Tech layoffs are driving more workers toward business school, and more AI and technology news this week

Welcome back to LinkedIn News Tech Stack, which brings you news, insights and trends involving the founders, investors and companies on the cutting edge of technology, by Tech Editor Tanya Dua. You can check out our previous editions here.

First, catch up on the latest edition of my weekly series VC Wednesdays, where Foundation Capital’s Joanne Chen shared how her finance and engineering background comes handy as an investor, what she looks for in early-stage enterprise and AI startups, and why people have gotten AI “wrappers” all wrong.?

Pitch me the interesting investors, founders, ideas and companies powering emerging technologies like AI to reach the inboxes of nearly 1 million subscribers plus thousands more on LinkedIn. Follow me for other tech updates. And click 'Subscribe' to be notified of future editions.

A deep dive into one big theme or news story every week.

A liberal arts major in college, Kay Bossler “fell into” tech, forging her career in the industry as a?technical recruiter at Waymo and the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken Digital Asset Exchange . She rode the wave until December 2023, when she became one of the thousands of tech workers given the pink slip as the industry retrenched after historic highs in the pandemic years.

At a crossroads, she decided to do the two things she’d been putting off for a while: starting her own business; and more importantly, pursuing an MBA.

“It was a bummer, but I took the time to think about what I really wanted to do,” Bossler said. “Balancing both work and school is extremely difficult, but I saw the layoff as an opportunity to learn more and grow my skills, since I now had full days ahead of me.”

As tech has lost some of its luster amid hiring freezes and layoffs that have continued to plague the industry in recent years, workers have been forced to consider a variety of alternatives. And an MBA seems to be increasingly top-of-mind.

While the percentage of tech workers who got an MBA before their most recent job change has been steadily climbing over the last decade, LinkedIn data shows that the biggest jump was between 2023 and 2024. 4.66% of tech professionals got their MBA in the U.S. before their most recent job change in 2023, and that number was 4.97% this year. (You can see the full list of LinkedIn’s second annual ranking of the top MBA programs to advance your career and methodology here.)?

This begs the question: Have more tech professionals been driven to pursue an MBA in recent years because of a tighter tech labor market and layoffs? It’s certainly a factor, said Scott Edinburgh , an MBA admissions consultant and the founder of Personal MBA Coach .

“The tech market is not as exciting from an employment standpoint today as it used to be, so an MBA makes more sense to a lot of people,” he said. “We have a number of clients now that are in that boat since layoffs started happening — it’s an inflection point where you have to think about what's the next best thing, and naturally, an MBA is one of those steps.”

Top business schools have also responded to the trend, offering various incentives to try to tap into what they see as a growing pool of prospective students. Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management , 美国杜克大学富卡商学院 , University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business , Cornell SC Johnson College of Business and The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth all either waived their standardized test requirements or application fees for unemployed tech workers in 2022.

The tech downturn prompted even some of those who weren’t directly impacted by layoffs to go back to school and brush up on their business skills. One of them is Francesca Bruna Pipino , a former partnerships manager at Meta , who moved to the U.S. from Italy and decided to get her MBA at 美国哥伦比亚大学商学院 after a series of mass layoffs at the company in 2022 and 2023.

“That was really the moment where I felt I had to do more in terms of my career, because until then I was growing internally but now my growth could be hindered by external factors,” she said. “It (an MBA) makes you feel more secure because it gives you an additional credential, a broader network and a stamp of approval that is particularly valuable in the U.S. job market, helping you access the opportunities you want.”

While layoffs may be behind the notable uptick in tech professionals going for an MBA than usual between 2023 and 2024, it’s not the only driving factor behind why the percentage has steadily increased since 2010, when it was 3.77%.?

For some, it’s the easiest way to make a career transition or pivot. Tanvi Janardhan , a former sales enablement manager at Instacart who just started her MBA at Northwestern’s Kellogg School, for example, was motivated by the desire to break out of her niche in digital ad sales, brush up her analytical skills and explore other arenas including social impact. Meanwhile, Sarthak Jaiswal , who graduated from the 美国哈佛商学院 in 2023, always wanted to dabble in entrepreneurship, which requires more of a business-oriented skill set than he was equipped with from his undergraduate degree in computer science and role as an engineer and product manager at companies including 思科 and 沃尔玛 .

“I realized that despite having a technical background through my education and work, there were aspects of business that I couldn't understand as easily,” said Jaiswal.?

Another common reason that tech workers decide to get an MBA is to move into product management — which requires not just technical expertise but also business acumen, said Personal MBA Coach’s Edinburgh. Mid-career professionals, on the other hand, see an MBA as a necessary propellant when ascending the management ladder, said Bossler, as tech companies tend to prefer people with such backgrounds once they’ve reached a certain scale. This was echoed by several LinkedIn members in their responses to a poll about why they pursued their MBA.

“For me, being involved in decision-making at the highest level meant I needed to have greater insights into the firm's business strategy beyond just what technology is needed to help the business function,” Anthony Peters , chief information officer at Standish Management, wrote on LinkedIn. “An MBA offers exposure to global business practices, which is particularly valuable in today's interconnected global economy. A number of companies are taking this level of experience into consideration when hiring senior IT leaders. It has certainly played a part in opening up opportunities for more leadership-type roles for me.”

For others, an MBA is key to helping them do their jobs better. An MBA offers a holistic view across functions, its business focus is often complementary to the technical skills they’ve already acquired, and it comes in handy when trying to bridge the gap between a company’s technology and business strategy.

“I started in IT in the tech boom of the early 2000s. What I encountered is that many IT leaders were great with technology but were not good at turning that technical knowledge into business advantage or aligning IT initiatives with the broader business strategy,” wrote Steven Beverly, MBA , director and head of IT at the digital e-commerce incubator Heyday. “What I noticed was the most successful IT leaders, in terms of career and business impact, had an MBA and they were able to bridge the gap between the technical hard skills to the rest of the business (marketing, sales, finance, customer service, operations, etc.) and achieved better outcomes for the business in shorter timespans.”

For the longest time, earning an MBA was considered a sureshot way to advance in the tech industry — that is, until AI came along. Now, not just Big Tech and startups, but companies across the board are significantly upping their AI investments and reorienting themselves to focus on the technology. This isn’t lost on those looking to pursue MBAs today or on the business schools trying to woo them, which are redesigning curriculums to integrate AI courses.

The W. P. Carey School of Business – Arizona State University , for example, created a master’s in AI in business this year. Northwestern's Kellogg offers an AI-focused MBAi program. And Dartmouth’s Tuck has launched 18 new, AI-oriented elective courses in its MBA program. Dozens of other schools have created AI certificates or AI specializations.

For future success, AI-related education is the way to go, as far as Merrick Krause is concerned. Krause serves as COO of the U.S. government's General Services Administration.

“My senior in high school, with a 4.3 GPA, wants to go into business,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “I said great, an MBA is still viable — but you sure better have the words analytics, data and AI attached to it.”

Here’s where we bring you up to speed with the latest advancements from the world of AI.

• OpenAI launches new model; valuation soars to $150 billion. The ChatGPT-maker on Thursday released a new model called o1, previously code-named Strawberry, the first in a planned series of “reasoning” models that have been trained to answer more complex questions. The newly released model can work through more complicated math, science and coding challenges than OpenAI's previous offerings, and it can even tackle subjective topics such as product marketing strategies. See OpenAI sales exec Conor Dragomanovich ’s LinkedIn post here for more. In related news, the AI startup is in negotiations with investors to raise $6.5 billion at a valuation of $150 billion, Bloomberg reported, citing anonymous sources. The latest funding round, led by Thrive Capital, gives OpenAI a significantly higher valuation than its $86 billion appraisal earlier this year. Apple and Nvidia have also held talks to invest in the startup, Bloomberg previously reported. Following the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, OpenAI’s growth has skyrocketed, setting off intense competition in the AI space with tech giants such as Meta and Google.?
• 甲骨文 's growth is being fueled by the AI wave. Still-hot AI demand appears to be fueling Oracle's cloud-computing business, as the database-software giant notched fiscal first-quarter revenue and earnings that beat Wall Street expectations. Revenue surged 8% compared with the same period last year, hitting $13.3 billion, and CEO Safra C. says he expects roughly the same revenue growth — in the 7% to 9% range — this quarter. Oracle also announced a pact with Amazon to make its database available on the Amazon Web Services cloud. It has already made similar deals with Google and LinkedIn parent Microsoft.
• Meanwhile, there was little at 苹果 's "Glowtime" event to make investor heartbeats quicken. Investors appeared not to be impressed by Apple's new product lineup, where the highly anticipated iPhone 16 — along with the tech giant's integration of AI features over the next few months — served as the centerpiece. The refreshed phone has a faster A18 processor, a vertical camera layout and a new camera control button. Meanwhile, its AI software, dubbed Apple Intelligence, will help users summarize content, provide writing and transcription tools, allow users to create custom emojis and search video. Updates will start to roll out in the U.S. next month. New iPhone shipments are expected to rise 5% in the next fiscal year, Bloomberg Intelligence reported, but Apple's AI ambitions are "still not fully baked," and its most promising AI features, including ChatGPT, have yet to be unveiled. Apple is also leaning further into healthcare features: Apple Watch is adding sleep apnea detection, while saying its new AirPods 2 can be used as clinical-grade hearing aids, with FDA approval expected "soon."
• Affirming an earlier decision, a New York appeals court ruled on Wednesday that the Internet Archive cannot allow access to scanned digital copies of books. Four publishers sued in 2020 over the Archive's "controlled digital lending" system, which the nonprofit organization argued is equivalent to a physical library. (Like libraries, the Archive initially enforced a one-to-one rule, allowing only one reader at a time for each book in its possession.) The court ruled that the Archive's system is not "transformative" and doesn't qualify as fair use. The verdict arrives at a time AI is prompting vigorous litigation of copyright laws. In a statement, the nonprofit said that it is "reviewing the court’s opinion and will continue to defend the rights of libraries to own, lend, and preserve books." The Internet Archive is separately facing a $400 million copyright-infringement lawsuit from a group of record labels, which Wired claims could be an "existential threat" to the organization.
• 高通 is working with 三星电子 and 谷歌 on a set of mixed-reality smart glasses. CEO Cristiano R. Amon told CNBC that unlike larger MR headsets that many users find uncomfortable, including Apple’s Vision Pro, the Qualcomm-Samsung-Google glasses will look like regular frames and link to a smartphone. His comments are the first on the partnership, which would follow a lukewarm reception to the Vision Pro and an even worse response to other wearables, like Humane’s AI pin.

Here’s a list of other notable AI developments from this week:

• French AI startup Mistral AI on Wednesday released its first multimodal AI model that can process images as well as text called Pixtral 12B. See the company’s head of developer relations Sophia Yang, Ph.D. ’s LinkedIn post here.
• Adobe on Wednesday previewed its new Firefly Video Model that it plans to release later this year, and says it has been trained exclusively on licensed content to provide a "commercially safe" option for customers.
• AI work platform Glean has raised over $260M in Series E funding at a $4.6 billion valuation alongside new product capabilities, the company announced this week. See CEO Arvind Jain ’s LinkedIn post here for more.
• ServiceNow this week released a comprehensive new set of AI Innovations as part of its latest Xanadu release, including AI agents. See SVP of Now Platform Jon Sigler ’s LinkedIn post here for more.
• Roblox is building a generative AI model that lets creators more easily build 3D objects and scenes, the company announced at its annual developer conference last week. The model will also be available to the open-source community, Roblox said.
• In more OpenAI news, the company announced last week that it has hit a million paid users for its Enterprise, Teams and Edu products. See its head of sales Aliisa Rosenthal ’s LinkedIn post here.

Catch up on the tech headlines you may have missed this week and what our members are saying about them on LinkedIn.

• AGs want social media warning labels. In a recent letter, 42 state and territory attorneys general urged support for the Surgeon General's proposed tobacco-like warning labels on social media. The letter cited research that claims a link between social media use and higher rates of mental health issues in young people, including depression and anxiety. They pointed to social media algorithms that encourage "relentless engagement" and "infinite scrolling" as areas for concern. Warnings on platforms for speech and communication are rare, but as lawmakers look for ways to increase protections for minors online, the idea has gained traction.
• 苹果 and 谷歌 were fined billions by European regulators on Tuesday in two landmark rulings that are seen as a "key victory" for the bloc and its scrutiny of Big Tech. In a case dating back to 2016, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that Apple must pay Ireland roughly $14.4 billion worth of unpaid taxes. Meanwhile, Brussels fined Google about $2.6 billion in a seven-year-old case that accused it of "abusing its monopoly power" to best rivals in shopping. The decisions were seen as major tests of the EU's bid to rein in large tech firms on tax and antitrust matters. Apple said Tuesday's decision effectively enabled the bloc to set "a double tax" on a business already taxed in the U.S. Whereas Google said it was “disappointed” by the ruling, but that it had already made changes to comply with an earlier decision. Google is also separately facing allegations from federal prosecutors that it maintains an illegal monopoly on the advertising technology market, in an antitrust trial now underway in Virginia.
• After just one day in orbit, SpaceX 's Polaris Dawn mission is already breaking records. The four-person crew, led by billionaire backer Jared Isaacman, has now traveled farther from Earth than any humans in more than 50 years. The two female crew members, SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, have gone farther from Earth than any women ever. Gillis and Isaacman made history again Thursday with the first spacewalk by private astronauts. The crew is set to be in space for five days total, and will perform dozens of experiments while there.
• Italian tech company Bending Spoons will axe about 75% of WeTransfer 's staff, TechCrunch reports, after acquiring the file transfer service in July for an undisclosed amount. WeTransfer has more than 350 employees, according to Dutch media, serving 600,000 subscribers and 80 million monthly active users. Bending Spoons CEO Luca Ferrari said the company is aiming for a "smaller, more sharply focused WeTransfer organization." Bending Spoons has built something of a reputation for the buy-and-slash: It cut jobs at Evernote and Meetup after acquiring those companies, and laid off the entire staff of Filmic last year.?
• Just two years after opening an office in Miami, renowned VC firm Andreessen Horowitz has closed its Florida outpost. The firm’s office was shuttered in May due to lack of employee usage, Bloomberg reports, citing anonymous sources. Andreessen Horowitz's arrival in Miami coincided with the city's rise as an up-and-coming tech epicenter during the height of the cryptocurrency boom. Since then, however, venture capital money into the city has begun to slow; Miami companies brought in $5.5 billion in 2022, but only $400 million in the second quarter of 2024, per PitchBook data.

Here’s keeping tabs on key executives on the move and other big pivots in the tech industry. Please send me personnel moves within emerging tech.

• Dana Rao , Adobe ’s EVP and general counsel, who was instrumental in establishing the company’s AI strategy and led it through a failed antitrust battle, is leaving the company. See his LinkedIn post for more.
• Karthik Narain is stepping into the role of consulting giant 埃森哲 ’s chief technology officer, with former CTO Paul Daugherty retiring. See Narain’s LinkedIn post for more.
• Nick Pickles , the head of global affairs at X (formerly Twitter), is leaving the company, the Financial Times reported.
• Ra'ad Siraj , MassMutual ’s head of AI governance, is stepping down from the role. See his LinkedIn post for more.

As always, thanks for reading. Please share Tech Stack if you like it! And if you have any news tips, find me on InMail.