The Information

Newsletters

The Weekend
Live from SF, It’s Tech Week
June 3, 2023
Pro Weekly
Pro Weekly: Generative AI Spurs Cloud Demand—and Competition
June 2, 2023
The Briefing
Let The Mixed-Reality Headset Games Begin
June 1, 2023
Creator Economy
How Social Media AI Chatbots Compare
June 1, 2023
Dealmaker
Google, Nvidia and Microsoft Offer What VCs Can’t
June 1, 2023
The Electric
The Electric: Congress’ Move on Permitting Reform Leaves Industry Wanting More
June 1, 2023
Crypto Global
MoonPay Is Trying to Reinvent Itself
May 31, 2023

Partners

Briefings

Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino to Start Monday
June 4, 2023
Second Twitter Safety Executive Resigns
June 2, 2023
Executive Order on Outbound Investment Will be ‘Narrow’ and ‘Administrable'
June 2, 2023
Amazon in Talks to Offer Cheap or Free Mobile Plans to Prime Members
June 2, 2023
California Assembly Passes News Bill Opposed by Meta
June 1, 2023
Ella Irwin, Twitter’s Head Trust and Safety, Resigns
June 1, 2023
SentinelOne’s Shares Plunge 35%
June 1, 2023
MongoDB Reports Strong Customer Growth, Hikes Sales Forecast
June 1, 2023
SpaceX Wins Pentagon Contract for Ukraine
June 1, 2023
Trian Chief Investment Officer and Co-Founder Ed Garden to Step Down
June 1, 2023
Meta Calls Employees Back to Office Three Days a Week
June 1, 2023
Okta Shares Plummet After CEO Acknowledges Sales ‘Uncertainty'
June 1, 2023
Microsoft Signs Deal With Cloud Startup for Access to GPUs
June 1, 2023
Meta Announces Quest 3 Ahead of Apple Headset Debut
June 1, 2023
Verizon Packages Netflix and Paramount+ Together in New Streaming Bundle
June 1, 2023

Subscriber comments

Yutaka Okura

on Google Invests in AI Startup Runway to Wrest Cloud Business From AWS

Google used to always aim high - like B-HUG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) as they call it internally. But their recent investment looks like just following social technical trend, rather than setting the trend. I would like them to regain dynamism of leading the society, further investing in moonshot type of activities such as they used to do it at GoogleX.

Carsten Schmidt

Carsten Schmidt

on TikTok Is Not the Enemy

While TikTok is certainly shady, there hasn’t been any clear evidence that shows they are guilty. I think the government owes it to the people to provide clear evidence of this being a clear security threat before banning a service.

Ivan Bou

on Musk Tells Tesla Staff He Must Approve All Hiring—Again

Carly Fiorina and Mark Hurd did the same at HP for many years. It kept creating a situation where sales people would love and territories would stay open for months and months because approvals took forever. When you don't trust people to manage to a budget and then use use blunt instruments to massage numbers to quarterly targets, this is what you do.

Andrew Hopkins

on Scared of Leaking Data to ChatGPT? Microsoft Tests a Private Alternative

Controlling the data feeding "private models" is part of the problem though. The more data you can feed a "private model", the more likely you are to derive value from it... but, how do you control access to data that could be sensitive or regulated? You have to control the output as well.

Jason Geater

on Silicon Valley’s Realtors, Like Its Bankers, Are Having a Tough Month

Shows just how much free money has artificially inflated assets prices (into the stratosphere) in the most highly-levered asset class. Exacerbate the issue by making said loans against fantasy VC valuations sounds like a recipe for success: ‘This founder has liquidity issues, but they have a billion in founder stock.…We’re going to ascribe value to that and give them a loan. We’re not like the boring banks who need a salary" This will certainly end well when all of the "unicorn" founder borrowers start defaulting on their mega-mansions.

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.

Latest Articles

Adam D'Angelo photograph by Ko Sasaki. Art by Clark Miller

The 1:1

Adam D’Angelo’s Endless Quest to Answer Everything

By Arielle Pardes · June 3, 2023 6:00 AM PDT · 1 comment

Adam D’Angelo is basking in an “endless summer” of artificial intelligence. A few weeks before he and 350 industry peers released a bizarre, one-line statement warning that AI could herald a...

Image: Adam D'Angelo photograph by Ko Sasaki. Art by Clark Miller

Tarlon Khoubyari (center) takes a photo of an onstage presentation at “Not a Boring Tech Party” on Thursday in the Mission District. It was a launch party for events company AfterWork, which is creating AI tools for party planners. Photograph by Laura Morton for The Information

What Doom Loop? A Six-Day Tech Party Tries to Shift the Vibes in San Francisco

By Erin Woo · June 3, 2023 6:00 AM PDT · 3 comments

Thousands converged on San Francisco this week for a 200-event “SF Tech Week” extravaganza that attempted to answer the question: Wait, isn’t every week tech week in San Francisco? The six-day roving party, which officially ends Sunday evening, was organized by Andreessen Horowitz, the famed and flashy venture capital firm... Thousands converged on San Francisco this week for a 200-event “SF Tech Week”...

startups venture capital

SoftBank’s Onetime Pizza-Robot Darling Shuts Down

By Erin Woo · June 2, 2023 4:37 PM PDT · 15 comments

Zume, which raised $375 million from SoftBank to automate pizza-making with robots before switching to developing sustainable packaging, has shut down. The company is insolvent and has retained restructuring firm Sherwood Partners to liquidate the assets for the benefit of the creditors, an alternative to bankruptcy, according to Martin... Zume, which raised $375 million from SoftBank to automate pizza-making with robots before...

Emad Mostaque, Vitalik Buterin and Grimes in the waters of Montenegro. Photo-illustration by Clark Miller.

Scene and Heard

The Hullabaloo of Zuzalu: Inside the Secret Pop-up City of Vitalik Buterin’s Dreams

By Margaux MacColl · June 2, 2023 9:24 AM PDT · 3 comments

Until it reached its planned obsolescence last week, the mythical city of Zuzalu was an intellectual wonderland. Days at Zuzalu began shortly after dawn at the edge of the Adriatic Sea. In the pursuit of an infinite life, Zuzalans (as they self-identify) enjoyed submerging themselves in the frigid waters of Montenegro at 8 a.m.—and again... Until it reached its planned obsolescence last week, the mythical city of Zuzalu was an...

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Photo: Getty.

Microsoft Is Charging Some Office 365 Customers 40% Extra to Test AI Features

By Aaron Holmes · June 2, 2023 6:00 AM PDT · 1 comment

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Photo: Getty.

Microsoft Is Charging Some Office 365 Customers 40% Extra to Test AI Features

By Aaron Holmes · June 2, 2023 6:00 AM PDT · 1 comment

Microsoft and other software companies that recently launched artificial intelligence features now face the hard part: getting customers to pay for the features, which are costly to operate. More than 600 of Microsoft’s largest customers, including Bank of America, Walmart, Ford and Accenture, are expected to test the AI features in... Microsoft and other software companies that recently launched artificial intelligence features...

Instacart CEO Fidji Simo. Photo by Getty.

startups Finance

Growth Wanes at Instacart, Gopuff

By Cory Weinberg · June 1, 2023 3:36 PM PDT

Grocery upstarts Instacart and Gopuff haven’t been able to deliver two things at once this year: growth and profits. Privately held Instacart posted a 2% decline in the number of grocery orders it facilitated in the first quarter compared with the same period last year, according to people familiar with the matter. The number,... Grocery upstarts Instacart and Gopuff haven’t been able to deliver two things at once this...

Photo by Getty

Meta Calls Employees Back to Office Three Days a Week

By Sylvia Varnham O'Regan · June 1, 2023 2:56 PM PDT

Meta Platforms has notified employees they will need to return to the office three days a week starting in September, according to a person familiar with the matter. The announcement, which has not been previously reported, marks the strictest policy change from the company since it embraced remote work during the pandemic. While tech companies... Meta Platforms has notified employees they will need to return to the office three days a week...

Introducing The Information’s Generative AI Database

By Kalley Huang · June 1, 2023 9:54 AM PDT

OpenAI’s ChatGPT launched six months ago, igniting a boom in generative artificial intelligence. Since then, all manner of startups have emerged, building technology to compete with ChatGPT and developing services that use generative AI. Despite an otherwise cool funding environment, investors are jockeying to join the action. The most... OpenAI’s ChatGPT launched six months ago, igniting a boom in generative artificial...

Art by Clark Miller.

The Next Twitter Is Just Thousands of Smaller Twitters

By Ryan Broderick · June 1, 2023 9:00 AM PDT · 7 comments

Art by Clark Miller.

The Next Twitter Is Just Thousands of Smaller Twitters

By Ryan Broderick · June 1, 2023 9:00 AM PDT · 7 comments

One of the biggest open-ended questions in the tech world is whether Twitter is truly dying—and if it is, what will replace it. Last December, I argued that whatever came next might feel like Twitter in certain ways, but that ultimately there was probably no way to recapture the lightning in a bottle that was the infamous bird site. Six... One of the biggest open-ended questions in the tech world is whether Twitter is truly...

Apple CEO Tim Cook and Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon. Photos by Bloomberg.

‘A Total Nightmare’: Transfer Delays With New Apple-Goldman Savings Accounts Prompt Complaints

By Lauren Tara LaCapra · June 1, 2023 8:14 AM PDT

When Kevin Smyth learned in April that Goldman Sachs and Apple were offering a savings account with higher yields than anyone else, he jumped at the chance to shift money that was earning less at another online bank. But within a few weeks, when he had to withdraw a small portion of the funds to pay for a home renovation, everything went awry. A... When Kevin Smyth learned in April that Goldman Sachs and Apple were offering a savings account...

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Photo by Bloomberg

semiconductors ai

Why Nvidia Aids Cloud Rivals of AWS, Google and Microsoft

By Anissa Gardizy · June 1, 2023 6:00 AM PDT · 2 comments

Nvidia’s business of selling chips for artificial intelligence is going gangbusters, but the company faces a looming problem. Its biggest customers—cloud providers including Microsoft, Google and Amazon—are making their own AI chips to reduce their reliance on Nvidia. In response, Nvidia is helping two upstart cloud providers... Nvidia’s business of selling chips for artificial intelligence is going gangbusters, but...

Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Photo: Bloomberg.

startups google

Google Invests in AI Startup Runway to Wrest Cloud Business From AWS

By Kate Clark, Jon Victor, Amir Efrati and Erin Woo · May 31, 2023 2:47 PM PDT · 1 comment

Google is investing in Runway, a New York–based startup that lets customers generate video from text descriptions using artificial intelligence it pioneered, at a valuation of around $1.5 billion including the new capital, according to two people familiar with the matter. The investment, part of a roughly $100 million funding round,... Google is investing in Runway, a New York–based startup that lets customers generate video...

Tim Cook. Photo by Bloomberg

Apple’s Learning Curve: How Headset’s Design Caused Production Challenges

By Wayne Ma · May 31, 2023 6:00 AM PDT · 8 comments

Tim Cook. Photo by Bloomberg

Apple’s Learning Curve: How Headset’s Design Caused Production Challenges

By Wayne Ma · May 31, 2023 6:00 AM PDT · 8 comments

If Apple unveils its long-awaited mixed-reality headset next week as expected, it will represent the company’s riskiest gamble on a new product since the iPhone. It will also test the company’s prowess in design and manufacturing like nothing before. The headset is the most complicated hardware product Apple has ever created due to... If Apple unveils its long-awaited mixed-reality headset next week as expected, it will represent...

Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson. Photo by Bloomberg.

enterprise Finance

Twilio, Set to Lose Supervoting Protection Next Month, Has Been Meeting With Activist

By Maria Heeter · May 30, 2023 1:43 PM PDT · 2 comments

Activist investor Legion Partners, which owns a stake in Twilio, has met several times with the company’s board of directors and management, urging them to make changes to the board and consider divestitures, among other moves, according to people familiar with the matter. The conversations come at a critical moment for the $11.5 billion... Activist investor Legion Partners, which owns a stake in Twilio, has met several times with the...

Art by Clark Miller.

startups crypto

MoonPay CEO, Other Executives Cashed Out Before Crypto Business Dropped

By Aidan Ryan · May 30, 2023 11:03 AM PDT · 4 comments

In November 2021, just as crypto prices were hitting all-time highs, MoonPay—a crypto payments startup that celebrities including Jimmy Fallon and Paris Hilton had praised for its non-fungible token “concierge” service—announced it had completed its first ever outside fundraising: an eye-popping $555 million round at a... In November 2021, just as crypto prices were hitting all-time highs, MoonPay—a crypto...

Art by Clark Miller, Shutterstock (4)

Don’t Count the Metaverse Out

By Brittan Heller · May 30, 2023 9:00 AM PDT · 9 comments

The technology hype cycle would have us believe that the metaverse—so recently the darling of digital trendsetters—is on the decline, its place usurped by generative artificial intelligence. Yet this narrative, while superficially attractive, is a fiction. The truth is that emerging technologies are part of a synergistic ecosystem.... The technology hype cycle would have us believe that the metaverse—so recently the darling...

Illustration via Shutterstock.

What Deals Drought? Founders Without Backing Are Still Selling Their Businesses

By Rachel Graf · May 30, 2023 8:00 AM PDT

Illustration via Shutterstock.

startups Finance

What Deals Drought? Founders Without Backing Are Still Selling Their Businesses

By Rachel Graf · May 30, 2023 8:00 AM PDT

Merger and acquisition activity has been anemic for more than a year, with buyers and sellers often far apart on price after valuations have taken a beating. But one corner of the M&A market has held up much better than others during the doldrums: the sale of companies owned by a founder with neither venture capital nor private equity... Merger and acquisition activity has been anemic for more than a year, with buyers and sellers...

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew. Photo by Bloomberg.

asia entertainment

TikTok CEO Expands Purview to Include ByteDance’s New App Lemon8

By Juro Osawa · May 30, 2023 5:59 AM PDT

The Singapore-based CEO of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, is getting a bigger job. TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, is putting its newer social media app, Lemon8, under Chew’s supervision, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. The move appears to reflect ByteDance’s strategy of locating the heads of its... The Singapore-based CEO of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, is getting a bigger job. TikTok’s Chinese...

Art by Clark Miller

How to Grease a Chatbot: E-Commerce Companies Seek a Backdoor Into AI Responses

By Chris Stokel-Walker · May 27, 2023 6:00 AM PDT · 6 comments

When Andy Wilson’s company received its first successful client referral through ChatGPT, he was shaken to his core. The founder and CEO of Logikcull, a San Francisco–based legal technology company, Wilson “had the exact same reaction to ChatGPT as I had to the internet browser in the early ’90s,” he said.... When Andy Wilson’s company received its first successful client referral through ChatGPT,...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Photo by Bloomberg.

Twitter Cut Key Software Before DeSantis Audio Glitch

By Kevin McLaughlin and Erin Woo · May 26, 2023 2:12 PM PDT · 11 comments

On Wednesday night, Twitter experienced multiple outages during a high-profile live audio forum on the app in which Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis launched his presidential campaign. While the specific reason for the flub couldn’t be learned, the company several weeks ago stopped paying for special software that handles high-traffic... On Wednesday night, Twitter experienced multiple outages during a high-profile live audio forum...

Art by Clark Miller.

The Day TikTok Went Dark in India

By Amanda Florian · May 26, 2023 11:00 AM PDT · 8 comments

Art by Clark Miller.

The Day TikTok Went Dark in India

By Amanda Florian · May 26, 2023 11:00 AM PDT · 8 comments

On June 29, 2020, as thunderstorms swept Mumbai and daily Covid-19 cases in India surged by almost 20,000, millions of people began experiencing a flood of network errors on their mobile devices. TikTok—and nearly 60 other Chinese apps—had been driven offline in the world’s largest democracy. A sweeping government crackdown on... On June 29, 2020, as thunderstorms swept Mumbai and daily Covid-19 cases in India surged by...