For the past year, venture firm Social Capital has been decimated by high-level departures and investor complaints about the firm’s founder, Chamath Palihapitiya, and his unpredictable and unilateral decision making.

Now, in an exclusive interview in which Mr. Palihapitiya questioned the very nature of startup funding, he made clear he doesn’t care about investor complaints. ...

Two of the biggest tech stories this year have been the use of social media platforms to spread political misinformation, and the rise of blockchain technology. Now, the two themes are colliding, as new forms of blockchain-based social media threaten to disrupt the foundation on which many existing platforms were built.

What role will blockchain, with its potential to provide uncensorable ...

The high-profile electric scooter wars have been waged on the ground in cities worldwide, as nearly a dozen companies including Bird, Lime, Lyft and Uber vie for two-wheel supremacy. Out of public view, the battles also are being fought by air and sea, as scooter operators scramble to purchase the vehicles from Asia to meet surging demand.

Some companies have resorted to sending high-price jets ...

Chinese discount shopping app Pinduoduo has grown explosively to challenge the country’s biggest ecommerce giants, Alibaba and JD.com, paving the way for the company to go public in the U.S. in July. But new data suggests Pinduoduo’s growth in transactions has slowed in the past four months, throwing into question whether the group-buying app’s viral spread will continue.

The ...

Facebook is stepping up its investments in augmented reality, seeking to hire engineers to work on custom silicon chips for devices that enable the technology.  

In at least four job listings posted in recent days, a research group inside the company called Facebook Reality Labs advertised engineering positions requiring expertise in the design of custom chips, which it said are ...

Executives at Google Cloud have said they are willing to meet large customers “where they are”—marketing-speak for their openness to extending Google cloud services into the private data centers of customers. As an example, Google in July announced a version of its Kubernetes software, which is used to manage large numbers of applications and servers, that runs in ...

When Instacart raised money at a $4.35 billion valuation in April, it marked a 28% step up from its previous valuation of $3.4 billion. That was surprising: Instacart raised the round as it was facing tougher competition from Amazon.com’s introduction of same-day Whole Foods grocery deliveries. It turns out, though, that investors weren’t as bullish as the valuation increase ...

The Food and Drug Administration has long been at war with academic scientists about whether a compound used in water bottles and thousands of other products called bisphenol A is safe. For a decade, the agency has dismissed hundreds of academic studies showing potential harm caused by BPA, as it is known, instead citing studies sponsored by the plastics industry.

But for the past six years, ...

A wave of new chips designed to run artificial intelligence software will soon be hitting the market. Device makers are waiting to use them in products like cameras that can identify images faster, and cloud computing providers want them to give their services a technical edge. First though, the companies have to figure out which chips perform the best.

That’s why some of the biggest ...

It has been a strong year for tech IPOs, with high-profile firms including Spotify and DocuSign soaring well above their initial prices on the public markets.

In Apple’s iOS App Store in China, videogames such as “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,” “Modern Combat 5” and “The Walking Dead” are for sale. Those games aren’t supposed to be available in the country. They lack approvals from regulators, a prerequisite every game needs before it can be released in China, where games are heavily censored like ...

Dear Subscriber,

Can somebody please check on Ethereum? The smart-contract network’s market cap has plummeted from a high of more than $138 billion in January to below $18 billion as of today. Exacerbating the decline is the fact that Ethereum was the engine for 2017’s ICO mania, which seems to have dissipated: ICO fundraising in August was at its lowest level in 16 months, ...

The once-hot ride-hailing business is cooling down—just as the two biggest players are thinking about going public.

Revenue growth rates for the U.S. ride-hailing businesses of Uber and Lyft slowed this summer to their lowest point in years, according to research firm Second Measure, which tracks credit and debit card transactions. Growth in the number of rides also slowed, particularly ...

Shortly after Marc Lore joined Walmart, an employee asked the company’s new U.S. ecommerce chief at an all-hands meeting if there were any books he read for inspiration. Mr. Lore replied that he wasn’t much of a reader, preferring instead to spend his time thinking, said one current Walmart employee who saw the presentation and another who heard about it from colleagues. ...

Artificial intelligence startup Sentient Technologies seemed to have hit paydirt three years ago when it landed customers such as shoe retailer Zappos and shoe maker  Skechers for its software, which uses AI algorithms to recommend products to shoppers. But in the past year Sentient has stumbled in efforts to diversify into advertising and agriculture. And lately the company, whose ...

When Dimitri Sirota approached investors two years ago to raise a seed round for his new company, BigID, many were dismissive of the idea behind the startup, which creates technology that helps companies find what personal data they have collected from customers and get recommendations on how to secure it. In the meetings, some of the venture capitalists fiddled with their phones, while others ...

TV shows have been produced the same way for decades. But in its quest to revolutionize how people watch TV, Netflix is revolutionizing how TV shows are made.

Take the popular show “Dear White People,” which debuted last year. After creator Justin Simien made his pitch about the show—based on the movie of the same name—Netflix executives ordered 10 episodes. A typical TV ...

The proliferation of Uber, Airbnb and now electric scooters has prompted city councils and mayors’ offices around the country to impose rules on how the companies can operate. But as the restrictions mount, city officials are running up against a conundrum: Tech’s urban disruptors are diminishing cities’ authority in some places by seeking approval from states.

Airbnb recently ...