Applications Software

Some of the economy’s most in-demand employees are about to find out how much power they have over where and how they work. After months of return-to-work starts and stops, many tech companies, including Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG 2.96% Google, Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. MSFT 2.26% , are telling remote workers it’s finally time to come back for good, or at least show up part of the week. Employees who fled the Bay Area…

Amprius Technologies Inc. has reached a deal with a special-purpose acquisition company that values the maker of silicon-anode batteries at about $1.3 billion and would take it public, company officials said. Based in Fremont, Calif., Amprius makes batteries that it says are more powerful than conventional lithium-ion cells because they use energy-dense silicon in the battery’s anode instead of graphite, the traditional material. The company currently sells them to customers such as…

More U.S. public companies are going private as deal makers look to use the capital they have built up to buy targets made more attractive amid recent stock-market declines.A handful of deals announced or completed so far in 2022—including for social-media company Twitter Inc. and software firm Citrix Systems Inc. —appear to be setting the stage for another busy year in which public companies are acquired by either private-equity firms or a controlling…

WASHINGTON—Tech-industry representatives are coming to Capitol Hill this week to warn that the remote-work trend will lead to more offshoring of software developer and other technology jobs unless the U.S. admits more high-skilled immigrants.Remote jobs in tech jumped by more than 420% between January 2020 and last month, growth that was intensified by the pandemic, according to a jobs data review by Tecna, a trade group for regional tech councils. In February, more than 22% of all tech jobs were listed as remote,…

TOKYO— Sony SONY -3.37% Group Corp. and Nintendo Co. NTDOY -3.33% said their flagship videogame machines are likely to be in short supply all year owing to component shortages, extending a problem that has plagued both companies. “There’s no end in sight to the semiconductor shortage at this point,” said Nintendo’s president, Shuntaro Furukawa.…

Palantir Technologies Inc. PLTR -21.94% shares fell more than 20% after the company forecast that its sales growth is slowing as its government business drags down growth. The data-mining company on Monday projected sales of $470 million in the current quarter, up 25% from a year earlier. That would be the slowest growth rate since the company made its public market debut in 2020. Analysts had projected sales of $484 million, according…

Psychiatrists and psychologists once ran their own practices. Now the local therapist office could be controlled by a buyout king.Venture capitalists and private-equity firms are pouring billions of dollars into mental-health businesses, including psychology offices, psychiatric facilities, telehealth platforms for online therapy, new drugs, meditation apps and other digital tools. Nine mental-health startups have reached private valuations exceeding $1 billion last year, including Cerebral Inc. and BetterUp Inc. Demand…

Meet the class of 2022. They are the most in-demand college graduates to enter the job market in years. They have the expectations to match.Grads are seeking more money and flexibility and more specifics about likely assignments than previous classes. Some want their employers to take stands on social issues. And after wrapping the last two years of their education under pandemic conditions, they are highly adaptable yet hungry for face-to-face work, training and mentorship. Companies that are struggling to fill open…

Metaverse. Metaverse. Metaverse.Say it three times fast, and you’ll still be confused about the promise of this much-hyped digital world where we’ll apparently work, hang out and more.Yet Peggy Johnson, chief executive of Magic Leap, can see it clearly. She doesn’t even have to put on the company’s high-tech headset.…

Elon Musk isn’t the only entrepreneur with big ideas about how to fix social media.A growing number of startups are emerging to challenge the status quo. Many of them are rooted in their founders’ experiences within the industry’s leading giant, Facebook’s parent company, now known as Meta Platforms Inc. FB 5.37% Nearly a decade ago, then-WhatsApp executive Neeraj Arora helped negotiate the $22 billion sale…