Washington’s antitrust investigations into big tech are probably years away from finishing. But already Facebook, at least, appears to be getting hit by a “regulatory tax” of at least $160 billion—on its stock price.

The social networking giant is trading at the lowest valuation, relative to its earnings growth rate, of the four big tech firms facing antitrust scrutiny ...

Last July, at a SoftBank conference in Tokyo, CEO Masayoshi Son brought on stage Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the founder of Indian startup Paytm. Son described Paytm as the “uncontested No. 1” payment service in India. SoftBank had invested $1.4 billion in the startup, helping to fuel India’s mobile payment boom a few years ago. 

But by the time Son singled out Sharma for ...

This week’s blockbuster revelations about the possible role of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince in the hacking of Jeff Bezos’ phone was a literal eye-popper of a story. It raised so many troubling questions about technology, politics and business. For me though, it was a moment for reflection on a tangential story: how differently the Amazon CEO’s purchase of the Washington ...

A wave of consolidation in the education technology market appears set to continue this year. 

K12 Inc., a publicly-traded education company, has agreed to acquire Galvanize, a provider of coding bootcamps and co-working spaces across eight locations in the U.S., for $165 million in cash, according to an email addressed to Galvanize shareholders that was viewed by The Information. The ...

This week we took a behind-the-scenes look at IPOs, and how companies try to get banks to become clients in order to win the account. Kevin Dugan and Priya explained the story of ZScaler, which tried to get a collection of customers in the banking syndicate that underwrites the IPO. It’s not an uncommon occurrence these days. And it raises questions about how the public can fairly judge ...

Silicon Valley has no shortage of companies promising to disrupt higher education with technology. The buzziest of them all may be Lambda School, a company that provides free coding courses in exchange for a cut of its students’ future incomes.

The online school has won a following among high-profile investors, who see Lambda as a way to help train a new generation of talent for the ...

In 2017, executives at the cloud security company Zscaler were interviewing bankers ahead of an initial public offering expected to value the company at more than $1.5 billion. During a meeting with bankers from Barclays, one of the dozen or so firms vying to underwrite the IPO, Zscaler’s chief financial officer Remo Canessa commented that he’d like the syndicate of underwriters to ...

Last week, Attorney General William Barr went on the offensive against the tech industry, scolding Apple for refusing to grant authorities access to phones used by the gunman in the deadly shooting at a Navy base in Pensacola, Florida, in December. The public confrontation over data privacy and security was Barr’s latest effort to challenge big tech companies, which are coming up against ...

Quibi CEO Meg Whitman lashed out against the media at an “all-hands” staff meeting last Thursday, drawing an analogy between reporters who cultivate sources and sexual predators who prey on underage victims, according to two people who heard her comments.

Whitman, a veteran tech executive who once ran for governor of California, made the comments while noting that someone had leaked ...

Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing is hoping a vastly overhauled management team can help it jumpstart growth.

The installation of a new executive team to its core ride-hailing business last month capped more than a year of management changes across the company, as Didi attempts to turn the corner from a growth slump sparked by the murder of two passengers in 2018. Aside from the new ...

Last fall, in Airbnb’s first major advertising campaign in more than two years, it portrayed hosts as regular homeowners happy to rent out a spare room and socialize with their guests. The message—that Airbnb helps foster a global community by bringing together travelers and locals—is one Airbnb has promoted since its earliest days.

While these so-called amateur hosts still ...

Next week, tech CEOs will trade their vests for furry hats and boots and trek to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Years ago, the trek was a sort of celebratory victory lap. With their businesses skyrocketing, executives from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Uber and Salesforce, to name a few, were rock stars. But amid privacy scandals and competition concerns, last year unfolded ...

We dove deep on the story of David Drummond at Google. The company’s chief legal officer recently announced he was retiring, following the lead of co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s decision to step aside, But his departure re-opened some old wounds with former partners at Google’s venture arm GV. Nick got the backstory on how Drummond and Page clashed with the CEO of ...

SoftBank’s Vision Fund made one of its largest U.S. venture investments last year in a Philadelphia-based startup that has developed a big following on college campuses for its deliveries of junk food, alcohol and other convenience store items.

The Vision Fund led a $750 million investment in goPuff last August, two people familiar with the matter said, and kept an option to invest an ...

When Alphabet’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, announced his retirement from the company last week, an executive who once ran the company’s main venture investment arm—now known as GV—issued an unusual public statement blasting Drummond. “We have very, very different ideas about how to treat people, and this was a long time coming,” said the executive, ...

Microsoft on Thursday unveiled a sweeping, 30-year plan to remove from the atmosphere all the carbon it has ever emitted, effectively eliminating its global carbon footprint. The plan appears likely to raise the stakes for other big tech companies that haven’t set goals anywhere near as ambitious.

By 2025, Microsoft says, it will shift to using only renewable energy to power its ...

Once high-flying tech companies like WeWork and Magic Leap have been shedding employees. Others are struggling to fundraise. Following a reckoning in the public markets in 2019, 2020 isn't likely to be kind to tech companies that have been burning through cash and haven't found a way to turn a profit. 

With that in mind, we assembled a list of companies that our reporting ...