Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 07/02 – In Meta v. OpenAI, Who’s Desperate And Who’s Scared?

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

More layoffs make me more concerned the AI jobpocalypse is coming to tech this summer. In the big Meta v. OpenAI talent battle, who is desperate and who is scared? We reframe the situation a bit. Figma files for an IPO. Chinese AI seems to be gain ground worldwide. And do universities need to fundamentally rethink teaching computer science? Links: Microsoft laying off about 9,000 employees in latest round of cuts (CNBC) Here’s What Mark Zuckerberg Is Offering Top AI Talent (Wired) Sam Altman Slams Meta’s AI Talent-Poaching Spree: ‘Missionaries Will Beat Mercenaries’ (Wired) Figma files for IPO on NYSE, plans to ‘take big swings’ with acquisitions (CNBC) China Is Quickly Eroding America’s Lead in the Global AI Race (WSJ) How Do You Teach Computer Science in the A.I. Era? (NYTimes) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech meme right home for Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough today. More layoffs make me more concerned. The AI job apocalypse is coming to tech this summer in the big meta-V-open-A-I talent battle. Who is desperate and who is scared? We reframe the situation a little bit there. Figma files for an IPO. Chinese AI seems to be gaining ground worldwide and do universities need to fundamentally rethink teaching computer science? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. CNBC is reporting that Microsoft plans to lay off around 9,000 employees, or less than 4% of its global workforce across teams and role types after cutting around 6,000 jobs in May. This is adding further fuel to my speculation that AI-driven workforce attrition might come to tech platforms first.

Quote, the announcement comes on the second day of Microsoft's 2026 fiscal year. Executives at the Redmond-Washington-based company typically unveil reorganizations at the time of the new fiscal year. we continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company and teams for success in a dynamic marketplace, a Microsoft spokesperson said in an email, end quote. Microsoft remains one of the most profitable companies in the S&P 500 reporting nearly $26 billion in net income on $70 billion in revenue for the March quarter. Executives projected around 14% year-over-year revenue growth for the June quarter, driven largely by gains in Azure Cloud Services and productivity software subscriptions. But despite these strong financials, Microsoft has aggressively trimmed its workforce throughout 2024. The company laid off more than 6,000 employees in May, followed by at least 300 more in June. Back in January, it had already cut

less than 1% of staff in a round reportedly based on performance. For context, the company eliminated 10,000 jobs in 2023, and its most dramatic layoff to date occurred in 2024 when 18,000 positions were slashed. And that is the point of the AI attrition theory, as we saw when we heard about CrowdStrike laying off people despite record growth. Big tech platforms might be seeing ways to do more with less headcount thanks to AI, even at times of record profitability. Microsoft is not alone in this trend. Software firms including Autodesk, Chegg, and the aforementioned CrowdStrike have also made significant cuts this year. The whole Zuck making AI people huge offers they can't refuse has become the story of the summer in tech, I guess. Now Wired

is reporting that Mark Zuckerberg has on more than 10. and occasions offered top AI research talent up to $300 million over four years with $100 million plus in total compensation for just the first year. Quote, that's about how much it would take for me to go to work at Meta, says one OpenAI staffer who spoke with Wired on the condition of anonymity, as they aren't authorized to speak publicly about the company. Other employees said that they were weighing the money against the potential impact they could have at Meta in comparison to OpenAI. Several believed their impact would be greater at OpenAI. As a point of comparison, Sachin Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, received $79.1 million in total compensation in 2024, most of it in stock, according to a financial filing by the company.

Dara Kosra Shahi, the CEO of Uber, made roughly $39.4 million, again mostly in stock that same year. Zuckerberg told potential recruits they would not have to worry about running out of resources, according to the Wall Street Journal. That's an attractive offer in the AI industry where access to cutting-edge chips or GPUs is highly competitive and can influence how impactful the research ends up being. At OpenAI, researchers have complained that Sam Altman has been known to promise people access to GPUs only to feel like there was no follow-through from leadership, end quote. Yes, that's what I've been hearing as well. The thing that I've heard Zuck is pitching is that he has the money to do whatever people want to do. Endless resources. The idea here is that while both Microsoft and Google have money, they also have other business concerns

that constrain them from shotgun blasting as much money as Meta can. And AI has no prospect of competing with Meta's existing cash cows, so there would be no politics around innovators' dilemma-type issues. As far as OpenAI is concerned, they're clearly money constrained. They have to go hat and hand to raise money from investors. Elon might be trying to kill Open AI by attacking their ability to raise them. capital, Zuck wants to kill them by walling off their access to talent. Put it in this context. If they were really serious about all 10 or so of those offers, that means META was willing to spend

$3 billion just to bring in talent, just on compensation. But note that the reporting suggests none of those people have taken these offers, yet at least. What does that say about META's reputation? Also, the rumors are these offers were often being made to fill the role of chief who is the current chief AI scientists at Meta? Jan LeCoon. Hmm. So what we have to ask is, is this a compelling argument on meta's part? Looking at it from a certain angle, it looks a bit thirsty, even a bit desperate. Like, you're literally making people offer so big as to overwhelm their common sense. Lots of folks are making the sports analogy. Here's at Signall on X, quote, Meta is basically the Yankees or the Dodgers right now. They're loading up the roster with elite AI

researchers dumping billions into infra and signaling, we're going for it. When you do that, the world expects rings. You don't get to say, we're still experimenting after you dropped $20 billion plus and poached half of Open AI. The pressure is now insane. Every paper, every product, every demo will be scrutinized like a playoff performance. All eyes on the scoreboard, end quote. Now conversely, there are signs this really is spooking open AI. Wired also got their hands on this internal memo from Sam Altman on Monday, quote, meta has gotten a few great people for sure, but on the whole, it is hard to overstate how much they didn't get their top people and had to go quite far down their list. They have been trying to recruit people for a super long time, and I've

lost track of how many people from here they've tried to get to be their chief scientist, he wrote. I am proud of how mission-oriented our industry is as a whole. Of course, there will always be some mercenaries. He added that missionaries will beat mercenaries and noted that OpenAI is assessing compensation for the entire research organization. I believe there is much, much more upside to OpenAI stock than meta stock, he wrote. But I think it's important that huge upside comes after huge success. What meta is doing will, in my opinion, lead to very deep cultural problems. We will have more to share about this soon, but it's very important. important to me, we do it fairly, and not just for people who meta happen to target. Altman then made

his pitch for people to remain at OpenAI. I have never been more confident in our research roadmap, he wrote. We are making an unprecedented bet on compute, but I love that we are doing it, and I'm confident we will make good use of it. Most importantly of all, I think we have the most special team and culture in the world. We have work to do to improve our culture for sure. We have been through insane hypergrowth, but we have the core right in a way. I don't think anyone else quite does, and I'm confident we can fix the problems. And maybe more importantly than that, we actually care about building AGI in a good way, he added. Other companies care more about this as an instrumental goal to some other mission, but this is our top thing, and always will be. Long after

meta has moved on to their next flavor of the week or defending their social moat, we will be here day after day, year after year, figuring out how to do what we do better than anyone else. A lot of other efforts will rise and fall too, end quote. Right, playing on the whole meta-crypto pivot, the whole metaverse pivot, this is all we do. You can't trust Zuck to still be into this in 18 months or so. So what is it? Open AI? Are they in danger of being brain-drained and getting scared and appealing to people's sense

of putting a dent in the universe? or is it actually meta? That's looking like it's flailing, looking desperate. Quoting, at Apwood X on X. Not so hot take is Google is going to be the Dallas Mavericks type of tight-knit team and culture that winds up winning, especially as OpenAI slash meta slash anthropic, etc. Go crazy in the transfer portal, end quote.

Figma has filed for an IPO planning to trade on the NYSC under the ticker fig. and reported Q1 revenue up 46% year-on-year to $228.2 million, and net income up 233% year-on-year to 44.9 million. Quoting CNBC, the offering would be one of the hotly anticipated IPOs in recent years, given Figma's growth rate and its high private market valuation. In late 2023, a $20 billion acquisition agreement with Adobe was scrapped due to regulatory concerns in the UK. That led Adobe to pay Figma a $1 billion termination fee. Revenue in the first quarter increased 46% to $228.2 million from $156.2 million in the same period a year ago, according to Figma's prospectus. The company recorded a net income of $44.9 million compared to $13.5 million a year earlier. CEO Dylan Field is the biggest individual owner of Figma with 56.6 million class B shares and

51.1% of voting power ahead of the IPO. He said in a letter to investors that it was time for Figma to buck the trend of many amazing companies staying privately indefinitely, end quote. As of March 31st, Figma had approximately 450,000 customers with 1,031 of them generating at least $100,000 in annual revenue, an increase of 47% year-over-year. The company hasn't disclosed how many shares it will offer in its IPO. It was last valued at $12.5 billion in a tender offer in 2023, and in April it revealed that it had confidentially submitted its IPO paperwork to the SEC. While Figma acknowledged, facing intense competition, it did not identify specific rivals, warning that a decline in market share could significantly impact its business. Figma reports more than 13 million monthly

users, but only about one-third are professional designers. As of March 31st, roughly 85% of users were based outside the U.S., though international customers accounted for just 53% of total revenue. If there is a pop, after this IPO, it would represent very good news for the tech IPO scene, especially because Figma is essentially a SaaS company. If this IPO does well, I will definitely have to adjust my tech IPO meter. According to the journal, Chinese AI models from Deepseek and others are becoming more popular worldwide. While Censor Tower says Chatshebt has 910 million global downloads since its release, Deep Seek now has seen 125 million downloads. Quote, in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia users range

ranging from multinational banks to public universities are turning to large language models from Chinese companies such as startup Deepseek and e-commerce giant Alibaba as alternatives to American offerings such as ChatGPT. HSBC and Standard Chartered have begun testing DeepSeek's models internally, according to people familiar with the matter, Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil company recently installed DeepSeek in its main data center. Even major American cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Google offer Deepseek to customers, despite the White House banning use of the company's app on some government devices over data security concerns. OpenAIs chat chip remains the world's predominant AI consumer chatbot

with 910 million global downloads compared with DeepSeaks 125 million. Figures from researchers sensor tower show American AI is widely seen as the industry's gold standard thanks to advantages in computing semiconductors, cutting-edge research, and access to financial capital. But as in many other industries, Chinese companies have started to snatch customers by offering performance that is nearly as good at vastly lower prices. A study of global competitiveness in critical technologies released in early June by researchers at Harvard University found China has advantages in two key building blocks of AI, data and human capital that are helping it keep pace.

The competition, some industry insiders say, has set the world on the path toward a technological cold war in which countries will have to decide to align with either American or Chinese AI systems. The number one factor that will define whether the U.S. or China wins. wins this race is whose technology is most broadly adopted in the rest of the world. Microsoft President Brad Smith said at a recent Senate hearing, whoever gets there first will be difficult to supplant. In a public post on Substack on June 25th, OpenAI, wrote that Jipu AI, a Chinese AI startup was making inroads helping Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern, and African nations build out their AI infrastructure. Open AI said the Chinese startup's goal was to, quote, lock Chinese systems and

standards into emerging markets before U.S. or European rivals can and claimed its leadership frequently engaged with Chinese Communist Party officials. OpenAI has a similar business line selling AI solutions to governments around the world. We want to make sure Democratic AI wins over authoritarian AI, Open AI chief executive Sam Altman said in May, end quote. Finally today from the Times, a bit of a long read, Carnegie Mellon and other U.S. universities are rethinking their computer science programs to adapt to generative AI, doing things like focusing more on computational thinking and AI literacy. Quote, computer science programs at universities across the country are now scrambling to

understand the implications of the technological transformation, grappling with what to keep teaching in the AI era. Ideas range from less emphasis on mastering programming languages to focusing on hybrid courses designed to inject computing into every profession, as educators ponder what the tech jobs of the future will look like in an AI economy. We're seeing the tip of the AI tsunami, said Jeanette Wing, a computer science professor who is Executive Vice President of Research at Columbia University. Heightening the sense of urgency is a tech job market that has tightened in recent years. Computer science graduates are finding that job offers, once plentiful, are often scarce.

Tech companies are already relying more on AI for some aspects of coding, eliminating some entry-level work. Some educators now believe the discipline could broaden to become more like a liberal arts degree with a greater emphasis on critical thinking and communication skills, end quote. The National Science Foundation is backing a new initiative called Level Up AI to reimagine how artificial intelligence is taught in colleges, led by the Computing Research Association and Partnership with New Mexico State University. The 18-month program brings together educators from universities and community colleges to develop shared curricula, host events, and publish best practices around AI education. Dr. Mary Lou Mayher, director at

the Computing Research Association said the project is motivated by an urgent need for more students with AI knowledge in the workforce. Rather than focusing solely on coding, the future of computer science education will emphasize computational thinking and AI literacy, teaching students how to break down problems, use data effectively, and understand how AI works and impacts society. At Carnegie Mellon, Dr. David D. Cortina supports integrating core AI principles with practical hands-on work. Initially, students relied on AI as a shortcut to complete assignments, but many have since realized the value of understanding how to write and debug code independently. Meanwhile, students like Connor Drake, a senior at UNC Charlotte, are navigating a

challenging tech job market. Once considered a guaranteed path to employment, a computer science degree no longer ensures easy entry. Drake, who landed a cybersecurity internship after sending 30 applications, is broadening his skill set with a minor in political science and leadership roles on campus. Hiring across tech has slowed, particularly for entry-level positions, with job postings down sharply since the pandemic-era boom. However, experts like Stanford's Alex Aiken believe AI will ultimately democratize software creation, while traditional programming jobs may decline. More people across all industries will use AI tools to build tailored applications,

expanding the definition of who programs. I said that was a bit of a long read because this is the last episode of this week. The July 4th holiday is, of course, coming soon here in the U.S., So I am taking tomorrow and Friday off. I will talk to you again on Monday. Sometimes I do try to have bonus content for you when I take more than one day off, but not this time. I'll explain why soon, actually. We've got a big summer coming up for this podcast, big, exciting new things. More on that soon as I say. Anyway, talk to you on Monday. Happy 4th.