Private investors have put a lot of faith in Wish becoming the online version of dollar stores, betting on huge growth for the ecommerce site and rewarding it with a valuation of about $8.5 billion. One possible hitch in those plans is that Wish’s new customers stop shopping at the site in fewer and fewer numbers within a few months of their first visits, according to new data.

On ...

I’m back in New York after a trip to San Francisco, where I attended the launch party for both this newsletter and Sam Lessin’s first picture book, “B Is for Bitcoin.” I’ll be keeping a copy on my desk as a trusty reference, replete with information on all the ABCs I need to know, from absolute algorithms to zero-knowledge proofs.

Thanks to everyone who came to the ...

Uber has been spending between $125 million and $200 million a quarter on its self-driving car unit over the past 18 months, The Information has learned, equivalent to between 15% and 30% of the company’s quarterly losses. The previously undisclosed spending highlights the financial burden that self-driving car development has imposed on Uber and why CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is under ...

Last month at a chip conference in San Francisco, the United States Department of Defense’s investment arm for emerging technologies kicked off a plan to make $1.5 billion in grants over the next five years to university researchers and companies, part of a plan aimed at boosting advanced chip production in the U.S.

Of the $75 million in initial grants by the Defense Advanced Research ...

As the old guard of enterprise software such as Microsoft and Oracle reinvented themselves for the cloud market in recent years, SAP took its time. Companies used its software for handling sensitive areas like supply chain management and finance, which made them reluctant to put it into the public cloud. But the German firm, the third largest enterprise software firm with a market ...

The introduction of autonomous features on cars has at its core a laudable goal: saving lives. But so far, there is a lack of independent data to judge whether the technology is working.

The federal agency charged with reducing injuries and fatalities on the road has taken steps to try to change that, encouraging states to include information on automated-driving technology in traffic-collision ...

Chinese tech giant Tencent became one of the world’s biggest videogame makers thanks to its 2011 acquisition of U.S. game studio Riot Games, maker of blockbuster “League of Legends.” But relations between the two companies have often resembled a war game, forcing Tencent to cut costly deals to keep Riot happy.

New details uncovered by The Information put a spotlight on how the ...

MoviePass’ effort to make a Netflix-like subscription service out of movie theater tickets has bled the company of cash in recent months. But while its future may be in doubt, the movie-ticket subscription concept it pioneered looks like it is here to stay.

Several theater chains, including AMC and Cinemark, in recent months have introduced subscriptions that give you access to multiple ...

In the U.S., Netflix and Amazon are locked in a heated battle for customers. In India, they have more than 40 other rivals to contend with. Companies ranging from Sony-owned Liv to local firms like Reliance Entertainment’s BigFlix are competing for online viewers. And that number is likely to grow, according to Datta Dave, the American-born co-founder of Tulsea, an Indian talent agency ...

Greetings!

I am thrilled to announce the first round of speakers for our fourth San Francisco Subscriber Summit. For those of you new to our community, this is our biggest event of the year in which I interview newsmakers we think our subscribers need to know better. We also host unique breakout sessions with entrepreneurs, investors and tech executives. I spend most of the year preparing for ...

The battle to win over viewers online may be reaching new levels of intensity. Comcast’s NBCUniversal is considering the launch of a streaming service that would pay people to watch it.

The tentative name for the service is Watch Back and it would feature episodes of TV shows and web series from NBCUniversal’s own TV networks—like NBC, USA and Bravo—as well as those from ...

The latest entrant in the overcrowded field of online news is a 37-year-old onetime investment banker from Japan, Yusuke Umeda, co-CEO of a financial data firm called Uzabase. What he lacks in name recognition, though, he makes up in ambition.

Last month Uzabase completed the purchase of Quartz, the business-oriented news site founded by the former owner of The Atlantic, David Bradley, for $75 ...

Elon Musk stunned investors on Tuesday by tweeting that he might take Tesla private, using SpaceX, his private space flight company, as a model for how to treat shareholders. If he succeeds, he may set a precedent for other public company CEOs who want the benefits of public ownership without the hindrance of public scrutiny.

It’s not well understood just how much SpaceX has created a new ...

Welcome to week two of The Information's new cryptocurrency newsletter. 

This week was big for institutional investment in crypto, with Goldman Sachs reportedly considering a custody product—and potentially clearing the way for more large funds to get into the sector. As a reminder, custody products make it possible for big funds to invest in crypto since there are limits on how ...

A few years ago, GoPro was grappling with an exasperating problem: Unknown sellers were offering stolen GoPro cameras on Amazon.com at a discount.

While the stolen items accounted for only a small percentage of GoPro’s total sales, the discounting created a domino effect as competitors tried to match the low price. Amazon would first cut its own price, then retailers like Best Buy and ...

When Udit Jain, a 21-year-old Yale University student, walked into a campus coffee lounge late one night in 2016, all he wanted was a strawberry, Greek-yogurt smoothie. He walked out with what became his first venture capital investment.

In the cafe, he ran into Kevin Tan, who was busy at a laptop writing code for an app he was building to alert students to timely restaurant deals around ...

Airbnb’s regulatory roller-coaster ride has taken new twists as the company enters its second decade. When the home rental site sent employees updates on its talks with local governments in June, it heralded positive momentum with politicians in two of its “toughest markets,” Barcelona and Berlin. It decried a “problematic” bill passed by the Pennsylvania House ...

Amazon and Google both tout voice shopping—the ability to make purchases and check on the status of orders with verbal commands—as significant features of their smart speakers. Some forecasts call for annual voice shopping sales to reach $40 billion in just a few years.

But it appears that only a small fraction of smart speaker owners use them to shop, and the few who do try it ...

In 2015, then-Uber CEO Travis Kalanick was under pressure. His beloved product, the food delivery service that was supposed to prove Uber could be more than a ride-hailing company, was struggling. To offer fast delivery, the company was buying a few kinds of prepared meals ahead of time and waiting for people to order them. Demand was inconsistent and difficult to forecast. Managers, led by ...