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March 25, 2023
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March 24, 2023
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March 23, 2023
Creator Economy
TikTok CEO Keeps His Cool, But Scores Few Points
March 23, 2023
Dealmaker
The Coming Wave of Cram Downs
March 23, 2023
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The Best and Worst Time for Coinbase
March 22, 2023

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Twitter Valued at $20 Billion in New Employee Stock Grant
March 25, 2023
Amazon Starts Latest Round of 9,000 Layoffs
March 24, 2023
Nasdaq to Launch Crypto Custody Service By End of June
March 24, 2023
Taking Aim at OpenAI, Databricks Releases ‘Dolly’ Language Model
March 24, 2023
UK Says Microsoft’s Activision Bid Won’t Harm Console Market, Dealing Blow to Sony
March 24, 2023
Heated Reaction in China to TikTok CEO’s U.S. Testimony
March 23, 2023
Utah Passes Bills to Restrict Minors’ Social Media Use
March 23, 2023
U.S. Prosecutors Charge Do Kwon with Fraud after Arrest in Montenegro
March 23, 2023
Mysten Labs to Buy Back Investment From FTX for $96 Million
March 23, 2023
Slack’s Sales Chief Departing Salesforce Next Month
March 23, 2023
Apple to Spend $1 Billion Per Year on Movies to Release in Theaters
March 23, 2023
TikTok CEO Stresses App’s Separation from China
March 23, 2023
Block Shares Crash 20% After Short Seller Alleges Fraud
March 23, 2023
Virgin Orbit Nears $200 Million Funding Deal
March 22, 2023

Subscriber comments

Amber Hayes

on LinkedIn Faces Growing Complaints From Recruiters Over Rising Prices

Amber Hayes VP of recruiting, HR Operations and Mobility - Unity Technologies Totally agree. Their product has not improved, and prices continue to rise, significantly. We have partnered with seekout as the continued cost increases with LinkedIn are not sustainable in the long term.

Anshu Sharma

on Twitter Cuts Salesforce Bill 75% as More Buyers Scrutinize Software Spending

The $400 per year sounds like a lot for Slack. But when your employees each fully loaded cost is close to $250,000 - it’s a rounding error, especially if it makes them even 1% more productive.

Abed Agha

on What Creators on Meta Should Learn from News Publishers on Meta

I think the situation with publishers and creators differs for the following reasons: Creators are the users themselves and as the creator economy grows, so will the number of creators. I suspect the line that draws a distinction between a "creator" and a "user" will get very blurry in the future. In this context, ignoring creator demands = ignoring users; and this will inevitably lead to the decline of such platforms who do this. Equitability between platforms and creators is an important pillar to the advertising-led creator economy and so far YouTube is the only platform that has done it right and baked it in their business model. Meta already scaled their business model outside of creators, so sharing revenue with creators will cannibalize their existing revenue. TikTok should do it while they are still early in their monetization journey.

Arthur P. Johnson

Arthur P. Johnson

on At Patreon, Mismanagement Thwarts a Pandemic-Era Star

Excellent reporting by Paris Martineau, who plainly did not leave a rock unturned. This is such a sad state of affairs, as quite a number of my most cherished creators rely almost entirely on their Patreon-using supporters (including me!) to put food on their respective tables. I personally plan to investigate funding alternatives for each creator I support.

Joy Randels

on Okta Chief Revenue Officer Departs Amid Sales Shakeup

One of the biggest obstacles to overcome in an acquisition is integration. Whether it is technology, people, or processes, it is both an art and science to make an acquisition fully successful.

Syed Ashrafulla

Syed Ashrafulla

on The Best Little Unicorn in Texas: Jasper Was Winning the AI Race—Then ChatGPT Blew Up the Whole Game

Great story on how non-technical founders found a business fit for a platform technology. I don't think OpenAI can hold all (or many) of the verticals while keeping the horizontal ahead, so it makes sense that companies like Jasper will rise with the tide of conversational AI rather than drown in that tide. In the end, we as consumers need the engineering AND the product.

Claire Enders

on Musk May Have Found a Hardcore Leader for Twitter

It’s surprising that any leader gets a kick out of bilking employees, suppliers and almost everyone they might have a legal contract with. Simply because of Musk’s misjudgement on acquiring the company for $44 billion on a whim. Nothing like this Twitter situation would be allowed in the EU.

Latest Articles

Elon Musk. Photo by Bloomberg.

Musk Puts $20 Billion Value on Twitter

By Erin Woo and Martin Peers · March 25, 2023 4:45 PM PDT · 3 comments

Elon Musk offered Twitter employees stock grants at a valuation of roughly $20 billion, said a person familiar with an email Musk sent to staff, less than half what he paid to buy the company. It was a concrete...

Image: Elon Musk. Photo by Bloomberg.

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From left, Jamie Xie (Christian Vierig/Getty Images), Alexis Cuban, Phoebe Gates and Eve Jobs (Edward Berthelot/Getty Images). Art by Clark Miller.

The Wunderkind Issue

Their Last Names Are Gates, Jobs, Xie and Cuban. Their Brands Are Still Loading

By Annie Goldsmith · March 3, 2023 9:00 AM PST

The 6-second video (caption: “When dad gets the #boxball for Christmas”) seems like standard TikTok fare. Posted on December 26, it features a white-haired man in glasses punching at a red ball. The ball is attached to the man’s forehead by a bungee cord. The man keeps trying to jab the target, but like a cat... The 6-second video (caption: “When dad gets the #boxball for Christmas”)...

Art by Clark Miller; all photos courtesy of the schools and programs.

The Wunderkind Issue

So You Want to Raise a Wunderkind: The Tech Parent’s Guide to Alt Education

By Diana Kapp · March 3, 2023 9:00 AM PST · 3 comments

Brothers Navid and Nadeem Nathoo are on a quest to create “unicorn people.” That is, young people who want to learn about nanotechnology, blockchain, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence and more, and who welcome questions with no possible solutions. “We want to get kids comfortable with ambiguity,” said Navid. And... Brothers Navid and Nadeem Nathoo are on a quest to create “unicorn people.” That is,...

A customer holds a Shein bag outside Shein's Tokyo showroom. Photo by Bloomberg.

e-commerce google

Shein Had Informal Talks With U.S. Tech Giants About Potential Investment

By Juro Osawa and Shai Oster · March 3, 2023 6:00 AM PST · 1 comment

Shein, the online fashion giant that started in China, recently had an interesting pitch for both Amazon and Google. As it considered buying more advertising on Google properties and more cloud time on either Amazon or Google, Shein executives wondered whether either company might be interested in buying a stake in it, people familiar with the... Shein, the online fashion giant that started in China, recently had an interesting pitch for both...

Art via Shutterstock.

Disney’s Hulu Deal Ain’t Over Till It’s Over

By Andrew A. Rosen · March 2, 2023 9:00 AM PST · 1 comment

Art via Shutterstock.

entertainment media/telecom

Disney’s Hulu Deal Ain’t Over Till It’s Over

By Andrew A. Rosen · March 2, 2023 9:00 AM PST · 1 comment

Sign up for Rosen’s newsletter, Parqor, part of The Information’s newsletter network. Among many newsmaking statements during his debut earnings season as Disney’s recently returned CEO, Robert Iger declared that “everything is on the table” concerning the Hulu-Disney relationship. Over the years, Disney has... Sign up for Rosen’s newsletter, Parqor, part of The Information’s newsletter...

Art by Clark Miller.

NFT Wars: How a Zero-Fee Upstart Is Roiling Big Marketplaces Like OpenSea

By Akash Pasricha · March 2, 2023 6:00 AM PST · 2 comments

Revenue has evaporated nearly overnight at non-fungible token marketplaces like OpenSea, thanks to a fierce price war that’s sent many NFT trading fees tumbling to zero. Now it’s a waiting game to see who can survive the drought. Blur, a marketplace that has no transaction fees, started picking up steam in October and eclipsed... Revenue has evaporated nearly overnight at non-fungible token marketplaces like OpenSea, thanks...

A Waymo prototype robotaxi in San Francisco. Credit: Waymo

Alphabet’s Robotaxi Unit Waymo Says it Laid Off 8%

By Jon Victor · March 1, 2023 8:37 AM PST

Alphabet’s robotaxi developer Waymo laid off 137 employees on Wednesday, its second round of cuts this year as the parent company reins in spending across its subsidiaries. The layoffs mean around 8% of Waymo employees, or 209 employees, have been cut this year, Waymo’s co-CEOs told staff in an internal email viewed by The... Alphabet’s robotaxi developer Waymo laid off 137 employees on Wednesday, its second round...

Shou Zi Chew, CEO of TikTok. Photo by Bloomberg

TikTok’s U.S. Survival Plan Faces Potential Hurdle: Apple’s App Store Rules

By Juro Osawa · March 1, 2023 7:32 AM PST · 3 comments

TikTok faces a new potential hurdle to overcoming national security concerns in the U.S.: Apple and Google. TikTok, the popular video app owned by Chinese internet giant ByteDance, has begun talks with Apple and Google to ensure its proposed data security plan doesn’t get derailed by their app store rules, according to a person with direct... TikTok faces a new potential hurdle to overcoming national security concerns in the U.S.: Apple...

The People Who Matter at Microsoft as it Deepens Pact with OpenAI

By Kevin McLaughlin and Aaron Holmes · March 1, 2023 6:00 AM PST

The People Who Matter at Microsoft as it Deepens Pact with OpenAI

By Kevin McLaughlin and Aaron Holmes · March 1, 2023 6:00 AM PST

Bill Gates is back at Microsoft—at least on the company’s internal organizational chart, if not as an employee. Although Gates recently said he is a part-time adviser, the co-founder’s inclusion in the above chart of more than 160 top managers is among the most striking of roughly 100 changes we’ve made since our... Bill Gates is back at Microsoft—at least on the company’s internal organizational...

Patrick Collison, CEO and co-founder of Stripe, left, and John Collison, president and co-founder of Stripe. Photo by Bloomberg.

Stripe Cuts Valuation to $50 Billion After Facing Fundraising Hurdles

By Maria Heeter and Cory Weinberg · Feb. 28, 2023 4:43 PM PST · 5 comments

Stripe has cut the valuation for its multi-billion-dollar fundraising by about 10% to around $50 billion, according to two people familiar with the situation, underlining the challenges that Stripe has faced in completing the fundraising. While Stripe is still expected to complete the funding round, it is now setting the per-share price at about... Stripe has cut the valuation for its multi-billion-dollar fundraising by about 10% to around $50...

Subscriber Survey

The Information Subscribers Are Upbeat About Tech After a Brutal 2022

By Scott Thurm · Feb. 28, 2023 10:00 AM PST · 2 comments

Readers of The Information are generally optimistic about the outlook for technology companies this year after a brutal 2022 marked by slowing growth, shrinking profits, widespread layoffs and plunging stock prices. That result emerges from a survey conducted in early February, which also found that readers are familiar with generative... Readers of The Information are generally optimistic about the outlook for technology companies...

Art by Clark Miller.

Even Busts Can Be Good for Tech

By Margaret O'Mara · Feb. 28, 2023 9:00 AM PST · 2 comments

These days, big tech CEOs are sounding like grizzled sea captains battening down the hatches for a macroeconomic storm. “This next year or two, the economy is going to test the long-term resolve of a lot of companies,” Amazon’s Andy Jassy noted in late November. “Our operational focus over the next few years is going to... These days, big tech CEOs are sounding like grizzled sea captains battening down the hatches for...

Photo by Getty. Art by Mike Sullivan

Facing Weak Demand for Its Pricey Solar Roof, Tesla Plans Changes

By Becky Peterson · Feb. 28, 2023 6:00 AM PST

Photo by Getty. Art by Mike Sullivan

electric vehicles

Facing Weak Demand for Its Pricey Solar Roof, Tesla Plans Changes

By Becky Peterson · Feb. 28, 2023 6:00 AM PST

In 2016, Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled one of the innovative products for which he’s become famous: roof tiles that incorporate solar panels. The resulting solar roof, as Musk called it, would be beautiful, environmentally beneficial—and cheaper than a conventional roof with separate solar panels, he said. That summer, Musk published... In 2016, Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled one of the innovative products for which he’s become...

Twitter CEO Elon Musk. Art: Shane Burke/Photo: Bloomberg

Fighting ‘Woke AI,’ Musk Recruits Team to Develop OpenAI Rival

By Jon Victor and Jessica E. Lessin · Feb. 27, 2023 4:32 PM PST · 4 comments

Elon Musk has approached artificial intelligence researchers in recent weeks about forming a new research lab to develop an alternative to ChatGPT, the high-profile chatbot made by the startup OpenAI, according to two people with direct knowledge of the effort and a third person briefed on the conversations. In recent months Musk has repeatedly... Elon Musk has approached artificial intelligence researchers in recent weeks about forming a new...

Gemini founders Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss. Photo by Getty.

How Crypto’s Costly Payments Problems Surfaced at Gemini

By Aidan Ryan · Feb. 27, 2023 9:05 AM PST

Crypto was supposed to revolutionize payments. But crypto firms are still getting tripped up with old-school banking problems. Gemini, the crypto exchange founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, offers a case study in how quickly things can go wrong. The crypto exchange saw a surge in fraud when it launched a crypto rewards credit card last... Crypto was supposed to revolutionize payments. But crypto firms are still getting tripped up with...

Photo by Bloomberg.

markets startups

Why Stripe Is Cheaper Than Adyen

By Cory Weinberg · Feb. 27, 2023 6:00 AM PST · 8 comments

Stripe has been blessed with a few big advantages over its Netherlands-based digital payments rival, Adyen. Stripe serves smaller businesses, allowing it to take a bigger cut of each sale. The vast majority of its customers are in the U.S., a more lucrative market than that of the European-centric Adyen. The result has been faster growth for... Stripe has been blessed with a few big advantages over its Netherlands-based digital payments...

Esther Crawford. Photo: Robert Cowherd

Elon Musk’s Twitter Lays Off Top Lieutenant in Charge of Twitter Blue

By Erin Woo and Kevin McLaughlin · Feb. 26, 2023 2:44 PM PST

Esther Crawford. Photo: Robert Cowherd

Elon Musk’s Twitter Lays Off Top Lieutenant in Charge of Twitter Blue

By Erin Woo and Kevin McLaughlin · Feb. 26, 2023 2:44 PM PST

As Elon Musk has driven cost cuts even deeper into Twitter, he’s shown even the most loyal lieutenants aren’t immune from the scalpel. Among those laid off in one of the biggest rounds of job cuts since Musk’s late October takeover was Esther Crawford, a product director at Twitter who rose to prominence early in Musk’s... As Elon Musk has driven cost cuts even deeper into Twitter, he’s shown even the most loyal...

Elon Musk in San Francisco on Jan. 24, 2023. Photo: Bloomberg.

Twitter Lays Off at Least 50 in Relentless Cost Cuts

By Erin Woo · Feb. 25, 2023 10:39 PM PST

Elon Musk’s Twitter laid off dozens of employees Saturday in what is at least the eighth round of job cuts since Musk took over the social network in late October. The cuts aim to offset a plunge in revenue following Musk’s takeover and further whittle down a staff that had shrunk by at least 70% to roughly 2,000. ... Elon Musk’s Twitter laid off dozens of employees Saturday in what is at least the...

Art by Mike Sullivan

Screentime: The TikTok Creator Bringing Comedy to Venture Capital

By Arielle Pardes · Feb. 25, 2023 8:44 AM PST

Rashad Assir has many faces: He’s a venture capitalist with no idea what he’s doing. (“My thesis? I don’t know. I’m trying to make money.”) He’s a Gen Z colleague trying out new jargon. He’s a CEO, making a return-to-office plea. And he’s an annoying co-worker who just took up improv. Assir... Rashad Assir has many faces: He’s a venture capitalist with no idea what he’s doing....

Stripe CEO and co-founder Patrick Collison. Photo by Getty.

markets startups

Stripe’s Search for Billions Nears an End, But It Hasn’t Been Easy

By Maria Heeter, Cory Weinberg and Kate Clark · Feb. 24, 2023 1:04 PM PST · 4 comments

A place on Stripe’s roster of investors was once one of the most exclusive and highly coveted seats in tech. To raise the billions of dollars it now needs, Stripe has had to open the door very wide—and even then not everyone has rushed in. Stripe is close to lining up investment commitments for the $4 billion fundraising in a deal... A place on Stripe’s roster of investors was once one of the most exclusive and highly...

Illustration by Clark Miller

‘This Fight Is Much Bigger Than Yelp Versus Google’: Antitrust Crusader Luther Lowe Is Enjoying the Moment

By Adam Lashinsky · Feb. 24, 2023 1:00 PM PST

Illustration by Clark Miller

‘This Fight Is Much Bigger Than Yelp Versus Google’: Antitrust Crusader Luther Lowe Is Enjoying the Moment

By Adam Lashinsky · Feb. 24, 2023 1:00 PM PST

Here’s something you don’t hear every day: “I'm a little bit jealous of my friends who are working inside government.” Such is the rosy outlook of Luther Lowe, the 40-year-old senior vice president for public policy at Yelp, as he assesses the state of antitrust reform in Washington these days. Speaking over Zoom the... Here’s something you don’t hear every day: “I'm a little bit jealous of my...