Activist investor TCI, which has a $6B+ stake in Alphabet, calls on the company to aggressively reduce headcount and cut costs in long-term bets such as Waymo (Miles Kruppa/Wall Street Journal)

Yun Li / CNBC:
Salesforce stock is up 6%+ pre-market after activist investor Starboard reveals a “significant” stake; shares of Salesforce have fallen more than 40% in 2022  —  Follow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNT  —  Jeffrey Smith, CEO of Starboard Value LP and Chairman of Papa John’s International Inc.

Jon Victor / The Information:
Source: between Q1 2019 and this fall, Alphabet’s Google Cloud, hardware unit, and YouTube have roughly doubled headcount, as the total employee count grew ~80%  —  Alphabet has doubled the headcount in its Google Cloud unit since early 2019, according to data obtained by The Information, outstripping Alphabet’s overall hiring growth.

Sarah E. Needleman / Wall Street Journal:
Pinterest adds Elliott Management’s Marc Steinberg to its board as part of an agreement with the activist investor; Elliott has a stake of over 9% in Pinterest  —  Activist investor has also entered into a long-term agreement to help the social-media company grow

Bloomberg:
Hedge fund Fir Tree Capital sues Grayscale Investments for info on potential mismanagement, as GBTC, down ~74% YTD, trades at a ~43% discount to its BTC’s value  —  Fir Tree Capital Management is suing Grayscale Investments for information to investigate potential mismanagement and conflicts …

Miles Kruppa / Wall Street Journal:
Texas AG sues Google for allegedly using features in Photos, Assistant, and Nest devices to collect facial- and voice-recognition data without proper consent  —  State alleges tech giant didn’t obtain user consent for biometric-data use  —  The Texas attorney general sued Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG 2.32%▲ …

Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Internal documents: Amazon is offering voluntary buyouts to some employees as it looks for ways to cut its headcount beyond the massive layoffs already underway  —  – Amazon sent out “voluntary severance” offers to some employees this week as it looks for ways to rein in costs beyond the massive layoffs already announced.