Autodesk said today it plans to cut approximately 1,000 jobs, or roughly 7% of its workforce, as part of what the company described as the final phase of a global restructuring effort aimed at strengthening its sales and marketing operations. The maker of AutoCAD and other digital design software said a significant portion of the cuts will fall within customer-facing sales functions.

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Ampere, l'entité dédiée au développement et à la fabrication des voitures électriques de Renault, va fermer ses portes. En soi, rien ne change pour nous, ni pour les salariés qui garderont leur emploi.

New research from Cornell University has tracked how households change their spending after someone starts taking GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Wegovy, and the numbers are material enough to explain why food industry earnings calls keep blaming everything except the obvious culprit. The study analyzed transaction data from 150,000 households linked to survey responses on medication adoption. Households cut grocery spending by 5.3% within six months of a member starting GLP-1s; high-income households cut by 8.2%. Fast food spending fell 8.0%. Savory snacks took the biggest hit at 10.1%, followed by sweets and baked goods. Yogurt was the only category to see a statistically significant increase. As of July 2024, 16.3% of U.S. households had at least one GLP-1 user. Nearly half of adopters reported taking the medication specifically for weight loss rather than diabetes management. About 34% of users discontinue within the sample period, and when they stop, candy and chocolate purchases rise 11.4% above pre-adoption levels. Further reading: Weighing the Cost of Smaller Appetites.

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Eightfold AI, a venture capital-backed AI hiring platform used by Microsoft, PayPal and many other Fortune 500 companies, is being sued in California for allegedly compiling reports used to screen job applicants without their knowledge. From a report: The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday accusing Eightfold of violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act shows how consumer advocates are seeking to apply existing law to AI systems capable of drawing inferences about individuals based on vast amounts of data. Santa Clara, California-based Eightfold provides tools that promise to speed up the hiring process by assessing job applicants and predicting whether they would be a good fit for a job using massive amounts of data from online resumes and job listings. But candidates who apply for jobs at companies that use those tools are not given notice and a chance to dispute errors, job applicants Erin Kistler and Sruti Bhaumik allege in their proposed class action. Because of that, they claim Eightfold violated the FCRA and a California law that gives consumers the right to view and challenge credit reports used in lending and hiring.

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Ubisoft is canceling game projects, shutting down studios and cutting its guidance as the Assassin's Creed maker restructures its business into five units. From a report: The French gaming firm expects earnings before interest and tax to be a loss of $1.2 billion the fiscal year 2025-2026 as a result of the restructuring, driven by a one-off writedown of about $761 million, the company said in a statement on Wednesday. Ubisoft also expects net bookings of around $1.76 billion for the year, with a $386 million gross margin reduction compared to previous guidance, it said. Six games, including a remake of Prince of Persia The Sands of Time, have been discontinued and seven other unidentified games are delayed, the company said. The measures are part of a broader plan to streamline operations, including closing studios in Stockholm and Halifax, Canada. Ubisoft said it will have cut at least $117 million in fixed costs compared to the latest financial year by March, a year ahead of target, and has set a goal to slash an additional $234 million over the next two years.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, OpenAI and ServiceNow signed a three-year deal to embed AI agents directly into ServiceNow's enterprise workflows. CNBC reports: As part of the deal, ServiceNow will integrate GPT-5.2 into its enterprise workflow platform and create AI voice technology harnessing these models. "Bringing together our engineering teams and our respective technologies will drive faster value for customers and more intuitive ways of working with AI," said Amit Zavery, president, chief operating officer, and chief product officer at ServiceNow.

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A PwC survey of more than 4,500 CEOs found that over half report no revenue growth or cost savings from their AI investments so far, despite massive spending. Of the 4,454 business leaders surveyed, only 12% saw both lower costs and higher revenue, while 56% saw neither benefit. "26% saw reduced costs, but nearly as many experienced cost increases," adds The Register. From the report: AI adoption remains limited. Even in top use cases like demand generation (22 percent), support services (20 percent), and product development (19 percent), only a minority are deploying AI extensively. Last year, a separate PwC study found that only 14 percent of workers indicated they were using generative AI daily in their work. Despite the CEOs' repsonses, PwC concludes more investment is required. It claims that "isolated, tactical AI projects" often don't deliver measurable value, and that tangible returns instead come from enterprise-wide deployments consistent with business strategy. [...] In terms of the broader picture, PwC says it found CEO confidence has hit a five-year low, with only 30 percent optimistic about revenue growth (down from 38 percent last year). This points to growing geopolitical risk and intensifying cyber threats, as well as uncertainty over the benefits and downsides of AI. Unsurprisingly, concern remains over tariffs as the Trump administration continues its erratic approach to policy, with almost a third of company chiefs saying tariffs are expected to reduce their company's profit margin in the year ahead. In the U.S., 22 percent indicate their corporation is highly or extremely exposed to tariffs. PwC warns that companies avoiding major investments due to geopolitical uncertainty underperform peers by two percentage points in growth and three points in profit margins.

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En marge du Forum économique mondial de Davos, le 20 janvier 2026, la présidente de la Commission européenne, Ursula von der Leyen, a officialisé la création d’EU‑INC, un projet attendu par de nombreux entrepreneurs européens qui vise à instaurer une seule forme de société paneuropéenne, avec un registre unique et des règles standardisées, pensée sur mesure pour les startups et scale‑ups du continent.​

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs are starting to be reflected in the price of some items, as sellers weigh how to absorb the shock of the added costs. From a report: Amazon and many of its third-party merchants pre-purchased inventory to try to get ahead of the tariffs and keep prices low for customers, but most of that supply ran out last fall, Jassy said in a Tuesday interview with CNBC's Becky Quick at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "So you start to see some of the tariffs creep into some of the prices, some of the items, and you see some sellers are deciding that they're passing on those higher costs to consumers in the form of higher prices, some are deciding that they'll absorb it to drive demand and some are doing something in between," Jassy said. "I think you're starting to see more of that impact." The comments are a notable shift from last year, when Jassy said Amazon hadn't seen "prices appreciably go up" a few months after Trump announced wide-ranging tariffs. Further reading: Americans Are the Ones Paying for Tariffs, Study Finds: Americans, not foreigners, are bearing almost the entire cost of U.S. tariffs, according to new research that contradicts a key claim by President Trump and suggests he might have a weaker hand in a reemerging trade war with Europe. [...] The new research, published Monday by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a well-regarded German think tank, suggests that the impact of tariffs is likely to show up over time in the form of higher U.S. consumer prices. [...] By analyzing $4 trillion of shipments between January 2024 and November 2025, the Kiel Institute researchers found that foreign exporters absorbed only about 4% of the burden of last year's U.S. tariff increases by lowering their prices, while American consumers and importers absorbed 96%.

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Rackspace's new pricing for its email hosting services is "devastating," according to a partner that has been using Rackspace as its email provider since 1999. From a report: In recent weeks, Rackspace updated its email hosting pricing. Its standard plan is now $10 per mailbox per month. Businesses can also pay for the Rackspace Email Plus add-on for an extra $2/mailbox/month (for "file storage, mobile sync, Office-compatible apps, and messaging"), and the Archiving add-on for an extra $6/mailbox/month (for unlimited storage). As recently as November 2025, Rackspace charged $3/mailbox/month for its Standard plan, and an extra $1/mailbox/month for the Email Plus add-on, and an additional $3/mailbox/month for the Archival add-on, according to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Rackspace's reseller partners have been especially vocal about the impacts of the new pricing. In a blog post on Thursday, web hosting service provider and Rackspace reseller Laughing Squid said Rackspace is "increasing our email pricing by an astronomical 706 percent, with only a month-and-a half's notice." Laughing Squid founder Scott Beale told Ars Technica that he received the "devastating" news via email on Wednesday. The last time Rackspace increased Laughing Squid's email prices was by 55 percent in 2019, he said.

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Seven out of ten C-suite executives believe traditional enterprise resource planning software has seen its best days, though the category remains firmly entrenched in corporate IT and opinion is sharply divided on what comes next. A survey of 4,295 CFOs, CISOs, CIOs and CEOs worldwide found 36% expect ERP to give way to composable, API-driven best-of-breed systems, while 33% see the future in "agentic ERP" featuring autonomous AI-driven decision-making. The research was commissioned by Rimini Street, a third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP. Despite the pessimism, 97% said their current systems met business requirements. Vendor lock-in remains a sore point: 35% cited limited flexibility and forced upgrades as frustrations. Kingfisher, operator of 2,000 European retail stores including Screwfix and B&Q, recently eschewed an SAP upgrade in favor of using third-party support to shift its existing application to the cloud. Gartner analyst Dixie John cautioned that while third-party support may work in the short or medium term, organizations will eventually need to upgrade.

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Elon Musk réclame désormais 134 milliards de dollars à OpenAI et à son partenaire Microsoft, dénonçant la transformation de son projet humaniste initial en une structure commerciale lucrative. Un procès devant jury est officiellement attendu pour avril 2026.

Le réseau social X lance une « nouvelle expérience » à 1 million de dollars. L'article le plus lu sur la plateforme permettra à son auteur de gagner cette somme.

OpenAI intègrera bientôt de la publicité dans ChatGPT pour les internautes aux États-Unis. Dans les semaines à venir, les versions gratuite et Go de l'intelligence artificielle testeront l'ajout d'encarts publicitaires.

Le premier ministre canadien Mark Carney s'est rendu en Chine pour signer un accord commercial avec le président Xi Jinping. Le partenariat va permettre l'entrée de 49 000 véhicules électriques fabriqués en Chine sur le marché canadien.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Thursday, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) reported record fourth-quarter earnings and said it expects AI chip demand to continue for years. During an earnings call, CEO C.C. Wei told investors that while he cannot predict the semiconductor industry's long-term trajectory, he remains bullish on AI. "All in all, I believe in my point of view, the AI is real -- not only real, it's starting to grow into our daily life. And we believe that is kind of -- we call it AI megatrend, we certainly would believe that," Wei said during the call. "So another question is 'can the semiconductor industry be good for three, four, five years in a row?' I'll tell you the truth, I don't know. But I look at the AI, it looks like it's going to be like an endless -- I mean, that for many years to come." TSMC posted net income of NT$505.7 billion (about $16 billion) for the quarter, up 35 percent year over year and above analyst expectations. Revenue hit $33.7 billion, a 25.5 percent increase from the same period last year. The company expects nearly 30 percent revenue growth in 2026 and plans to spend between $52 billion and $56 billion on capital expenditures this year, up from $40.9 billion in 2025.

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Six mois après l’ouverture des précommandes, le Trump Phone n’a toujours pas été expédié. Saisie par Elizabeth Warren et dix autres élus démocrates, la Federal Trade Commission est appelée à enquêter sur les promesses de fabrication américaine et les retards répétés de Trump Mobile.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said this week that his company's software engineering headcount has remained "mostly flat" over the past year as internal AI tools have delivered substantial productivity gains. Speaking on TBPN, Benioff said he has about 15,000 engineers who are "more productive than ever." The company has redirected its hiring efforts toward sales and customer engagement roles, hiring 20% more account executives this year as it pushes its Agentforce agentic AI service. Human salespeople remain essential for explaining the "intricacies and nuances" of agentic AI to skeptical enterprise customers, he argued. Other parts of the business have seen deeper cuts. In a separate appearance on The Logan Bartlett Show, Benioff said that Salesforce had reduced its customer support workforce by roughly 50%.

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theodp writes: Code.org, the nonprofit backed by AI giants Microsoft, Google and Amazon and whose Hour of AI and free AI curriculum aim to make world's K-12 schoolchildren AI literate, points job seekers to its AI Use Policy in Hiring, which promises dire consequences for those who use AI during interviews or take home assignments without its OK. Explaining "What's Not Okay," Code.org writes: "While we support thoughtful use of AI, certain uses undermine fairness and honesty in the hiring process. We ask that candidates do not [...] use AI during interviews and take-home assignments without explicit consent from the interview team. Such use goes against our values of integrity and transparency and will result in disqualification from the hiring process." Interestingly, Code.org CEO Partovi last year faced some blowback from educators over his LinkedIn post that painted schools that police AI use by students as dinosaurs. Partovi wrote, "Schools of the past define AI use as 'cheating.' Schools of the future define AI skills as the new literacy. Every desk-job employer is looking to hire workers who are adept at AI. Employers want the students who are best at this new form of 'cheating.'"

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: Amazon is turning to an Arizona mine that last year became the first new source of U.S. copper in more than a decade, to meet its data centers' ravenous appetite for the industrial metal. The mine was restarted as a proving ground for Rio Tinto's new method of unlocking low-grade copper deposits. Rio signed a two-year supply pact with Amazon Web Services, a vote of confidence for its Nuton venture, which uses bacteria and acid to extract copper from ore that was previously uneconomical to process. The move by Amazon is the latest example of a technology company rushing to secure the power and critical materials necessary to build and operate artificial-intelligence data centers. The Nuton copper will satisfy only a sliver of Amazon's needs. The biggest data centers each require tens of thousands of metric tons of copper for all the wires, busbars, circuit boards, transformers and other electrical components housed there. The 14,000 metric tons of copper cathode that Rio expects the Arizona Nuton project to yield over four years wouldn't be enough for one of those facilities. Rio deployed its bioleaching process in the recent restart of a mine east of Tucson and has partnerships to take the technology to several others in the Americas. The idea is to uncork the low-grade ore left behind at old mines and is key to Rio's plans to boost output when new discoveries are harder than ever to bring online and copper demand is surging. [...] "We work at the commodity level to find lower carbon solutions to drive our business growth," said Chris Roe, Amazon's director of worldwide carbon. "That means steel, and that means concrete, and it absolutely means copper with regard to our data centers." Roe said the copper will be routed to companies that produce components for Amazon's data centers. As part of the deal, Amazon is supplying Rio with cloud-computing and data analytics to optimize Nuton's recovery rates and help the miner expand production.

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