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In summary: Meta has hired five founding members of Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup built by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, after she rejected a reported $1 billion acquisition offer. The most expensive individual hire, co-founder Andrew Tulloch, reportedly received a $1.5 billion package over six years. The talent raid is part of a […]
Summary: WhatsApp has begun testing a paid consumer subscription called WhatsApp Plus at approximately EUR 2.49 per month, offering cosmetic upgrades including 18 chat themes, custom icons, exclusive ringtones, and expanded pinned chats, following Instagram Plus which launched in three markets on 30 March. The subscriptions represent Meta’s first simultaneous consumer-facing paid tiers across its […]
Summary: Threads head Connor Hayes previewed a redesigned web interface that adds direct messages, a navigation sidebar with shortcuts to saved posts and insights, and a cleaner single-feed layout replacing the current multi-column design. DMs, which launched on mobile in June 2025, will roll out on web “over the coming weeks,” bringing one-on-one chats, group […]
In short: Meta will begin companywide layoffs on 20 May, cutting approximately 8,000 employees (10% of its 78,865-person workforce), with additional cuts planned for the second half of 2026. The restructuring, which follows earlier rounds that brought Zuckerberg’s total cuts since 2022 to roughly 25,000, is driven by a reallocation toward AI infrastructure costing $115-135 […]
Corrie Aune for BI
Carol Foster inched her walker toward the front of a senior living meeting room and paused while a virtual reality headset was strapped onto her face.