Activity

Eternal (Zomato) laid off approximately 240-250 employees in its Hyderabad customer support ('customer delight') operations and shut the centre, as the company continued shifting customer service to AI and automation. The company offered counselling services through March 2027, transferred company-issued laptops and earphones to affected employees, and provided outplacement assistance. This follows a similar 500-600 person AI-driven customer-support layoff round in April 2025, and comes amid broader industry scrutiny of food-delivery platforms over food safety and hygiene standards.

Hyundai Motor declined a March 10, 2026 request from ten subcontractor unions representing roughly 1,675 logistics, security, cleaning, cafeteria, and vehicle-sales workers at its Ulsan, Asan, and Jeonju plants to bargain directly under South Korea's amended 'Yellow Envelope' Trade Union and Labor Relations Adjustment Act, which expanded the legal definition of 'employer' to cover companies that substantially control subcontracted workers' conditions. The Ulsan Regional Labor Relations Commission ruled against Hyundai in September 2026, and the National Labor Relations Commission upheld that Hyundai must recognize bargaining obligations for production, cafeteria, security, and cleaning subcontract workers (though not dealership sales agents). As of mid-August 2026, only 102 of 456 principal companies nationwide that received similar demands had entered negotiations, with many, including Hyundai group affiliates, contesting the rulings through administrative appeals.

South Korea's Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) made four attempts between August 19-24, 2026 to investigate allegations that Coupang's automatic price-matching coupon (PMC) system shifted discount costs onto suppliers by deducting them from supplier settlement payments while leaving listed prices unchanged, a possible violation of the Large Retail Business Act. Coupang refused to cooperate, citing lack of prior notice -- the first time a Large Retail Business Act investigation was derailed by company resistance since the law's enactment. On September 1-2, 2026 the KFTC sent roughly 30 investigators to raid Coupang's Seoul headquarters, this time seeking about 10 years of data (2016-2026), an unusually broad scope compared to the typical 3-5 year window. Coupang maintains it bears the marketing costs itself and has filed suit to overturn a prior related KFTC decision; a court has temporarily suspended that decision's effect through September 23, 2026.

In September 2026 Ubisoft closed its Winnipeg (Canada) and Belgrade (Serbia) studios and narrowed its Barcelona studio to work solely on the Rainbow Six franchise, the latest in a string of cuts that included closing Ubisoft Stockholm and Ubisoft Halifax and canceling six games (including a Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake) in January 2026, 200 Paris job cuts the same month, and 40 cuts to the Splinter Cell remake team in Toronto in February 2026, reducing total headcount from over 20,000 in 2023 to 16,590. The cuts followed CEO Yves Guillemot's January 21, 2026 announcement ending remote work and mandating a five-day in-office return without prior consultation with works councils, funded by a EUR200 million cost-cutting plan employees learned of via press release. Five Ubisoft unions called an international strike for February 10-12, 2026, with one union statement saying management was 'push[ing] us out by making our working conditions unbearable' rather than taking financial responsibility for layoffs.

In August 2026, Huawei courted Egypt with a proposal to build AI data centers powered by its Ascend chips, explicitly including military and surveillance applications and integration with national population databases; reporting noted the presence of China's Ministry of Public Security insignia in proposal materials, suggesting direct involvement of Chinese state surveillance infrastructure. The bid put Huawei in direct competition with a US-backed consortium for the same government tender, marking one of the first instances of head-to-head US-China competition for a national AI data center contract. The US government raised concerns, warning of extraterritorial legal consequences for unauthorized use of restricted Huawei accelerators; Egypt is one of roughly 40 countries requiring US permission for AI chip shipments. A similar Huawei-powered national AI proposal in Malaysia was scaled back after US pressure, and Malaysian customs seized a $13 million chip shipment bound for re-export in June 2026.

Rappi and Uber are appellants in a landmark case before Brazil's Supreme Court (STF), which resumed hearings August 27, 2026, challenging lower-court rulings that recognized employment relationships between platform workers and the apps based on 'algorithmic subordination.' The Court's eventual ruling will set binding precedent (repercussao geral) for thousands of similar lawsuits nationwide; iFood, 99 and InDrive were admitted as interested third parties. Rappi is seeking to overturn rulings that would trigger CLT employment obligations (paid vacation, 13th salary, FGTS contributions) for its delivery workforce.

At Xero's 2026 Annual Meeting on August 27, 2026, shareholders voted 70.54% against adopting the company's remuneration report, an unprecedented rebuke driven by proxy advisers' objections to a 22% increase in CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy's target pay package to US$18.5 million (NZ$25.5 million), composed largely of long-term equity awards. The vote came as Xero's share price had fallen roughly 49-50% over the prior year, from a 2025 peak of ~NZ$194 to NZ$82.74, and after Singh Cassidy sold several million dollars of vested shares in July 2026. The non-binding vote does not overturn the pay package but signals major institutional-investor dissatisfaction with executive compensation governance.

At Naspers's 112th Annual General Meeting on August 27, 2026, the board confirmed it does not publicly disclose deaths or accidents among the roughly 22,000 Takealot and Mr D delivery drivers (15,000 Takealot, 7,000 Mr D), citing the absence of industry-wide reporting standards. South African shareholder-activism nonprofit Just Share pressed the board on how many of the 22,000 drivers were injured or killed in the 2026 financial year and what compensation or medical costs the company paid, as well as the share of foreign nationals, asylum seekers, and refugees in the delivery fleet and how July 2026 anti-migrant protests in Johannesburg affected driver earnings and platform access. Independent non-executive director Debra Meyer said Naspers was 'advancing internal reporting while it looks for meaningful public metrics' but did not commit to a disclosure timeline.

Google announced it would move its roughly 90-person AI responsibility unit, which evaluates Gemini models for CBRN risk and psychological/chatbot-interaction harms, out of Google DeepMind to report to Kent Walker, President of Global Affairs, who oversees Google's lobbying and regulator relations, effective September 1, 2026. Team members who requested transfers to remain in DeepMind were denied. Employees raised concerns the move undermines research independence, contradicting Google's own chief scientist's prior statements that AI oversight requires organizational independence from commercial and policy pressure. Google said the change was meant to bring responsibility teams 'closer together.'

X Corp sued New York over the 'Stop Hiding Hate Act,' which requires large social media companies to disclose how they monitor hate speech, extremism, harassment, foreign interference, and disinformation. On August 26, 2026, US District Judge John P. Cronan (SDNY) dismissed X's complaint with prejudice, ruling that requiring disclosure of 'purely factual and uncontroversial information' about content-moderation policy does not violate the First Amendment.

On August 26, 2026, Meta settled a multidistrict lawsuit brought by 51 attorneys general (47 states, DC, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands) alleging it designed Facebook and Instagram to be addictive to minors and misled the public about platform safety. Meta agreed to pay a maximum of about $16.7 billion to the states, with total settlement value reaching up to $18 billion; roughly 30% ($5.3B) is contingent on YouTube and TikTok adopting similar safety measures and payments. Meta also agreed to new safety measures: a 2-hour daily usage cap for teens, blocking usage from midnight-6am absent parental consent, enhanced age verification, expanded parental controls, and an independent compliance auditor. The suit followed a trial that began August 18, 2026, over claims filed in October 2023. This is separate from the March 2026 New Mexico jury verdict against Meta on related child-exploitation claims.

In August-September 2026 (announced August 25, 2026 in Abbeville; codenamed 'Project Osprey' during negotiation), Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry signed laws granting SpaceX's planned ~$100B Starbase Louisiana facility in Vermilion Parish a 25-year property tax exemption (estimated $23.8B in savings), roughly $3.6B in sales tax rebates, and exemptions from liability and nuisance claims (noise, vibration, heat, sonic booms) and from public records law. In exchange SpaceX pays Vermilion Parish about $25 million annually - roughly 2% of what standard property taxes on a facility of that value would generate. State lawmakers signed NDAs during negotiations, which were obtained via public records requests.

The National Bank of Belgium (NBB) publicly announced on August 25, 2026 that Wise Europe SA had failed to comply, by a March 31, 2026 deadline, with a formal order the NBB issued on July 8, 2025 requiring remediation of anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist-financing deficiencies. The original order cited failures including inadequate information-sharing between group entities for AML/CFT purposes (Article 13 Section 1), deficiencies in customer identification and beneficial-owner verification (Articles 23, 26, 27), inadequate due diligence on customer relationships and occasional transactions (Article 35 Section 1), and failure to properly analyze atypical transactions (Article 45) under Belgium's Anti-Money Laundering Act. The publication, made under Article 93 Section 2(1) of that Act, was the first such public identification under Belgium's strengthened AML enforcement-disclosure policy. It is a separate NBB supervisory action from the Belgian federal prosecutors' criminal investigation into ~EUR500M in suspicious Wise Europe transactions reported in June 2026. Wise said it has implemented the required changes.

On August 24, 2026, X Corp sent cease-and-desist letters to the maintainer of Nitter, a 7-year-old open-source project that let users read X posts without an account, ads, tracking cookies, or JavaScript, and to XCancel, a service built on Nitter. X accused the projects of unlawful circumvention of its API and scraping, citing the Texas Harmful Access by Computer Act and the Lanham Act, and gave a roughly 24-hour deadline. Both services went offline and development on Nitter stopped.

On August 24, 2026, Taiwan prosecutors indicted 9 people, including two Nvidia Taiwan employees, over an alleged scheme to illegally export 130 AI servers equipped with export-controlled Nvidia B300 GPUs to China in violation of US export controls. A Nvidia distribution manager surnamed Chang was named the 'key figure' who authorized release of the B300 GPUs; a second Nvidia employee was charged with breach of trust. Prosecutors say defendants used fake websites, falsified end-user certifications, and forged business records to route 74 servers to China (50 via Indonesia, 16 directly, 8 via Japan/Hong Kong); 56 servers were intercepted by Taiwan customs. Nvidia said it would work with Taiwanese authorities to resolve the allegations. US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jim Banks cited the case in a letter arguing Nvidia's inability to detect this Southeast Asia diversion scheme undermines its claims that it can police direct China shipments.

On August 24, 2026, French AI company Mistral AI announced a strategic collaboration with HUMAIN, the Saudi state-owned AI company, to jointly develop and localize frontier AI models optimized for Arabic, explore use of HUMAIN's Saudi data-center infrastructure, and pursue a joint go-to-market strategy across regulated sectors (financial services, telecommunications, public sector, manufacturing) in Saudi Arabia and the wider Middle East. The deal is valued in the 'hundreds of millions of euros' though key infrastructure and customer terms remain undisclosed. Mistral framed the deal around data 'sovereignty' and customer control, but made no public statement addressing human rights concerns about deploying AI infrastructure for a government with a documented record of surveillance and suppression of dissent, including for public-sector deployment.

A worker was critically injured after being trapped by a forklift at a Coupang logistics warehouse around August 23, 2026. South Korea's labor ministry and police raided the logistics center on September 2, 2026 over the entrapment injury, with criminal charges pursued against warehouse management. The incident followed a pattern of worker-safety complaints raised by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions' courier union through August 2026, including multiple heat-related worker collapses at Coupang facilities during the summer.

On August 21, 2026, the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens) fined Uber €824,990,000 for violating GDPR's prohibition on fully automated decision-making. Between 2018 and 2022, Uber used software to automatically deactivate driver accounts based on suspected fraud or low customer ratings without human review, and failed to adequately inform drivers that automated decision-making was in operation, causing immediate loss of platform income for affected drivers. The investigation stemmed from a complaint by 171 French drivers via human rights group Ligue des droits de l'Homme to French regulator CNIL, coordinated with the Dutch AP under GDPR's one-stop-shop mechanism since Uber's EU headquarters are in the Netherlands. It is the AP's fourth fine against Uber (following fines in 2018, 2023, and 2024); Uber has appealed the decision.

In August 2026, Indian media reported that Tata Consultancy Services had installed a 'Digital User Experience Monitoring' tool on company-issued laptops covering roughly 600,000 employees, without prior formal communication to staff about the deployment. TCS did not publicly disclose the software vendor, what data was stored or reviewed, or which teams could access monitoring dashboards. Following the reports, TCS issued a statement calling characterizations of the tool as employee surveillance 'baseless and inaccurate,' saying it monitors only macro-level network performance rather than individual employee activity.

In mid-August 2026, Revolut circulated a proposal to shareholders to increase co-founder and CEO Nik Storonsky's personal borrowing limit against his roughly 29% stake (worth an estimated $33 billion at the company's $115 billion valuation) from $50 million to $250 million. The proposal, internally codenamed 'Project Shasta,' would also remove the existing requirement for board approval of larger share pledges, eliminate proportional limits on how much stock can be pledged as collateral, and expand the share classes eligible to be pledged. Storonsky is the only person at Revolut to whom the pledge provisions apply. Revolut said it 'routinely updates its articles' to reflect the company's growth; governance commentators noted the removal of board approval and proportional limits was the more significant change, particularly given Storonsky simultaneously serves as CEO.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission executed a search warrant on WiseTech Global's offices on August 19, 2026, gathering evidence in an investigation into alleged contraventions of competition law involving WiseTech's CargoWise logistics software, the dominant platform used across major global freight-forwarding businesses. Shares fell as much as 8.7-12% on the news, the steepest single-day drop since June 2026. The ACCC has not disclosed which specific conduct or business divisions are under investigation. The warrant follows a January 2026 enforcement action in which the ACCC accepted a court-enforceable undertaking requiring WiseTech to divest the Expedient software it acquired via e2open, after the regulator found WiseTech already held substantial market power in logistics software.

Zomato announced that cumulative National Pension System (NPS) contributions from delivery partners onboarded through its platform crossed Rs 1 crore, with PRAN enrolments surpassing 2 lakh (200,000), under the NPS e-Shramik (Platform Service Partner) model launched in October 2025 with HDFC Pension, PFRDA and KFintech. The program lets gig delivery partners make small, portable retirement contributions across platforms.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, joined by the National Employment Law Project, The Action Lab, and ALIGN, filed a complaint with the New York State Department of Labor on August 18, 2026, alleging Amazon and 13 delivery service partner (DSP) subcontractors violated New York's WARN Act by failing to give the legally required 90-day advance notice before closing DSPs and laying off delivery drivers between September 2023 and October 2025. The accompanying report found 35 DSPs closed since 2018, cutting over 3,500 jobs, with more than 1,300 workers affected by the specific violations alleged; of 20 DSPs that filed WARN notices in the study period, 13 gave less than the required notice. Potential back wages owed are estimated at up to $11 million.

OpenText laid off approximately 400 employees, about 2% of its 20,000+ person global workforce, in the week of August 17, 2026, as part of its ongoing multi-year 'Business Optimization Plan.' The company said the cuts were part of continued cost containment after selling non-core businesses to pay down debt, and characterized the Canadian impact as minimal, citing 6% year-over-year Canadian headcount growth. This follows earlier rounds of the same plan: roughly 1,200 jobs cut in 2024, about 1,600 in May 2025, and roughly 880 in March 2026, bringing cumulative cuts under the plan to over 4,000 employees.

Effective August 17, 2026, Atlassian's updated data contribution policy made metadata contribution (statistical characteristics, content patterns, search query keywords, Rovo Chat conversations) mandatory and non-optional for Free, Standard, and Premium tier customers; only Enterprise-tier customers retain the ability to opt out, and that ability is lost if an org downgrades from Enterprise. Atlassian's own support documentation states de-identified and aggregated data may be retained for up to seven years, and its sub-processor list names OpenAI as an authorized processor despite Atlassian's stated zero-data-retention agreements with third-party LLM partners.

On August 17, 2026 Germany's Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt) closed its investigation into Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework after finding Apple applied stricter, more discouraging consent prompts to third-party apps than to its own advertising and services, self-preferencing Apple's offerings. Rather than a fine, Apple agreed to binding commitments: visually and linguistically neutral consent prompts (removing the warning-hand icon and the word 'tracking'), expanded explanation space for developers, and the ability to combine ATT prompts with developers' own data-protection consent requests, implemented within four months and monitored by an independent trustee for seven years. France and Italy had previously fined Apple over the same ATT framework.

On August 15, 2026, Bengaluru delivery workers organized by the Karnataka App-based Workers Union struck against Zomato (and Swiggy) in solidarity with a restaurant boycott threat led by the Bengaluru Hotel and Restaurant Association, which said over 21,000 restaurants could stop accepting orders. Workers and restaurants demanded an end to commissions as high as 30%, transparent payout and deduction systems, and dedicated human support to resolve disputes, calling platform economics exploitative of workers, restaurants, and customers alike.

On August 15, 2026, Bengaluru delivery workers organized by the Karnataka App-based Workers Union struck against Swiggy (and Zomato) in solidarity with a restaurant boycott threat led by the Bengaluru Hotel and Restaurant Association, which said over 21,000 restaurants could stop accepting orders. Workers and restaurants demanded an end to commissions as high as 30%, transparent payout and deduction systems, and dedicated human support to resolve disputes, calling platform economics exploitative of workers, restaurants, and customers alike.

As of August 13, 2026, Shopify was powering the online merchandise store (t-shirts and stickers) of the Dominion Society, a Canadian group whose platform calls for deporting or stripping citizenship from roughly 9 million people, about one-fifth of Canada's population. Shopify's Acceptable Use Policy explicitly prohibited 'hateful content' promoting or condoning hate or violence based on protected characteristics until sometime between March and June 2024, when the language was quietly narrowed to bar only direct calls for or threats of violence against specific people or groups; Shopify's own Shop app continued to display the older, stricter policy. A Shopify spokesperson told The Tyee the company acts as 'infrastructure rather than an arbiter of what gets bought and sold' and does not remove merchants over objections to their worldview.

Stellantis informed union Unifor in August 2026 that it was seriously considering closing and selling its Brampton, Ontario assembly plant, idled since February 2025 amid Trump-era tariffs, putting roughly 3,000 autoworkers' jobs at risk. The company subsequently signed a memorandum of understanding to sell the plant to Roshel, a defense contractor, which Unifor says breaches both the company's 2023 collective-agreement commitment to keep Brampton staffed and a confidential federal government funding contract (worth up to C$529 million) that bars plant closure before 2035 absent circumstances beyond Stellantis's reasonable control. Unifor national president Lana Payne said the 2023 commitment 'is now broken.' Stellantis also conditioned finalizing pattern agreements for workers at its Windsor, Etobicoke, Mississauga, and Red Deer facilities on acceptance of the Brampton closure, which Unifor called 'unacceptable.' About 9,000 Unifor members, including roughly 2,200 already on indefinite layoff, voted on strike action October 17-18, 2026.