An ‘intense year’ at Meta begins with layoffs

Fly, Eagles, fly / On the road to victory / Fly, Eagles, fly / Score a touchdown 1, 2, 3 / Hit ‘em low, hit ‘em high / And watch our Eagles fly / Fly, Eagles, fly / On the road to victory / E-A-G-L-E-S Eagles!

Sorry, just had to get that out of my system. The (tech) news below. —Andrew Nusca

Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Data Sheet? Drop a line here.

Meta's latest layoffs have begun

By the time you read this, Meta will have told about 3,600 people that they have lost their jobs.

The Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp parent previously announced—via an internal memo distributed last month—a 5% cut to its global workforce of about 72,000. Those cuts begin today. 

No continent seems to be spared, but there are exceptions: Workers in Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands are reportedly exempt because of local regulations.

The layoffs will nevertheless be Meta’s largest since the company eliminated about 21,000 roles—at the time, about a quarter of its workforce—in 2022 and 2023, its self-proclaimed “year of efficiency.” Meta has characterized today’s cuts as “performance terminations” and “non-regrettable attrition,” to some criticism.

In the meantime, Meta plans to accelerate hiring of machine learning engineers and other technical roles over the next month, according to a Reuters report. 

CFO Susan Li said during a Jan. 29 call with investors that Meta plans to increase its investment in R&D talent—“infrastructure monetization, generative AI, Reality Labs, and regulation and compliance”—and constrain growth in business functions as it moves to compete on all things artificial intelligence.

“From a hiring standpoint, our focus continues to be on adding technical talent to support our strategic priorities,” she said. —AN

UK authorities order Apple to allow access to encrypted user data

Several years ago, the U.K. introduced a law called the Investigatory Powers Act, though it’s more popularly known as the Snooper’s Charter. Now it seems to be hitting Apple.

According to the Washington Post, the British authorities have ordered Apple to make it possible for them to “retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud.”

Specifically, Apple has reportedly received a “technical capability notice” under the Act. These notices say a company must make it technically possible to respond to a future warrant for the interception of someone’s communications or for access to their device.

In this case, it seems the authorities want Apple to turn off the Advanced Data Protection feature that it rolled out in 2022. The opt-in feature makes it so that users’ end-to-end encrypted iCloud data can only be decrypted on their devices—even Apple can’t access it.

Apple is not legally allowed to say whether it has received a technical capability notice, and did not respond to my request for comment. A U.K. Home Office spokesperson said only: “We do not comment on operational matters, including for example confirming or denying the existence of any such notices.”

The spokesperson would not even confirm whether these notices can make a company expose the data of customers all over the world—an extraordinary proposition.

Bernard Keenan, a tech surveillance expert at University College London, told me the development shows how powerless governments are to get at people’s information without the cooperation of platform providers like Apple, thanks to the strength of end-to-end encryption. “It’s a sign that the state is no longer really able to do this unilaterally,” he said. —David Meyer

Shein looks to Vietnam as it grapples with U.S. tariffs

The fast fashion company Shein is reportedly asking its local suppliers to establish new production lines in Vietnam to ease the pain of U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods.

According to a Bloomberg report, Shein is temporarily offering higher procurement prices (between 15% and 30%), guaranteed large orders, and longer production timelines to facilitate their investment. Shein denied to the outlet that it was adding production capacity in Vietnam.

Though U.S. President Donald Trump’s 10% tariff on Chinese imports took effect on Feb. 4—retaliatory tariffs and restrictions from China take effect today—Shein has reportedly been discussing such a move with its suppliers for several months.

Trump’s removal of the so-called de minimis provision that exempted low-value packages from U.S. tariffs hit Shein (and rival Temu, plus category peers Alibaba and JD.com) particularly hard. More than 1.36 billion de minimis shipments were processed in fiscal 2024, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. 

Shein’s U.S. revenue was an estimated $9 billion in 2023—more than a quarter of the total.

Shein last year filed for a U.S. IPO with hopes of a valuation of up to $90 billion, but that was proclaimed all but dead by the summer. The Singaporean company, which was founded in Nanjing in 2012, is now pursuing a London listing with a valuation closer to $50 billion. —AN

More data

—Klarna prepares for U.S. IPO in April. The Swedish fintech company is valued up to $15 billion.

—Anduril to raise $2.5b at $28b valuation. The LA-area defense tech company founded by Palmer Luckey doubled its revenue to $1 billion last year.

—SolarWinds goes private in $4.4b deal. Turn/River Capital takes on the IT management software company, sending its shares up 23%.

—Rapyd to raise $300m at $3.5b valuation. The Stripe rival was valued at $9 billion in 2021.

—Hugging Face clones OpenAI. Its open source Deep Research agent was duplicated in a day.

—Uber stock jumps 8% after activist investor Bill Ackman reveals a $2 billion stake in the company.

—Safe Superintelligence to fundraise at $20b valuation. It was founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. 

—Warner Bros Discovery’s gaming division lost $300 million last year. Its chief, David Haddad, will step down in April.

—Eutelsat, SES investors nervous about Starlink in Europe. Fears that two of Europe’s largest satellite operators will struggle to pay debts.

—Two-thirds of venture investment in Europe came from elsewhere in 2024.

—A Baltic Sea cable owned by Russia was damaged. No impact on subscribers.

—Christie’s will hold its first AI art auction, adding fuel to the AI training-without-consent fire.

Endstop triggered