Good morning. It'd be difficult to locate anyone in the business sphere who'd confess to not striving to make their company as prepared for AI as feasible. (Despite the fact that AI's uses for their current operations might be restricted.)
TL;DR
- Verizon is reportedly planning to lay off approximately 15,000 employees as part of cost-cutting measures.
- Apple and Tencent have agreed that Apple will handle payments and take 15% revenue from WeChat mini games.
- Law enforcement agencies dismantled over 1,000 servers used by cybercriminals in "Operation Endgame."
- Only 36% of businesses have a comprehensive change management strategy for AI integration, according to Cisco.
Alright, time for a quick quiz: What proportion of businesses report having developed a comprehensive change management strategy for AI, specifically designed to ready their workforce for AI integration at work?
Take your best guess and find the answer in “Endstop triggered.”
Have a wonderful weekend. —Andrew Nusca
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Verizon is considering reducing its workforce by approximately 15,000 employees.
The world’s second-largest telco is getting a little bit smaller.
According to a new Wall Street Journal reportVerizon is preparing for its most substantial workforce reduction to date next week, with approximately 15,000 employees expected to be laid off from its staff of around 100,000.
The reason? Good old fashioned tough times.
The leading U.S. Mobile provider saw 7,000 postpaid phone customers depart for competitors over three straight quarters, a period when financial analysts had anticipated substantial growth.
Last month, Verizon's board appointed former PayPal CEO Dan Schulman as chief executive; the founding CEO of Virgin Mobile promptly initiated cost-cutting measures.
“These will not be incremental changes,” Schulman told investors two weeks ago. “We will aggressively transform our culture, our cost structure, and the financial profile of Verizon in order to put our customers first, compete effectively, and deliver sustainable returns for our shareholders.”
In short, it’s gonna get messy.
Schulman intends to divest or scale back underperforming legacy operations and transition approximately 200 company-owned locations to a franchise model. Concurrently, Verizon is implementing strategies to curb customer attrition, including price-protection commitments and other advantageous customer terms. —AN
Apple and Tencent have reached an agreement regarding WeChat.
Apple will reportedly handle payments and take 15% of revenue generated in mini games and apps within Tencent’s popular WeChat service.
According to a new Bloomberg report, the companies spent more than a year hammering out an agreement.
Apple aimed to seal what it considered circumventions of its payment system, while Tencent aimed to retain a larger share of earnings.
Fifteen percent is half of Apple’s usual 30% commission on in-app purchases. But so-called mini games, such as those found entirely within WeChat, proved to be big business. Last quarter, they netted China’s most valuable company the equivalent of $4.5 billion.
This pact supports a wider initiative that Apple initiated on Thursday for mini app developers.
It also helps Apple ease tensions in China as the U.S. And its rival wage a multifront trade war.
Apple, the iPhone manufacturer, might benefit from considerable assistance in its efforts to counter domestic competitors like Huawei and Xiaomi. These companies' increasing prominence in their native market has negatively impacted Apple's growth over the past few financial periods. —AN
'Operation Endgame' action disables 1,000 servers
Law enforcement agencies across nine nations have dismantled over 1,000 servers utilized by cybercriminals, marking a significant development in the ongoing “Operation Endgame” anti-cybercrime initiative.
The computers targeted were utilized by The Rhadamanthys infolstealer, VenomRAT, and Elysium botnet malware campaigns.
Europol and Eurojust spearheaded the takedown operation, which involved firms such as CrowdStrike, Lumen, Proofpoint, and Bitdefender.
The circumstances are quite dramatic. This month, law enforcement conducted searches at eleven sites across Germany, Greece, and the Netherlands over a four-day period. Twenty online domains were confiscated, and a primary suspect was apprehended.
"The dismantled malware infrastructure consisted of hundreds of thousands of infected computers containing several million stolen credentials," Europol said on Thursdayadding that the main culprit behind the infostealer “had access to over 100,000 crypto wallets” is stealing from victims. —AN
More tech
—China hackers heavily rely on AI. A September campaign was “80-90%” automated, Anthropic says.
—Ubisoft punts on earnings report. The Assassin’s Creed maker delays its H1 financial results and requests that its shares be halted from trading.
—xAI raises $15 billion? Elon Musk’s AI company is now reportedly worth $200 billion…though Musk called the CNBC report “false” without elaborating.
—Meta revamps Facebook Marketplace. AI, comments, collections, and more.
—EU opens fresh Google investigation. Did it unfairly demote news outlets who also publish content by commercial partners?
—Apple, MLS revise agreement. Major League Soccer games will reportedly now be available without an additional paywall.
—Meet Amazon Leo, the company’s renamed Project Kuiper satellite communication project.
Endstop triggered
Answer: 36%.
Despite all the current discussions surrounding AI, only one-third of businesses report having a structured change management strategy in place to assist staff during AI integration, as indicated by Cisco's latest findings. AI Readiness Index.
For proactive and ambitious businesses, the statistics appear significantly more favorable, a category Cisco labels “pacesetters.” With over 90% of them being ready.
“Without that planning, investments, strategy, and ownership may not fully translate into real-world value,” the report says. “Teams may resist new processes, struggle to integrate AI into workflows, or fail to adopt tools effectively—meaning much of the potential ROI could remain untapped.”
A daunting proposition. But as Jimmy Dugan once said: “If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.” —AN