Microsoft will ‘scale down’ its operations in Russia

Microsoft previously halted sales in Russia following the invasion of Ukraine, and now it’s shrinking its presence in the country. The company told Bloomberg in a statement that it will “significantly scale down” its Russian operations in response to a bleaker economic forecast stemming from the war. Microsoft will still honor its contracts in the country, but the reduced footprint will affect over 400 employees.

The Windows creator said it was “working closely” with affected staff to provide support. There was no mention of which segments would be impacted. It was also unclear how many people the company employed in Russia before the announcement. We’ve asked Microsoft for comment.

This isn’t the first major tech company to withdraw at least some of its business in Russia in response to the war. IBM is now winding down its operations after suspending them in March, while software giant SAP said in April that it would exit the country entirely. Other firms, such as Amazon and Apple, have limited some or all of their sales.

This isn’t a huge sacrifice for Microsoft. The developer said in March that Russia accounted for less than one percent of its revenue, and its local business had been in a steady decline over the past few years. Even so, it wouldn’t be surprising if the cutback prompted similar moves from tech peers either showing support for Ukraine or concerned about their Russian sales prospects.

Porsche pours more cash into EV supercar company Rimac

Porsche is strengthening its relationship with EV supercar company Rimac, investing “eight figures” for a total ownership stake of 20 percent, TechCrunch reported. Rimac scored $500 million in total, with additional funds coming in from investment giants Softbank and Goldman Sachs. All of that is a huge vote of confidence in the company, which has become a key supplier and collaborator on EVs built by Hyundai, Porsche and other mainstream automakers. 

Porsche, which invested $83.3 million in Rimac last year, said it’s “delighted” that Rimac has gained some new, high-profile investors. “SoftBank is the biggest tech investor in the world, and Goldman is a very big financial investor,” said Rimac founder and CEO, Mate Rimac. The money will be used to build a $200 million Rimac campus in Zagreb, Croatia and bolster the company’s Rimac Technology subsidiary, which designs and builds EV parts for other automakers. 

Despite the influx of cash from Porsche, Rimac said the overall investment will help it remain independent. “It’s very good for us to have Porsche and Hyundai onboard as shareholders, but we don’t want to be fully dependent on them,” the CEO explained. 

Last year, Rimac set up a joint venture with Porsche to run Bugatti after Volkswagen ceded ownership. The new entity, called Bugatti Rimac, recently unveiled the 1,914-horsepower Rimac Nevera EV hypercar that will go from 0-60 MPH in 1.85 seconds and have an estimated top speed around 250 MPH. Apart from Porsche and Hyundai, Rimac Technology develops and manufactures batteries and other components for Koenigsegg, Pininfarina and Aston Martin. 

Atlassian co-founder takes big step toward shutting down Australia’s coal power

Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes just scored a major coup in his quest to end Australia’s use of coal energy. The Wall Street Journalreports AGL Energy, Australia’s worst emissions producer, has withdrawn plans to ‘demerge’ its retail power and generation units (thus keeping coal power plants running longer) after Cannon-Brookes bought over 11 percent of the company’s stock. The breakup plan is unlikely to pass a shareholder vote after the tech executive’s move, AGL said.

Both the chairman and CEO of AGL are stepping down as a result of the failed demerger. The board of directors is also conducting a review of the company’s strategy, and plans broader changes to the board as well as overall management. The directors want to deliver the best value in light of “Australia’s energy transition,” the company added.

Cannon-Brookes hopes AGL can shut down the coal plants about 10 years sooner than the company’s 2045 goal. He originally tried to buy AGL outright with help from Canadian investment giant Brookfield Asset Management, but resorted to buying stock after the energy provider rejected the offers.

The Atlassian exec’s renewable energy push began in 2017, when he learned of Tesla’s proposal to end southern Australian blackouts using large-scale battery storage. He has long singled out AGL as a target. According to Cannon-Brookes, AGL represents about 8 percent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. That’s more than every car in the country, and more than some entire developed countries.

The stock ploy won’t guarantee that AGL shuts down its coal plants ahead of schedule. Still, it’s a relatively unique effort in the tech world to accelerate the shift toward clean energy. Companies like Amazon, Apple, Google and others have generally focused on reducing their own emissions by either buying renewables or installing solar and wind power at their facilities — Atlassian’s co-creator is trying to engineer change across an entire country.

Twitter investors sue Elon Musk over stock manipulation claims

Elon Musk is facing yet another lawsuit over his planned Twitter acquisition. Reutersreports investors have sued the Tesla CEO for allegedly manipulating stock prices ahead of his $44 billion takeover bid. As in an earlier suit, Musk supposedly saved $156 million by failing to disclose that he’d bought more than a 5 percent stake in Twitter by March 14th, violating SEC rules. The investors said Musk only disclosed his investments in early April, when he revealed that he owned a 9.2 percent slice of the social network.

Musk’s post-announcement statements also amounted to manipulation, the investors said. They were particularly concerned about his claim that the deal was “on hold” until Twitter could prove that bots weren’t a major problem and represented less than 5 percent of accounts.

The plaintiffs in the case are hoping for class action status, and ask for unspecified damages if they’re successful. Twitter has declined comment, and Musk hadn’t responded to Reuters‘ requests for comment.

Musk’s hoped-for purchase has already sparked a flurry of legal action. In addition to the previously mentioned lawsuit from April, a Florida pension fund sued Musk for purportedly violating a Delaware law that would bar the merger until 2025. The SEC, meanwhile, is investigating Musk’s disclosure timing. There’s no certainty any of these actions will succeed, but they still pose serious challenges to Musk’s ambitions.

Sony vows to ramp up PS5 production to levels ‘never achieved before’

One of Sony’s top priorities going forward is to ramp up production for the PlayStation 5 to meet unprecedented demand for the console. In a briefing with investors (PDF), the company said that it expects to close the gap in PS4 and PS5 sales this year after the newer console lagged behind its older sibling in 2021. Sony blamed the lack of PS5 sales on its inability to build enough units due to ongoing supply chain shortages in its quarterly earnings report. There’s no lack of demand: Based on the data Sony presented, it takes only 82 minutes to to sell 80,000 PS5 units, whereas it takes nine days to sell the same number of PS4s. 

The company now expects to be able to produce more units as supply chain shortages have eased up a bit, but the pandemic’s impact on parts availability still remains a concern. In addition, Sony is worried that the Russian invasion of Ukraine might also affect its logistics and potential parts inventory. To mitigate the impact of those issues, Sony plans to source from multiple suppliers “for greater agility in unstable market conditions.” It also has ongoing negotiations to maintain optimal delivery routes for the console. 

With those solutions in place, the company believes PS5 sales can overtake the PS4’s again starting next year. Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan said during the briefing that after the initial ramp up, the company is “planning for heavy further increases in console production, taking [it] to production levels that [it has] never achieved before.”

Aside from discussing its PS5 production goals, Sony has also revealed that it’s expanding PlayStation Studios by acquiring more game studios, as well as increasing its investments in live services, PC and mobile offerings. It’s committing to launch 12 live services in the coming years that don’t include Destiny, which will be the company’s as part of its Bungie acquisition. And it intends to have half of its annual first party releases on PC and on mobile by 2025. “By expanding to PC and mobile, and it must be said… also to live services, we have the opportunity to move from a situation of being present in a very narrow segment of the overall gaming software market, to being present pretty much everywhere,” Ryan explained.

NVIDIA reportedly slows down hiring as it braces for a drop in gaming sales

A slowing economy continues to affect the tech industry, as NVIDIA has become one of the first chipmakers to announce a pullback on new hiring, according to memos seen by The New Indian Express and confirmed by Protocol. That lines up its comments during its latest earnings release, when it said that it expects sales of GPUs for gaming consoles and PCs to decline in the current quarter. “Overall the gaming market is slowing,” CEO Jensen Huang told Reuters. 

NVIDIA actually had a solid previous quarter, with revenue up 46 percent over last year to $8.29 billion. It also noted that its “gearing up for the largest wave of new products in our history” with new GPU, CPU, DPU and robotics processors coming online in the second half of the year. 

However, it forecast lower revenue than the market expected for next quarter. And internally, the company appears to be bracing for a slowdown. “Onsite interviews… continue, but we will raise our standard to the highest levels,” it reportedly said in a Slack message. “We were told that leadership wants to take a pause to onboard the thousands of new hires we’ve recently made.” The company also told Protocol that it’s slowing hiring “to focus our budget on taking care of existing employees as inflation persists.

NVIDIA will be joining a number of tech companies, including Lyft, Uber and Snap, in announcing hiring slowdowns. Tech companies have been hit particularly hard by economic headwinds cause by COVID lockdowns in China and the war in Ukraine. NVIDIA, however, was expected to weather events due to continued strong demand in the GPU market that has kept prices high and supply short.