Tonight: The RTO hardliners gain another Big Tech backer. Plus: Elon Musk is hyping his biotech baby, and it's a very familiar tune. Let's get into it. By Allison Morrow |
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| | Last updated January 30 at 6:59 PM ET | |
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Joel Sagat/AFP/Getty Images | Overpromising and underdelivering is a full-time job for Elon Musk, the owner of half a dozen companies that all claim to pursue revolutionary technological advancements. SpaceX will one day carry humans to Mars. Teslas will drive themselves. The Boring Company will solve the scourge of traffic. X will ... do something, maybe. But perhaps the most audacious mission comes from Neuralink, the startup that wants to connect human brains to computer interfaces. Yes, it sounds like a Black Mirror episode. But in addition to its potential to usher in a dystopian nightmare of mass marketed internet implants, it could also be a good thing. The primary case for such technology is to help restore limb function for people who've suffered a traumatic injury. The Musk hype machine switched on Monday night, when he went on X to say that Neuralink had successfully placed a chip in a human brain for the first time, and that the patient was recovering well. Neuralink's first product, Telepathy, will enable users to control a phone or computer "just by thinking," according to Musk. "Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer," he wrote. Of course, we shouldn't take this announcement as anything more than it is — the statement of a well-known exaggerator whose biotech startup has lost a bit of its shine in the rapidly evolving brain-computer space. At the time of this writing, Neuralink itself hadn't issued a statement about the procedure, though it reposted Musk's statement on X. Musk didn't elaborate on the patient's status or the implant process in his statement Monday night. None of this is to say a successful implant didn't happen — it's just that we have to take Musk's word for it, and he is a notoriously unreliable source. What we do know is that Neuralink, like many of Musk's companies, has been through the ringer in recent years. - According to Reuters, Neuralink has lost six of the original eight people who helped launch the company in 2016.
- Its closest rival, Synchron, beat Neuralink to receive FDA approval to begin human trials by nearly a year. Neuralink finally received the regulatory green light in May, about four years after Musk initially estimated.
- In 2022, Neuralink employees told Reuters that the company was rushing and botching surgeries on monkeys, pigs and sheep, resulting in more animal deaths than necessary, as Musk pressured staff to receive FDA approval.
Bottom line: Like most of Musk's lofty ambitions, this one has incredible potential to help humanity. But — like Tesla's "self-driving" cars that can't drive themselves, or the underground tunnels Musk promised but never built — the brain implant from Neuralink remains firmly in the hype stage. 🚨 JUST IN: On Tuesday evening, just as Nightcap was going to press (so to speak), a Delaware judge threw out Musk's 2018 Tesla pay package, valued today at more than $50 billion. My colleague Chris Isidore is covering that rather stunning breaking news here. |
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UPS said it would cut 12,000 jobs as part of an effort to slash costs following a disappointing sales outlook for the year. The company, which employs 500,000 people, said most of the cuts will come from manager-level and contractor positions. Last year was a difficult one for UPS, which lost business from customers who were worried about a possible strike by the Teamsters union. UPS said it expects those customers to return, but so far it had won back only 60% of that lost business. Revenue in 2023 fell more than 9%. CEO Carol Tomé blamed some of UPS' slump on "the macro environment" and some on "disruptions associated with our labor contract negotiations, as well as higher costs associated with the new contract." |
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| The Great Return to Office is in a weird spot for much of Corporate America. It sure seems like the old days of M-F, 9-5, are not coming back for most folks. But some days, for some people, in certain locations are 100% required, unless you have a good excuse and your manager is chill, but really we want everyone to try to make the effort, and come on, guys, we even have snacks now... The latest hard-liner on the matter is IBM, which gave US-based managers an ultimatum Tuesday: Come back to the office, or take a walk, my colleague Jennifer Korn writes. Executives and managers will now be expected to be in-person at least three days a week, and remote workers living more than 50 miles from an office have until August to relocate. There will be some exceptions for employees with medical issues or military service, according to an internal January 16th memo. Couple of things to note: RTO isn't just about managers wanting everyone to sing kumbaya around the water cooler. It can also be a way to shed some jobs without technically laying people off. Let's take IBM: - The company has been offloading real estate, closing offices in Philadelphia, central New York and Iowa. That's going to leave workers in those areas prohibitively far away from an office that they are suddenly required to visit three days a week.
- CEO Arvind Krishna, meanwhile, has made no secret of the fact that he favors in-person work. He also told Bloomberg in May the company was planning job cuts.
- Some IBM staff may move, but many will simply quit, as nearly half of the employees at Grindr did last year when confronted with a strict RTO mandate.
To be sure, hybrid is still very much the norm, and CEOs are increasingly giving up the battle to get employees to return to the office full-time. (Just 4% of US CEOs and 4% of CEOs worldwide say they would prioritize bringing workers back to the office full time, a recent survey found.) But IBM isn't alone in taking a harder line. - UPS recently announced it is ditching its hybrid work policy, and it's now calling corporate employees back full-time.
- Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said employees who don't adhere to the three-day-a-week in-office rule could be let go.
- Meta told employees that after Labor Day managers would track attendance for its own three-day policy.
- Even Zoom, which powered the work from home era, has called its employees back into the office.
As Jennifer notes: A full-time return to office may never happen. And a full-time WFH era is similarly unlikely to take root, at least for now. A recent EY survey of C-suite leaders found that full-time remote work plummeted from 34% in 2022 to just 1% in 2023. Bottom line: Hybrid is the new normal. Is it awkward and a little confusing at times? Yes. But is it better than spending 10 hours a week commuting and feeling tethered to a desk? Also yes. It's going to take time to figure this all out. Let's just be nice to one another as we do. |
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🎓 Hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin, who has donated more than $500 million to Harvard, said he halted contributions to his alma mater, claiming America's elite colleges are "lost in the wilderness of microaggressions and a DEI agenda." 👀 New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Citibank, alleging the bank failed to sufficiently protect and reimburse victims of fraud. 🏦 The Federal Reserve is widely expected to hold interest rates steady Wednesday for the fourth consecutive meeting, leaving them at a 23-year high as policymakers likely discuss the timing of rate cuts. 💸 PayPal is cutting around about 9% of its workforce, joining a growing list of tech companies to announce layoffs. | |
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Last updated January 30 at 4:00 PM ET | |
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