Meta, SpaceX and PayPal: This Week's Top Five Stories

Mark Zuckerberg: Meta Made ‘Mistakes’ with AI Overhaul

According to a company memo, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees that the company has made mistakes in regard to its AI transformation of its workforce.

Mark has invested several billion dollars into AI technology for the past couple of years as Meta hopes the technology will help optimise and streamline internal operations – a move that has been mirrored by other companies in the tech sector this year.

In the memo, Mark describes the advancement of AI and the subsequent challenges brought on by demand for the technology.

“Given ⁠the complexity of these changes, we've made mistakes and will almost certainly make more,” ​Mark said, adding that he also remains “focused on providing as much stability as possible” regarding organisation changes going forward.

“I don't want to overpromise because the world is changing in ways that are out of our control,” he said, adding that Meta does not expect more company-wide layoffs this ​year.

SpaceX Agrees to Acquire Cursor for US$60bn

SpaceX has formally agreed to take over Cursor that values the AI coding startup at US$60bn, reflecting Elon Musk’s strategy to compete with the coding tools of rival companies.

According to a recent regulatory filing, Cursor investors will have the right to receive SpaceX stock based on the implied US$60bn equity value of the startup.

SpaceX first revealed in April that it had secured the right to buy Cursor later this year but was waiting for the result of its IPO.

The aerospace company is pushing ahead with the Cursor transaction just days after the IPO, which has since become the biggest IPO in history, with SpaceX valued at US$2.2tn.

Company stock surged more than 40% in its first two trading sessions, reflecting strong demand from investors looking to invest early into the company’s growth prospects.

The acquisition of Cursor by SpaceX is expected to close in the third quarter.

PayPal Announces Closure of Venture Capital Arm

PayPal has announced plans to shut down its venture capital arm, just months after Enrique Lores’s appointment as company CEO.

Last year, the company had a total of 10 partners and has since reduced that number to two. Additionally, PayPal no longer lists the venture unit’s employees on its website.

Earlier in June, Ashish Aggarwal and Alexandros Bottenbruch, co-leads for PayPal’s fintech investments across EMEA left their roles as partners at PayPal Ventures. 

Both executives were the only two remaining partners based out of the company’s London office, with the rest positioned in the US.

“As part of our continued efforts to sharpen our focus, we are exploring strategic options for our corporate venture capital arm, PayPal Ventures,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “We don’t have additional details to share at this time.”

They also added that the company is considering selling some of its positions on the secondary market and has hired the investment bank Jefferies to help with potential transactions.

Diageo Announces Cost Reductions and Layoff Plans

Diageo’s newest CEO Dave Lewis has instructed the company’s top executives to implement a series of job cuts and cost reductions across all departments.

The decision to cut roles and costs comes after a period of financial difficulty and declining sales for the multinational beverage company.

Within these plans, Dave has established cost reduction targets for Diageo’s executive committee, rather than giving them a specific number of roles to eliminate. An unnamed person familiar with Diageo’s plans says that “non-revenue-generating” teams would take the biggest hit amid these changes.

An internal announcement regarding the scale of the jobs cuts will be made next week, with one employee adding that there was currently a “funeral home atmosphere” inside Diageo’s London head office.

The brand, which owns Guinness and Johnnie Walker, currently employs close to 30,000 people worldwide.

Anthropic CEO and Tech Executives Call for US AI Coalition

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and other tech executives have called for a US led coalition to establish regulatory frameworks around AI use during a meeting with President Donald Trump and several other industry tech leaders.

The meeting took place at the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, France and saw Dario discuss a proposed international cooperation on AI, with the US leading the initiative.

The proposal would help protect against risks associated with the technology according to two attendees of the summit. The two stated they were not authorised to discuss further details of the meeting.

Agreeing with the two tech leaders, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney agreed that the US should lead the AI coalition.

The meeting follows the release of increasingly powerful AI models that house abilities so advanced that industry experts  have raised concerns that they could cause major disruptions and potentially disasters if placed in the wrong hands.

Recently, Anthropic disabled access to its newest models – Fable 5 and Mythos 5 – after the US government suspended access to the models, citing national security concerns.