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Big Four accounting firm PwC is laying off about 1,500 employees in the United States, a company spokesperson told Reuters on Monday. The workforce reduction equates to approximately 2% of our U.S. firm, the spokesperson said. PwC employs more than 75,000 people in the United States. “This was a difficult decision, and we made it with care, thoughtfulness, and a deep awareness of its impact on our people, appreciating that historically low levels of attrition over consecutive years have made it necessary to take this step”, PwC said in a statement. Last year, Reuters had reported that PwC was considering slashing up to half its financial services auditing staff in China, as a regulatory investigation and an exodus of clients darken business prospects. PwC last month shut operations in nine Sub-Saharan African countries following a strategic review. KPMG, PwC, EY and Deloitte make up the Big Four accounting firms. In November last year, Reuters had reported that KPMG would lay off less than 4%, or about 330 people, of its audit workforce in the United States. Jaiveer Shekhawat, Reuters
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Cisco is the latest company to announce a quantum breakthrough. On Tuesday, the company said it has developed a prototype entanglement source chip that has the potential to cut the timeline for practical quantum computing by as much as a decade. The chip was developed in partnership with UC Santa Barbara and is novel in that it generates up to one million entangled photon pairs per second, and does so at room temperature, saving considerable resources. Additionally, Cisco is also announcing the opening of Cisco Quantum Labs, which will be the companys dedicated quantum research hub in Santa Monica, California. The chip itself was developed at Ciscos Outshift incubator, where Viljoy Pandey, senior vice president at Outshift by Cisco, says the company works on projects that are slightly out of the comfort zone. Were a networking company, says Pandey. Were looking at quantum networking and quantum security.” “Our thesis is pretty straightforward: To make [quantum computing] practical, you need to scale it out, he adds. You need a network, and to have a quantum network, you need a quantum entanglement chip. Thats the first building block. In practice, the chip will allow quantum computers to be networked togethersimilar to existing networks for classical computersenabling distributed quantum computing. ‘There’s going to be a ChatGPT moment for quantum’ While other companies are focused on building quantum computers themselves, Cisco is working on the infrastructure to make quantum computing actually workand it’s attempting to get ahead of things by developing the network and security frameworks while large-scale quantum demand is still likely years away. Moreover, while some experts have mused that quantum computing could be as far as 20 years down the road, Pandey says that Ciscos breakthrough likely cuts that timeline by between five and 10 years. [Photo: Cisco] Building the chip took between three and four years, and now Cisco is looking at moving it into production, says Reza Nejabati, head of Quantum Research and Quantum Labs at Outshift by Cisco. Were working toward more commercial fabrication, he says. Theres a whole bunch of hardware and software technology that were bringing up. The quantum proof of concept is happening. As for whats next, Pandey says Cisco will work on software to help build out a quantum network and continue work on a quantum roadmap. Theres going to be a ChatGPT moment for quantum, he says. We need to start putting the fundamental building blocks together to prepare.
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E-Commerce
Shares of Palantir Technologies slumped more than 13% on Tuesday, after quarterly results and a raised forecast failed to meet the high expectations of Wall Street investors, who had driven the stock price up significantly ahead of earnings. The data analytics company’s stock had gained 63% ahead of earnings this year, following a more than fourfold increase last year, fueled by AI-powered growth and government contracts. “We believe we have reached a point where respectable earnings beats and raised guidance aren’t enough to materially move the stock to the upside,” Morningstar analyst Mark Giarelli said. Palantir is set to lose more than $40 billion from its market valuation of $292.06 billion if losses hold. The Denver, Colorado-based company is a significant beneficiary of increased AI-driven demand and strong government contracts, with its AI software solutions being widely used across U.S. commercial sectors such as healthcare, energy, and automotive. Palantir’s total revenue grew 39% in the first quarter to $883.9 million, with U.S government revenue up 45% from a year earlier. Analysts had expected quarterly revenue of $862.8 million, according to data compiled by LSEG. Despite the seasonally light quarter, analysts noted strong demand for Palantir’s solutions, with its U.S. business driving results and securing the “lion’s share” of new customers in the quarter. “Despite recent uncertainty introduced from tariff announcements, Palantir continues to see underlying momentum in the business, landing a record number of $1M deals,” analysts at D.A. Davidson said. The company now expects full-year revenue to be between $3.89 billion and $3.90 billion, up from its earlier forecast of sales between $3.74 billion and $3.76 billion. At least 9 brokerages raised their price target for Palantir after earnings, bringing the PT median to $96.46. Palantir’s 12-month forward price-to-earnings ratio is 202.07, compared with Snowflake’s 131, Salesforce’s 23.48 and Datadog’s 54.81. Harshita Mary Varghese, Reuters
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