Latest AI News
If you use Google, you’re training its AI. Here’s how to opt out.
Consider this a belated PSA: A recent change to Google’s privacy settings is allowing the company to store more of your data, including media such as “images, files, and audio and video recordings,” to improve its AI models. In other words, if you upload any media to Google’s Search services, it’s being used to train AI unless you opt out. The change came about via an under-the-radar update to Google’s Search services privacy settings, announced in June via a customer email. With the update, the company essentially opted people into this expanded AI training under the guise of giving users more control over their saved history and personalized recommendations. The update introduced two new settings, Search Services History and Personalized Recommendations, allowing you to configure how your activity is used to personalize your Google experience and how long your web and app activity is saved. This update applies beyond Google Search itself, and also includes other search services such as Maps, Shopping, Flights, Hotels, Translate, and News. For instance, when you use Google Lens to search for something visually by snapping a photo, that image may now be saved for AI training. Similarly, if you use the newerSearch Livefeature to search via voice input in the Google app, those audio recordings could be saved, as can any other Google voice search. If you use Google Translate to practice speaking, that audio is saved, too. The changes reflect a broader industry shift toward gathering data by any means necessary to improve AI services. Instead of relying solely on information scraped from the web, Google and others are increasingly collecting data that people upload or create when using their services. Meta is another example of a consumer-facing tech company doing this at scale,training its AI on users’ imagesand media, as well as oncontent recorded by its AI glasses. Google confirms the media-training use directly, stating in that email to customers: “Like your Search Services History, your saved media is also used to develop and improve Google services and technologies, including AI models and safety measures.” Itshelp documentationechoes this, noting that the company “uses your history to provide, develop, and improve its services (such as training generative AI models) and to protect Google, its users, and the public with the help of human reviewers.” Some of this storage is temporary and tied to making the product work, but per Google’s own language, saved media can also be retained specifically to train its AI. The good news is you have some control here. You can change your preferences on theSearch Services HistoryandSearch Services Personalizationpages. On the former, you can uncheck the “Save Media” box separately from the “Search Services History” box, or uncheck both. You can also configure how often you want saved data automatically deleted — after 3 months, 18 months, or 36 months. From there, you canjump to this pageto dig into other privacy settings, including Web & App Activity, Timeline, YouTube History, and more. Beyond saved media, Google also uses your search history, location, and other information from the websites you visit to personalize your experience on Google, including which ads are shown. Before this update, Google let you configure what historical search data was saved via its “Web & App Activity” settings. That’s now been separated into two settings: the Web & App Activity data and the new Search data setting, which is on by default. That means if you make a change to the Web & App Activity data retention settings in an effort to opt out of having your data stored by the tech giant, the update will no longer impact your use of Google Search services, as it’s now a separate option.
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The running list: major tech layoffs in 2026 where employers cited AI
Microsoft said Monday that it has eliminated about 4,800 roles, or 2.1% of its global workforce, adding to the string of AI-related layoffs hitting the tech world. The company said the roles being cut are “not being replaced by AI,” but acknowledged that “AI is changing how work gets done” and automating many everyday tasks. The cuts continue what feels to many in the tech industry like an epidemic: companies reporting record revenues while simultaneously culling their workforces, pointing to AI as both the engine of growth and the reason for the cuts. Tech layoffs hit theirhighest single monthin years in May, and AI was the most-cited reason, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Roughtly120,000 tech roleshave now been cut in 2026, according to Layoffs.fyi, a tracker that has monitored industry layoffs since 2020. We recently wrote about why that rationale is something companiesmay want to rethink, not least because for many of these companies, the teams they’re now cutting ballooned during the pandemic hiring surge, raising questions about what’s really going on right now. Below is a running look — in reverse chronological order — at the bigger tech companies that have announced significant layoffs this year with AI as a stated factor. Oracle— June 22, 2026. Oracle disclosed in late June that it had reduced its workforce by 21,000 employees over the past 12 months, a decline of 13%, which means more cuts than was previously known, including because of AI. “The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce,” the company said in anannual financial regulatory filing. GitLab— June 3, 2026. GitLab laid off roughly 350 workers, about14% of its staff, to fund AI infrastructure investment and handle surging traffic from AI workflows. CEO Bill Staples said agentic workloads are “pushing competitors to the brink” and that the company had begun a “generational rebuild” of its core infrastructure to support what he called 100x growth requirements. GitLab is exiting 22 countries, flattening management layers, and partnering with an unspecified AI lab to rebuild its platform for agent-scale workloads. The company reported first-quarter revenue of $264 million, up 23% year-over-year, and expects to incur $30 to $35 million in restructuring costs. Google— ongoing through May. Alphabet’s Google hasquietly cutemployees across its Cloud division, including its Threat Intelligence Group and Mandiant-linked cybersecurity staff, even as Cloud revenue grew 63% to exceed $20 billion for the first time and its backlog nearly doubled to over $460 billion. Over the past year, Google has cut more than a third of the managers overseeing small teams — 35% fewer managers with fewer direct reports. Unlike most companies on this list, Google has never announced a single overall number — the cuts have come through a rolling performance review process, a voluntary buyout program, and structural reorganizations, with outside estimates putting the 2026 total at between 1,500 and 3,000+ engineers. Intuit— May 20, 2026. Intuit announced plans to eliminateroughly 3,000 jobs— about 17% of its total workforce — in a restructuring centered on reducing complexity and reallocating resources toward AI. CEO Sasan Goodarzi reportedly told staff the company is reducing complexity and simplifying the structure so it can deliver better products. Meta— May 20-21, 2026. Meta laid off about 8,000 employees, roughly 10% of its workforce, while moving about 7,000 employees into new AI-focused roles (that theyreportedly hate). CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff the cuts were necessary because “success isn’t a given” in AI. Cisco— May 14, 2026. Cisco announced it’s cutting nearly4,000 jobs, about 5% of its workforce, despite reporting better-than-expected profit and revenue. CFO Mark Pattersonsaid: “This was really not a savings-driven restructure… this is more [about] realigning … resources around silicon, optics, security and AI.” Cloudflare— May 7-8, 2026. Cloudflare cut about 20% of its workforce (1,100 people), reporting quarterly revenue of $639.8 million, up 34% year-over-year and thehighest single quarterin company history. CEO Matthew Princewrote that“the vast majority of those we laid off last week were measurers” — middle management, finance, legal, internal auditing, and revenue recognition. General Motors— May 12, 2026. GM eliminated 500 to 600 jobs, largely in IT roles in Austin, Texas, and Warren, Michigan, saying it was reevaluating its workforce needs amid uncertain market conditions. A person familiar with the cuts told CNBC thatAI played a role in the decisionbut that it wasn’t the only reason. GM’s statement said it was “transforming its Information Technology organization to better position the company for the future.” Despite the cuts, the company still had roughly 80 open IT positions, including roles in AI, motorsports, and autonomous vehicles. Coinbase— May 5, 2026. The crypto exchange said it was cutting about 700 employees, or 14% of its staff, as part of a restructuring aimed at addressing market volatility and increasing AI efficiency. The company flattened its organizational structure to five layers below the CEO and COO, and said it would experiment with “one-person teams” combining engineering, design, and product roles. CEO Brian Armstrong wrote that AI had changed the pace of work dramatically — “engineers useAI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks” — and that the company needed to “leverage AI across every facet of our jobs.” PayPal— May 5, 2026. PayPal announced plans to cut around 20% of its workforce over the next two to three years — north of 4,500 jobs — as part of a turnaround strategy centered on AI adoption and organizational simplification. CEO Enrique Lores told investors the company would “aggressively adopt AI” in its development processes and formed a new “AI transformation and simplification” team reporting directly to him, tasked with redesigning the company’s processes “function by function.” Lores framed the cuts as removing organizational layers, and said AI would extend well beyond coding into customer service, support operations, and risk management.Microsoft— April-May 2026. Microsoft offered buyouts structured as voluntary separations, without disclosing how many employees these would impact. CFO Amy Hood said total headcount declined year-over-year in fiscal Q3, and is expected to keep declining as the company focuses on “building high-performing teams that operate with pace and agility”amid rising AI investment. Snap— April 16, 2026. Snap cut roughly16% of its global workforce— about 1,000 full-time employees — and closed more than 300 open roles, with CEO Evan Spiegel citing AI advancements as a key driver. “Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers,” Spiegel wrote in a memo filed with the SEC. The company said it had already seen small squads using AI tools to drive progress across Snapchat+, ad platform performance, and infrastructure efficiency. IBM— rolling through 2026. Between Q4 2025 cuts and April 2026 Red Hat engineering reductions, estimates range from 3,000 to 9,000 U.S. positions eliminated, bringing IBM’s cumulative total since September 2024 above 15,000. Bloomberg reported IBM plans to triple its U.S. entry-level hiring for AI and hybrid-cloud roles, even as roughly 200 HR positions were replaced by AI agents. An IBM spokesperson described the Q4 2025 round as aroutine rebalancingaffecting “a low single-digit percentage” of its global workforce. Atlassian— March 11, 2026. Atlassian cut about1,600 jobs(10% of its workforce) to “rebalance” toward AI and enterprise sales, even as shares rose nearly 2% on the news. CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said: “Our approach is not ‘AI replaces people.’ But it would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn’t change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas. It does.”Dell— January 30 (though disclosed in March 2026). Dell’s total workforce fell about10%in fiscal 2026 — roughly11,000 jobs— to about 97,000 employees from 108,000 a year earlier, with $569 million spent on severance. The cuts came as Dell projected its AI-optimized server revenue could double in fiscal 2027. Oracle— March 5-31, 2026. As noted above, Oracle began telling employees it would be cutting thousands of jobsvia terminal emails. The cuts came even as Oracle posted $3.7 billion in quarterly net income, up 27% year-over-year, with remaining performance obligations up 325% to $553 billion — savings redirected toward AI data centers. The cuts that would later total 21,000 over 12 months, as Oracle disclosed in its June 22 annual filing. Block— February 26-27, 2026. Jack Dorsey’s Block cut 4,000 jobs — nearly half its workforce, down to under 6,000 from over 10,000. Dorsey wrote on X: “We’re already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company.” He added: “I think most companies are late. Within the next year, I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion andmake similar structural changes.”Salesforce— February 10, 2026. Salesforce laid off fewer than 1,000 employees across marketing, product management, data analytics, and its Agentforce AI unit. The companytold Fortune, “Because of the benefits and efficiencies of Agentforce, we’ve seen the number of support cases we handle decline and we no longer need to actively backfill support engineer roles.” This followed an earlier cut of about 4,000 customer-support roles, shrinking that team from roughly 9,000 to 5,000, with CEO Marc Benioff saying the company needed “less heads” because AI agents handle the work.Amazon— January 28, 2026. Amazon cut16,000 corporate jobs, following 14,000 cuts in October 2025 — about 9% of its corporate workforce in three months. The company said it was part of “strengthen[ing] our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy.” CEO Andy Jassy had said in June 2025 that, “As we roll out more generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today… in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”
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Station F ramps up as a launchpad for Europe’s hottest AI startups
Station F, a Paris-based startup hubfoundedby French billionaire Xavier Niel, is gearing up for a new edition of itsF/ai accelerator programin a bid to strengthen its positioning as a stepping stone for promising AI startups. Launchedin January of this year, F/ai’s planning to kick-start its second batch this September, aiming to help a handful of AI-focused startups move from early product to real revenue in a matter of weeks. Spanning 538,000 square feet, Station F is often described as a co-working space, but its footprint extends beyond the physical space, its directorRoxanne Varzatold TechCrunch. One example isStation F’s Future 40annual selection, in which the team names the most promising teams among some 1,000 companies it welcomes each year. In 2024, TechCrunch observed thatnearly all of that annual cohortincorporated AI into its core business. Station F today has a front row seat to the rise of AI startups, leveraging its position as acornerstoneof “la French Tech.” The startup hub has also successfully leveraged its position to capture equity stakes in its Future 40 companies. “We have been investing [in these companies]since 2022,” Varza said. Helped both by its size and Niel’s connections, Station F has become a frequent stop for officials seeking to connect with Europe’s tech scene, with no less than 11 presidential visits since President Macron’sinaugural tour in 2017. It has also welcomed AI big nameslike Sam Altman, and is now leveraging these ties for F/ai. The first cohort of F/ai’s program wasbacked by a long list of significant tech companies— AMD, Anthropic, AWS, Clay, Google, G42, Hugging Face, Lovable, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral AI, OpenAI, OVHcloud, Snowflake, and Qualcomm — not to mention several VC funds. The second cohort will add a few more big names, TechCrunch has learned: Eleven Labs, Nebius, Rippling, OpenRouter, HubSpot, and GitHub. “The goal was to bring together all the major players and make it much easier for [AI] startups looking to launch in Europe to connect with them,” Varza said. Two teams from the accelerator’s first batch have already gained international recognition: Alpic, whichwon the global grand finaleofThe Pitch, a competition organized by Deel; and Rippletide, whichwontheOpenAI Codex Hackathon. While awards rarely hurt, especially when they bring funding, F/ai is focused on helping its cohort generate revenue, targeting €1 million (about $1.14 million) within six months. “We’d heard quite a bit of criticism about the slow pace of commercialization of European startups,” Varza said. “This brings them on par with what investors are seeing in the U.S.” Investors seem to like what they’ve seen so far. The first cohort collectively raised $34 million in pre-seed funding, according to Station F. The teams’ track record may have also helped: 80% of these 20 AI startups were founded by repeat entrepreneurs, a third of whom hold PhDs. The founder profile skews that way mostly because F/ai selects its cohort exclusively via recommendations from founders, partners, and investors — a process that could add to the cliquishness and elitism France’s tech scene is at times accused of. But while teams can’t apply directly, they can get in touch with one of F/ai’s many partners, and perhaps soon with alumni, Varza said. She added that Station F has some30 other programsstartups can apply to. Access appears to be a key focus for F/ai, which has in the past hosted the likes of Turing Award winnerYann LeCunfor private chats. “Today, if the founders here want to speak to people at this level, they all seem to think they need to go to the U.S. and join a program there. We actually want to show that you can stay here and do it from here,” Varza said.
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LTM Launches BlueVerse RightLogic as Enterprises Grapple with Rising Security Threats
BlueVerse RightLogic combines AI and cybersecurity assessments to help enterprises identify vulnerabilities, prioritise remediation, and strengthen governance as AI adoption accelerates.
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Indian IT's First 6 Months of 2026 Were Brutal, But H2 May Be Worse Still
Six months of AI anxiety, record foreign selling, aggressive M&A, and a shrinking Nifty footprint have left India's $315-billion technology machine looking for its next big opportunity.
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Hyderabad Startup Cosmoserve to Test Robotic Satellite Capture Aboard Skyroot Rocket
Cosmoserve plans an in-orbit demonstration of debris-removal technology during Vikram-1’s maiden launch. It is separately collaborating with Pixxel for a larger satellite platform.
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Fable 5’s Return Was Supposed to be Exciting. What Happened?
The Fable 5 episode has exposed the hidden costs of proprietary AI, forcing enterprises to rethink trust, pricing, and long-term control.
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India's E-Rickshaw Shutdowns Exposed a Bigger Problem Than Chinese Apps
The recent e-rickshaw shutdowns revealed that the real security flaw wasn’t in the battery management apps but in battery packs that shipped with Bluetooth interfaces left open and unauthenticated.
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Naukri Unveils AI REX to Help Recruiters Analyse, Shortlist Talent
With AI REX at the centre of its AI-first strategy, Naukri aims to build a more intelligent hiring ecosystem that reduces manual recruitment work while improving candidate discovery.
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Yotta’s 85,000-GPU Bet Is Bigger Than the IndiaAI Mission
CEO Sunil Gupta says overseas customers now account for most of Yotta’s GPU business, with demand accelerating after introductions from NVIDIA
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![[Exclusive] ekincare Acquires Superclaims to Expand Its Insurance Operations](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fteenyfy-assets.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Ftemp_exclusive_70de4a081f.jpg&w=750&q=75)
[Exclusive] ekincare Acquires Superclaims to Expand Its Insurance Operations
ekincare has acquired both Superclaims’ technology platform and team. However, Superclaims will continue to operate independently as a legal entity.
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![[Webinar Alert] GenAI at Your Desk – Building Agentic AI with NVIDIA DGX Spark](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fteenyfy-assets.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Ftemp_webinar_al_97d7eb1ad4.jpg&w=750&q=75)
[Webinar Alert] GenAI at Your Desk – Building Agentic AI with NVIDIA DGX Spark
Rashi Peripherals, an NVIDIA partner, is hosting a session titled “GenAI at Your Desk: Building Agentic AI with NVIDIA DGX Spark”, focused on what it takes to move from experimentation to real-world AI systems.
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