Good morning, CIOs. Cybersecurity company Crowdstrike this week became the latest company to tie layoff plans in part to advances in artificial intelligence.

Chief Executive George Kurtz said in a letter to employees that about 500 jobs, or 5% of Crowdstrike's global workforce would be cut, citing efficiencies driven by AI.

“AI flattens our hiring curve, and helps us innovate from idea to product faster. It streamlines go-to-market, improves customer outcomes, and drives efficiencies across both the front and back office," he wrote. "AI is a force multiplier throughout the business.”

Crowdstrike said that while it cuts in some areas of the business it will continue to hire customer-facing and product-engineering roles.

Over the last month other companies, including e-commerce firm Shopify and language-learning app Duolingo, have linked hiring plans to AI.

Separately, International Business Machines Chief Executive Arvind Krishna told the WSJ this week that the company has used artificial intelligence, and specifically AI agents, to replace the work of a couple hundred human resources workers. The moves led to  increased hiring in programming and sales, he said.

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., China’s largest chip maker, reported a sharp rise in quarterly net profit, driven by Beijing’s stimulus measures and front-loading activities amid geopolitical tensions, the WSJ reports.

Apple is developing a chip for a new line of smartglasses that could come to market in the next two years, Bloomberg reports.

With the Trump administration looking to cut tech spending, Adobe announced plans to offer its software to the government at a 70% discount, Bloomberg reports. 

Microsoft hired a former marketing executive at Meta Platforms to lead advertising for its consumer AI products, the Information reports. Mark D’Arcy will report to Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, who oversees Copilot.

Coinbase Global has agreed to acquire Deribit, the world’s biggest trading platform for bitcoin and ether options, for roughly $2.9 billion, the WSJ reports.

President Donald Trump in a social media post Thursday called a program providing internet access to underserved communities "racist" and "illegal" and vowed to end it, the New York Times reports. 

The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development could lead to a new wave of deaths and is “way beyond any elimination of waste,” Bill Gates told WSJ Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker in an onstage interview Thursday. Gates plans to spend more than $200 billion over the next 20 years to fight poverty, malnutrition, polio and other global scourges.