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(Reuters) -Cybersecurity firm F5 forecast annual revenue below Wall Street estimates on Monday, warning that a recent systems breach that triggered alarm over potential risks to U.S. and UK government systems would hurt demand for its services. Shares of the company were down 10% in after-hours trading, on track to erase most of the stock's gains so far this year. F5 disclosed earlier this month that hackers had "long-term, persistent access" to certain company systems, including the source code for one of its key cybersecurity services. Reuters later reported that two people briefed on the investigation attributed the breach to state-backed hackers from China. The company's website says it serves more than four in five Fortune 500 companies in some capacity, and U.S. officials have said that federal networks were among those targeted in the hack's aftermath and have urged immediate action. "F5 anticipates some near-term disruption to sales cycles as customers focus on assessing and remediating their environments following the recent security incident," the company said on Monday. It forecast full-year revenue growth of 0% to 4%, with any demand impacts expected to be more pronounced in the first half, before normalizing in the second half of fiscal year 2026. That was below the average analyst estimate of 4.8%, according to LSEG-compiled data. Its first-quarter revenue forecast of $730 million to $780 million was also came in below estimates of $791 million. (Reporting by Nithyashree R B in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva and Maju Samuel)

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(Reuters) -A federal judge on Monday decertified a class action by tens of millions of Apple customers who accused the company of monopolizing the market for iPhone apps by banning purchases outside its App Store, leading to higher prices. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, reversed her February 2024 decision allowing Apple account holders who spent $10 or more on app or in-app content to sue as a group. Rogers said the plaintiffs "failed to provide a model capable of reliably showing classwide injury and damages in one stroke." (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Nia Williams)

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(Reuters) -Educational technology company Chegg said on Monday it would cut 388 roles globally, or about 45% of the workforce, to reduce costs and streamline operations as it works to adapt to the growing shift toward AI-powered tools. The company, which offers textbook rentals, homework help and tutoring, said the "new realities of AI and reduced traffic from Google to content publishers have led to a significant decline in Chegg's traffic and revenue". Chegg also said Dan Rosensweig would return as CEO effective immediately, replacing Nathan Schultz, who has stepped down and would serve as an executive adviser. Rosensweig had previously led the company from February 2010 to June 2024. The Santa Clara, California-based company expects to incur charges of roughly $15 million to $19 million related to the restructuring by the first quarter 2026, and $12 million to $16 million by the fourth quarter of 2026. It had 1,271 employees as of December 31, 2024, according to its latest annual report. Chegg, which sued Google over its AI summaries hurting traffic, had initiated a strategic review and was exploring a sale or take-private transaction. The company said on Monday it had concluded the review and would continue to operate as a standalone company. Its shares have fallen more than 10% so far this year, after slumping 85.6% in 2024. (Reporting by Vallari Srivastava in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)

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By Wen-Yee Lee TAIPEI (Reuters) -Taiwan’s Foxconn said its board of directors has approved an investment plan to procure equipment for a AI compute cluster and a supercomputing centre, that will allow it to spend up to NT$42 billion ($1.37 billion). The investment will be made from December 2025 to December 2026 using its own funds, the company said in a filing published late on Monday. Foxconn said the purpose of the plan is to "expand the cloud compute service platform and accelerate the development of the Group's three smart platforms.” It did not elaborate or say where the investment would be made. A person familiar with the matter said the investment will be made in Taiwan. Foxconn did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The world’s largest contract electronics maker, also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, has been stepping up its investments in artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure as it seeks new growth drivers beyond smartphones and traditional electronics manufacturing. In May, the company announced it would build an artificial intelligence centre with Nvidia in Taiwan targeted to have 100 megawatts of power. In August, the company said it plans to manufacture data centre equipment with Japan's SoftBank at the Taiwanese firm's former electric vehicle factory in Ohio, part of the Stargate project to advance U.S. artificial intelligence infrastructure. (Reporting by Wen-Yee Lee; Editing by Stephen Coates)

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By Greg Bensinger SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Amazon is planning to cut as many as 30,000 corporate jobs beginning on Tuesday, as the company pares expenses and compensates for overhiring during the peak demand of the pandemic, according to three people familiar with the matter. The figure represents a small percentage of Amazon's 1.55 million total employees, but nearly 10% of its roughly 350,000 corporate employees. This would mark Amazon's largest job cut since late 2022, when it started to eliminate around 27,000 positions. An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment. Amazon has been trimming smaller numbers of jobs over the past two years across multiple divisions, including devices, communications and podcasting. The cuts beginning this week may affect a variety of divisions, including human resources, known as People Experience and Technology or PXT; operations, devices and services; and Amazon Web Services, the people said. Managers of impacted teams were asked to undergo training on Monday for how to communicate with staff following email notifications that will start going out on Tuesday morning, the people said. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is undertaking an initiative to reduce what he has described as an excess of bureaucracy, including by reducing the number of managers. He installed an anonymous complaint line for identifying inefficiencies that has elicited some 1,500 responses and over 450 process changes, he said earlier this year. Jassy said in June that the increased use of artificial intelligence tools would likely lead to further job cuts, particularly through automating repetitive and routine tasks. "This latest move signals that Amazon is likely realizing enough AI-driven productivity gains within corporate teams to support a substantial reduction in force," said Sky Canaves, an eMarketer analyst. "Amazon has also been under pressure in the short-term to offset the long-term investments in building out its AI infrastructure." The full scope of this round of job cuts was not immediately clear. The people familiar with the matter said the number could change over time as Amazon's financial priorities shift. Fortune earlier reported that the human resources division could be targeted with a cut of roughly 15%. A program begun early this year to bring employees back in the office five days per week, among tech's most stringent, has failed to generate sufficient attrition, said two of the people, citing that as another reason for the size of the layoff. Some of the employees who are not swiping in daily because they live far from corporate offices, or for other reasons, are being told they have voluntarily quit Amazon and must leave without severance, a savings for the company. Layoffs.fyi, a website tracking tech job cuts, estimated that about 98,000 jobs have been lost so far this year among 216 companies. For all of 2024, the figure was 153,000. Amazon's largest profit center, cloud computing unit AWS, reported second-quarter sales of $30.9 billion, a 17.5% increase that was well below gains of 39% for Microsoft's Azure and of 32% for Alphabet's Google Cloud.  Estimates indicate that AWS will have boosted third-quarter sales by about 18% to $32 billion, a slight slowdown from last year's 19% increase. AWS is still reeling from a roughly 15-hour internet outage last week that felled many of the most popular online services, like Snapchat and Venmo. Amazon appears to be expecting another big holiday selling season. It plans to offer 250,000 seasonal jobs to help staff warehouses, among other needs, the same as in the prior two years. Amazon on Friday also announced a reorganization of a segment of its PXT unit focused on diversity initiatives, a memo reviewed by Reuters showed. The changes largely involved promoting people to new roles. Amazon shares rose 1.2% to $226.97 on Monday. The company plans to report third-quarter earnings on Thursday.  (Reporting by Greg Bensinger in San Francisco; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Matthew Lewis and Richard Chang)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

(Reuters) -Cybersecurity firm F5 forecast annual revenue below Wall Street estimates on Monday, warning that a recent systems breach that triggered alarm over potential risks to U.S. and UK government systems would hurt demand for its services. Shares of the company, which serves most of the Fortune 500 firms in some capacity, were down 5.8% in after-hours trading. F5 disclosed earlier this month that hackers had "long-term, persistent access" to certain company systems, including the source code for one of its key cybersecurity services. Reuters later reported that two people briefed on the investigation attributed the breach to state-backed hackers from China. U.S. officials have said federal networks were among those targeted in the hack's aftermath and have urged immediate action. "F5 anticipates some near-term disruption to sales cycles as customers focus on assessing and remediating their environments following the recent security incident," it said on Monday. The company has not seen any impact to demand yet, executives said on a post-earnings call. The incident primarily affected BIG-IP customers in two ways. Some had to rapidly upgrade to latest releases following the disclosure of the incident, CEO Francois Locoh-Donou said on the call. The other was a small subset of customers that faced limited data exfiltration and were notified with details. Initial feedback indicated the data was not sensitive, Locoh-Donou said. F5 forecast full-year revenue growth of 0% to 4%, with any demand impacts expected to be more pronounced in the first half, before normalizing in the second half of fiscal year 2026. That was below the average analyst estimate of a 4.8% increase, according to data compiled by LSEG. It forecast first-quarter revenue between $730 million and $780 million, including potential disruption from the U.S. government shutdown. That was also below the estimate of $791 million. (Reporting by Nithyashree R B in Bengaluru and Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Anil D'Silva, Maju Samuel and Shilpi Majumdar)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

By Greg Bensinger SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Amazon is planning to cut as many as 30,000 corporate jobs beginning on Tuesday, as the company pares expenses and compensates for overhiring during the peak demand of the pandemic, according to three people familiar with the matter. The figure represents a small percentage of Amazon's 1.55 million total employees, but nearly 10% of its roughly 350,000 corporate employees. This would mark Amazon's largest job cut since late 2022, when it started to eliminate around 27,000 positions. An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment. Amazon has been trimming smaller numbers of jobs over the past two years across multiple divisions, including devices, communications and podcasting. The cuts beginning this week may affect a variety of divisions, including human resources, known as People Experience and Technology or PXT; operations, devices and services; and Amazon Web Services, the people said. Managers of impacted teams were asked to undergo training on Monday for how to communicate with staff following email notifications that will start going out on Tuesday morning, the people said. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy is undertaking an initiative to reduce what he has described as an excess of bureaucracy, including by reducing the number of managers. He installed an anonymous complaint line for identifying inefficiencies that has elicited some 1,500 responses and over 450 process changes, he said earlier this year. Jassy said in June that the increased use of artificial intelligence tools would likely lead to further job cuts, particularly through automating repetitive and routine tasks. "This latest move signals that Amazon is likely realizing enough AI-driven productivity gains within corporate teams to support a substantial reduction in force," said Sky Canaves, an eMarketer analyst. "Amazon has also been under pressure in the short-term to offset the long-term investments in building out its AI infrastructure." The full scope of this round of job cuts was not immediately clear. The people familiar with the matter said the number could change over time as Amazon's financial priorities shift. Fortune earlier reported that the human resources division could be targeted with a cut of roughly 15%. A program begun early this year to bring employees back in the office five days per week, among tech's most stringent, has failed to generate sufficient attrition, said two of the people, citing that as another reason for the size of the layoff. Some of the employees who are not swiping in daily because they live far from corporate offices, or for other reasons, are being told they have voluntarily quit Amazon and must leave without severance, a savings for the company. Layoffs.fyi, a website tracking tech job cuts, estimated that about 98,000 jobs have been lost so far this year among 216 companies. For all of 2024, the figure was 153,000. Amazon's largest profit center, cloud computing unit AWS, reported second-quarter sales of $30.9 billion, a 17.5% increase that was well below gains of 39% for Microsoft's Azure and of 32% for Alphabet's Google Cloud.  Estimates indicate that AWS will have boosted third-quarter sales by about 18% to $32 billion, a slight slowdown from last year's 19% increase. AWS is still reeling from a roughly 15-hour internet outage last week that felled many of the most popular online services, like Snapchat and Venmo. Amazon appears to be expecting another big holiday selling season. It plans to offer 250,000 seasonal jobs to help staff warehouses, among other needs, the same as in the prior two years. Amazon on Friday also announced a reorganization of a segment of its PXT unit focused on diversity initiatives, a memo reviewed by Reuters showed. The changes largely involved promoting people to new roles. Amazon shares rose 1.2% to $226.97 on Monday. The company plans to report third-quarter earnings on Thursday.  (Reporting by Greg Bensinger in San Francisco; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Matthew Lewis and Richard Chang)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

By Wen-Yee Lee TAIPEI (Reuters) -Taiwan’s Foxconn said its board of directors has approved an investment plan to procure equipment for a AI compute cluster and a supercomputing centre, that will allow it to spend up to NT$42 billion ($1.37 billion). The investment will be made from December 2025 to December 2026 using its own funds, the company said in a filing published late on Monday. Foxconn said the purpose of the plan is “to expand the cloud compute service platform and accelerate the development of the Group's three smart platforms.” It did not elaborate or say where the investment would be made. The world’s largest contract electronics maker, also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, has been stepping up its investments in artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure as it seeks new growth drivers beyond smartphones and traditional electronics manufacturing. In May, the company announced it would build an artificial intelligence centre with Nvidia in Taiwan targeted to have 100 megawatts of power. In August, the company said it plans to manufacture data centre equipment with Japan's SoftBank at the Taiwanese firm's former electric vehicle factory in Ohio, part of the Stargate project to advance U.S. artificial intelligence infrastructure. (Reporting by Wen-Yee Lee; Editing by Stephen Coates)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

By Wen-Yee Lee TAIPEI (Reuters) -Taiwan’s Foxconn said its board of directors has approved an investment plan to procure equipment for a AI compute cluster and a supercomputing centre, that will allow it to spend up to NT$42 billion ($1.37 billion). The investment will be made from December 2025 to December 2026 using its own funds, the company said in a filing published late on Monday. Foxconn said the purpose of the plan is “to expand the cloud compute service platform and accelerate the development of the Group's three smart platforms.” It did not elaborate or say where the investment would be made. The world’s largest contract electronics maker, also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, has been stepping up its investments in artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure as it seeks new growth drivers beyond smartphones and traditional electronics manufacturing. In May, the company announced it would build an artificial intelligence centre with Nvidia in Taiwan targeted to have 100 megawatts of power. In August, the company said it plans to manufacture data centre equipment with Japan's SoftBank at the Taiwanese firm's former electric vehicle factory in Ohio, part of the Stargate project to advance U.S. artificial intelligence infrastructure. (Reporting by Wen-Yee Lee; Editing by Stephen Coates)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)

By Harshita Mary Varghese (Reuters) -Qualcomm on Monday unveiled two artificial intelligence chips for data centers that will be available next year, diversifying beyond a stagnant smartphones market and sending its shares up 20%. The share gain following the news underscores strong enthusiasm for the company's AI bets while the smartphone chipmaker geared up to compete against Nvidia's AI data center heft. The new chips, called AI200 and AI250, are designed for improved memory capacity and running AI applications, or inference, and will be commercially available in 2026 and 2027, respectively. Global investment in AI chips has soared as cloud providers, chipmakers and enterprises rush to build infrastructure capable of supporting complex, large language models, chatbots and other generative AI tools. Qualcomm said the new chips support common AI frameworks and tools and played up cost-savings for enterprises. The company also unveiled racks based on the new chips, as Nvidia and AMD move from selling chips to providing larger data center systems. Though competition against Nvidia has been heating up, the high costs of switching chip providers and superior performance of Nvidia processors has made it difficult for new entrants to gain traction. Qualcomm said Humain, an AI startup launched by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, will deploy 200 megawatts of its new AI racks starting in 2026. "Qualcomm's entry and major deal in Saudi Arabia prove the ecosystem is fragmenting because no single company can meet the global, decentralized need for high-efficiency AI compute," said Joe Tigay, portfolio manager of the Rational Equity Armor Fund. QUALCOMM DIVERSIFIES Qualcomm is the world's largest supplier of modem chips that enable smartphones to connect to wireless data networks. But it has been diversifying its business to reduce dependence on the smartphone market, which makes up a majority of its sales after losing Huawei as a major customer and client Apple's efforts to develop in-house chips. Over the last two years, it has entered the personal computer market, competing against Intel and AMD to sell chips that power Windows-based laptops. (Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa; Editing by Vijay Kishore and Maju Samuel)

(The article has been published through a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has been published verbatim. Liability lies with original publisher.)