Brody Ford
@BrodyFord_
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Writing about tech at Bloomberg. text/signal me at 619-519-1264
Joined January 2019
Scoop: Microsoft’s datacenter pullback stretches around the world - they've halted or delayed projects from Indonesia to Chicago. @dawnmlim @ByFarisMokhtar. $MSFT $NVDA $APLD.
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NEW: #DeclineNow is a guerrilla experiment to train Doordash's algorithm to pay workers better, and its proponents insist it’s already working
"The goals are to get drivers to stop taking lowball offers as a whole.". The #DeclineNow movement is testing whether workers can use DoorDash's software against it
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scoop: Microsoft layoffs hit coders the hardest. lots of companies are focused on replacing some software engineering work with AI. $msft w/ @mattmday
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Tech sales used to be an easy way to get rich, now it "kinda sucks." Think less $800 dinners, more performance-based firings. I dug into ground-zero of these changes at Salesforce with @drakepbennett.
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NEW: AI pin Humane is shutting down. Startup's software being sold to HP and majority of employees will join, too. w/ @markgurman $HPQ
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NEW: Microsoft is laying off about 6,000 workers. Big pressure on costs as company invests in AI. $msft.
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It’s my first day as a full time reporter with Bloomberg @business! I’ll be rotating through four teams over the next year, starting with DC breaking news. So grateful for this opportunity and everyone who helped me get here.
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Scoop: Databricks' acquisition of Tabular was actually nearly $2 billion. I spoke with 50 insiders to tell the real story of the Snowflake/Databricks war with @Katie_Roof. Free link below -
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🚨🚨 I’m now covering enterprise tech companies full-time for Bloomberg @technology! Think Salesforce, Zoom, Oracle, or any other software that your workplace relies on. I’m at bford61@bloomberg.net for tips, jokes, or gossip!.
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@Katie_Roof Adobe officially announces $20B deal -- shares are down more than 11% this morning as investors question the price tag
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@mdoukmas Visualization of where Chicago cops live (Blue) compared to arrest frequency (Red) -
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Zoom's CFO was just accidentally muted while speaking on an earnings call. See, happens to all of us.
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SCOOP: Employees of the crime-watch app Citizen voted to unionize, a rare instance of successful labor organizing at a venture-backed startup. Details on the Terminal.
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NEW: Nearly 900 secret service employees caught Covid, most of them responsible for protecting government officials and buildings
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NEW: IBM will pause hiring for jobs it figures AI could do. Could mean 7,800 roles cut over next few years.
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NEW: C3 AI's value tripled during ChatGPT-mania. But the company has overstated its tech and been hindered by top-down management.
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Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson cut his salary in half as part of a major layoff. Except that pay accounts for less than 1% of his $14 total million compensation package.
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Minecraft active users have increased 75% since the movie's release, Microsoft's CEO says. $MSFT.
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EXCLUSIVE: A new worker-owned Uber competitor promoted by @AOC and other progressives is seeking to raise over $1 million from investors, drivers and everyday people. With @thesimonetti
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Scoop: Regulators are preparing a lawsuit to try and block Adobe's $20B acquisition of Figma. With @leah_nylen @annaedge4
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Scoop: Adobe is paying around $3/minute for videos to build a new generative AI model.
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Scoop: Albert Einstein’s been dead for nearly a century. He still scored a $20M compensation package at Salesforce.
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NEW: Salesforce has gutted Tableau – executives were ousted in recent months and the unit was pummeled by layoffs Wednesday.
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New: Stargate's first AI datacenter site is the size of Central Park but promises just 57 full-time jobs. with @shiringhaffary @mcbridesg. $ORCL
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NEW: Autodesk is proud of being a green company. Except, its software powers coal mines, oil drills, and other polluting projects.
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NEW: Russia’s business giants spent at least $186 million on U.S. influence since 2014. Now, they're getting dumped by their lobbyists. @OpenSecretsDC @BenFreemanDC @annalecta.
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NEW feature: Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor @btaylor was used to big deals and big personalities. Then came Elon Musk. @KurtWagner8 and I did 17 interviews to understand who is negotiating with the world's richest person.
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New: Clear turned airport security frustrations into an incredibly lucrative business. But it has faced issues lately with the TSA, airports, and customers. (thread) . w/ @daniellesacks, $YOU
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Scoop: Meta's planning a ~$1B data center in Wisconsin and got some tax incentives. Microsoft and OpenAI have also looked to the state for data cente expansion. With @rileyraygriffin, Josh Saul. $META
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Scoop: Oracle has been silent after the Roe v Wade decision, but it quietly updated employee health plans to include abortion travel benefits. @dinabass
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Scoop: Adobe is paying around 6 cents a photo for AI training data. Lots of fun exclusive details about Firefly in this feature with @AustinCarr and @daniellesacks
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@drakepbennett Salesforce ushered the golden age of the cushy tech job. Now we can see how that era is coming to a close across the industry. Paywall-free link below -
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New: Amazon promised 1,000 jobs to get tax breaks on a massive data center in Mississippi. Most of them will actually be contractors without Amazon benefits.
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Scoop: Adobe's been keeping a little secret about its AI. Its Firefly model was branded as more ethical than rivals like Midjourney. But it was actually trained on images from them. With @rachelmetz
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NEW: IBM to cut about 3,900 jobs even as it forecasts positive growth
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Tech is getting bolder about pitching AI as a job-replacer. ServiceNow this week said its new AI agents work 24/7 and don't require food or a 401k. $NOW $CRM
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New: Twilio is sticking with work-from-home as many tech cos force workers back to the office. It has around 6,600 employees after two rounds of layoffs.
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One of my favorite elements of the rivalry is nicknames. "SnowMelt" is a initiative within Databricks to take business from its winter-themed rival. At Snowflake, "SparkAttack" is a codename to snatch machine learning workflows from Databricks.
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Salesforce down 16% postmarket after giving it's first-ever single digit growth outlook. Lot of anxiety in software right now. $crm $wday $orcl
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New: If you get sued for using Adobe's generative AI tools, they'll go to court for you
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scoop: $5B GPU AI server mega-deal in the works between $DELL and Elon Musk's xAI.
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Scoop: TikTok touts its 'Project Texas' security setup which includes rigorous code reviews from Oracle. Except. they're not actually happening yet. w/@alexbarinka
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NEW: Salesforce could see another round of layoffs as the company is under pressure to boost profits.
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new: ~2,000 of the jobs cut will be out of Microsoft's headquarters near Seattle, Washington.
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Scoop: Adobe is officially giving up on building a direct Figma competitor after its planned merger collapsed. XD won't see further investment and any work in the product design space will be through partnerships.
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Scoop: C3 ai’s most important customer sold more of its stock. Short-sellers have alleged the relationship is deteriorating. $AI
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Scoop: Duolingo cut 10% of its contractors as it uses gen AI to create content "dramatically faster." With @natlungfy
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Scoop: Adobe is buying 3D data to build a gen ai model for graphics. Autodesk, Nvidia and startups like Meshy are also developing 3D AI. $ADBE $ADSK $NVDA
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scoop: Salesforce inked a deal to spend $2.5B on Google's Cloud over the coming years. Big shake-up as Salesforce has long been a massive AWS customer. w/ @dinabass $CRM $GOOG $AMZN.
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NEW: Adobe tried for years to buy Figma before @zoink finally accepted. Though not before he tried to get an offer from another tech company. Lots of new details on how Adobe’s mega-deal came together.
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A big tech rivalry is brewing - ServiceNow has poached hundreds of workers from Salesforce, thrown shots at the company, and even quit using Slack once it became part of CRM. $NOW $CRM
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New: Oracle did layoffs across Cerner last week including long-tenured technical staff and steep cuts to marketing departments
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Scoop: Dell and Micron secretly funded a campaign aimed at their Chinese rivals like Lenovo. Details and paywall-free link below. $DELL $MU $HPQ
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NEWS: Adobe isn't going to buy Figma after all. Over a year of regulator scrutiny on both sides of the pond, the companies are calling it quits.
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Stargate's first supercomputer is taking shape. Up to 400k Nvidia Blackwell chips will be at the data center in Texas for OpenAI/Oracle. @rachelmetz @Leonardonclt
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Scoop: AI acquisitions are heating up. Snowflake is in talks to buy Reka AI for north of $1B. $SNOW. with @rachelmetz
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Scoop: Dell is cutting more jobs amid a sales re-org as it focuses on high growth products like AI servers. $DELL.
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Scoop: Dropbox ends its unlimited storage option, latest reminder that cloud economics aren't easy
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Databricks has played the public antagonist. Attendees to Snowflake’s 2023 conference in Vegas were greeted with billboards claiming Databricks’ product was nine times cheaper.
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scoop: Stargate's first data center in Abilene is set to receive 64,000 Nvidia GB200's as part of an initial build-out. with @rachelmetz.$ORCL $NVDA
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NEW: TurboTax lost about a million free users this tax season. Could be due in part to a new free government tax filing service. $INTU
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Scoop: Salesforce is hiring over 1,000 new salespeople as part of its AI Agent push. @Benioff says there's "amazing momentum" on new Agentforce product. $CRM $MSFT $NOW
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Always appreciate reader feedback.
How many times are we going to read these b.s. stories about Microsoft cutting back on data centers when it is obvious they are relying on OpenAI's build out. Might be foolish but it's true. Good luck Microsoft.
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New: Salesforce execs couldn't stop saying "profit" last night. They used it as much as the last nine earnings calls combined.
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Shutterstock has quietly built one of the world's largest AI data licensing businesses. It cleared $104M last year by letting firms like OpenAI and Meta train on its marketplace of images and videos. $SSTK
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New: AI PCs are off to a rough start -- only 3% of devices shipped this year will meet Microsoft's AI PC standards. $DELL $HPQ $MSFT $QCOMM
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Scoop: data center costs keep going up. Amazon now expects to spend $16 billion on a mega-project in Mississippi, a 60% jump. $AMZN w/ @mattmday
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Scoop: Dell is getting rid of many computer discounts, another sign that prices are going up after tariff drama. $DELL.
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New: Adobe's getting sued by the government. It's too difficult and expensive to cancel subscriptions to apps like Photoshop, the DOJ/FTC says. Adobe plans to fight them in court. $ADBE.
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Exclusive: Amazon and Oracle assured lawmakers that they're not selling data that could help prosecute abortions. @LoriTrahanMA isn't convinced. @accessnow
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New: DOGE cut or paused around 15 $IBM contracts amounting to around $100M in backlog.
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Scoop: Oracle moved its HQ to Texas years ago and now wants to go to Nashville. but the largest chunk of its office workers are still in California.
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@daniellesacks With $700M+ in annual revenue, Clear is now worth more than some airlines and can be found across the country. Check out how much they're making from different airports -
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NEW: Yellow cabs are making a comeback. Soaring costs at Uber and Lyft have led more New Yorkers to step off the curb and raise their hands. With @jackiedavalos1
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Adobe users have long complained about having to pay high fees to cancel subscriptions. Looks like regulators were listening.
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Exclusive w/ @josheidelson: Workers at @Mapbox, a startup backed by SoftBank, announce union drive in latest tech labor push.
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New: Microsoft's Azure outage yesterday began as a DDoS cyberattack . and was worsened by a glitch in Microsoft's own defenses. W/ @CGorrivan $MSFT $SBUX
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Scoop: Dell to cut around 6,650 workers. It was one of the last large tech companies that hadn't announced layoffs
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SCOOP w/ @Katie_Roof: Adobe is set to acquire Figma in a bid to expand its creative software dominance
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Scoop: Salesforce is cutting over 1000 jobs, seemingly to make room for AI-focused roles in sales. $CRM.
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NEW: After two years of Zoombombs, privacy crises and free 40-minute calls, Zoom wants to go back to making software for businesses
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Scoop: Oracle Health (Cerner) revenue is down and they’re losing customers, according to internal documents and interviews with 30+ employees/customers. Free link here -
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Nvidia's delayed lineup of new AI chips are finally getting into customer hands. Dell said it will start shipping servers with the new Blackwell chips next month. $DELL $NVDA
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NEW: Big tech firms like Apple, Google, and Microsoft used to be united against new regulation. Now they're in an all-out brawl over a law that could blow up the app store. @SaraForden @sarahhalzack @DivesTech @appfairness @actonline @TimSweeneyEpic
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New: Oracle may take a minority stake in TikTok and function as a kind of security intermediary. Proposal circulating within Trump admin. $ORCL w/.@stephaniealai
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Scooplet: Some of TikTok’s rising stars haven't been able to get paid for weeks due to a glitch in the app's Creator Fund registration system. “It's a very defeating feeling,” one of them told me.
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NEW Documentary: If you’ve applied to a job recently, your resume was probably read by robots. See how these systems work, and how some activists are fighting back. @TheHOPEProgram @FoxCahn @NYUWasserman @ZipRecruiterCEO
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Google told employees to ask how emails would look on the front page of the New York Times before sending.
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I've been reading @CityLab since high school, and today I got my first byline! Mayors keep memeing, and not everyone is happy about it - w/ @dccdudley.
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Like father, like son. IBM-spinoff Kyndryl did layoffs two months after its old parent company. Cuts likely amount to a few thousand workers.
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Snowflake's Frank Slootman walks away worth $3.7B. That's richer than Tim Cook or Satya Nadella. Very rare for a non-founder to amass that level of wealth. $SNOW @LamoneyTom
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Salesforce tapped a new Tableau CEO as it works to integrate massive acquisitions of years-past including Slack.
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Scoop: New cuts at Salesforce - follows layoffs at Intuit, UiPath, and Open Text last week. $CRM $INTU $PATH $OTEX.
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Dell's stock has tripled over the last year due to AI server business. Still, the stock is way down after reporting earnings that didn't meet the hype. $DELL $SCMI $HPE $NVDA
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NEW: Activist groups urge retailers like Macy's and Albertson's to stop using facial recognition in their stores, saying the unregulated technology can lead to abuses.
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New: One of ServiceNow's top execs, CJ Desai, is out after a complaint around a government contract and his hiring of the Army's CIO. Text me if you know what happened. $NOW
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