One of the big questions facing Walt Disney Co. as it prepares to launch its Disney+ streaming app is how aggressively will it retreat from selling TV shows and movies to other networks and streaming services, in favor of keeping everything on its own outlets. If recent signals from the company are any guide, Disney is going all in on its own apps.

New details learned by The Information ...

Not long before former Amazon executive Adam Selipsky joined Tableau Software as its chief executive in 2016, the Seattle-based software company’s stock had lost half its value in a single day on worries that Microsoft was preparing to eat its lunch with a cheaper product.  

Investors got another scare after Mr. Selipsky took over when he told them Tableau—which makes tools for ...

Ucommune, WeWork’s biggest rival in China, is seeking a $3 billion valuation for a New York listing this year, as China’s economic slowdown makes it harder for many startups to raise money.

Ucommune has hired investment banks Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase to work on an initial public offering in Nasdaq as early as the third quarter of this year, according to a person with direct ...

General Motors’ autonomous vehicle subsidiary Cruise has always lived in the shadow of Alphabet’s Waymo unit, which was first to launch a robotaxi service late last year. But under new CEO Dan Ammann, who was president of GM until a month ago, Cruise is hoping to prove it can be among the first to build a robotaxi business in a dense urban center, starting this year.

The 46-year-old ...

As U.S. companies grow more concerned about efforts by Chinese firms to obtain their intellectual property, all eyes are on Huawei Technologies, which the U.S. government recently accused of stealing trade secrets. New reporting by The Information sheds light on Huawei’s tactics, which often have been aimed at one of the company’s chief competitors, Apple.

Take Huawei’s ...

As those of you stuck in traffic in San Francisco this week or still gawking at your Uber surcharges can attest, it was a big week for non-Bay Area companies descending on our shores. IBM hosted its annual developer THINK conference while Goldman Sachs hosted its annual Internet company conference a few blocks away. I attended parts of both events and spoke to a range of executives and ...

In the battle to sign up consumers for low-priced streaming versions of cable TV, the streaming-only internet companies appear to be gaining on the traditional media firms.

The two biggest firms in the market, Dish Network’s Sling TV and AT&T’s DirecTV Now, each posted anemic growth for the December quarter. That followed several quarters of slowing growth for both. In ...

A proposal by four satellite operators to sell wireless spectrum critical for new 5G technologies has run into opposition from Google and cable companies such as Charter Communications. The opponents complain the plan would let the satellite firms sell the spectrum privately, thereby allowing them to shape the competitive landscape for next generation wireless services.  

Instead, ...

A few years ago, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the storied venture capital firm known for blockbuster bets on Amazon and Google, was in a funk. The firm had lost some of its luster by missing out on early investments in social media, while its reputation was battered by a sexual discrimination lawsuit filed by a former partner.

To lead a turnaround, Kleiner in 2017 recruited Mamoon ...

Kubernetes, a tool that Google engineers created in 2014 to manage applications running across large numbers of machines, is becoming a kind of standard in enterprise computing, powering everything from mobile banking to smart home applications. Now the question is how much further Kubernetes can go.

“I do think [Kubernetes] is capable of running almost any kind of workload,” Jason ...

Everybody paid attention in October when the SEC settled cases with two crypto companies found to have violated securities laws, putting the industry on notice that most tokens were going to be treated as securities. But months later, those companies have yet to register their tokens with the SEC, raising the question of when (or if) their investors will get the refunds they are owed.

The ...

As several of the big entertainment companies move toward the launch of Netflix-like video streaming services, the big questions for investors are how big a business will they build—and how much money will they lose along the way.

To get a sense of that, we dug into some numbers. Consider this: To cover what we estimate could be the programming costs for its new Disney+ streaming service, ...

Movie studio MGM Holdings is looking for a strategic partner for its Epix cable channel, to help grow the business and gain access to more programming  and distribution, according to two people familiar with the situation. The search comes less than two years after MGM paid nearly a billion dollars for control of Epix.

MGM Chairman Kevin Ulrich is working informally with boutique ...

Thomas Cute, a former bus driver, will be among the first to take a ride this spring in Providence, R.I.’s new, self-driving shuttle. He and other local bus drivers will survey how the small, driverless bus makes its way from the downtown train station, over the Woonasquatucket River, to a neighborhood where few public buses currently run. But one question that’s likely to be on ...

If you study the history of news, one thing becomes very clear: we are not living through as extraordinary a period in the history of news as some people think.

Time and time again, over hundreds of years, the same pattern has played out. There is a period where a small group of elites pay enormous amounts of money for the quality information they need to operate. Then the information business ...

As we approach the mid-point of 2019’s first quarter, the startup funding environment remains promising, many investors say. After all, multibillion-dollar funds such as Sequoia’s still have plenty to invest even after last year’s record pace. Nearly $131 billion in venture capital was deployed in private companies worldwide in 2018, industry data shows, beating the previous ...

In late December Erik Torenberg and I sat down to talk about the future of human capital and the long history of Income Share Agreements. I am glad we delayed releasing this episode, because the last few months have only made the topic of ISAs more relevant.  

Lambda School’s much-discussed January series B financing, and several other startups have brought the topic more and more ...

This week, I asked three venture capitalists to describe what kind of startups have been hitting them up for funding lately. They each said something similar: “startups? These days, we see more pitches from new funds who want us to invest in them.”

For those of you who don’t follow venture capital closely, the boom of the last several years has attracted a flood of capital and ...