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Feb 04, 2026
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Wednesday is here! Investors dump enterprise software stocks as AI disruption fears grow. Two more Sequoia Capital partners depart. Disney names theme parks chief Josh D’Amaro as new CEO.
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Shares of enterprise software stocks tumbled Tuesday as worries over new AI tools replacing traditional enterprise software subscriptions deepened following Anthropic’s release of its latest tool to automate legal tasks. Shares of Snowflake, Atlassian, MongoDB, Elastic and Hubspot fell more than 10%. Other software heavyweights such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, Workday lost more than 7%. Many have tried to add new AI products or make acquisitions to beef up their offerings to fend off competitions from AI-native startups. Companies that sell analytics software to the legal industry were particularly hit by Anthropic’s release. Britain’s RELX and the Netherlands’ Wolters Kluwer fell by more than 10%. London Stock Exchange Group and Thomson Reuters, which have large data analytics businesses, lost more than a tenth
of their market share.
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Two partners at Sequoia Capital have left or plan to leave the blue-chip venture firm, according to people familiar with the decisions. The plans, which haven’t previously been reported, add to recent exits at the firm and come during a period when more venture capitalists are attempting new funds or startups, lured by the prospects of harnessing AI. Josephine Chen, who focuses on early stage investments and joined Sequoia nearly seven years ago, is leaving the firm to start what she’s described to colleagues as a new fund concept. Cole Pergament, a partner on the growth team who joined the firm from Mary Meeker’s Bond last year, left late last month. He has told some people at the firm he wanted to start a company. Last month, Charlie Curnin, a Sequoia partner who invested in early stage companies and who joined
four years ago, announced his departure to take part in a “once-in-a-generation time to build transformational products.” The firm typically has about 20 partners at a time. And in early January, general partner Ravi Gupta, previously CFO of Instacart, said that he was planning to start his own company and would step back from the GP role. He has remained a partner and represents Sequoia on some boards. Sequoia has committed to
invest in Gupta’s new company. Sequoia, known for backing startups including SpaceX and Stripe, underwent a shake up in its top leadership late last year. Roelof Botha in November announced he was passing leadership of the firm to two general partners, Alfred Lin and Pat Grady, after three years in the top role during a tumultuous time for startup investing.
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Walt Disney Co. named its theme parks chief, Josh D’Amaro, to succeed Bob Iger as CEO on March 18, ending a years-long search. The selection immediately raises the question of whether D’Amaro will be more successful than Iger’s previous successor—another parks veteran, Bob Chapek—in taking the reins of the entertainment giant. Chapek had the bad luck of taking over just as the Covid pandemic was starting, which forced the shuttering of Disney’s theme parks and froze much of its TV and film production. Chapek also presided over increasing losses at Disney’s streaming operations. After rising internal dissension, he was forced out in late 2022, after two and a half years, with Iger returning. Alongside D’Amaro’s appointment, Disney’s top entertainment executive Dana Walden, who was seen as a
contender to be CEO, was named President and Chief Creative Officer of Disney. Iger, meanwhile, will become a senior advisor when D’Amaro takes over until he retires (for the second time) at the end of the year. Disney chair James Gorman, who oversaw the search, said D’Amaro had “demonstrated a strong vision for the company’s future and a deep understnading of the creative spirit that makes Disney unique.”
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The Paris office of Elon Musk’s X was raided by French police on Tuesday, as prosecutors summoned Musk and former CEO Linda Yaccarino for questioning as part of a broadening investigation into the social media service, according to a statement from the Paris prosecutor. The prosecutor’s office said that it was investigating X for several violations of the law, including complicity in possession and dissemination of child pornography and the creation of sexually explicit deepfakes. The office wants Musk and Yaccarino to appear at a hearing in April, though it’s unclear if it will be able to force them to appear. Also on Tuesday, the United Kingdom opened a separate probe into the creation of sexual deepfakes by its Grok chatbot. Late last year, X laid off several engineers focused on trust and safety after staff
raised concerns about the integration of Grok into X, including the potential for the chatbot to create sexual images of real people, The Information has reported.
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The Department of Justice and a group of U.S. states on Tuesday appealed a judge’s ruling on how Google’s search businesses should change in the wake of an earlier finding that it was an illegal monopoly. Their appeal came two weeks after Google also appealed the ruling. The remedies decision last fall followed a sweeping judgment in 2024 in which a federal judge found that Google had used exclusive distribution contracts to maintain an illegal monopoly in general search engines. In ruling on how to remedy that monopoly, the judge rejected the most extreme proposals from the Justice Department and plaintiff states, which included banning Google from paying for search distribution at all and forcing Google to sell its Chrome browser. Instead, the judge more narrowly prohibited exclusive distribution deals and mandated limited data sharing with Google’s search
rivals. Google is seeking to halt the data sharing and search syndication remedies while the appeal is pending, according to its motion filed last month. The Justice Department filed last week to oppose that motion. The judge has not yet issued a ruling on the stay.
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