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1.	Meta Said to Push Back Launch of Avocado Model By Julia Hornstein Source: The New York Times

Meta’s new foundational model, code-named Avocado, has come up short of competitors’ AI models, prompting the company to delay its release, The New York Times reported Thursday. The company is pushing out Avocado’s rollout, which was supposed to happen this month, to at least May, the report said.

Meta’s AI leaders had also considered temporarily licensing Gemini to power its AI tools, the Times reported.

Meta has thrown billions of dollars at hiring highly sought after AI researchers and talent. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has also said the company plans to spend at least $600 billion on data centers and other infrastructure projects. In a memo viewed by The Information in February, Meta called Avocado the company’s “most capable pre-trained base model to date.”

Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

2.	Another xAI Co-Founder Leaves By Theo Wayt Source: Business Insider

Zihang Dai, a co-founder of xAI, has left Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence firm, Business Insider reported on Thursday, the latest in a string of high-profile exits this year. Another co-founder, Guodong Zhang, is also planning to leave, the report said.

After both reported departures, xAI would have just three of its dozen co-founders including Musk still working at the firm. xAI was acquired by SpaceX last month.

Other co-founders who have left xAI this year include Toby Pohlen, Tony Wu and Jimmy Ba. The departures come as Musk has internally expressed dissatisfaction with xAI’s progress on its Grok models.

3.	Adobe CEO to Step Down After 18 Years, Company Searching for Successor By Kevin McLaughlin Source: The Information

Adobe announced that Shantanu Narayen is planning to step down as CEO after 18 years as soon as the company finds his successor, although he’ll stay on as board chair. It’s the latest example of software firms shaking up their leadership as they deal with the threat posed by artificial intelligence.

Narayen, who turns 63 in May, joined Adobe in 1998 and became CEO in 2007. Under his watch, Adobe grew from a seller of software tools to artistic professionals to a provider of business applications—like marketing automation and data analytics—to many Fortune 500 companies. That includes shifting Adobe’s business from selling packaged software to cloud applications more than a decade ago.

But Adobe is considered to be at risk from generative AI products that create images and video, and its shares are down nearly 20% since the start of the year and nearly 40% over the past 12 months.

News of Narayen’s pending departure comes after Workday co-founder and executive chair Aneel Bhusri returned to the CEO role last month, replacing former CEO Carl Eschenbach.

Adobe shares dropped more than 7% in after-hours trading. For its January quarter, Adobe reported revenue of $6.4 billion, up 12% from last year and surpassing its earlier forecast by around $10 million. Adobe also reaffirmed its earlier revenue forecast for its fiscal year.

4.	Microsoft Windows and Office Chief Rajesh Jha to Retire, Names Successors By Aaron Holmes Source: The Information

Microsoft Executive Vice President Rajesh Jha, who oversees the business unit that includes Windows, Office, and Microsoft’s Surface devices, will retire July 1, he said in a memo to staff Thursday. Jha has spent more than 35 years at Microsoft, including two decades at the helm of the company’s Office product group.

Jha will be replaced by four of his deputies, all of whom will report directly to CEO Satya Nadella: Windows and Surface leader Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft 365 head Perry Clarke, LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky, and business Copilot head Charles Lamanna (see Microsoft’s updated org chart here).

The leadership change comes less than a year after Nadella and Jha reshuffled teams within Jha’s unit to focus more on selling AI tools to businesses. At the time, Roslansky gained additional responsibilities overseeing Office 365 products in addition to his LinkedIn duties, and Lamanna took more responsibility over building AI capabilities within those products.

Both Roslansky and Lamanna oversaw significant changes to Copilot in the months that followed, including the addition of Anthropic models to power AI features in the products, which had previously relied mostly on OpenAI models. The product changes came as executives such as Jha said they were worried customers of Office 365 Copilot, which included the AI features, weren’t using them enough.

5.	Salesforce Raises $25 Billion in Bonds for Buyback By Martin Peers Source: The Information

Salesforce raised $25 billion in bonds, the company confirmed, and has struck deals with “financial institutions” to buy back that much in stock. A $25 billion buyback would shrink Salesforce’s outstanding shares by about 13%. Salesforce shares were trading up 3.4% on Thursday morning.

Such a buyback would be an expansion of what Salesforce has done. Last year, for instance, it repurchased about $12.6 billion in shares, which was up from $7.8 billion the year earlier.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff had signaled his intention to borrow money to buy back shares at the company’s recent earnings call. Alluding to the company’s recent stock price decline and the fact that Salesforce has issued shares in a couple of big acquisitions over the years, he said:  “Now is the opportunity to take some of that stock back out of the market…and I think debt is a great way to do that.”