Facebook has canceled its annual marketing conference in San Francisco, and IBM announced it is pulling out of the cybersecurity-focused RSA Conference 2020, also in San Francisco, amid concerns over the spread of the new coronavirus.
Facebook was scheduled to host about 5,000 attendees from around the world at the Global Marketing Summit on March 9-12, but canceled the event on Feb. 14.
"Out of an abundance of caution, we canceled our Global Marketing Summit due to evolving public health risks related to coronavirus," a spokesperson for the company said in a statement to Recode.
The same day as Facebook's announcement, IBM confirmed it would not send any representatives to San Francisco for the annual RSA Conference, local CBS affiliate KPIX-TV reported. The tech giant also cited in its statement concerns over COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus from China.
The RSA Conference is still scheduled to be held Feb. 24-28, with about 42,000 people reportedly expected to attend. In a statement on its site, the conference's organizers said they are monitoring developments related to the coronavirus and shared that six of nine Chinese companies originally scheduled to exhibit at the conference have canceled their participation due to travel restrictions.
The updates to both conferences came shortly after the Barcelona-based Mobile World Congress, one of the largest tech trade shows in the world, was canceled after participants including Amazon, Facebook, Sony and Intel dropped out.
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