9,000 Microsoft employees did everything right. Top schools. FAANG resumes. $200K salaries. Still got replaced by a line item in an AI budget. Senior engineers. Directors. PMs with FAANG resumes and 15-year careers. The memo called it “voluntary retirement.” Nobody volunteered. Here’s the part nobody’s saying out loud: Microsoft is cutting humans to pay for AI. The same people who built the company are now funding the technology that made them unnecessary. No performance review saves you from a budget decision. This is what the AI transition actually looks like. Not robots. Just a reallocation of spend ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Meta, tells its staff that it is laying off 10% of its employees in a push for "efficiency." This is roughly ~8,000 employees who will be laid off. The ongoing impact of AI.

- After more than two decades, the stock has surpassed its 2000 peak and reached a new all-time high. - The driver is strong guidance, with the company projecting $14.3B in the next quarter's revenue, well ahead of the $13B expected. - Demand for its Xeon server processors is fueling the upside, supported by continued growth in AI infrastructure. A big winner from Intel’s revival? - The Trump administration, which acquired a 10% stake in 2025 for $8.9B, has now seen that position rise by over 300%.

Avis Budget Group, Inc. (CAR) crashed down by $540 or 66% in less than 24 hrs, following a short squeeze.

ServiceNow (NOW) stock plunged 13% in premarket on Thursday, fueling a broader sell-off across software stocks. Other software stocks, including Salesforce (CRM), Oracle (ORCL), and Adobe (ADBE), also traded lower. What’s behind the move: The enterprise software company met first quarter earnings expectations but said the Middle East conflict delayed some subscription sales. Subscription revenue for the first three months of the year jumped 22% to $3.67 billion. That expansion would have been higher were it not for the impact of the Middle East conflict, the company said.

- Apple surprised the markets by announcing Tim Cook would step down as CEO this summer, and John Ternus would become the new CEO. - Cook will still be around, becoming the Chair of Apple. Over the course of 15 years, Cook took Apple from a $350 billion company to a $4 trillion company. - Revenue went from $108 billion to $466 billion this year, and its services business went from non-existent to $123 billion in sales. - His greatest triumph was around supply chains and logistics, keeping China on the company's no matter the state of relations with the US government. - Ternus was the head of hardware before being tapped to become CEO and has been with the company since 2001. - His appointment comes as AI has burst onto the scene, and Apple doesn't seem to have a player in the game.