Microsoft on Tuesday said that it’s laying off 3% of employees across all levels, teams and geographies.

“We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC.

The company reported better-than-expected results, with $25.8 billion in quarterly net income, and an upbeat forecast in late April.

Microsoft had 228,000 employees worldwide at the end of June, meaning that the move will affect thousands of employees.

It’s likely Microsoft’s largest round of layoffs since the elimination of 10,000 roles in 2023. In January the company announced a small round of layoffs that were performance-based. These new job cuts are not related to performance, the spokesperson said.

One objective is to reduce layers of management, the spokesperson said. In January Amazon announced that it was getting rid of some employees after noticing “unnecessary layers” in its organization.

Last week cybersecurity software provider CrowdStrike announced it would lay off 5% of its workforce.

In January, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told analysts that the company would make sales execution changes that led to lower growth than expected in Azure cloud revenue that wasn’t tied to artificial intelligence. Performance in AI cloud growth outdid internal projections.

“How do you really tweak the incentives, go-to-market?” Nadella said. “At a time of platform shifts, you kind of want to make sure you lean into even the new design wins, and you just don’t keep doing the stuff that you did in the previous generation.”

On Monday, Microsoft shares stopped trading at $449.26, the highest price so far this year. They closed at a record $467.56 last July.

McDonald’s announced a plan to hire 375,000 employees across the U.S. this summer.

The plan, announced on Monday, is one of the fast-food chain’s largest hiring pushes in years, according to a news release. It goes hand in hand with McDonald’s goal to open 900 new restaurants in the U.S. by 2027 and its plan to serve more customers during summer months.

Joe Erlinger, McDonald’s president for the U.S., met with Department of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer at a location just outside of Columbus, Ohio, to announce the news. The hiring will be across McDonald’s company-owned and franchised locations, according to a company spokesperson.

The news comes amid the Trump administration’s push for businesses to invest more in the U.S. The White House reported that it secured more than $5 trillion in new investment promises in the U.S. during Trump’s first 100 days in office.

Those investments include a $500 billion plan in manufacturing by Apple, and $500 billion investment plans announced by Nvidia and by a coalition of companies including SoftBank and Oracle.

Earlier this month, McDonald’s reported its worst quarterly sales for the U.S. since the height of the pandemic in 2020.

The restaurant company reported U.S. same-store sales fell 3.6%, the largest three-month drop since Q2 2020, when they plunged 8.7%. Forecasts had been for a decline of just 1.7%.

McDonald’s executives told investors during a call that the reason for the decline was that ‘people are just visiting less,’ adding that traffic among middle-income diners fell by “nearly double digits” alongside an ongoing drop-off among low-income ones. As an example, they said more people appear to be skipping breakfast entirely to cut back on spending, or eating breakfast at home.

The fast-food chain has over 38,000 locations in over 100 countries, and is aiming for 50,000 by 2027.

As struggling drugstore chains work to regain their footing, Walgreens is doubling down on automation. 

The company is expanding the number of retail stores served by its micro-fulfillment centers, which use robots to fill thousands of prescriptions for patients who take medications to manage or treat diabetes, high blood pressure and other conditions. 

Walgreens aims to free up time for pharmacy staff, reducing their routine tasks and eliminating inventory waste. Fewer prescription fills would allow employees to interact directly with patients and perform more clinical services such as vaccinations and testing.

Walgreens first rolled out the robot-powered centers in 2021, but paused expansion in 2023 to focus on gathering feedback and improving performance at existing sites. After more than a year of making upgrades, including new internal tools, the company said it is ready to expand the reach of that technology again.

Walgreens told CNBC it hopes to have its 11 micro-fulfillment centers serve more than 5,000 stores by the end of the year, up from 4,800 in February and 4,300 in October 2023. As of February, the centers handled 40% of the prescription volume on average at supported pharmacies, according to Walgreens. 

That translates to around 16 million prescriptions filled each month across the different sites, the company said. 

The renewed automation push comes as Walgreens prepares to go private in a roughly $10 billion deal with Sycamore Partners, expected to close by the end of the year. 

The deal would cap a turbulent chapter for Walgreens as a public company, marked by a rocky transition out of the pandemic, declining pharmacy reimbursement rates, weaker consumer spending and fierce competition from CVS Health, Amazon and other retail giants.

Like CVS, Walgreens has shifted from opening new stores to closing hundreds of underperforming locations to shore up profits. Both companies are racing to stay relevant as online retailers lure away customers and patients increasingly opt for fast home delivery over traditional pharmacy visits.

The changes also follow mounting discontent among pharmacy staff: In 2023, nationwide walkouts spotlighted burnout and chronic understaffing, forcing chains to reexamine their operational models.

Walgreens said the investment in robotic pharmacy fills is already paying off.

To date, micro-fulfillment centers have generated approximately $500 million in savings by cutting excess inventory and boosting efficiency, said Kayla Heffington, Walgreens’ pharmacy operating model vice president. Heffington added that stores using the facilities are administering 40% more vaccines than those that aren’t. 

“Right now, they’re the backbone to really help us offset some of the workload in our stores, to obviously allow more time for our pharmacists and technicians to spend time with patients,” said Rick Gates, Walgreens’ chief pharmacy officer.

“It gives us a lot more flexibility to bring down costs, to increase the care and increase speed to therapy — all those things,” he said. 

Gates added that the centers give Walgreens a competitive advantage because independent pharmacies and some rivals don’t have centralized support for their stores. Still, Walmart, Albertsons and Kroger have similarly tested or are currently using their own micro-fulfillment facilities to dispense grocery items and other prescriptions. 

Micro-fulfillment centers come with their own risks, such as a heavy reliance on sophisticated robotics that can cause disruptions if errors occur. But the facilities are becoming a permanent fixture in retail due to the cost savings they offer and their ability to streamline workflows, reduce the burden on employees and deliver goods to customers faster.

When a Walgreens retail pharmacy receives a prescription, the system determines whether it should be filled at that location or routed to a nearby micro-fulfillment center. Maintenance medications, or prescription drugs taken regularly to manage chronic health conditions, and refills that don’t require immediate pickup are often sent to micro-fulfillment.

At the core of each facility is a highly automated system that uses robotics, conveyor belts and barcode scanners, among other tools, to fill prescriptions. The operations are supported by a team of pharmacists pharmacy technicians and other professionals.

Instead of staff members filling prescriptions by hand at stores, pill bottles move through an automated and carefully choreographed assembly line. 

Pharmacy technicians fill canisters with medications for robot pods to dispense, and pharmacists verify those canisters to make sure they are accurate. Yellow robotic arms grab a labeled prescription vial and hold it up to a canister, which precisely dispenses the specific medication for that bottle.

Certain prescriptions are filled at separate manual stations, including inhalers and birth control pill packs. Each prescription is then sorted and packaged for delivery back to retail pharmacy locations for final pickup.

There are other security and safety measures throughout the process, said Ahlam Antar, registered group supervisor of a micro-fulfillment center in Mansfield, Massachusetts. 

For example, the robot pods automatically lock and signal an error with a red-orange light if a worker attaches a canister to the wrong dispenser, preventing the incorrect pills from going in a prescription, she said. 

Properly training workers at the centers to ensure accuracy and patient safety is also crucial, according to Sarah Gonsalves, a senior certified pharmacy technician at the Mansfield site. 

She said a core part of her role is to make sure that technicians can correctly perform the different tasks in the process. 

Antar, who has worked at the Mansfield site since its 2022 opening, said Walgreens has made improvements to the micro-fulfillment process after considering feedback from stores and patients during the paused expansion. That includes establishing new roles needed to support the process at the sites, such as a training manager for all 11 locations. 

The facilities also plan to transition to using smaller prescription vials after hearing concerns that the current bottles are too large, according to a Walgreens spokesperson. They said that will allow the centers to ship more prescriptions per order and reduce costs.

Heffington said the automated locations have helped reduce Walgreens’ overall prescription fulfillment costs by nearly 13% compared to a year ago. 

She said Walgreens has also increased prescription volume by 126% year-over-year, now filling more than 170 million prescriptions annually. The company hopes to raise that number to 180 million or even more. 

Heffington added that Walgreens implemented new internal tools to track the work across all 11 centers and provide real-time data on where a patient’s prescription is in the micro-fulfillment process. 

“If a patient called the store and said, ‘Hey, can you tell me where my prescription is today?’ [Workers] can do that with great specificity,” thanks to the new tools, Heffington said. 

Despite the company’s progress, Gates said there is more work to be done with micro-fulfillment centers. 

For example, he pointed to the possibility of shipping prescriptions directly to patients’ doorsteps instead of putting that burden on retail stores. 

“It’s only step one right now,” he said. 

Other improvements may still be needed at facilities, according to some reports. For example, WRAL News reported in April that some customers at a Walgreens store in Garner, North Carolina, say they are only getting partial prescription fills, with several pills missing, or their medicine is being delayed.

A customer views merchandise for sale at a Walgreens store in the Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Christopher Lee | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Before Brian Gange’s Arizona store started relying on an automated facility, he walked into the pharmacy every morning knowing that a massive list of prescriptions was in his work queue waiting to be filled for the day. 

Now, with help from micro-fulfillment, that list is significantly smaller each day, according to Gange. 

“We don’t have to spend as much time on just those repetitive fulfillment tasks,” he told CNBC. “It really takes a huge weight off our shoulders.” 

Gange said that gives him and his team time to step behind the pharmacy counter and interact with customers face-to-face, answering questions, providing advice, performing health tests or administering vaccines. 

That kind of attention can make all the difference for a patient.  

For example, Gange recalls stepping away for five minutes to take a patient’s blood pressure despite being overwhelmed with tasks while working at a different Walgreens location several years ago. He ended up sending that person to the emergency room because their blood pressure was “off the charts.” 

That patient’s wife visited the pharmacy the next day to thank Gange, saying her husband “probably wouldn’t be here with us today” without that blood pressure test. 

“I shouldn’t have to question whether I have that five or 10 minutes to check a blood pressure for a patient,” Gange said. “Micro-fulfillment and centralized services are really what are going to allow us to be able to do that, to have that time.” 

“That really allows us to provide better care for them,” he added.

Fox Corp. will launch its direct-to-consumer streaming service, to be called Fox One, ahead of the National Football League season later this year.

Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch unveiled the name and timing of the company’s upcoming streamer during a quarterly earnings call Monday. The exact launch date and pricing will be announced in the coming months.

While Murdoch didn’t give specifics on pricing, he said during Monday’s call it would be in line with so-called wholesale pricing, meaning it would be similar to the cost of the channels for pay tv distributors. Cable TV subscribers will get access to the service at no additional cost, Murdoch said.

“Pricing will be healthy and not a discounted price,” he said.

“It would be a failure of us if we attract more connected subscribers … we do not want to lose a traditional cable subscriber to Fox One,” said Murdoch. He added the company is doing everything “humanly possible” to avoid more subscribers fleeing the cable bundle.

Fox plans to offer the app as part of bundles with other distributors and services, Murdoch said. He added many other streamers had already approached Fox about bundling and said the company “will be moving forward with a number of those relationships.”

On Monday Fox reported fiscal third-quarter revenue of $4.37 billion, up 27% from the same period last year.

Fox’s financials were lifted by the Super Bowl, which aired on the company’s broadcast network and free, ad-supported service, Tubi, during the most recent quarter. Some ads for Super Bowl 59, which attracted roughly 128 million viewers, cost $8 million apiece. Fox reported a 65% increase in advertising revenue during the quarter.

The media company, known for the cable TV channel Fox News and its sports offering on broadcast and cable, had been on the sidelines of streaming compared with its peers. While the company has the Fox Nation streaming app and Tubi, it has yet to offer all of its content in a direct-to-consumer offering.

Murdoch alerted investors in February of the company’s plans to offer the streaming service by the end of this year.

The decision came shortly after Fox, alongside Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney, abandoned efforts to launch Venu, a joint venture sports streaming app. Fox was the only one out of its partners without a subscription streaming app already in the market.

Warner Bros. Discovery offers its live sports content on streamer Max.

Disney’s ESPN has its ESPN+ app and is developing a new flagship streaming app that will reflect the content on its cable TV network. The company will unveil further details on the app this week. CNBC reported last week that ESPN plans to name the app simply ESPN.

Epic Games said on Friday that it submitted Fortnite to Apple’s App Store, the month after a judge ruled in favor of the game maker in a contempt ruling.

Fortnite was booted from iPhones and Apple’s App Store in 2020, after Epic Games updated its software to link out to the company’s website and avoid Apple’s commissions. The move drew Apple’s anger, and kicked off a legal battle that has lasted for years.

Last month’s ruling, a victory for Epic Games, said Apple was not allowed to charge a commission on link-outs or dictate if the links look like buttons, paving the way for Fortnite’s return.

Apple could still reject Fortnite’s submission. An Apple representative did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment. Apple is appealing last month’s contempt ruling.

The announcement by Epic Games is the latest salvo in the battle between it and Apple, which has taken place in courts and with regulators around the world since 2020. Epic Games also sued Google, which operates the Play Store for Android phones.

Last month’s ruling has already shifted the economics of app development for iPhones.

Apple takes between 15% and 30% of purchases made using its in-app payment system. Linking to the web avoids those fees. Apple briefly allowed link-outs under its system but would charge a 27% commission, before last month’s ruling.

Developers including Amazon and Spotify have already updated their apps to avoid Apple’s commissions and direct customers to their own websites for payment.

Before last month, Amazon’s Kindle app told users they could not purchase a book in the iPhone app. After a recent update, the app now shows an orange “Get Book” button that links to Amazon’s website.

Fortnite has been available for iPhones in Europe since last year through Epic Games’ store. Third-party app stores are allowed in Europe under the Digital Markets Act. Users have also been able to play Fortnite on iPhones and iPads through cloud gaming services.

America’s supply chain is under attack.

From coast to coast, organized criminal groups are hitting trucks on the road, breaking into warehouses and pilfering expensive items from train cars, according to industry experts and law enforcement officials CNBC interviewed during a six-month investigation.

It’s all part of a record surge in cargo theft in which criminal networks in the U.S. and abroad exploit technology intended to improve supply chain efficiency and use it to steal truckloads of valuable products. Armed with doctored invoices, the fraudsters impersonate the staff of legitimate companies in order to divert cargo into the hands of criminals.

The widespread scheme is “low risk and a very high reward,” according to Keith Lewis, vice president of Verisk CargoNet, which tracks theft trends in the industry.

“The return on investment is almost 100%,” he said. “And if there’s no risk of getting caught, why not do it better and do it faster?”

In 2024, Verisk CargoNet recorded 3,798 incidents of cargo theft, representing a 26% increase over 2023.

Total reported losses topped nearly $455 million, according to Verisk CargoNet, but industry experts told CNBC that number is likely lower than the true toll because many cases go unreported. Numerous experts who spoke to CNBC estimate losses are close to $1 billion or more a year.

Train cargo thefts alone shot up about 40% in 2024, with more than 65,000 reported incidents, according to the Association of American Railroads.

Industry experts and law enforcement officials say a more sophisticated and insidious form of cargo theft called strategic theft is also on the rise.

The way the system is supposed to work is this: A shipper pays a broker, and the broker, after taking its fee, pays the carrier, the trucking company that moves the load.

In strategic theft, criminals use deceptive tactics to trick shippers, brokers or carriers into handing cargo or legitimate payments, sometimes both, over to them instead of the legitimate companies.

Krispy Kreme stock plunged 24% on Thursday morning after the doughnut chain said it is “reassessing” its rollout with McDonald’s and pulled its full-year outlook in part due to economic “softness.”

Krispy Kreme is not planning to launch its doughnuts in any additional McDonald’s locations in the second quarter, suspending a nationwide rollout. As of March 30, more than 2,400 of the burger chain’s roughly 13,500 domestic locations carried Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

“I remain confident in the long-term national opportunity, but we need to work together with them to identify levers to improve sales,” Krispy Kreme CEO Josh Charlesworth said.

Over the last year, Krispy Kreme shares have shed more than 70% of their value, dragging the company’s market value down to less than $600 million.

Truist downgraded the stock on Thursday from buy to hold.

“We are shocked by the speed at which the story fell apart,” Truist analyst Bill Chappell wrote. ”… We no longer have high conviction in management’s previously stated strategy and execution of these initiatives, and it will likely take several quarters before we or investors can regain confidence.”

The two restaurant companies announced more than a year ago that Krispy Kreme doughnuts would be sold in all McDonald’s U.S. locations by the end of 2026. The rollout began roughly six months ago.

While the beginning phases were promising, sales fell below projections, Krispy Kreme executives said on Thursday.

As consumers worry about the broader economy and a potential recession, they have been pulling back their spending at restaurants. McDonald’s reported a 3.6% decline in its U.S. same-store sales for the first quarter. McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said that the fast-food industry’s traffic fell as middle- and low-income diners visited restaurants less frequently.

For Krispy Kreme, profitability appears to be the key reason for slowing the rollout with McDonald’s.

“However, we are seeing that after the initial marketing launch demand dropped below our expectations requiring intervention to deliver sustainable, profitable growth,” Charlesworth told analysts on the company’s conference call.

“We are partnering with McDonald’s to increase sales by stimulating higher demand and cutting costs by simplifying operations,” he added. “At the same time, we are reassessing our deployment schedule together with McDonald’s as we work to achieve a profitable business model for all parties.”

Krispy Kreme reported a net loss of $33 million for the quarter ended March 30.

To supply all of McDonald’s U.S. restaurants, Krispy Kreme was investing in expanding capacity quickly, which weighed on profits. In the last year, the company has reported three quarters of net losses.

The company uses a “hub and spoke” model that lets it make and distribute its treats efficiently. Production hubs, which are either stores or doughnut factories, send off freshly made doughnuts every day to retail locations such as grocery stores and gas stations. Krispy Kreme is looking to prune its unprofitable locations, which could affect up to 10% of its U.S. network.

Krispy Kreme also pulled its 2025 outlook, citing “macroeconomic softness” and uncertainty around the schedule for the McDonald’s partnership.

A group of investors sued UnitedHealthcare Group on Wednesday, accusing the company of misleading them after the killing of its CEO, Brian Thompson.

The class action lawsuit — filed in the Southern District of New York — accuses the health insurance company of not initially adjusting their 2025 net earning outlook to factor in how Thompson’s killing would affect their operations.

On Dec. 3 — a day before Thompson was fatally shot — the company issued guidance that included net earnings of $28.15 to $28.65 per share and adjusted net earnings of $29.50 to $30.00 per share, the suit notes. And on January 16, the company announced that it was sticking with its old forecast.

The investors described this as “materially false and misleading,” pointing to the immense public scrutiny the company and the broader health insurance industry experienced in the wake of Thompson’s killing.

The group, which is seeking unspecified damages, argued that the public backlash prevented the company from pursuing ‘the aggressive, anti-consumer tactics that it would need to achieve’ its earnings goals.

‘As such, the Company was deliberately reckless in doubling down on its previously issued guidance,’ the suit reads.

The company eventually revised its 2025 outlook on April 17, citing a needed shift in corporate strategy — a move that caused its stock to drop more than 22% that day.

‘The company denies any allegations of wrongdoing and intends to defend the matter vigorously,’ a UnitedHealthcare spokesperson said in a statement.

Thompson’s fatal shooting on the streets of New York City in broad daylight sent shockwaves across the nation.

Luigi Mangione, the 27-year-old man accused of the killing, has pleaded not guilty to federal and state charges against him. The legal defense fund for Mangione surpassed the $1 million mark in donations on Tuesday.