tci fund management the activist hedge fund helmed by uk billionaire christopher hohn touted a massive stake in googleparent alphabet on tuesday as he called on the company to cut costs by reducing its headcount and paying workers less becoming the latest highprofile investor slamming the formerly highflying tech sector amid broader market weakness in a tuesday letter addressed to alphabet ceo sundar pichai hohn urged company management to take aggressive action to combat costs he called too high saying the firm has too many employees and is spending too much on individual compensation packages nearly all technology companies are reducing costs hohn said pointing to metas 13 headcount reduction last week amazon reportedly cutting 10000 jobs and layoffs by stripe twitter salesforce and microsoft hohn acknowledged alphabets strong revenue growth of 6 last quarter but lamented its fastergrowing expenses which grew 18 year over year saying there is no justification for alphabets outsized compensation which is among the highest in silicon valley at a median of 296000 last year—67 higher than microsoft in a monday filing tci reported ownership of more than 68 million alphabet shares representing about 1 of total shares outstanding and worth about 6 billion on tuesday hohn said tci has been a significant shareholder since 2017 and that the stake reflects a strong conviction in alphabets future hohn also said alphabet should increase share buybacks using its 116 billion in cash on hand and reduce losses from its venture capital and private equity division—dubbed other bets—which includes selfdriving firm waymo and thermostatmaker nest shares of alphabet which did not immediately respond to forbes request for comment have plummeted 31 this year even worse than the techheavy nasdaqs 28 decline 79 billion thats how much 56yearold hohn is worth according to forbes estimates the son of a jamaican car mechanic hohn founded londonbased tci in 2003 after stints in consulting and private equity and at hedge fund perry capital global economies have started to slow down as central banks including the federal reserve work to combat inflation by tempering consumer demand with higher interest rates recent earnings reports have started to reflect the pressures—particularly in the technology industry hohns letter first reported by the wall street journal comes less than two weeks after alphabet released earnings that failed to meet analyst expectations with youtube ad revenue falling 2 to 71 billion despite projections calling for a 3 increase meanwhile meta shares sank more than 10 following the facebook parent’s earnings release last month—just days after an investor with more than 300 million worth of shares urged the company to further slash expenses by laying off employees the company has since laid off 11000 workers according to a bank of america survey released tuesday fund managers have allocated the smallest share of their portfolios to technology stocks since 2006 recession fears hit new high even as inflation slows—heres what fund managers predict for 2023 forbes