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Thoughtworks secured 15th place in Stonewall's Top 100 Employers List 2024 for LGBTQ+ inclusion, a major leap from 64th place in 2023. The company received the Gold Award specifically recognizing work towards bi and trans inclusion, including bi allyship resources, explicit anti-biphobia policies, and the Interning with Pride program for LGBTQ+ representation in tech.

OrCam Technologies closed its reading glasses development activity for the visually impaired in July 2024, abandoning the core accessibility product that the company was founded to provide. Company stated 'technological progress in image processing by language models makes the need for further development of the Low Vision products unnecessary.' This decision left blind users who had relied on OrCam devices with a discontinued product. The company pivoted from vision technology to hearing aids, effectively abandoning its social mission after raising $86.4M on the promise of helping the blind community.

Throughout 2024-2025, Waymo robotaxis caused recurring noise complaints in San Francisco. In mid-2024, vehicles honked at each other throughout the night in a South of Market parking lot, disrupting sleep for nearby residents for weeks. Resident Sophia Tung ran a live stream of the lot to document the issue. In the Inner Richmond neighborhood in 2025, residents posted signs reading 'No Waymos from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m!' citing vehicles arriving up to 7 times per hour with flashing lights and reverse warning sounds. Waymo only responded to the SoMa issue after significant media attention.

At the Aspen Ideas Festival in June 2024, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman claimed content on the open web is 'fair use' and 'freeware' that 'anyone can copy, recreate with, reproduce with.' This contradicts established copyright law - creative works are protected from the moment of creation regardless of being shared online. Shortly after, the Center for Investigative Reporting and multiple newspapers sued OpenAI and Microsoft for using content without permission.

Uber paid $148 million (part of $175 million combined with Lyft) as restitution to Massachusetts drivers who were underpaid by the company. Most drivers who completed trips for Uber between July 14, 2020, and July 2, 2024 in Massachusetts are entitled to payment. Settlement requires Uber to pay drivers minimum of $32.50 per hour (increased to $34.48 effective January 15, 2026) for time spent traveling to pick up riders and transporting them to their destination. Drivers also receive guaranteed paid sick leave, earning one hour of sick pay for every 30 hours worked, up to maximum of 40 hours per year. The settlement preserves the flexibility of independent contractor model and avoids potentially negative decision on driver classification.

Lyft paid $27 million as part of $175 million settlement (combined with Uber) resolving Attorney General's multi-year litigation originally filed in 2020. Settlement provides at least $140 million total in back pay to drivers who worked between July 14, 2020 and July 2, 2024. Requires minimum earnings floor of $32.50 per hour (now $34.48 as of January 15, 2026) for engaged time, adjusted annually by 3% or inflation rate. Also provides health insurance stipend for drivers working 15+ hours per week, occupational accident insurance up to $1 million, deactivation appeal rights, and earnings transparency. As result of settlement, Lyft withdrew support for ballot question modeled on California's Proposition 22 that would have codified independent contractor status.

A year-long investigation by India's Ministry of Corporate Affairs found significant corporate governance lapses at BYJU'S, though it did not find evidence of direct financial fraud such as fund siphoning or account manipulation. Investigators found the company failed to bring in professionals to manage finances and compliance, did not fully disclose acquisition details to all directors, and often convened approval meetings on short notice. A subsequent probe by the Registrar of Companies in Hyderabad was launched in November 2024 to examine whether the company misreported financial statements.

On June 26, 2024, SAP published an official Open Source Manifesto, publicly committing to sustained investment in open-source development. SAP holds founding and/or platinum-level membership in the Linux Foundation, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, Cloud Foundry Foundation, Continuous Delivery Foundation, and OpenAPI Initiative, plus Silver membership in the Apache Software Foundation, and is a major contributor to OpenJDK. SAP maintains multiple actively-used open-source projects including Gardener (Kubernetes-based cluster management, a CNCF project), GardenLinux, OpenUI5 (its web application framework, Apache-2.0 licensed since 2013, ~270 GitHub contributors), Open Resource Discovery, and Open Component Model. In December 2023 SAP also open-sourced its previously proprietary SAP Cloud SDK for Java under Apache-2.0. Per the third-party Open Source Contributor Index (OSCI), which measures active GitHub contributors by company email domain, SAP has ranked among the largest commercial contributors to open source for several years running.

Tesla's Fremont factory has received over 112 Notices of Violation since 2019 for emitting harmful compounds without proper abatement - more than almost any other facility in California except one Chevron refinery. Penalties include $275,000 EPA fine (Feb 2022) for Clean Air Act violations and $750,000 (2021) for 33 air quality violations. In February 2024, eight Bay Area counties plus 17 other California counties sued Tesla for illegal hazardous waste dumping. Environmental Democracy Project filed suit in 2024 alleging 160+ Clean Air Act violations.

After leaving OpenAI, Ilya Sutskever co-founded Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI) with Daniel Gross and Daniel Levy in June 2024. The company raised $1 billion from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, DST Global, and SV Angel. SSI's stated mission is to focus exclusively on building safe superintelligent AI, without the commercial pressures of a product company.

On June 19, 2024, Ilya Sutskever co-founded Safe Superintelligence Inc (SSI) with Daniel Levy and Daniel Gross after leaving OpenAI, where he had voted to fire Sam Altman over safety concerns. SSI's mission is developing safe superintelligence with no products or revenue until the goal is achieved, deliberately insulated from commercial pressures. By April 2025, SSI raised $3 billion total ($1B Series A, then Series B at $30B, Series C at $32B valuation) from Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Greenoaks, and others. Sutskever rebuffed a Meta acquisition attempt, maintaining SSI's independent safety-first approach.

At Toyota's June 2024 shareholder meeting, Akio Toyoda was re-elected to the board with only 71.93% support—the lowest director approval in Toyota's history, down from 84.57% in 2023 and 95.58% in 2022. Proxy advisors ISS and Glass Lewis recommended voting against Toyoda, citing 'spate of certification irregularities' and insufficient board independence. NYC pension funds and Nissay Asset Management voted against all board members.

In June 2024, the FTC filed a federal lawsuit against Adobe and executives David Wadhwani and Maninder Sawhney, alleging the company pushed consumers toward annual-paid-monthly plans while burying early termination fees worth hundreds of dollars. The complaint also accused Adobe of making cancellation deliberately difficult through multiple pages, dropped calls, and resistance from customer service representatives.

Notion's revised AI policies published in 2024 committed by default to not using customer workspace content for foundation-model training, requiring explicit per-workspace opt-in for any training-data sharing. The policy contrasted with default-on AI integration approaches taken by Dropbox, Slack and others in the same period and was praised by privacy advocates including the EFF.

Class action filed on behalf of over 12,000 current and former female employees in Apple's engineering, marketing and AppleCare divisions in California. Lawsuit alleges Apple used prior salary history to perpetuate pay gaps even after the practice became illegal in 2018.

In June 2024 at a Dartmouth event, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati stated 'Some creative jobs maybe will go away, but maybe they shouldn't have been there in the first place.' The comment drew significant backlash from artists, writers, and creative professionals concerned about AI displacement.

Chamath Palihapitiya donated $300,000 directly to elect Trump in 2024 and co-hosted with David Sacks a $12 million fundraiser at Sacks's Pacific Heights home. Tickets ranged from $50K-$500K. Previously donated $1.3M to Democrats over prior decade before shifting Republican around 2020-2021. Now has direct White House access.

David Sacks hosted a high-dollar fundraiser for Trump's 2024 campaign at his San Francisco home in June 2024, raising approximately $12 million. The event marked a significant moment of Silicon Valley support for Trump and included other prominent tech figures.

In June 2024, Adobe updated its terms of service requiring users to agree to give the company access to their content via 'automated and manual methods.' The vague language went viral as creatives feared Adobe would use their work to train its Firefly AI model or access NDA-protected projects. Adobe quickly responded with a blog post calling it a 'misunderstanding' and on June 24, 2024 released updated terms explicitly stating users own their content and Adobe would not train generative AI on customer content except for Adobe Stock submissions.

In mid-2024, Yann LeCun vocally opposed California's SB 1047 AI safety bill. He argued that making technology developers liable for bad uses would 'simply stop technology development' and would 'certainly stop the distribution of open source AI platforms, which will kill the entire AI ecosystem.' He called the bill based on an 'illusion of existential risk pushed by a handful of delusional think-tanks' and warned that without open-source AI, 'AI start-ups will just die.'

David Sacks, co-founder of Craft Ventures, hosted a campaign fundraiser for Donald Trump at his San Francisco home in June 2024 that raised approximately $12 million, with tickets ranging from $50,000 to $300,000 per person. He then spoke at the 2024 Republican National Convention in July 2024, delivering a speech focused on foreign policy and criticizing Biden administration policies.

During the 2024 election cycle, DoorDash donated $625,000 to the Republican Governors Association (RGA), which was used to support Mark Robinson and other Republican gubernatorial candidates. Robinson has repeatedly maligned LGBTQ people with crude rhetoric, calling them 'filth' and 'devil-worshiping child molesters.' On June 4, 2024, the RGA received a $250,000 contribution from DoorDash.

In June 2024, Japanese Transport Ministry officials raided Toyota headquarters after discovering Toyota and four other automakers submitted incorrect or manipulated safety test data for vehicle certification. Toyota admitted rigging safety tests on seven car models affecting 1.7 million vehicles, involving falsified collision tests, airbag inflation data, and engine power tests. Misconduct at Toyota Group companies (Daihatsu, Hino Motors, Toyota Industries) dated back decades.

Google used YouTube video content to train its Gemini and Veo AI models without explicit creator consent or compensation, while simultaneously prohibiting competitors from accessing the same content via YouTube's terms of service. In December 2024 YouTube introduced opt-in settings for third-party AI training but these did not apply to Google's own internal use. In January 2026, Google publicly stated it should not pay for 'freely available' web content used in AI training. The EU opened an investigation in December 2025.

Vinod Khosla donated $413K to Harris Action Fund (June 2024), $100K more (June 2023), plus multiple donations to Biden. Hosted Biden for fundraising dinner at his Portola Valley home. Publicly criticized Trump saying 'hard for me to support someone with no values, lies, cheats, rapes, demeans women, hates immigrants like me'.

Palantir won the Pentagon's Project Maven contract for AI-powered military targeting and intelligence analysis. The contract expanded from an initial $480 million to potentially $1.3 billion. Project Maven uses AI to analyze drone footage and identify targets, raising concerns about autonomous weapons development.

Despite opposing broad AI regulation, Ng has been a vocal supporter of targeted transparency legislation. He endorsed California's SB 53 and New York's RAISE Act, arguing that transparency requirements for large AI platforms would give regulators better visibility into actual problems rather than hypothetical risks.

OrCam Technologies laid off 100 workers in June 2024, representing almost half of the company's remaining workforce. At its peak, the company employed about 400 workers. This was the third major round of layoffs within two years.

Under Ton-That's leadership, Clearview AI aggressively expanded its facial recognition platform to more than 3,100 law enforcement agencies across the United States, including the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. By 2024, law enforcement searches via Clearview AI had doubled to 2 million annually. The expansion included a $9.2 million ICE contract in 2025, with ICE personnel using the system globally. This occurred despite wrongful identification cases, including Randal Quran Reid who spent six days in jail due to a mistaken Clearview match.

Healios undertook two rounds of mass redundancies within six months in 2024. Employee reviews cited unsupportive management and poor job security. The layoffs raised concerns about service continuity for NHS CAMHS patients relying on Healios for mental health, autism, and ADHD services.