Google lays off employees, Tesla eliminates its Supercharger team, and UnitedHealthcare discloses security breaches.

In a week filled with tech industry shake-ups, Google, Tesla, and UnitedHealthcare made headlines with major developments. Google announced layoffs affecting its Flutter, Dart, and Python teams just weeks before its annual I/O developer conference, leaving 200 employees across its “Core” teams without jobs. Meanwhile, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made cuts to the team overseeing the Supercharger network, despite recent successes in attracting major automakers like Ford and General Motors. Musk even hinted at a potential slowdown in the network’s expansion due to the layoffs.

On the cybersecurity front, UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, Andrew Witty, revealed to a House subcommittee that a ransomware gang hacked U.S. health tech giant Change Healthcare, a subsidiary of UnitedHealthcare. The hackers used stolen credentials to access unprotected systems, leading to the theft of health data from a significant portion of the American population.

In other news, OpenAI faced a privacy complaint in the EU over its AI chatbot ChatGPT’s inability to correct misinformation it generates about individuals. Sam’s Club introduced technology that allows customers to walk out of the store without having their purchases double-checked, and TikTok was accused of circumventing Apple’s App Store rules by directing users to a website to purchase digital coins for tipping creators.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) launched a new program to assess generative AI technologies, while quick commerce company Getir decided to pull out of the U.S., U.K., and Europe to focus on its home country of Turkey. Additionally, Techstars, a startup accelerator, faced financial losses and employee cuts, and GitHub’s AI-powered coding assistant Copilot evolved into a more general tool with new capabilities like Copilot Chat.

Overall, the tech industry saw significant shifts and challenges this week, setting the stage for further developments in the coming weeks.