Apple has quietly acquired a startup, Silk Labs, that specializes in making artificial intelligence software lightweight enough to fit onto consumer hardware like cameras, another sign of its growing ambitions around AI and smart home devices.

The acquisition, which hasn’t been reported before, occurred earlier this year, according to a person briefed on the transaction. The deal was ...

Ctrip.com, China’s biggest travel and hotel booking website, is getting pummeled by investors. After forecasting earlier this month that profits could fall to zero next quarter and warning it couldn’t predict next year because of the slowing pace of economic growth amid a trade war, shares of the New York–listed stock fell 19%. It now trades at about half its 52-week high, ...

Companies that manage open-source software have a message for cloud computing providers like Amazon: pay up, share your code or stop using our technology for free.

The tension stems from the fact that cloud providers like Amazon Web Services are increasingly relying on open-source software—which is generally available to use free of charge, with the expectation that companies will ...

Until a few months ago, Snap’s board meetings could be tense affairs. Benchmark partner Mitch Lasky, a Snap director until August, on occasion would challenge CEO Evan Spiegel about the company’s failure to meet Wall Street expectations for user growth and profits. Mr. Spiegel, who spends most board meetings looking at his phone and messaging people on Snapchat, was dismissive of ...

Since President Donald Trump was elected, Trump and tech news have been entwined. The role tech companies played in spreading misinformation during his campaign—and the ensuring regulatory hearings, Presidential tweets and the like—have joined tech companies to the political news cycle in unprecedented ways.

So perhaps it is no surprise that the effect Trump has had on political ...

Instagram notified some users of a new security flaw that could have inadvertently exposed their passwords to public view, raising questions among security researchers about the effectiveness of Instagram’s security measures.

The security flaw was tied, ironically, to a tool Instagram introduced in April to let users see how much of their personal data the site had collected. ...

Google's cloud computing chief Diane Greene is leaving the company amid growing tensions with other senior Google executives and after the company failed to make meaningful progress in one of its most important new businesses.

Although Google has struggled to gain market share from Amazon in the cloud business, Ms. Greene’s departure was still abrupt and somewhat surprising. Since ...

AT&T, fresh off its acquisition of Time Warner, is gearing up for what could be a series of bloody battles with rival media giants, as it seeks to cut programming costs at its DirecTV satellite and streaming video division. The outcome could affect the shape of the TV industry for years to come.

Several major media companies, including Fox, CBS and Viacom, have programming agreements with ...

The next few weeks are shaping up to be pivotal for Lyft and how its IPO will be received. A detailed review of the company’s results for the three quarters to Sept. 30, based on confidential data made available to The Information, confirms a steady improvement in key expenses such as marketing and insurance.

That is helping lift key profit indicators such as its gross profit margin, ...

Happy Wednesday. Bitcoin Cash, the cryptocurrency network that spun off from Bitcoin last year, plans to upgrade its software this week, but as is the norm in crypto, the proposal to improve Bitcoin Cash has been met with an equal and opposite reaction. Disagreements within the technical community about how many transactions miners should process in each block mean that Bitcoin Cash, the ...

The enormous profits Apple generates from its iPhone business are legendary. Even though they account for less than 20% of all smartphone shipments, iPhones capture 87% of the entire market's profits, according to estimates from Canaccord Genuity.

But what’s less understood is that as iPhones have increased in hardware complexity, the gross profit margins on Apple smartphones have ...

Vacasa became the largest vacation rental management company in North America this year, operating homes in beach and mountain towns. Now, backed by more than $200 million from tech investors on the road to a potential public offering, Vacasa wants to move into the big city.

Vacasa see an opportunity in managing tourist lodgings in city apartment buildings that might attract both business ...

Patreon has become known in the online media industry as the place to go if you want to send your favorite podcaster or musician a few dollars a month in exchange for extra content or access to exclusive chats. But the company has much bigger ambitions. It wants to offer creators a variety of services for creators, such as loans, so they can build their businesses. Think of Shopify, which ...

Despite a number of high-profile Chinese startups listing in Hong Kong this year, the U.S. still provides a compelling market for initial public offerings because of its more sophisticated investors, several Chinese entrepreneurs and investors said Monday during an onstage interview at The Information’s Subscriber Summit in Hong Kong.

Annabelle Yu Long, head of German publisher ...

Uber Eats’ food deliveries in the Asia-Pacific region have quadrupled in the past half-year, propelled by India, a company executive said.

“We are growing fast everywhere. We are growing exponentially more quickly in India,” Nikki Neuburger, the global head of marketing for Uber’s food delivery business, said Monday in an onstage interview at The Information’s ...

The idea that social networking and messaging platforms could be used to launch and distribute new cryptocurrencies has been widely discussed in technology circles in the last few years. But what about ride-sharing companies—and in particular Uber?

You could argue that Uber might be better positioned than the social networking players to launch a successful cryptocurrency. While this is ...

Thursday was one of my favorite days of the year. Twice a year, we gather media professionals to talk about, well, the future of media. It’s a program based on the bootcamp we run for the media companies we invest in—condensed to eight grueling hours of talking about subscription funnels, analytics packages and where this crazy business is heading.

This time around software ...

At first glance, the small Walmart store in the New York suburb of Levittown seems unexceptional, but hovering above the aisles of water bottles, pet food and cookies are clues to an important technology experiment the giant retailer is conducting.

A halo of cameras hangs above shelves throughout the store, the sheer number of which—roughly 100 devices in each of eight ...