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1.	Amazon Prepares To Cut As Many As 30,000 Corporate Jobs By Ann Gehan Source: Reuters

Amazon is preparing to cut as many as 30,000 corporate jobs beginning this week, Reuters reported Monday. The cuts are meant to help compensate for overhiring during the pandemic and to cut expenses, the report said. An Amazon spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The cuts could affect as much as 10% of Amazon’s roughly 350,000 corporate employees, Reuters reported. The company previously cut around 18,000 corporate jobs beginning in late 2022 and another 9,000 roles beginning in mid-2023, and has made several waves of smaller cuts since then. CEO Andy Jassy told employees earlier this year the adoption of AI and improved productivity would likely lead to job cuts, and has overseen an anti-bureaucracy push to reduce the number of managers at the company.

The planned cuts may affect divisions ranging from human resources to devices to operations, the report said. Fortune reported earlier this month that Amazon was planning layoffs for human resources teams and other parts of its consumer division. Amazon is set to report earnings on Thursday, Oct. 30.

2.	Qualcomm Shares Soar On AI Chip Deal With Saudi Arabia By Miles Kruppa Source: The Information

Shares in Qualcomm soared more than 12% after the semiconductor company said it would make artificial-intelligence chips and struck a deal to provide them to Saudi Arabia’s Humain.

The announcement on Monday, the first day of Saudi Arabia’s annual Future Investment Initiative conference, made Qualcomm the latest company to challenge Nvidia’s lead in the AI chip market. Intel said this month it would make a new AI chip code-named Crescent Island.

Humain, a company owned by Saudi Arabia’s $900 billion Public Investment Fund, is building data centers and planning a $10 billion venture fund as part of the country’s push to become a bigger force in AI. It has also struck deals to import AMD and Nvidia chips, and it’s using chips from the startup Groq to power open-source AI models in the region.

Qualcomm and Humain said they would build data centers containing the new chips starting next year. Shares in Nvidia briefly dipped following the Qualcomm announcement before rallying more than 2%.

3.	Forge Global Said to Explore Sale By Valida Pau Source: Financial Times

Forge Global, a publicly traded platform for trading stakes in privately held startups, is exploring a sale, the Financial Times reported. Shares of Forge Global jumped more than 13% on Monday. The company is working with Financial Technology Partners, an investment bank that specializes in advising fintechs, on the sale and could attract suitors from competitors and Wall Street investment banks, according to the report.

Founded in 2014, Forge allows investors and employees in private startups to buy and sell their shares. It had a market capitalization of close to 200 million before the report. Its stock fell 90% since the company went public via a blank check merger in 2021.

Forge Global and FT Partners didn’t immediately respond to a request for comments.

4.	Education Tech Firm Chegg Lays Off 45% of Staff as AI Woes Continue By Kevin McLaughlin Source: The Information

Online education firm Chegg announced it is laying off 388 employees—around 45% of its workforce—due to the “new realities of AI,” which includes reduced website traffic and revenue stemming from Google’s practice of including AI summaries atop search results.

It’s the latest sign of trouble for Chegg, whose business was slowing even before OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022 and made some of its services almost completely redundant, including one that let students ask questions and get answers from subject matter experts.

Chegg tried to get on the AI bandwagon two years ago by teaming up with OpenAI to develop an AI-powered learning service, but it hasn’t taken off. Last year Chegg switched CEOs, with executive Nathan Schultz taking over for its longtime CEO Dan Rosensweig, who moved to executive chairman. Earlier this year, Chegg sued Google for hurting its web traffic with AI summaries.

In a press release, Chegg said it hired Goldman Sachs last year to help it explore a sale or take-private acquisition but has decided to remain a standalone company. Meanwhile, Rosensweig is moving back into the CEO role, with Schultz moving to an advisory role.

5.	Chinese EV Maker Seres Seeks $1.7 Billion in Hong Kong Listing By Juro Osawa Source: The Information

Seres Group, a major electric vehicle maker in China, is looking to raise $1.7 billion in a Hong Kong listing, according to the company’s filing with the city’s stock exchange.

The Hong Kong listing of Seres, whose shares are already listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, comes amid a market rally and a resurgence of IPO activities in Hong Kong this year. In Shanghai, Seres has a market capitalization of around $36 billion.

Driven by a surge in tech stocks including EV makers, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index has gained more than 30% since the beginning of this year. For example, major EV maker Xpeng’s Hong Kong-listed stock is up more than 90% year to date, while another competitor Nio’s stock has risen nearly 60%.

In the filing submitted on Monday, Seres said it expects to receive net proceeds of about $1.66 billion from the offering, and plans to use the majority of the proceeds to invest in research and development.