The Briefing by Martin Peers, Jessica E. Lessin and the team at The Information

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The Briefing

By Martin Peers, Jessica E. Lessin and the team at The Information

Get smarter about the day’s news in tech, media and finance by following Silicon Valley’s most-read executive newsletter.

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Recent Editions

An IT Giant Cuts Half of Its Security Incident Response Team After Automating ‘Grunt Work’

Special Report Series

An IT Giant Cuts Half of Its Security Incident Response Team After Automating ‘Grunt Work’

By Aaron Holmes · Aug 27, 2025 10:00am PDT

Cybersecurity executives have long bemoaned how hard it is to hire staff, citing a dearth of talent with the necessary experience to fill roles that are notoriously high-pressure and can burn people out. But recently, some of those executives have found a solution: Instead of hiring new security professionals, they’re turning to AI to help... Cybersecurity executives have long bemoaned how hard it is to hire staff, citing a dearth of...

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic. Photo via Getty

The Cult of Anthropic

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 27, 2025 7:00am PDT · 2 comments

Out of all the model developers, Anthropic stands out as perhaps the one with the most ideologically devoted employee base, one that some researchers even describe as “cultish.” The reasons may include CEO Dario Amodei’s monthly ”Dario Vision Quests” where he talks to employees about the future of AI (with more than slight religious overtones)... Out of all the model developers, Anthropic stands out as perhaps the one with the most...

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, left, and Vast Data CEO Renen Hallak. Photos via Getty

How Nvidia Anointed a Data Storage Startup as an AI Darling

By Kevin McLaughlin, Valida Pau and Anissa Gardizy · Aug 27, 2025 6:00am PDT · 1 comment

Nvidia reshaped the cloud computing market by giving upstart cloud providers a lot of artificial intelligence chips. Now it is extending its influence into another cloud field: data storage. Nvidia has invested multiple times in Vast Data, which sells software to firms such as Elon Musk’s xAI and videoconference maker Zoom for storing data in a... Nvidia reshaped the cloud computing market by giving upstart cloud providers a lot of artificial...

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Art by Clark Miller; image via Getty.

OpenAI Employee Stock Sale Could Rise to $8 billion

By Sri Muppidi · Aug 26, 2025 7:19pm PDT

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Art by Clark Miller; image via Getty.

OpenAI Employee Stock Sale Could Rise to $8 billion

By Sri Muppidi · Aug 26, 2025 7:19pm PDT

OpenAI’s plan to allow employees and former staff to sell $6 billion in private stock to investors was already slated to become one of the biggest such employee tenders in Silicon Valley history. Now, that sale could be even bigger. The ChatGPT maker will allow current and former employees to sell up to $8 billion at a valuation of... OpenAI’s plan to allow employees and former staff to sell $6 billion in private stock...

Tim Cook. Photo via Getty

Why Tim Cook Is Right to Avoid Big Acquisitions

By Martin Peers · Aug 26, 2025 5:00pm PDT

Apple shareholders should be glad Eddy Cue isn’t running the iPhone maker. As a story we published today revealed, Cue has been an advocate for Apple making big acquisitions—including of Netflix and Tesla in the past—that CEO Tim Cook rebuffed. More recently, Cue has suggested that Apple should do bolder deals in artificial intelligence. The... Apple shareholders should be glad Eddy Cue isn’t running the iPhone maker. As a story we...

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas. Photo via Getty

The Founder Perk Showing Up in More VC Deals

By Cory Weinberg · Aug 26, 2025 4:10pm PDT

You’ll sometimes find signs of the times buried in companies’ bland corporate charters. The latest example: A growing number of startups that raised venture capital this year have issued a type of stock designed to make it easier for founders to sell some of their stakes.Nearly 11% of companies that raised money in the first half of the year... You’ll sometimes find signs of the times buried in companies’ bland corporate charters. The...

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel. Photo via Getty

Creator Economy

How Snap Can Turn on the Creator Spigot

By Kaya Yurieff · Aug 26, 2025 1:12pm PDT

Where does Snap go from here? The nearly fourteen-year-old company is struggling to grow its ad business, particularly compared to larger Meta Platforms and Google’s YouTube. At the same time, CEO Evan Spiegel remains laser focused on his long-time, big bet: the company’s augmented reality glasses, Spectacles. To keep funding the AR project,... Where does Snap go from here? The nearly fourteen-year-old company is struggling to grow its ad...

‘AI Native’ Apps’ $18.5 Billion Annualized Revenues Rebut MIT’s Skeptical Study

‘AI Native’ Apps’ $18.5 Billion Annualized Revenues Rebut MIT’s Skeptical Study

By Amir Efrati · Aug 26, 2025 10:32am PDT · 11 comments

‘AI Native’ Apps’ $18.5 Billion Annualized Revenues Rebut MIT’s Skeptical Study

‘AI Native’ Apps’ $18.5 Billion Annualized Revenues Rebut MIT’s Skeptical Study

By Amir Efrati · Aug 26, 2025 10:32am PDT · 11 comments

It’s been hard to avoid a study last week from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which claimed that 95% of corporate efforts to use artificial intelligence failed to boost the bottom line for the surveyed companies. In other words, “only 5% of custom enterprise AI tools reach production.” Let’s set aside the study’s limitations,... It’s been hard to avoid a study last week from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which...

Art by Mike Sullivan

Why Some Google Competitors Don’t Want Google To Share Its Search Data

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 26, 2025 7:00am PDT

Federal judge Amit Mehta is expected to shortly issue a ruling on what changes Google needs to make to its search business to fix its monopoly of the search ad market. Mehta’s decision could have ripple effects across the search market, which includes older rivals like Microsoft’s Bing and Brave as well as newcomers like OpenAI and Perplexity.... Federal judge Amit Mehta is expected to shortly issue a ruling on what changes Google needs to...

Tim Cook, left, and Eddy Cue. Photos via Getty. Art by Mike Sullivan

Apple’s Aversion to Big Deals Could Thwart Its AI Push

By Aaron Tilley, Wayne Ma and Valida Pau · Aug 26, 2025 7:00am PDT · 5 comments

This summer, investment bankers came knocking on Apple’s door with a pitch: Was the iPhone maker interested in doing a major acquisition or some other kind of deal in artificial intelligence? So far, the only answer it has given them is: not so much. In the current AI frenzy, nearly all of Apple’s peers in big tech have thrown open their... This summer, investment bankers came knocking on Apple’s door with a pitch: Was the iPhone maker...

Neil Shen, founding partner of HongShan. Photo via Getty

Neil Shen’s HongShan Is Slow to Deploy Its $9 Billion Capital, Looks for Deals Outside China

By Jing Yang and Juro Osawa · Aug 26, 2025 6:00am PDT · 1 comment

When venture capital giant Sequoia decided to carve off Sequoia China two years ago in response to growing tensions between the U.S. and China, the newly independent China firm was expected to continue pouring its huge funds into Chinese startups. Renamed HongShan (Mandarin for Sequoia), the firm had only a year earlier raised what was then a... When venture capital giant Sequoia decided to carve off Sequoia China two years ago in response...

Photo via Getty

Musk’s Litigation-Led AI Strategy

By Martin Peers · Aug 25, 2025 5:00pm PDT · 2 comments

Photo via Getty

Musk’s Litigation-Led AI Strategy

By Martin Peers · Aug 25, 2025 5:00pm PDT · 2 comments

It’s not obvious that filing lawsuits against your competitors is the way to succeed in artificial intelligence, if only because a lawsuit can take years to resolve and AI is evolving extremely rapidly. Nonetheless, litigation is the approach Elon Musk is taking to try to protect his startup, xAI, from bigger rivals. You might wonder if this is... It’s not obvious that filing lawsuits against your competitors is the way to succeed in...

Pantera founder, Dan Morehead. Photo via Getty

Crypto Fund Pantera Seeks to Raise Up to $1.25 Billion for Solana Deal

By Yueqi Yang · Aug 25, 2025 2:06pm PDT · 1 comment

Crypto fund manager Pantera is seeking to raise as much as $1.25 billion to convert a public company into a solana investment firm, as a flood of companies race to cash in on the latest hot crypto sector. Pantera, founded by Dan Morehead, a former trader at Goldman Sachs and Tiger Global Management, is one of the largest and oldest crypto asset... Crypto fund manager Pantera is seeking to raise as much as $1.25 billion to convert a public...

The Information reporters Valida Pau (l) and Sri Muppidi (r). Photos courtesy of the subjects.

The Information Announces New Roles for OpenAI, Deals Reporting

By The Information Staff · Aug 25, 2025 2:03pm PDT · 1 comment

We are delighted to announce new roles for our reporters covering two of the most important beats in business: OpenAI and AI dealmaking. Sri Muppidi, who joined us late last year to cover venture capital and startups, will continue and expand on her strong coverage of the business of the biggest AI startups to become a beat reporter on OpenAI... We are delighted to announce new roles for our reporters covering two of the most important beats...

Art via Getty

VCs Bet on AI Chips That Use Light Instead of Electronics

By Rocket Drew · Aug 25, 2025 7:00am PDT

When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in March said his company would release hardware that lets an AI data center chip send information directly over optical cables instead of needing to convert to optical from electrical signals, it was a shot in the arm for optics developers that have long wanted a bigger role in data centers.Using light to send... When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in March said his company would release hardware that lets an AI...

Photo via Faire

E-Commerce Startup Faire Targets $500 Million in Revenue

By Ann Gehan and Natasha Mascarenhas · Aug 25, 2025 6:00am PDT

Photo via Faire

E-Commerce Startup Faire Targets $500 Million in Revenue

By Ann Gehan and Natasha Mascarenhas · Aug 25, 2025 6:00am PDT

In 2022, Faire became one of the most highly priced e-commerce startups, with a valuation of $12.6 billion, as the online marketplace benefited from a surge in internet sales during the pandemic. But after e-commerce growth cooled with waning Covid-19 restrictions, the company in late 2023 slashed its internal valuation to $5 billion, according... In 2022, Faire became one of the most highly priced e-commerce startups, with a valuation of...

Musk in Qatar. Win McNamee/Getty

The Electric: Is One of Tesla's Key Battery Innovations Worth It?

By Steve LeVine · Aug 25, 2025 4:30am PDT · 1 comment

In 2020, Tesla CEO Elon Musk promised to completely rework his processes and release a cheap electric vehicle for the masses. That sent rivals scurrying, especially to keep up with his vow to stop making batteries “wet,” the expensive conventional way, requiring toxic solvents, massive drying ovens and cavernous factories. Instead, Tesla would... In 2020, Tesla CEO Elon Musk promised to completely rework his processes and release a cheap...

Art by Clark Miller

Why MIT’s Viral AI Study Struck A Nerve

By Abram Brown · Aug 23, 2025 7:00am PDT · 1 comment

Welcome, Weekenders!I’m delighted to introduce Weekend’s latest addition: Jemima McEvoy, who joins as a reporter.Jemima comes from Forbes, where she was a staff writer and a distinguished member of the Wealth Team, the group of reporters who assemble the Forbes 400 and World’s Billionaires lists and chronicle these moguls throughout the year.... Welcome, Weekenders!I’m delighted to introduce Weekend’s latest addition: Jemima McEvoy, who...

Art by Clark Miller

Artificial Intelligence

AI Forces Silicon Valley to Confront a Moment of Ecstasy and Agony

By Natasha Mascarenhas, Jemima McEvoy and Erin Woo · Aug 23, 2025 6:55am PDT · 7 comments

Last fall, Howie Liu, CEO and co-founder of Airtable, arrived at a board meeting with an urgent realization: If Airtable, a maker of collaboration software, wanted to stay relevant, it needed to significantly rethink itself. “We started to feel like the incumbent instead of the disruptor and risked becoming one of the dinosaurs,” Liu said. The... Last fall, Howie Liu, CEO and co-founder of Airtable, arrived at a board meeting with an urgent...

AWS data centers in Manassas, Va. Photo via Getty

Bankers Doing Data Center Financings Had No Respite This Summer

By Ken Brown · Aug 22, 2025 3:00pm PDT

AWS data centers in Manassas, Va. Photo via Getty

Bankers Doing Data Center Financings Had No Respite This Summer

By Ken Brown · Aug 22, 2025 3:00pm PDT

There were no August vacations for bankers who do data center financing deals.At the start of the month, Meta reached a deal to borrow $26 billion and get $3 billion in equity tied to its data center build-out, according to Bloomberg. This week, JPMorgan Chase and Japanese lender Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group agreed to underwrite $22 billion in... There were no August vacations for bankers who do data center financing deals.At the start of the...