Latest news with #CZI
Business Insider
7 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
How the informal sector in Zimbabwe has become a 'critical risk'
A recent report indicates that Zimbabwe's economy is fueled by the informal sector, with more than three-quarters of all economic activity taking place outside of established legal frameworks. Zimbabwe's economy predominantly operates within the informal sector, comprising over 75% of economic activity. This trend arises from decades of economic issues, such as job shortages, inflation, and currency instability. The informal sector provides livelihoods but contributes minimally to government revenue due to tax non-compliance. This is according to the results of the country's first economic census, which present a striking picture of how pervasive the informal economy has become. Informal businesses in the Southern African country have now 'increasingly become a significant source of livelihoods, its contribution to government revenue remains minimal due to non-compliance with the formal tax system,' the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency said in a report released on Wednesday. According to the country's most prevalent industry body, the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, the situation poses a "critical risk" to the country's economy. 'Formal businesses are being squeezed,' MacDonald Mutengo, CZI's lead research officer, said at the event. 'Companies are not making profits, they are highly regulated.' The informal sector's expansion is mostly a reaction to the loss of official job prospects brought on by decades of economic mismanagement, hyperinflation, and periodic currency depreciations, as seen on Bloomberg. According to the economic census, which surveyed over 204,798 businesses, wholesale and retail trade accounts for 73% of the informal economy's activity. Manufacturing trailed behind at 8%. Bulawayo has the largest concentration of formal enterprises among Zimbabwe's provinces, at 40%, significantly outpacing other areas where the formal sector make up less than 30% of the local market. The growth of the informal sector in other African markets This trend is not exclusive to Zimbabwe, as Kenya faces a similar situation. Based on a 2024 report by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), the informal sector employs 83.6% of the workforce, or approximately 17.4 million people. Notably, the informal sector created 703,700 new jobs, accounting for 90% of all new employment outside of small-scale agriculture. In Nigeria, the informal sector is also dominant.
Time of India
21-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Mark Zuckerberg's wife Priscilla Chan reveals what AI researchers value more than big salaries
Priscilla Chan, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg 's wife, recently revealed her secret recruiting pitch to lure top talent. Chan is co-founder of the nonprofit organisation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). Speaking on the Core Memory podcast hosted by Ashlee Vance, she said that while tech companies continue to offer massive compensation packages, CZI is focused on providing researchers with the tools they need instead. 'The other thing researchers really care about is access to GPUs. You're not going to make the most of someone if you don't actually have the GPUs for them to work from,' Priscilla Chan said. Her comments come as Meta's Superintelligence Labs keeps hiring top AI talent with eight-figure salaries and a goal of managing 1.3 million GPUs by the end of 2025. During the podcast, she revealed that the organization now has about 1,000 advanced GPUs and plans to add more so that scientists can pursue cutting-edge work—even if the nonprofit can't match tech industry salaries. Chan revealed that CZI has shifted its priorities to what she called a 'science-first philanthropy,' with major efforts focused on biomedical discovery. The nonprofit, she said, continues to build advanced infrastructure to support research, aiming to make scientific breakthroughs more accessible. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Swelling and internal bleeding in the brain, help this baby Donate For Health Donate Now Undo Chan emphasized that while they can't match Big Tech's paychecks, CZI hopes to offer the next best thing: top-tier computing power dedicated to science. 'Come work with us because we're going to have the computing power to support the research that you want to do,' Chan tells candidates. She added, 'Pay is obviously important, yet we cannot compete with tech companies on this.' Mark Zuckerberg on techies joining Meta for big salaries Recently, Mark Zuckerberg dismissed the idea that top AI researchers are joining Meta only for the massive paychecks, revealing that the major factor drawing towards them is the unmatched compute power autonomy. In an interview with The Information, Zuckerberg emphasised that the unparalleled compute power and the unique opportunity to build "superintelligence' are the reasons why AI researchers are joining the company. Recently, we witnessed an aggressive recruitment drive from Meta, with some reports citing offers in the hundreds of millions of dollars to poach AI talent from Apple, OpenAI and Google DeepMind. These figures and rapid hiring made by Meta fuelled speculation of an unprecedented talent war, where financial gains reign supreme. Google Pixel 10 Series Launch: Everything Coming on August 20 AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
Business Insider
20-07-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Priscilla Chan's recruiting pitch? We can't pay as well as tech companies, but we've got GPUs
Compute power is a big draw for top talent, but not just in the world of AI. Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg's wife and the cofounder of the couple's philanthropic organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, spoke about the appeal of massive GPU clusters for biology researchers during a recent episode of Ashlee Vance's "Core Memory" podcast. "The other thing researchers really care about is access to GPUs," she said. "You're not going to make the most of someone if you don't actually have the GPUs for them to work from." Chan said, "We have that at CZI," adding that the organization has roughly 1,000 GPUs in its cluster, with plans to keep growing. In short, Chan said the pitch is: "Come work with us because we're going to have the computing power to support the research that you want to do." Another important factor is compensation, which she said is "obviously important," though she added that "we cannot compete with tech companies on this." CZI has in recent years narrowed its mission to focus on its "next phase" with a "bolder, clearer identity as a science-first philanthropy." The change marks a strategic shift, as the organization previously also supported education and other causes. "While CZI remains committed to our work in education and our local communities, we recognize that science is where our biggest investments and bets have been and will be made moving forward," Chan, a pediatrician by training, wrote in a memo to staff last year. Zuckerberg made a similar point about the importance of GPUs in recruiting on a recent episode of The Information's TITV show. Meta is spending billions to build an AI division it calls Superintelligence Labs. "Historically, when I was recruiting people to different parts of the company, people are like, 'Okay, what's my scope going to be?'" the Meta CEO said. "Here, people say, 'I want the fewest number of people reporting to me and the most GPUs.'" Meta, of course, has significantly more GPUs than CZI. Zuckerberg has said the company will have 1.3 million GPUs for AI by the end of 2025. "Having basically the most compute per researcher is definitely a strategic advantage, not just for doing the work but for attracting the best people," he said.
Sydney Morning Herald
30-06-2025
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
The Zuckerbergs stopped funding social causes – 400 children lost their school
Nearly 90 per cent of the Primary School's roughly 400 students in preschool to year 8 identify as Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, black or multiracial. At its separate preschool across San Francisco Bay, 98 per cent of families have incomes that would qualify for state-subsidised tuition at a conventional school that charged fees. Many families will likely turn to the local public school district, Ravenswood, which closed two schools around the time the Primary School was launched. At a board meeting late last month, the district's assistant superintendent of finance, William Eger, said it would face 'long-term financial pressure' because of the closure, despite CZI's commitment to cover the cost of educating any students from the Primary School until 2031. To address the shortfall after that, the district is considering turning one of its campuses into housing. CZI declined to make Chan available for an interview. 'We're hopeful that the most successful elements of the school's model will become accessible to more students and families through integration with the Ravenswood City School District, building on its strong foundation in health programming and parent engagement,' communications director Jane Packer said in an emailed statement. CZI has promised a parting gift totalling $US50 million ($76.5 million) to the community. Parents were told students wouldreceive $US1000 to $US10,000 for their future education based on age, and the school district received $US26.5 million in grant funds last month. The district declined to comment for this article. 'We're very proud of the work we've done at the Primary School over the past decade, and of what our children and families have achieved,' Carson Cook, a spokesperson for the Primary School, said in an email. Shannon Todd, a parent who has been with the school since it opened, said its closure would be difficult for her family, whose three children attend the school. It provided disability testing, coaching and helped navigating healthcare, said Todd, who has unsuccessfully pushed for Chan to meet with families. 'For her to come into our community and give us the hopes of a better future for our kids, and now just pull the plug like that is not fair for these kids,' she said. Dream school East Palo Alto is a neighbour to wealthy Silicon Valley towns like Palo Alto, where the children of employees at Google and Meta, as Zuckerberg's company is now called, can receive top-rated public education for free. Because of historical redlining, residents of East Palo Alto are mostly lower-income families of colour. Many struggle with the region's cost of living. The Primary School opened in 2016 with 40 students and a 'whole child' philosophy that offered free healthcare for students and families, plus coaching and mental health support for parents. 'It takes three to five years of consistent leadership for a school to really take off. The Primary School never had that.' Former Primary School administrator Chan, the daughter of refugees who fled Vietnam and settled in a low-income Boston neighbourhood, hoped to prove that access to good healthcare and schooling could help economically disadvantaged students achieve more. 'We are working toward a world where every child gets an education that gives them a fair shot,' she said in a 2019 speech. The East Palo Alto project was the billionaire couple's second major intervention in a city's education system, after a controversial 2011 gift of $US100 million to the Newark public schools. Some experts and community members have claimed that money was largely squandered. In 2017, a Harvard study funded by CZI found that by 2015, the growth rate of student achievement in English had significantly improved, but there had been no significant change in mathematics. Chan's partner on her new mission was education leader Meredith Liu, whom she hired from Boston's Codman Academy, a model for her project. 'People thought they were going to get the school of their dreams,' one former school administrator said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect her career. Current staffers at the Primary School were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements. In reality, the school met stumbling blocks. Two principals left in its early years, which three former school leaders said made it difficult to establish stability. The school tested innovative ideas but lacked some standard features found in many schools. It didn't have the special education system or disciplinary rules that are required of charter schools, the former administrator said. But students wore recording devices dubbed 'speech pedometers' so that software could analyse the speech patterns of children and the adults around them. The technology was designed by a non-profit to encourage staff to talk more with students in ways that studies suggest encourage brain and language development. 'It was beyond naivete,' the former administrator said. 'It was hubris.' In annual reports, the school credited the devices with helping staffers track and improve students' language development. In the Primary School's fourth year, the coronavirus pandemic brought disruption, especially to the school's literacy rates. Katherine Carter, a former public school administrator brought on in 2019 to assess the school's academic struggles, was surprised to find that staff did not use science-based methods to teach reading, according to a 2023 blog post on the school's website. 'It takes three to five years of consistent leadership for a school to really take off,' the former administrator said. 'And the Primary School never had that.' In 2023, Liu, Chan's co-founder and the school's president, died unexpectedly. The two were close, people familiar with the school and their relationship said. According to the former administrator, Liu 'was the visionary'. The tragedy cost the school its closest tie to Chan, who by then had stepped down as the board's chair. In recent years, she has been seen at the school infrequently, according to three people familiar with its operations. Another former administrator recalled that leaders of a similar school advised it might take 20 years for the Primary School to deliver the outcomes it sought. 'I remember hearing that and thinking, 'We don't need to be rushing … we just need to keep at it,'' the former staffer said, also speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of damaging her career prospects. The Primary School had been operating for only nine years when its board voted unanimously in April to close it because of the lack of funding. 'Any model that leans on one primary funder is not something I've felt was sustainable,' board chair Jean-Claude Brizard said in an interview with the Post, although he praised the school's work. Cook, the school's spokesperson, said in an emailed statement the focus on literacy made the percentage of students meeting or exceeding grade-level reading standards steadily increase. 'I don't think it was enough time,' the former administrator said. Wound down CZI's withdrawal from the Primary School came after a flurry of changes at the philanthropy in the early months of US President Donald Trump's second term. They included announcing lay-offs, abandoning diversity policies and pulling out of work on community, education and social issues. CZI had been founded alongside the start of the school project in 2015 as part of Chan and Zuckerberg's pledge to emulate Bill and Melinda Gates in giving away the majority of their wealth. The founding couple has led CZI even as Zuckerberg continues to serve as chief executive of Meta, possibly meaning their philanthropic ventures could complicate the company's relationship with politicians and regulators. In 2020, during Trump's first term, Zuckerberg touted CZI's work on racial equity after the death of George Floyd. Some employees saw the comments as tone-deaf and his philanthropic work as insufficiently ambitious, according to previous Post reporting as well as a person familiar with the matter. The same year, the couple gave $US400 million to help state and local governments run the pandemic election, but some Republicans called the donation 'Zuckerbucks' and claimed it was part of an alleged scheme to favour Democrats. Under the new Trump administration, some of CZI's established programs may appear out of step with moves by the White House to eradicate diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Shortly after the 2020 election, Zuckerberg and Chan began to pull CZI back from social issues. Its criminal justice reform work was spun off into a separate organisation. To insiders, it seemed part of a strategy to separate the CZI name from a sensitive political topic. 'People can promise stuff all day long. If nothing is legally binding, they're going to pull out, and we're going to be left with the fallout.' Kyle Brown, East Palo Alto resident and activist CZI stopped launching new racial and criminal justice equity programs, and its immigration work moved to an advocacy group that supports expanding immigration. After Trump's re-election last year, Zuckerberg reversed some of his previously stated positions on diversity and content moderation, ending Meta's fact-checking programs and many of its diversity initiatives. In parallel, more changes came to CZI, which laid off members of its community team that worked on affordable housing, supported local civil society groups and helped underrepresented entrepreneurs. Days after it publicly confirmed that the Primary School would close, it emerged that the philanthropy was also ending its statewide housing program, which studied housing policy and tried to spur production of affordable homes. 'As we've focused on science, we've wound down our social advocacy funding,' chief operating officer Marc Malandro wrote in a February email to CZI staff, in favour of 'pushing the frontiers of biology and AI'. In an emailed statement, Packer, CZI's director of communications, said the initiative was focused on 'building technology to help scientists unlock a deeper understanding of how the human body works,' which she said 'has been a core mission since our earliest days.' 'Tremendous impact' Gisselle Munoz, a 24-year-old mother who attended public school in Ravenswood, was excited to offer her three- and four-year-old children something better at the Primary School. In April, when parents were asked to attend an important meeting, she joined via Zoom and heard staff announce that the school would be closing. Some parents were so shocked and angry that they hung up, she said. The school's closure 'stresses me out', Munoz said. 'We have to find another school and start all over again.' At the meeting, a presentation stated that each family would be allocated a 'transition specialist' to help them choose a new school and detailed the education savings money students would receive: $US10,000 for elementary and middle school students, $US2500 for preschoolers and $1000 for younger children. 'We understand that this news has a tremendous impact on your family,' read a copy viewed by the Post. Some parents said in interviews that the money promised to their children felt insignificant compared with the costs ahead. Kyra Brown is a fourth-generation East Palo Alto resident and activist who has written about displacement and gentrification caused by the tech industry. She has long been sceptical of allowing the community to become dependent on billionaires like Zuckerberg. 'People can promise stuff all day long', Brown said, but 'if nothing is legally binding, they're going to pull out, and we're going to be left with the fallout'. When the political climate changed under Trump, Brown surmised, so did the Chan-Zuckerberg commitment to East Palo Alto.
The Age
30-06-2025
- Business
- The Age
The Zuckerbergs stopped funding social causes – 400 children lost their school
Nearly 90 per cent of the Primary School's roughly 400 students in preschool to year 8 identify as Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, black or multiracial. At its separate preschool across San Francisco Bay, 98 per cent of families have incomes that would qualify for state-subsidised tuition at a conventional school that charged fees. Many families will likely turn to the local public school district, Ravenswood, which closed two schools around the time the Primary School was launched. At a board meeting late last month, the district's assistant superintendent of finance, William Eger, said it would face 'long-term financial pressure' because of the closure, despite CZI's commitment to cover the cost of educating any students from the Primary School until 2031. To address the shortfall after that, the district is considering turning one of its campuses into housing. CZI declined to make Chan available for an interview. 'We're hopeful that the most successful elements of the school's model will become accessible to more students and families through integration with the Ravenswood City School District, building on its strong foundation in health programming and parent engagement,' communications director Jane Packer said in an emailed statement. CZI has promised a parting gift totalling $US50 million ($76.5 million) to the community. Parents were told students wouldreceive $US1000 to $US10,000 for their future education based on age, and the school district received $US26.5 million in grant funds last month. The district declined to comment for this article. 'We're very proud of the work we've done at the Primary School over the past decade, and of what our children and families have achieved,' Carson Cook, a spokesperson for the Primary School, said in an email. Shannon Todd, a parent who has been with the school since it opened, said its closure would be difficult for her family, whose three children attend the school. It provided disability testing, coaching and helped navigating healthcare, said Todd, who has unsuccessfully pushed for Chan to meet with families. 'For her to come into our community and give us the hopes of a better future for our kids, and now just pull the plug like that is not fair for these kids,' she said. Dream school East Palo Alto is a neighbour to wealthy Silicon Valley towns like Palo Alto, where the children of employees at Google and Meta, as Zuckerberg's company is now called, can receive top-rated public education for free. Because of historical redlining, residents of East Palo Alto are mostly lower-income families of colour. Many struggle with the region's cost of living. The Primary School opened in 2016 with 40 students and a 'whole child' philosophy that offered free healthcare for students and families, plus coaching and mental health support for parents. 'It takes three to five years of consistent leadership for a school to really take off. The Primary School never had that.' Former Primary School administrator Chan, the daughter of refugees who fled Vietnam and settled in a low-income Boston neighbourhood, hoped to prove that access to good healthcare and schooling could help economically disadvantaged students achieve more. 'We are working toward a world where every child gets an education that gives them a fair shot,' she said in a 2019 speech. The East Palo Alto project was the billionaire couple's second major intervention in a city's education system, after a controversial 2011 gift of $US100 million to the Newark public schools. Some experts and community members have claimed that money was largely squandered. In 2017, a Harvard study funded by CZI found that by 2015, the growth rate of student achievement in English had significantly improved, but there had been no significant change in mathematics. Chan's partner on her new mission was education leader Meredith Liu, whom she hired from Boston's Codman Academy, a model for her project. 'People thought they were going to get the school of their dreams,' one former school administrator said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect her career. Current staffers at the Primary School were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements. In reality, the school met stumbling blocks. Two principals left in its early years, which three former school leaders said made it difficult to establish stability. The school tested innovative ideas but lacked some standard features found in many schools. It didn't have the special education system or disciplinary rules that are required of charter schools, the former administrator said. But students wore recording devices dubbed 'speech pedometers' so that software could analyse the speech patterns of children and the adults around them. The technology was designed by a non-profit to encourage staff to talk more with students in ways that studies suggest encourage brain and language development. 'It was beyond naivete,' the former administrator said. 'It was hubris.' In annual reports, the school credited the devices with helping staffers track and improve students' language development. In the Primary School's fourth year, the coronavirus pandemic brought disruption, especially to the school's literacy rates. Katherine Carter, a former public school administrator brought on in 2019 to assess the school's academic struggles, was surprised to find that staff did not use science-based methods to teach reading, according to a 2023 blog post on the school's website. 'It takes three to five years of consistent leadership for a school to really take off,' the former administrator said. 'And the Primary School never had that.' In 2023, Liu, Chan's co-founder and the school's president, died unexpectedly. The two were close, people familiar with the school and their relationship said. According to the former administrator, Liu 'was the visionary'. The tragedy cost the school its closest tie to Chan, who by then had stepped down as the board's chair. In recent years, she has been seen at the school infrequently, according to three people familiar with its operations. Another former administrator recalled that leaders of a similar school advised it might take 20 years for the Primary School to deliver the outcomes it sought. 'I remember hearing that and thinking, 'We don't need to be rushing … we just need to keep at it,'' the former staffer said, also speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of damaging her career prospects. The Primary School had been operating for only nine years when its board voted unanimously in April to close it because of the lack of funding. 'Any model that leans on one primary funder is not something I've felt was sustainable,' board chair Jean-Claude Brizard said in an interview with the Post, although he praised the school's work. Cook, the school's spokesperson, said in an emailed statement the focus on literacy made the percentage of students meeting or exceeding grade-level reading standards steadily increase. 'I don't think it was enough time,' the former administrator said. Wound down CZI's withdrawal from the Primary School came after a flurry of changes at the philanthropy in the early months of US President Donald Trump's second term. They included announcing lay-offs, abandoning diversity policies and pulling out of work on community, education and social issues. CZI had been founded alongside the start of the school project in 2015 as part of Chan and Zuckerberg's pledge to emulate Bill and Melinda Gates in giving away the majority of their wealth. The founding couple has led CZI even as Zuckerberg continues to serve as chief executive of Meta, possibly meaning their philanthropic ventures could complicate the company's relationship with politicians and regulators. In 2020, during Trump's first term, Zuckerberg touted CZI's work on racial equity after the death of George Floyd. Some employees saw the comments as tone-deaf and his philanthropic work as insufficiently ambitious, according to previous Post reporting as well as a person familiar with the matter. The same year, the couple gave $US400 million to help state and local governments run the pandemic election, but some Republicans called the donation 'Zuckerbucks' and claimed it was part of an alleged scheme to favour Democrats. Under the new Trump administration, some of CZI's established programs may appear out of step with moves by the White House to eradicate diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Shortly after the 2020 election, Zuckerberg and Chan began to pull CZI back from social issues. Its criminal justice reform work was spun off into a separate organisation. To insiders, it seemed part of a strategy to separate the CZI name from a sensitive political topic. 'People can promise stuff all day long. If nothing is legally binding, they're going to pull out, and we're going to be left with the fallout.' Kyle Brown, East Palo Alto resident and activist CZI stopped launching new racial and criminal justice equity programs, and its immigration work moved to an advocacy group that supports expanding immigration. After Trump's re-election last year, Zuckerberg reversed some of his previously stated positions on diversity and content moderation, ending Meta's fact-checking programs and many of its diversity initiatives. In parallel, more changes came to CZI, which laid off members of its community team that worked on affordable housing, supported local civil society groups and helped underrepresented entrepreneurs. Days after it publicly confirmed that the Primary School would close, it emerged that the philanthropy was also ending its statewide housing program, which studied housing policy and tried to spur production of affordable homes. 'As we've focused on science, we've wound down our social advocacy funding,' chief operating officer Marc Malandro wrote in a February email to CZI staff, in favour of 'pushing the frontiers of biology and AI'. In an emailed statement, Packer, CZI's director of communications, said the initiative was focused on 'building technology to help scientists unlock a deeper understanding of how the human body works,' which she said 'has been a core mission since our earliest days.' 'Tremendous impact' Gisselle Munoz, a 24-year-old mother who attended public school in Ravenswood, was excited to offer her three- and four-year-old children something better at the Primary School. In April, when parents were asked to attend an important meeting, she joined via Zoom and heard staff announce that the school would be closing. Some parents were so shocked and angry that they hung up, she said. The school's closure 'stresses me out', Munoz said. 'We have to find another school and start all over again.' At the meeting, a presentation stated that each family would be allocated a 'transition specialist' to help them choose a new school and detailed the education savings money students would receive: $US10,000 for elementary and middle school students, $US2500 for preschoolers and $1000 for younger children. 'We understand that this news has a tremendous impact on your family,' read a copy viewed by the Post. Some parents said in interviews that the money promised to their children felt insignificant compared with the costs ahead. Kyra Brown is a fourth-generation East Palo Alto resident and activist who has written about displacement and gentrification caused by the tech industry. She has long been sceptical of allowing the community to become dependent on billionaires like Zuckerberg. 'People can promise stuff all day long', Brown said, but 'if nothing is legally binding, they're going to pull out, and we're going to be left with the fallout'. When the political climate changed under Trump, Brown surmised, so did the Chan-Zuckerberg commitment to East Palo Alto.
