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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)

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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, 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)

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(Reuters) -Australia's corporate regulator and the federal police have visited WiseTech Global's office, executing a search warrant for documents related to alleged trading in shares, the firm said on Tuesday.  The company said the allegations are against founder Richard White and three employees for trading from late 2024 to early 2025.  WiseTech said it is unaware of any charges against the individuals or allegations against the company itself.   (Reporting by Sneha Kumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel and Alan Barona)

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(Reuters) -GlobalFoundries' John Hollister has stepped down from the CFO position and will be succeeded by Sam Franklin on an interim basis, the contract chipmaker said on Monday. The management reshuffle comes at a time when the company has pledged to invest $16 billion partly towards building more manufacturing facilities on American soil amid U.S. President Donald Trump's push to onshore supply chains. The company, unlike leader TSMC, does not largely produce cutting-edge artificial intelligence chips and is spending heavily on upgrading its manufacturing processes to produce more advanced chips for markets such as automotive and smartphones. While Taiwan's TSMC manufactures the most advanced processors designed by the likes of Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm, GlobalFoundries produces the chips used alongside them that form an essential part of electronic systems. Hollister, who joined the company as CFO early last year, is leaving due to "personal reasons", GlobalFoundries said, without providing further details. Franklin, who is currently vice president of business finance, operations and investor relations, joined Global Foundries in 2022. He has previously held banking and finance positions across firms including Mubadala, a unit of Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund that is also GlobalFoundries' largest shareholder, according to LSEG data. "While the company determines a permanent successor, we are confident in Sam's ability," CEO Tim Breen said in a statement. "GF (GlobalFoundries) remains focused on our strategic priorities." GlobalFoundries' adjusted gross margin has struggled to break out of the 20-30% range for a large part of the last four years, with analysts citing pricing problems and increased competitive pressure. The company is expected to report a drop of about 4% in quarterly revenue to $1.68 billion on November 12, according to data compiled by LSEG. Its profit is expected to fall 8% to $165.4 million. (Reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa; Editing by Anil D'Silva)

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By Suzanne McGee (Reuters) -Canary Capital plans to launch the first U.S. exchange-traded products tied to the litecoin and hedera cryptocurrencies on Tuesday, the firm told Reuters, forging ahead despite a government shutdown that has hobbled the U.S. securities regulator. Separately, Bitwise Asset Management said it will launch its own new cryptocurrency ETF, tied to solana, on Tuesday. The launches test a recently streamlined approval process, potentially paving the way for a wave of new cryptocurrency products to come to market without lengthy, product-specific reviews. "We've had several interactions with the SEC" on both filings over the last year, Steven McClurg, Canary's founder and CEO, told Reuters. "We were very much ready to go" before the shutdown. Canary is relying on the mid-September vote by SEC commissioners allowing three national securities exchanges to adopt generic listing standards for cryptocurrency and other commodity exchange-traded products. That vote removed the last obstacle for asset managers hoping to launch dozens of new spot funds tied to an array of cryptocurrencies. SEC officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Previously, new spot crypto ETFs, such as the bitcoin funds launched in January 2024, had to undergo lengthy, product-specific reviews by two different groups of SEC staffers. The new rules enable crypto asset managers to launch products as long as they meet certain criteria. McClurg added that Canary will not launch all of its filed crypto products at once, but will roll out additional products in the coming weeks and months. While the firm is comfortable with launching the litecoin and hedera offerings, based on the extent and nature of pre-shutdown discussions with the SEC, "There are a lot of filings we've still got out there that we don't have that level of comfort with." Together with a 2019 rule designed to streamline the ETF listing process, "the standardized listings give the whole industry plenty of room" to roll out these new products, said Dave Nadig, head of research at ETF.com. (Reporting by Suzanne McGee; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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