Also in the letter:
■ Mphasis’s leadership churn
■ Uber doubles down on India
■ Cerebras’ race to IPO
For Meta AI, India tops the global charts: Will Cathcart
India has quietly become the centre of gravity for Meta’s AI ambitions. In an exclusive interaction, WhatsApp chief Will Cathcart said the country now leads the world in monthly active users of Meta AI, making it the company’s largest AI market globally.
On India: “The number of people in India, their need to access information, the familiarity with WhatsApp, and now (with) the privacy feature, I think we have this really huge opportunity to serve a lot of people in India and see tremendous usage.”
On the new incognito mode: “The AI itself has to be secure. You just should have end-to-end encryption for an AI too,” he said. “We’ve built something where we can’t see what you say, and we can’t see what the answers are… You would think of it as a phone where we don’t know the passcode.”
Feedback gap: “The privacy-first design limits Meta’s ability to learn from user chats. “We can’t see what you’re saying… so we can’t use those conversations to train our models.”
On competition: “There is tremendous competition and openness in the AI space. There are a lot of apps. People are not having trouble downloading their app and using it.”
Tech layoffs continue: Amazon, Cisco, LinkedIn cut jobs amid AI investment surge
The wave of tech layoffs isn’t slowing. Amazon, Cisco and LinkedIn are the latest to recalibrate headcount even as they double down on artificial intelligence (AI).
Tell me more:
- Amazon has cut roles in its Selling Partner Services unit, adding to more than 30,000 layoffs since late 2025.
- Cisco will slash nearly 4,000 jobs – about 5% of its workforce – as it redirects spending into AI-led growth areas.
- LinkedIn is set to trim around 5% of its staff, affecting roughly 800 roles.
CEO speak: “Winners in the AI era will continuously shift investment toward areas of long-term value,” Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins said.
AI pivot reaping benefits:
- Cisco raised its annual revenue forecast after securing $5.3 billion in AI infrastructure orders, and now expects the figure to reach $9 billion.
- Demand from hyperscalers is lifting not just chips but the networking systems that power large data centres.
- LinkedIn, with more than 17,500 employees, isn’t explicitly blaming or crediting AI for the cuts – even as it reported a solid 12% revenue growth in the latest quarter.
Also Read: Tech layoffs top 73,000 in 2026 as AI drives cuts at Meta, Oracle, others
Mphasis playing host to a high-stakes game of executive musical chairs
Blackstone-backed IT services firm Mphasis is in the midst of a major leadership churn, with more than a dozen senior executives leaving since 2025, people in the know told us.
Driving the news: While Mphasis’s lawsuit against Coforge highlights alleged talent poaching, insiders say the exits reflect rising competitive pressure across India’s mid-tier IT services firms.
High-profile exits to date:
Poaching wars: Rivals such as Coforge and Tenarai are hiring aggressively. “When senior leaders leave… they tend to take other executives with them,” a source noted — turning each resignation into a mini-exodus.
Growth pressures: “Their investor Blackstone is now also investing in Anthropic, so the AI services may not necessarily come to them. They also have executives with good domain knowledge in BFSI, so they become a poaching ground,” said Pareekh Jain of the eponymous firm Pareekh Consulting.
Also Read: Tech services demand is changing, not weakening: Coforge CEO
Company response: Mphasis says it is renewing, not weakening, its bench, citing a steady inflow of senior hires and returning “boomerang employees.”
Quote, unquote: “Given our unique positioning in the market, we attract top talent from the industry at leadership levels. In FY 2026, we have welcomed two CEO directs and 22 in the next level because they appreciate our unique hi-tech culture,” Mphasis said.
Also Read: ET Graphics: AI services boom rewrites IT Ops
Uber to expand India footprint with two new tech centres: CEO Dara Khosrowshahi
Uber will set up two new technology centres in India — in Bengaluru and Hyderabad — by the end of 2027. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced the move at a town hall at Uber’s Bengaluru office on Thursday.
Details:
- Bengaluru: ~1.1 million sq. ft; capacity for around 5,000 employees.
- Hyderabad: ~901,115 sq ft; capacity for about 4,600 employees.
The announcement comes a day after Uber said it would partner with the Adani Group to build its first data centre in India.
What else? Khosrowshahi also underlined Uber’s focus on India’s two-wheeler segment and flagged rising fuel prices as a concern.
“Two-wheelers remain an important category for us in India. We are no longer behind in the two-wheeler market. Two years ago, we were not even discussing this category, and now it has become a key market,” he said.
US chip start-up Cerebras to raise $5.5 billion in IPO
US chip startup Cerebras Systems will begin trading on Wall Street on Thursday at $185 per share. The IPO is expected to raise about $5.5 billion, making it the biggest US listing this year.
IPO details:
- Valuation: Over $55 billion, including all outstanding shares, stock options and other instruments.
- Share price: $185 per share on Nasdaq.
- Price changes: Initially guided at $115–$125, later raised to $150–$160, before final pricing at $185.
- Shares offered: 30 million shares, plus an overallotment option for 4.5 million shares.
Sector backdrop: TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, now predicts the global semiconductor market will exceed $1.5 trillion by 2030, up from its earlier $1 trillion estimate.
AI and high-performance computing are expected to drive about 55% of that growth, followed by smartphones at 20%, and automotive at 10%, according to the company.
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