Hindenburg Research released a report on Twitter Co-founder Jack Dorsey's payments group Block, formerly known as Square. Hindenburg Research stated the company facilitated fraud against consumers and the government, avoided regulation, dressed up predatory loans and fees as revolutionary technology, and misled investors with inflated metrics. Block has market capitalisation of nearly $44 billion.

Accenture on Thursday stated that it is laying off 19,000 employees. The IT services company also lowered its annual revenue and profit projections. Accenture today also reported financial results for the second quarter, recording revenues of $15.8 billion. Earlier this week, Amazon also announced that it will lay off 9,000 more employees worldwide.

Amazon's Web Services Department posted 24,988 job openings, when in fact there were approvals for only 7,798, leading to an over-hiring situation, Insider reported quoting from an internal document. Amazon acknowledged the over-hiring, admitting its processes were prone to inconsistency, error, and potential "mis-use". Amazon announced a second round of layoffs that will result in 9,000 job cuts.

Hindenburg Research, in its report on Jack Dorsey's cash payments group Block, mentioned the firm's CFO Amrita Ahuja dumped millions of dollars in stock during pandemic along with other executives. Amrita completed her MBA from Harvard Business School in 2007. She joined Block in January 2019. She has also worked for firms like Morgan Stanley and The Walt Disney Company.

The Hindenburg Research's report on Jack Dorsey-led Block has said the group's Cash App has "dozens" of 'Elon Musk' and 'Donald Trump' fake accounts. Hindenburg said it was able to send and receive funds easily via fake Trump and Musk accounts. The app also allegedly ignored user pleas for help amid criminal activity and fraud on the platform.

Hindenburg Research, in its new report, accused Jack Dorsey's Block's Cash App of "wildly" overstating its genuine user counts and understating its customer acquisition costs. Former employees estimated that 40%-75% of accounts they reviewed were fake, involved in fraud, or were additional accounts tied to a single individual, Hindenburg Research said in the report.

Hindenburg Research, in a report on payments group Block, alleged Block's stock soared on back of its "facilitation of fraud" during the pandemic. It claimed Block Co-founders Jack Dorsey and James McKelvey collectively sold over $1 billion of stock during pandemic. Block reported pandemic surge in user counts and revenue, ignoring contribution of widespread fraudulent payments, the report said.

Twitter Co-founder Jack Dorsey's Block "regularly hypes...mundane or predatory sources of revenue as technological breakthroughs", according to Hindenburg Research's report. Block's $29-billion acquisition of Afterpay is "flopping" and the 'buy now, pay later' service lost $357 million in 2022, the year it was acquired by Block, the report said. Afterpay reported losses of $184 million in 2021.

Infosys' shares fell nearly 1.3% on Thursday and the stock is down in 12 of the last 13 sessions. It is also just 1.5% away from its 52-week low of ₹1,355.50 that it touched in September 2022. Infosys has declined 10% so far in 2023. It is also among the worst performers on the Nifty 50 index so far.

Cash App, which was co-founded by Twitter Co-founder Jack Dorsey, ignored warnings of Secret Service, US Department of Labor and multiple state regulators, along with internal employee concerns, according to Hindenburg Research's latest report. The warnings were regarding the issue of multiple COVID-19 relief payments going to the same account, which was flagged as an obvious sign of fraud.

Hindenburg Research, in its report, claimed Jack Dorsey's Cash App has been used for facilitating crimes including sex trafficking and murder. Multiple Department of Justice complaints outline how it has been used to facilitate sex trafficking, including sex trafficking of minors, the report stated. The report also mentioned how the app is used by gangs to transfer illicit drug proceeds.

WhatsApp today announced that users can now link their accounts to up to four devices. It stated chats can stay "synced, encrypted and flowing" even after phone goes offline. A new WhatsApp app for Windows has also been launched. Users can host group video calls with up to 8 people and audio calls with up to 32 people through it.

Tata Group is considering injecting another $2 billion of fresh capital into its super app—Tata Neu—as the conglomerate seeks to boost its digital business, Bloomberg cited sources as saying. Tata Digital will receive the additional funding over two years if the deal proceeds, the source said. This could help Tata Neu to strengthen its digital offerings and fix technical glitches.

A Credit Suisse report showed how OpenAI registered 100 million users in just two months, outpacing the likes of TikTok and Instagram in terms of growth rate. ChatGPT became popular way faster than social media platforms, TIME said. "We believe rules and regulations are needed for AI development and ChatGPT...considering the potential impact it has on society," the report added.

Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX reached a deal on Wednesday to retrieve more than $400 million from Bahamas-based hedge fund Modulo Capital. According to court filings, FTX affiliated hedge fund Alameda Research gave ₹475 million to Modulo last year. The deal marks FTX's new management's efforts to recover assets to repay FTX customers.

Ford Motor has said its electric vehicle business incurred a pretax loss of $3 billion in the last two years, and the same amount of loss is expected this year. The EV unit, named 'Model e', should be seen as a startup, CFO John Lawler said. EV startups lose money as they build knowledge and gain market share, he added.

Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has invested in AI chatbot startup Character.AI. The startup, which has no revenue, has raised $150 million in a new funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz that valued it at $1 billion. As per PitchBook, AI investment in 2023 to date has surpassed the full-year amount in 2020 of $1.5 billion.

Microsoft has said its 10-year proposal to keep 'Call of Duty' (CoD) available on PlayStation 5 is "sufficient" for Sony to develop its own alternatives to the game. Microsoft made the remark as part of its testimony related to its proposed acquisition of CoD developer Activision Blizzard. Sony recently said Microsoft might degrade the game's quality on PlayStation.

The British parliament has blocked TikTok on all the devices on its network, following a similar ban on government devices in the UK. "The commissions of both the House of Commons and Lords have decided that TikTok will be blocked from all parliamentary devices and the wider parliamentary network," a parliament spokesperson said.

Over 2.78 lakh EVs have been registered in the country since January 2023, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday said, citing data from the government's Vahan portal. The registration figure has seen a jump from 3.29 lakh in 2021 to 10.20 lakh in 2022, the minister said. He added that Telangana and Lakshadweep aren't yet part of the portal.

Toshiba Corporation's board has accepted a takeover offer worth around $15 billion from a consortium led by private equity firm Japan Industrial Partners (JIP), Nikkei reported. JIP would take the company private once it secures the necessary permits, the report added. Toshiba has been engulfed in troubles, including accounting scandals and losses in US nuclear business since 2015.

HCL Co-founder Ajai Chowdhry said that the company created its first PC at the same time Apple created its first. "I was passionate about creating an electronics industry in India and making the hardware sector flourish in India," he said. Chowdhry added that he is bringing together angel investors in his network to fund Indian hardware startups.

Firefox developer Mozilla has launched a new startup called 'Mozilla.ai' to develop tools "that make generative AI safer" and trustworthy. It's initially investing $30 million in the startup. The company said it's launching Mozilla.ai as other big tech companies with "the most power and influence" are still building AI "the same old way" that lacks transparency and accountability.

ChatGPT maker Open AI's CEO Sam Altman has said his team feels "awful" about a "significant" issue the AI chatbot faced recently. "We had a significant issue in ChatGPT due to a bug in an open-source library, for which a fix has...been released," he said. The issue caused some users to see the titles of other users' conversation history.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai, in an email seen by CNBC, told employees that "things will go wrong" as more people start to use AI chatbot Bard. "The user feedback is critical to improving the product and the underlying technology," Pichai stated. He noted that about 80,000 employees helped test Bard and said, "We should be proud of this work."