iWorld
Zia Mansoor joins Unravel Data’s board of directors
Mumbai: Unravel Data, which is a DataOps observability platform built to meet the needs of modern data teams, today announced that Zia Mansoor has joined the company’s board of directors. Mansoor currently serves as Microsoft VP of data, AI. He has extensive expertise in go-to-market strategy and providing product and solution leadership across operational databases, analytics, AI/machine learning, data governance, and business intelligence solutions.
“We are excited to welcome Mansoor to our board. He’s had tremendous success enabling customers to build efficient and scalable solutions while instilling a strong data culture within organisations. His appointment reflects our strong relationship with M12, Microsoft’s venture fund, a key investor in Unravel. We look forward to working together as Unravel continues to help organisations efficiently deliver data outcomes and effectively control skyrocketing cloud compute and storage costs,” said Unravel Data CEO Kunal Agarwal.
He has held various positions at Microsoft for the last 15 years. Prior to his current role of leading worldwide data and AI commercial business, he led Microsoft Canada’s largest team of technical professionals as vice president of customer success. He has helped numerous organisations accelerate their journey to the cloud and realise potential across all Microsoft commercial solution areas, including modern workplace, Azure (app development and infrastructure, data and AI), business applications, and security.
“I am excited to work with Unravel Data, which has proven itself to be a fast-growing data observability company. Alongside my fellow advisors, I look forward to helping drive innovation in its data operations solutions. I have long admired the team, their work, and how they are leveraging AI to meet the growing opportunities for the modern data stack,” he said.
Founded by Kunal Agarwal and Dr. Shivnath Babu, Unravel Data understands that the exponential growth of data combined with the broad adoption of the public cloud requires an entirely new way to manage and optimise the data pipelines that support the real-time analytics needs of today’s data-driven enterprises. Numerous Fortune 100 companies, including two of the top five global pharmaceutical companies and three of the top 10 financial institutions in the world, rely on Unravel Data to gain unprecedented visibility across their data stacks, proactively troubleshoot and optimise their data workloads, and define guardrails to govern costs and improve predictability. Customers who have deployed Unravel have been able to double productivity of data teams and ensure data applications run on time, while scaling costs efficiently in the cloud.
iWorld
Meta plans 8,000 layoffs in new AI-led restructuring wave
First phase from May 20 may cut 10 per cent workforce amid AI pivot.
MUMBAI: At Meta, the future may be artificial but the cuts are very real. The social media giant is reportedly preparing a fresh round of layoffs, with an initial wave expected to impact around 8,000 employees as it doubles down on its artificial intelligence ambitions. According to a Reuters report, the first phase of job cuts is slated to begin on May 20, targeting roughly 10 per cent of Meta’s global workforce. With nearly 79,000 employees on its rolls as of December 31, the move marks one of the company’s most significant workforce reductions in recent years.
And this may only be the beginning. Sources indicate that additional layoffs are being planned for the second half of the year, although the scale and timing remain fluid, likely to be shaped by how Meta’s AI capabilities evolve in the coming months. Earlier reports had suggested that total cuts in 2026 could reach 20 per cent or more of its workforce.
The restructuring comes as chief executive Mark Zuckerberg continues to steer the company towards an AI-first operating model, committing hundreds of billions of dollars to the transition. Internally, this shift is already visible: teams within Reality Labs have been reorganised, engineers have been moved into a newly formed Applied AI unit, and a Meta Small Business division has been created to align with broader structural changes.
The trend is hardly isolated. Across the tech sector, companies are trimming headcount while investing aggressively in automation. Amazon, for instance, has reportedly cut around 30,000 corporate roles nearly 10 per cent of its white-collar workforce citing efficiency gains driven by AI. Data from Layoffs.fyi shows over 73,000 tech employees have already lost jobs this year, compared with 153,000 in all of 2024.
For Meta, the move echoes its earlier “year of efficiency” in 2022–23, when about 21,000 roles were eliminated amid slowing growth and market pressures. This time, however, the backdrop is different. The company is financially stronger, generating over $200 billion in revenue and $60 billion in profit last year, with shares up 3.68 per cent year-to-date though still below last summer’s peak.
That contrast underlines the shift underway. These layoffs are less about survival and more about reinvention. As Meta restructures itself around AI from autonomous coding agents to advanced machine learning systems, the question is no longer whether the company will change, but how many roles will be left unchanged when it does.
