Good morning. I’m delighted to share a little bit about who’s speaking at this year’s Fortune Brainstorm Tech, our flagship technology summit in Deer Valley, Utah.
Joining us at this year’s invite-only gathering are legendary Hollywood power broker Michael Ovitz, crypto king Barry Silbert, Walmart U.S. CEO John Furner, and Chris Barman, chief of the “radically simple” upstart EV automaker Slate.
We’ll also hear from Lyft CEO David Risher, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, Ōura CEO Tom Hale, and Caterpillar CTO Jaime Mineart. The chief executive of just-IPO’d Omada Health, Sean Duffy, will join us; the former top exec of Amazon’s consumer business, Jeff Wilke, will, too. (He’s got a few ideas about how to revive American manufacturing.)
And have you heard about this company called OpenAI? CRO Ashley Kramer will tell us how that whole pivot-to-revenue thing is going.
Elsewhere: Vast CEO Max Haot will show us the future of space stations. Dotdash Meredith CEO Neil Vogel will debate the future of media. David Krane will tell us where GV, Alphabet’s venture arm, is placing its bets. WndrCo’s Jeffrey Katzenberg and Aura’s Hari Ravichandran will tell us if the kids are really alright.
This is only the beginning. We’ll announce more names in the coming weeks.
Fortune Brainstorm Tech is September 8-10 this year. Wanna join? Register your interest here. —Andrew Nusca
P.S. Today is the Juneteenth holiday in the U.S. To learn more, I encourage you to read the great Ellen McGirt on how corporate leaders should observe the date. And, of course, mind the gap.
Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Fortune Tech? Drop a line here.
Microsoft readies thousands of layoffs, report says
Microsoft is reportedly planning to cut “thousands of jobs” next month as the AI revolution ripples through the business world and Microsoft itself.
A new Bloomberg report says the Seattle-area company’s sales organization is expected to be particularly hard hit. (Microsoft declined to comment to the outlet.) Two months ago, the company told employees that it would lean on third-party firms to sell to small and medium-size customers.
If you’re thinking, didn’t Microsoft just make a cut? The answer is yes.
The company’s last round of layoffs, which affected about 6,000 people in the product and engineering groups, was only last month.
Like its peers, Microsoft has told investors it planned to splash out on AI and cloud infrastructure (and related talent) while limiting costs in other areas.
Among the so-called Magnificent 7 big tech companies, Microsoft has one of the largest employee headcounts, with 228,000 as of last year.
By comparison, Amazon employed 1.55 million people (!) at year’s end; Google employed 183,000; Apple employed 164,000; Tesla employed 126,000; Meta employed 77,000; and Nvidia employed 36,000. —AN
Texas Instruments will spend $60 billion on U.S. chip plants
Texas Instruments—yes, millennials, the folks behind the TI-83 graphing calculator—said Wednesday that it plans to spend more than $60 billion on semiconductor facilities in the U.S.
The move makes TI the latest in a long line of chipmakers (GlobalFoundries, TSMC, Micron, etc.) who have announced similar plans in response to the White House’s tariff-laden insistence on domestic manufacturing.
Some of the funds will flow to plants that are already in the process of being built. The Dallas-based company also plans to begin construction on two new factories in Sherman, about an hour’s drive from HQ.
A Bloomberg report notes that TI has been bulking up domestic production for years “to increase its competitiveness, particularly against Chinese competitors.”
That’s a big deal because TI leads the pack in analog chips, which convert elements like sound and pressure to electronic signals. Barred from accessing the most advanced chips, Chinese companies “are rapidly expanding their capabilities” in the category, the report adds.
Some investors haven’t loved the company’s splashy capital expenditures, prompting CEO Haviv Ilan to tackle the topic earlier this year. “We’re…approaching the last innings,” he assured them. Until the world changes again, anyway. —AN
DOJ seizes crypto from ‘pig butchering’ scheme
The Department of Justice on Wednesday asked a court to allow it to seize $225 million from a so-called pig butchering operation.
The vivid term describes scams in which con men build up the trust of a victim over time, and then trick them into handing over large amounts of money.
The funds, which the crooks held in USDT stablecoins, were laundered through the crypto exchange OKX, according to the Justice Department.
It would be the U.S.’s largest-ever seizure of funds tied to crypto confidence schemes, said the agency.
While prosecutors didn’t name one perpetrator in the complaint, they did say the funds were linked to a “scam compound” in the Philippines. These locales usually house scores of workers who labor in shifts to lure victims into parting ways with their crypto, like Bitcoin, or cash.
Losses from cryptocurrency scams have accelerated in the U.S. over the past five years, according to the most recent annual report on internet crime from the FBI.
From 2023 to 2024, the money Americans lost skyrocketed 66% to $9.3 billion and the number of complaints the agency received more than doubled to nearly 150,000, said the government agency. —Ben Weiss
More tech
—16 billion records stolen. “The biggest data breach you’ve never heard of” spans Apple, Facebook, Google, the government, and more.
—“Like putting a Band-Aid on a bullet wound.” Reid Hoffman has thoughts about new college grads and the AI revolution.
—AI-powered biological weapons? OpenAI warns of what its latest models are capable of.
—Zoox kicks it up a notch in California. The Amazon-owned robotaxi company opens a new plant in its home state as it gears up for commercial launch.
—Midjourney pivots to video. Its first video generation model is called V1.
—Trump’s T1 phone: A manufacturing fantasy, experts say.It’s one smartphone made in the U.S., Michael. What could it cost? $500?
—Iran’s largest crypto exchange is hacked. $90 million was stolen from Nobitex; a pro-Israel group claims responsibility.
—Facebook will add passkeys to its mobile app in a bid to frustrate hackers.
—Waymo in New York City? It’s not as simple as it seems.
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