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Cisco is a Platinum member of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and a Platinum sponsor of the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF). The company is a top contributor to OpenTelemetry and the Kubernetes ecosystem, and launched Foundation AI, an open-source AI initiative for cybersecurity. Cisco's engineers serve in leadership roles across open source governance including as maintainers of key supply chain security projects.

Over 900 US public safety organizations deploy DJI drones for search and rescue, with at least 278 people rescued from peril worldwide according to DJI's Drone Rescue Map. Notable examples include finding a missing autistic child in 13 minutes using thermal imaging during a thunderstorm. DJI's Disaster Relief Program provides drone technology to first responders during wildfires, hurricanes, and floods. During Hurricane Helene, StormPoint mapped 3,700+ acres of flood-affected areas using DJI drones. In agriculture, 400,000 DJI drones are used globally, saving approximately 222 million tons of water and reducing 30.87 million tons of carbon emissions.

In 2024, Australia's Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) filed the first-ever legal proceedings under Australia's academic cheating laws against Chegg. The regulator alleged five violations across 2021-2022, targeting Chegg's role in enabling contract cheating and academic dishonesty at universities.

In January 2024, Duolingo laid off approximately 10% of its contractors - primarily translators and content writers - explicitly citing AI as the replacement. Affected workers reported being told that 'AI can come up with content and translations.' A second round in October 2024 cut another 10% of contractors, this time targeting writers.

In 2023, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan earned $161.8 million in total compensation, up 167% from the previous year. This represented a CEO-to-median worker pay ratio of 510-to-1, making him the third-highest-paid CEO in the US.

Sam Altman was a significant Democratic donor for years before his 2025 pivot. His contributions included: $200,000 to Biden Victory Fund (2023), $100,000 to Biden Victory Fund (2020), $100,000 each to American Bridge PAC and Senate Majority PAC (2020), $250,000 to Senate Majority PAC (2018), and contributions to Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Andrew Yang during the 2020 primary. His only notable Republican donation was $2,700 to Patrick McHenry in 2018.

In 2023 tax filings, the Carl Victor Page Memorial Foundation disclosed $66 million in grants to climate and environmental organizations - the first substantial direct grant disclosure in over a decade. This included two $23 million grants to the Stitching European Climate Foundation, $10 million to Brazilian Instituto Clima e Sociedad, $4 million to U.S. Energy Foundation, $3 million to Global Fishing Watch, and $1 million to Clean Slate Initiative. This marked a shift from the foundation's previous practice of routing 99.9% of grants through opaque donor-advised funds.

SAP reported achieving carbon neutrality across its own operations (Scope 1, Scope 2, and selected Scope 3 categories including business flights, employee commuting, and external data centers) for 2023, meeting a goal it had publicly set in 2021. The result was independently audited by BDO AG with limited assurance under ISAE 3000 and disclosed in SAP's audited Integrated/Annual Report. Building on this, SAP subsequently set a new near-term target -- validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) as consistent with the 1.5°C Paris Agreement pathway -- to cut gross Scope 1+2+3 greenhouse gas emissions by at least 90% by 2030 versus a 2023 baseline (from 6.9 million to 0.7 million metric tons CO2e), neutralizing at most the remaining 10% via carbon removals. SAP was also the first German company to receive SBTi certification, in 2017.

The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023 for using NYT articles to train ChatGPT without permission. The Authors Guild separately sued with 17 authors including John Grisham and George R.R. Martin. By 2025, 51 total copyright lawsuits had been filed against AI companies. In January 2025, a federal judge ordered OpenAI to produce its GPT-4 training dataset to plaintiffs. Canadian and Indian news publishers also filed suits.

A December 2023 HRW report found Meta's content moderation systematically silenced pro-Palestine voices. Of 1,050 cases reviewed, 1,049 involved peaceful pro-Palestine content being censored while only 1 case involved pro-Israel content. Documented issues included content removals, account suspensions, shadow banning, and broken appeal mechanisms affecting users in 60+ countries.

In December 2023 Stanford Internet Observatory researchers disclosed that the widely-used LAION-5B image-text training dataset hosted on Hugging Face contained at least 1,008 identified child sexual abuse material (CSAM) images, with researchers estimating likely thousands more. Hugging Face and LAION removed the dataset within days of disclosure. The episode highlighted gaps in pre-hosting safety screening for very large training datasets and prompted Hugging Face to expand its dataset-content policy enforcement.

In December 2023, ARM Holdings laid off over 70 software engineers in China, relocating some positions outside the country. The layoffs came as ARM complied with US and UK export controls on advanced chips to China, reportedly preventing exports to companies like Alibaba.

Adobe's proposed $20 billion acquisition of collaborative design tool Figma was terminated in December 2023 after facing antitrust scrutiny from the US DOJ, UK CMA, and European Commission. Regulators expressed concerns that the merger would reduce competition and innovation in the design software market. Adobe paid a $1 billion reverse termination fee. The DOJ Antitrust Division stated the abandonment 'ensures that designers, creators, and consumers continue to get the benefit of the rivalry between the two companies.'

OpenAI developed and published a Preparedness Framework for systematically evaluating AI model risks before release, committing not to deploy models exceeding 'Medium' risk thresholds without sufficient safety interventions. The company committed to allowing US government safety agencies pre-deployment access to test frontier models. In 2024, OpenAI disbursed $7.5 million in AI safety research grants. However, the safety commitments faced criticism after the Superalignment team dissolved in May 2024 and its co-lead Jan Leike resigned citing insufficient safety prioritization.

In December 2023, Tesla informed workers at its battery factory in Sparks, Nevada, that some hourly workers would see pay increases of approximately 10% starting in January 2024, bumping hourly pay from $20-$30.65 to $22-$34.50 per hour. The wage increases came amid growing UAW union activity in the auto industry following successful strikes at legacy automakers. Analysts noted the raises appeared designed to stave off workers' interest in forming a union.

On December 18, 2023 Comcast's Xfinity broadband unit disclosed a data breach affecting approximately 35.8 million customers, in which attackers exploited the CVE-2023-4966 'Citrix Bleed' vulnerability between October 16-19, 2023. Exposed data included usernames, hashed passwords, partial Social Security numbers, dates of birth, contact information and secret questions/answers. Xfinity disclosed only after a 2-month delay, exposing affected customers to credential-stuffing risk during the gap.

Adobe and Figma jointly announced on December 18, 2023 that they were abandoning their proposed $20 billion acquisition after the UK Competition and Markets Authority and the European Commission both indicated the merger would significantly reduce competition in interactive product design software. Adobe paid Figma a $1 billion termination fee. The outcome was a rare instance of European competition enforcement effectively blocking a major US tech acquisition.

TikTok's original Creator Fund, launched in 2020 with $200M projected to reach $1B over three years, was widely criticized for extremely low payouts of $0.02-$0.04 per 1,000 views ($20-$40 per million views). Creator Hank Green reported earning 2.5 cents per 1,000 views. Creator SuperSaf earned ~$137 in 10 months for 25 million views. The fund was shut down on December 16, 2023, replaced by the Creator Rewards Program with reportedly higher rates of $0.40-$1.00 per 1,000 views, though creators have since reported sharp drops in income under the new program.

In December 2023, Activision Blizzard agreed to pay $54 million to settle the California Civil Rights Department lawsuit alleging employment discrimination and equal pay violations. The settlement included provisions to address pay and promotion inequality for female employees. The settlement agreement stated that no court or independent investigation had substantiated allegations of systemic harassment or that the board and CEO acted improperly, though unions and former employees disputed this characterization.

On May 12, 2021 the EU General Court annulled the European Commission's 2017 order requiring Amazon to repay approximately €250 million in alleged unlawful state aid to Luxembourg, finding the Commission had not established a selective advantage. The Court of Justice dismissed the Commission's appeal on December 14, 2023, finalising the ruling in Amazon's favour. While Amazon prevailed on this specific tax-ruling case, multiple separate national tax disputes against Amazon's European operating-structure remained open.

In December 2023, Tesla issued its largest-ever recall covering 2.03 million US vehicles (nearly all Teslas on US roads) after NHTSA found 467 crashes involving Autopilot resulting in 54 injuries and 14 deaths. NHTSA determined that Autopilot's driver attention monitoring was insufficient and warnings were inadequate. The OTA software update added larger warning text, single-tap activation, and a five-strike system disabling Autopilot for repeat offenders. Consumer Reports later found the recall fix 'addresses minor inconveniences rather than fixing the real problems.'

In December 2023 security researchers and Dropbox users discovered the company had silently enabled by default a 'third-party AI' setting in user account settings that, while Dropbox said did not permit OpenAI to train on customer files, indicated user content could be sent to OpenAI for the company's AI features. The backlash forced Dropbox to publish a clarifying blog post by CEO Drew Houston and pause the setting's default-on rollout. Critics argued the episode showed how easily 'AI features' opt-in toggles can erode user trust around training-data use.

At the Fortune Brainstorm AI conference in December 2023, Reid Hoffman publicly dismissed calls to pause advanced AI development, calling such ideas 'foolish' and 'anti-humanist.' He argued the focus on AI risks was overblown, stating 'the real important thing is to not fumble the future.' This positioned him against the March 2023 open letter signed by thousands of AI researchers calling for a six-month pause on training systems more powerful than GPT-4, and against broader precautionary approaches to AI safety.

In December 2023, James O'Keefe released a leaked recording of IBM CEO Arvind Krishna promising to fire, demote, or deny bonuses to executives who fail to meet racial and gender hiring quotas. Krishna stated 'Asians are not an underrepresented minority in tech in America' and 'for blacks we should try to get towards 13 percent.' Red Hat chairman Paul Cormier admitted Red Hat terminated employees who refused to engage in racial discrimination. Elon Musk called it 'obviously illegal.' America First Legal filed a federal civil rights complaint. Krishna defended the practice, saying 5% of bonuses are tied to diversity while 95% is performance-based.

After OpenAI's board fired CEO Sam Altman on November 17, 2023 citing a lack of candor without detailing specific misconduct, Bret Taylor was appointed chair of a reconstituted board on December 8, 2023. Taylor led the response to the crisis: he oversaw Altman's reinstatement as CEO within about five days, commissioned an independent investigation by law firm WilmerHale (led by Anjan Sahni and Hallie Levin), and personally chaired the special committee overseeing that review alongside Larry Summers. The March 2024 WilmerHale report concluded the prior board 'acted within its broad discretion' but that Altman's conduct 'did not mandate removal.' Taylor publicly committed to building a more diverse board and stronger governance procedures, though the original allegations against Altman that triggered the ouster were never publicly detailed.

In December 2023, IBM and Meta co-founded the AI Alliance, an international community that grew from 50 founding members to over 100 organizations focused on open-source AI development, safety, and responsible innovation. The Alliance promotes open AI models, shared research, and collaborative governance frameworks as alternatives to closed proprietary AI systems.

Spotify cut 17% of its workforce, approximately 1,500 jobs, in its largest round of layoffs. CEO Daniel Ek attributed the cuts to over-investment during 2020-2021 when capital was cheap. Employees received around five months severance. The layoffs notably eliminated Glenn McDonald, creator of EveryNoise, ending that popular music discovery resource.

At Darktrace's 2023 annual meeting, 56.67% of shareholders voted against the election of Patrick Jacob as a non-executive director representing Mike Lynch's interests. Institutional investors cited Lynch's US fraud trial as creating 'unhelpful headline risk' for Darktrace. Lynch later lost his right to a board seat entirely when his stake fell below 10%.

CEO Hock Tan told staff that VMware's remote-friendly policies would end: 'Remote work does not exist at Broadcom.' When asked about exceptions, Tan said 'you better learn how to walk on water, I'm serious.' Only sales workers and those living 60+ miles from an office were exempt.

Following Broadcom's November 2023 acquisition of VMware, the company conducted mass layoffs affecting 2,000-3,000 employees across California, Colorado, Georgia, and Massachusetts. Partners described the situation as 'chaos'.