Tag: jeff bezos

  • Amazon plans to lay off 10,000 employees due to declining sales

    Amazon plans to lay off 10,000 employees due to declining sales

    Amazon is reportedly getting ready to lay off thousands of office workers due to decreasing sales and worries about an impending recession.

    The e-commerce giant’s office personnel could lose about 10,000 of their employees, according to US media sources who requested anonymity.

    Cuts are anticipated to have an impact on departments like e-commerce and personal devices.

    The business warned it had overhired during the pandemic and had previously implemented a hiring freeze and stopped some of its warehouse expansions. Additionally, it has taken steps to close off some areas of its operations by shelving plans for things like a personal delivery robot.

    The business announced last week that cutting costs would be a priority in its annual review of business operations. “As part of this year’s review, we’re of course taking into account the current macro-environment and considering opportunities to optimize costs,” the e-commerce company said in a statement.

    According to media sources, the precise number of positions that will be eliminated is still uncertain.

    Amazon is battling a dip in online sales after the epidemic saw a surge in its revenue. Despite a 15 per cent increase in overall revenue in the most recent quarter, the company has remained concerned about the forecast as the slowdown spreads to other industries, including its long-profit-boosting cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services.

    On social media, the company’s founder Jeff Bezos, who is no longer serving as CEO but is still chairman of the board, declared that it was time to “batten down the hatches.”

    Amazon joins a long list of other tech firms that have announced layoffs in an effort to signal an impending economic collapse. Included in the list is Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, which recently announced plans to eliminate 11,000 jobs, the largest reduction in staff in company history.

    According to a survey by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which analyses such announcements, US-based tech companies have cut more than 28,000 jobs overall this year, more than double the number from a year ago.

  • Here’s a list of the top 10 richest people of the world

    According to the latest list by Forbes, these are the world’s richest people who have made it to the top 10.

    Elon Musk

    Elon Musk, who is in the news because of his battle with Twitter, has a net worth of $263.4 billion.

    SpaceX is valued at almost $100 billion and Tesla is the world’s most important automaker.

    Bernard Arnault and Family

    Europe’s richest man who earned a $100 billion fortune last year, the chairman and CEO of LVMH, Bernard Arnault, is second on the list with a net worth of $167.7 billion. The family owns more than 70 brands.

    Jeff Bezos

    Jeff Bezos is the founder and CEO of Amazon and has a net worth of $162.7 billion. Even though he transferred much of his wealth to his wife after their divorce, the e-commerce giant remains the third richest.

    Gautam Adani and family

    India’s Gautam Adani has diversified Adani Group into multiple sectors, including aerospace, logistics, and energy. At $142.7 billion, he is now the fourth richest person in the world.

    Bill Gates

    Bill Gates has a net worth of $113.4 billion.

    Larry Ellison

    With a net worth of $108.5 billion, Larry Ellison — the founder of software firm Oracle — stands at the sixth position. Ellison has also been on Tesla’s board after he bought three million shares in 2018, reported Business Insider. Almost all of the Hawaiian island Lanai belongs to Ellison.

    Larry Page

    Google’s co-founder Larry Page has a net worth of over $100 billion. Among other interesting projects, he is funding “Flying Car”.

    Sergey Brin

    Sergey Brin is the co-founder and board member of Alphabet. He also co-founded Google. He has a total net worth of $97.0 billion.

    Mukesh Ambani

    Mukesh Ambani with a total net worth of $94.2 billion is at the 10 position in the world. He owns Reliance Industries and has been the richest person in Asia.

  • Elon Musk plans to fire Twitter employees to save money

    Elon Musk plans to fire Twitter employees to save money

    Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is putting his plans into action after acquiring Twitter for $44 billion. In an attempt to obtain money for the takeover, he told banks that he wanted to cut the salaries of board members and executives and also pitched ideas for monetizing tweets.

    Musk presented the pitch to the financiers just days after making his bid on Twitter on April 14. He previously stated that if the offer was accepted, board members’ wages will be cut to zero, saving Twitter $3 million per year. It seems clear that Musk plans to lay off people to save money.

    The tech mogul also remarked that Twitter has a considerably smaller gross margin than similar sites like Facebook and Pinterest. He claimed that this freed up a lot of room for the corporation to run more cost-effectively.

    Musk detailed his ambitions to create features that will help his company generate more money from tweets that contain essential information or become viral.

    Read more: Instagram is testing ‘pin’ feature for posts

    In the near future, a fee could be charged if a third-party website quotes or incorporates a tweet from verified individuals or organisations.

  • Teen on space flight tells Bezos he has never used Amazon

    Teen on space flight tells Bezos he has never used Amazon

    A Dutch teenager who became the world’s youngest space traveller told billionaire Jeff Bezos on the space flight that he had never ordered anything from Amazon.com.

    An 18-year-old physics student, Oliver Daemen, accompanied Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos and 82-year-old female aviator Wally Funk – the oldest person to go to space on a 10-minute space trip.

    Bezos funded exploration company Blue Origin by selling billions of dollars worth of stock in his online delivery business Amazon.

    “I told Jeff, like, I’ve actually never bought something from Amazon,” Daemen told Reuters in an interview on Friday at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. “And he was like, ‘Oh, wow, it’s a long time ago I heard someone say that’.”

    Daemen, who was picked after another candidate bidding $28 million for the ride cancelled at the last minute, found out he would be joining the flight while on a family holiday in Italy.

    “They called and said: ‘Are you still interested?’ and we were like ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’”

    Daemen had dreamt of space travel since he was a kid.

    “We didn’t pay even close to $28 million, but they chose me because I was the youngest and I was also a pilot and I also knew quite a lot about it already.”

    “I don’t think I realised it until I was in the rocket: ‘Wow, it’s really happening’,” he said. “It was my ultimate, ultimate goal … but I never thought it was going to be this soon.”

    The crew was given safety training before the training, but nothing very hard, said Daemen.

    “That was super cool. It’s so weird to be weightless. It was easier than I had expected. It was kind of like being in the water.”

    Daemen, who is set to start at Utrecht University in September, said he was not sure what he wanted to do later in life, but would seriously consider a career in space travel.

    Asked what it was like travelling in a rocket ship with a billionaire, he answered with a wide smile: “They were super fun and all down to earth, as funny as that may sound.”

  • Facebook, Amazon chiefs’ wealth rose 15pc amid coronavirus pandemic

    Facebook, Amazon chiefs’ wealth rose 15pc amid coronavirus pandemic

    Amid the coronavirus pandemic, wealth of the chief executive officers (CEOs) of Amazon and Facebook increased by 15 per cent.

    According to reports, wealth of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg witnessed the increase within the past two months.

    More than 600 billionaires in the United States (US) became even richer as tech stocks rose during virus lockdowns.
    Between March 18 and May 19, their total net worth went up by $434 billion while coronavirus continued to cause unemployment around the world.

    Bezos’s wealth grew over 30 per cent to $174.6 billion while Zuckerberg’s fortune increased by more than 45 per cent to $80b billion.

    As per a study conducted by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institution for Policy Studies’ Programme for Inequality, Amazon and Facebook stocks have surged following new programmes that pushed their businesses ahead at a time when many consumers are stuck at home.

    Reportedly, job losses in the US have surpassed 36.8 million since business shutdowns began in the middle of March to stop the spread of the deadly new disease.

    Data also shows that housing sale and manufacturing businesses also collapsed during the said time period.

    Coronavirus has killed at least 94,700 people in the US where more than 1.5 million infections have so far been confirmed.

  • Amazon owner likely to become world’s first trillionaire

    Amazon owner likely to become world’s first trillionaire

    While the coronavirus pandemic has racked the global economy with uncertainty, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire by the year 2026.

    The business software comparison site used data collected from the last five years of the Forbes Rich List to calculate the yearly wealth growth rate of the world’s richest billionaires.

    The results concluded that Bezos, whose wealth is over $140bn, could become the world’s first trillionaire in 2026, by then he will be 62 years old.

    The study also says that Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, could become the youngest trillionaire in the world in 2036 when he will be 51 years old.

    Physical shopping is not a thing at the moment, therefore, Amazon is doing well at the moment because the demand for online is very high.

    Last month Jeff Bezos donated $100 million to US food banks which are struggling to feed a growing number of Americans who have lost their jobs due to the coronavirus crisis.

    According to the Billionaires Index, Bezos is one of the world’s five richest people who hasn’t lost money in 2020 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Amazon has reported $75.5 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2020.

  • Mohammad Bin Salman allegedly hacked Jeff Bezos’ cellphone

    Mohammad Bin Salman allegedly hacked Jeff Bezos’ cellphone

    Amazon founder Jeff Bezos phone was reportedly hacked by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman.

    According to The Guardian report, Bezos’ phone received a ‘malicious file’ from the WhatsApp number of the crown prince. After a few hours, the phone started transmitting a large amount of data to an unknown receiver.

    A few months after the intrusion, MBS was accused in the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Although, there was no tangible evidence against MBS’ involvement in the murder of Khashoggi, the journalist was working for The Washington Post which is owned by Bezos.

    Furthermore, information about Bezos’ personal life was also breached and provided to a tabloid, owned by American Media Inc (AMI). In consequence, AMI published a story revealing his extramarital affair. AMI insisted that the information was a tip off by the brother of Bezos’ girlfriend, however, the billionaire’s forensic team concluded that Saudis had managed to access his cellphone information.

    Meanwhile, the government of Saudi Arabia has denied these allegations and have asked for an inquiry into them.

    Nonetheless, the allegations will seriously damage the efforts of the Crown Prince in bringing Western culture and economic investments into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.