#ai

Banker claims Oracle may slash up to 30,000 jobs, sell health unit to pay for AI build-out
https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/29/oracle_td_cowen_note/

ClawdBot (now OpenClaw over trademark issues) is officially the fastest growing open source project in history. When looking at graphs of open source adoption, it's a vertical line and nothing even comes close to matching its success. Why does it matter? Because it's the first comprehensive agentic system with an ever growing list of tools that is more or less completely unleashed (use at your own risk! remember it's early yet).

For those of you still convinced AI is just a chatbot, you should go out and take a look at what people are doing with this tool. Then tell us how jobs aren't going to be automated away. Remember too that, job displacement doesn't necessarily mean the AI is going to fully replace you, but that it's going to enable people to 10x their work and require significantly less headcount. Given how lackluster WF growth is, I doubt the growth needed to maintain headcount will keep pace with the productivity this will unlock.

As a bonus, go check out moltbook.com for laffs. It's hilarious to read through.

How does this relate to WF and layoffs you ask? It should be obvious once you understand what it is capable of. Your biggest firewall right now is data governance, and plenty of companies are working through this right now, including WF. Only Wells Fargo are way behind the curve, for obvious reasons of ineptitude.

I just hope they don't try to slap the AI label on every barely believable justification. That excuse has become tired already.

At a time when many legacy tech companies struggled to adapt, Arvind made the hard, visionary decisions—doubling down on hybrid cloud, AI, and enterprise modernization rather than chasing hype. The Red Hat acquisition, the focus on open systems, and IBM’s renewed relevance in mission-critical enterprise workloads didn’t happen by accident.

True leadership isn’t about quarterly soundbites—it’s about positioning a 100+ year-old company for the next 100 years. Under Arvind’s leadership, IBM has shown discipline, clarity, and long-term vision in an industry obsessed with shortcuts.

That’s what real CEOs do: make bold calls early, stay the course, and let results speak.

Why are we still employing “baristas”? All of these businesses should be modernized with AI. Ordering can be done by the customer who inputs the specific product and ingredients then much like a vending machine the beverage is made and dispensed.

We don’t need people with blue hair, nose rings and a they/them attitude sc--wing up our orders anymore.

https://www.wsj.com/business/earnings/ibm-sales-rise-12-as-customers-appetite-for-ai-grows-ff8f8442

The tech company posted a fourth-quarter profit of $5.60 billion, up from $2.92 billion a year earlier

By: Katherine Hamilton
Jan. 28, 2026 4:33 pm ET

International Business Machines recorded higher revenue in the fiscal fourth quarter, as customers move to implement AI in more areas of their businesses.

IBM’s generative AI book of business now stands at more than $12.5 billion, up $3 billion from the third quarter. Chief Financial Officer Jim Kavanaugh said he anticipates that the AI book of business will continue to increase at a similar pace, with growth continuing through the next handful of years.

“What you’re seeing is the early indications of moving from what I’ll call industry experimentation to we are now beginning to the cycle of scaling,” Kavanaugh said.

The Armonk, N.Y., tech company on Wednesday posted a profit of $5.60 billion, or $5.88 a share, in the quarter ended Dec. 31, compared with $2.92 billion, or $3.09 a share, a year earlier.

Stripping out certain one-time items, adjusted per-share earnings were $4.52, ahead of the $4.31 anticipated by analysts, according to FactSet.

Revenue rose 12% to $19.69 billion. Analysts surveyed by FactSet forecast revenue of $19.21 billion. Sales were driven by software and infrastructure, which rose 14% and 21%, respectively.

Within IBM’s software business, data sales rose 22%, while automation was up 18% and hybrid cloud increased 10%. In infrastructure, IBM Z fueled most of the growth, with sales climbing 67%.

Consulting revenues were $5.3 billion, which was a hair below analysts’ expectations. Kavanaugh said businesses are feeling more confident about spending—which typically leads to stronger consulting results—as macroeconomic uncertainty has subsided compared with this time last year.

“While we’re still operating in a dynamic environment, we see pretty good green shoots about growth factors,” Kavanaugh said.

In 2026, IBM expects full-year revenue growth of more than 5%. That would be a slow-down from 2025, but higher than the previous two years. Wall Street was projecting 4.6% in annual sales growth.

IBM in December agreed to pay $31 a share for the data-infrastructure Confluent, which provides technology that helps manage streams of data using AI models. The bo-m in AI usage across industries has boosted the need for its capabilities.

The synergies with Confluent are expected to increase IBM’s total addressable market by more than $100 billion, adding real-time data streaming to the business for the first time, Kavanaugh said.

“It is the glue that brings together IBM’s portfolio,” Kavanaugh said of Confluent.

Oracle is making a mistake by choosing cheap labor over quality. By hiring fresh graduates to save money and moving work offshore, the company has stopped improving its products and is now just maintaining them.

The experienced people who actually know how things work are being ignored or are waiting to leave, while the bosses at the top keep doing the same old things just to keep their jobs. New hires are using AI to write code, but they don't truly understand the systems.

People are worried stock will drop more because Oracle doesn’t have a strong cloud or AI strategy. Even its financial strategy is poor. No mo--n will go for such a big debt immediately.

To fix this, Oracle needs to analyze stagnant projects. Rework on talents. Get rid of the stuck leadership at the top, and start rewarding the real experts who can actually innovate. Remember Oracle pays low. If it layoff and hires back its going to be another challenge.

Dimon wants to replace all of you with AI

To be honest it’s a shame how our leadership is approaching AI. AI truly has the capacity to make healthcare better but leadership just uses it as an excuse to nickel and dime employees. We are constantly forced to justify ourselves as to why something can’t be done with AI. As such there is zero real enthusiasm around AI and there is no real incentive to actually use it as you are just taking on more responsibilities without any compensation. How about instead of using ai as an excuse to layoff 20% of the company, we take care of our own and reward people for being more productive with AI. Nobody in leadership at this company actually knows how to lead
and they are completely lacking in the qualities that make a leader.

The introduction of a co-pilot fundamentally changes our capacity. If a squad lead like me can now handle most development tasks with AI assistance, it accentuates the inefficiency of our bloated structure with so many L-8 GCLs and Architects who aren't providing tangible technical or strategic value

Cigna's Hyderabad Innovation Hub (HIH), often associated with Evernorth, is a major technology and operations center for The Cigna Group in India. It focuses on driving innovation, digital transformation, and supporting global teams with roles in AI, software development, and analytics. The facility aims to support thousands of employees and serves as a key hub for enhancing global health services.

https://www.cio.com/article/4125103/oracle-may-slash-up-to-30000-jobs-to-fund-ai-data-center-expansion-as-us-banks-retreat.html

Unless you are in HIH, Philippines, or Ireland, then you are at risk of being laid off. Other posts here and my own experience shows that being a top performer or being younger or paid less doesn’t make a difference. They stopped taking manager input and they are just randomly firing. Probably letting AI tell them who to cut.

So what can you do about it until this madness is over?

Quiet quit. Do only what you have to, and no going above and beyond. If they cut 3 people and hand you their work, do what you can but don’t do it all. Otherwise you are rewarding them for making things worse. If you are salary, work 40 hours. No more no less. If you are told to take on new roles on top of your current one, politely inform your manager that you are only one person, ask for a breakdown of all expectations then advise that while you will do your best, the expectations are not reasonable for one person.

Don’t go out of your way to help HIH. Do what you have to in order to keep your job, but if they are asking for extra time from you so you can basically train them to replace you, defer until you have the extra time. If HIH says something hard to understand, ask them to repeat until you do understand. If you get a kindly email that is hard to read, politely respond that you don’t understand and ask for clarification until you do. That will slow the down and increase the inefficiencies of language barriers. These people, while certainly mostly good humans, aren’t your friends. They are your replacement.

Don’t put everything into documentation. This is used to train AI and many HIH can only work off of SOPs. Let them figure out missing, but common sense, steps. Otherwise you are training your replacements. Make your documentation as obscure and high level English language as possible. AI will struggle to interpret it and will be more prone to hallucinations. HIH will get confused and make mistakes. Cigna won’t see the error of this JE/RIF/offshoring strategy unless those left behind cause things to fall apart.

Take your PTO. You earned it. It is your time and your benefit. If you have Standout points cash them in before you can’t.

If you have Cigna insurance, use as many benefits as you can as soon as you can. Get your new glasses. Snag that HSA $. Get as many preventative screenings as you can.

It won’t stop what’s coming. We can’t change that. Unionizing is not feasible and Cigna would bankrupt itself Union busting before ever allowing it.

But not helping them be successful in sending your jobs to another country, or having (error prone) AI doing your job will make a small difference and add up long term. Don’t not do your job. But don’t make it any easier on Cigna for getting rid of others or even yourself.

Now even less time for DXC. The AI bot who wrote the earnings call speech is now the DXC CEO.

TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC Established in Compliance with U.S. Regulatory Requirements

Today, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC has been established in compliance with the Executive Order signed by President Trump on September 25, 2025, now enabling more than 200 million Americans and 7.5 million businesses to continue to discover, create, and thrive as part of TikTok's vibrant global community and experience. The majority American owned Joint Venture will operate under defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protections, algorithm security, content moderation, and software assurances for U.S. users.
TikTok USDS Joint Venture's mandate is to secure U.S. user data, apps and the algorithm through comprehensive data privacy and cybersecurity measures. It will safeguard the U.S. content ecosystem through robust trust and safety policies and content moderation while ensuring continuous accountability through transparency reporting and third-party certifications.
….
Data Protection: U.S. user data will be protected by USDS Joint Venture in Oracle's secure U.S. cloud environment. The Joint Venture will operate a comprehensive data privacy and cybersecurity program that is audited and certified by third party cybersecurity experts. The program will adhere to major industry standards, including the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) CSF and 800-53 and ISO 27001 as well as the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Security Requirements for Restricted Transactions.
Algorithm Security: The Joint Venture will retrain, test, and update the content recommendation algorithm on U.S. user data. The content recommendation algorithm will be secured in Oracle's U.S. cloud environment.
Software Assurance: The Joint Venture will secure U.S. apps through software assurance protocols, and review and validate source code on an ongoing basis, assisted by its Trusted Security Partner, Oracle.
Trust & Safety: The Joint Venture will safeguard the U.S. content ecosystem and have decision-making authority for trust and safety policies and content moderation.
Interoperability enables the Joint Venture to provide U.S. users with a global TikTok experience, ensuring U.S. creators can be discovered and businesses can operate on a global scale. TikTok global's U.S. entities will manage global product interoperability and certain commercial activities, including e-commerce, advertising, and marketing.
The Joint Venture, built on the foundation of the TikTok U.S. Data Security (USDS) organization, will operate as an independent entity governed by the following seven-member, majority-American board of directors:
…

Raul Fernandez – Independent Director and Chair of the Security Committee: Raul Fernandez is President and Chief Executive Officer of DXC Technology and a member of its Board of Directors. He brings more than three decades of experience at the intersection of technology, risk, and national security.
…

Full Press Release here: https://newsroom.tiktok.com/announcement-from-the-new-tiktok-usds-joint-venture-llc?lang=en

Whats everyone putting for theirs? Does learning how to use Grok to make deep fakes of our dear leaders count as AI training?

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of some of these VPs on LinkedIn talking about AI and the impact they can have when they can’t even look away from their monitor and the script that they’re reading from. The chief people officer is the worst offender of all. Cisco is not an AI company just like they’re not a software company. Stick to selling boxes that’s where you made your money.

I wonder how many Amazon employees were encouraged to embrace AI in everything they do, only to have Bezos realize their jobs could be automated?

I hope they're aware of the hallucination problem. Frankly, I doubt they'll ever manage to build a specialized, efficient, and, most importantly, reliable AI setup. But even if they could, responsible leadership would never discard the human elements - the institutional knowledge, the creative input, the essential oversight. This will backfire spectacularly. Unless, of course, the real motive was always to get rid of the people, and "AI" is just the latest excuse.

Investors know full well that Microsoft's AI and all of the software Microsoft pushes out the door is bug filled useless garbage, especially Copilot, so Investors punished the stock today and hopefully continued to do so.

I have an idea, why not run off more high quality developers and let AI do the work. I mean its worked out well so far.

AI??? More like incompetence. They couldn't get their AI platform off the ground as of the end of last year. They eliminated contractors who were working on datacenters related to automation and AI. All I saw was non-stop push back against progress while I was there from middle managers who do nothing but fudge reports. It's just more smoke and mirrors to hide the fact that the executives are out of touch. No one is driving the ship.

Layoffs coming tomorrow. 15% of middle managers are getting axed. AI has replaced their job and as they add no value a reduction is needed.
No layoffs today, right?

2,000 (3%) RIF by end of February.

Driven by AI and automation (no mention of HIH which is laughable).

Notifications will go out for the next couple of weeks.

It’s safe to say the cuts won’t end there.

With Brad Arkin at the helm, Salesforce's security team reportedly shrank from ~300+ to 188 engineers over two years, aligning with company-wide restructurings amid AI adoption and efficiency drives. No public data specifically attributes incident spikes to these cuts, but one has to ask. The volume of breaches has fueled speculation about under-resourcing in security.

Do they regret the security headcount drop? No explicit statements, but the incident surge (from sporadic in 2024 to widespread in 2025) and AI backpedaling suggest possible hindsight regrets and prioritizing efficiency over robust defense in a high-threat landscape like Salesforce.

Major Incidents-
Late 2024 – Early 2025 Vishing Wave (UNC6040)
June–July 2025 Major Vishing Campaign (UNC6040)
August 2025 Salesloft Drift OAuth Breach (UNC6395)
September–October 2025 Extortion & Leak Escalation (Scattered LAPSUS$ Hunters)
Late 2025 – Early 2026 Follow-On Incidents

https://x.com/edzitron/status/2015968336669245688

TD Cowen had a data center themed analyst letter today that said that Oracle may lay off 20-30,000 people or sell Cerner to keep up with the debt on the data centers it’s building for OpenAI. It also says multiple US banks have pulled back from Oracle data center deals.

Holy Cow this company is cooked. Absolutely rutterless townhall talking about AI. I wouldn't be surprised if this company chapter 11s in the next 3 years. And Optum is sold off for scraps.

Huge amt of layoffs happening and will increase throughout the year as AI spending dramatically increases. Estimate is north of 50k jobs this quarter.

Well I spent 30 minutes chatting with a rep to get my $20 credit for the outage. Rep was very nice.
Can someone ask Skiadis why this is not automated. Can someone share some AI with him.

The harm it will cause to both clients and us will be incalculable. I won't even mention the craziness of the AI business model or the broader impact on people and the environment. Since it's already being forced upon us, it should be regulated into oblivion.

TCS Invests $37M in Brazil, CEO Reassures on AI Impact

TCS CEO K Krithivasan dismissed fears of AI-led mass layoffs. The firm will invest $37 million in a new Brazil tech campus. This facility in Londrina will create over 1,600 jobs by 2027. Krithivasan stated AI boosts productivity and generates new client contracts. TCS reported quarter-on-quarter revenue growth and increased AI services revenue.

https://www.peoplematters.in/news/strategic-hr/tcs-says-ai-wont-trigger-mass-layoffs-as-it-invests-dollar37m-in-brazil-tech-campus-48180

It is no secret that the overseas agents were bad. The ai tools were good sometimes, other times totally wrong with what they said and not helpful. I understand using tech to make it easier. But I have serious doubts that the actions they have taken this month will benefit the company, remaining employees, or customers. In my mind I thought I'll wait it out and when they realize it was a mistake, I'll apply again. But the more I look for new employment and the more time removed from Wayfair, I don't think going back is a good move. Which su-ks because I liked a lot of people there. At this point I'll be happy to get my w2 and be done with them.

Holy Cow this company is cooked. Absolutely rutterless townhall talking about AI. I wouldn't be surprised if this company chapter 11s in the next 3 years. And Optum is sold off for scraps

If we played a drinking game every time they say AI everyone would be drunk before lunch time. These people are so out of touch.

Truist is planning on 22k plus. Just an FYI

The digital billboard company said in a Tuesday filing that the job cuts are part of a broader effort to redirect resources to teams and positions centered on artificial intelligence. According to the company, those AI-focused roles are key to boosting adoption and putting AI into practice.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/pinterest-layoffs-ai-1236485995/

Is Amazon laying off caretakers and giving discounted soap to Engineers for kitchen cleaning? Or is it the dawn of a Day 2 era? Probably the latter. Layoffs only prove management incompetence - essentially a Bandaid batch for much bigger problems like inflating free cashflow and uncontrolled AI datacenter overspend.

https://www.anthropic.com/research/anthropic-economic-index-january-2026-report

TLDR: How humans prompt is how Claude responds: The education levels of human prompts and AI responses are nearly perfectly correlated (r > 0.92 at both levels). Higher per capita usage countries also show more augmentation—using Claude as a collaborator rather than delegating decisions entirely.

In other words, model quality output highly correlates with education level. Explains a lot at WF. Time to bring in more AI savvy people.

Copilot guesstimates 2000-5000 cuts in 2026 just within Optum health. 572 confirmed in Jan. Out of 240000 employees could be worse.

https://www.beckersasc.com/asc-transactions-and-valuation-issues/whats-new-with-optum-9-updates-in-3-months/