Google CEO Sundar Pichai Nears Billionaire Status Amid Over 70,000 Tech Layoffs

New Delhi: Amid 70,000 tech layoffs including by major tech companies Google, Tesla, Apple, Intel and Amazon, Alphabet Inc. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sundar Pichai is close to becoming a billionaire.

The layoffs took place last month, Times of India reported.

Apple laid off 600 employees, the largest since the pandemic. The employees were a part of a special project group. Google laid off its staff in Python, Flutter and Dart teams though the company said, the impacted employees could apply in other verticals. The company also cut jobs in its real estate and finance departments.

Amazon cut hundreds of jobs at its cloud division, which included sales, marketing and technology teams, and also hundreds at the web services division.

Intel fired 50 employees at its headquarters in California while BYJUs laid off three per cent, that is, 500 of its employees in sales, marketing and teaching roles.

Elon Musk’s company Tesla has laid off thousands while OLA Cabs has laid off 200 employees. Whirlpool has laid off 1,000 employees while HealthifyMe has laid off 150 and GTA Publisher five per cent of workforce.

However even as Google layoffs continue, the company’s stock is surging and so is CEO Sundar Pichai’s fortune.

Since Pichai became CEO of Google in 2015, the company’s stock has surged more than 400 per cent, outperforming the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. It hit a fresh record on Friday after the company’s first-quarter earnings beat expectations, boosted by AI-driven growth in its cloud computing unit, NDTV reported.

Google’s success has made Pichai one of the world’s highest-paid executives and has boosted Pichai’s fortune to nearly $1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.