SOS system.

Lastly, there have been the mid-term elections, which by the top of the week nonetheless hadn’t been finalized in some races. Buyers reacted largely positively to the returns that had been accomplished, in addition to some upbeat information on inflation.