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

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The Briefing

By Martin Peers, Jessica 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

Art by Mike Sullivan

The Information 50

How Last Year’s Picks for The Information 50 Have Fared

By Akash Pasricha · Oct 24, 2024 10:00am PDT

Last year’s entries in The Information’s 50 Most Promising Startups have been masterful fundraisers, even as global venture funding has slipped in 2024 compared with last year. At least 21 of the companies our reporters selected a year ago have raised additional funding since then. At least 10 have either raised more than $100... Last year’s entries in The Information’s 50 Most Promising Startups have been...

Photo via Adobe.

Open-Source AI Struggles to Close Gap with Closed Rivals

By Kalley Huang · Oct 24, 2024 8:54am PDT · 1 comment

Over the past week, artificial intelligence developers have posted rave reviews on X and Reddit about the quality of Nemotron, a series of large language models Nvidia built using Meta Platforms’ open-source Llama model.The buzz about Nemotron rekindled questions about whether the race between open- and closed-source models is tightening. The... Over the past week, artificial intelligence developers have posted rave reviews on X and Reddit...

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The Information 50

Introducing The Information’s 50 Most Promising Startups for 2024

By Scott Thurm · Oct 24, 2024 6:00am PDT · 5 comments

Artificial intelligence has accomplished many things, but few are as dramatic as the way it has supercharged investing in startups. Just look at the recent headlines: OpenAI raised $6 billion at a valuation of $157 billion. Anthropic is looking to raise funding at a valuation of $40 billion. That posed challenges for our reporters seeking... Artificial intelligence has accomplished many things, but few are as dramatic as the way it has...

Photo: Adobe

The Electric: Musk Warns Rivals They Will Regret Not Making Fully Autonomous EVs

By Steve LeVine · Oct 24, 2024 4:30am PDT · 1 comment

Photo: Adobe

The Electric: Musk Warns Rivals They Will Regret Not Making Fully Autonomous EVs

By Steve LeVine · Oct 24, 2024 4:30am PDT · 1 comment

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has staked the company’s future more clearly than ever on autonomous vehicles, saying Tesla would not make a driver-controlled car costing $25,000. In remarks to analysts Wednesday evening, he urged rivals to follow Tesla’s example and develop their own autonomous vehicles, but offered few new details on Tesla’s... Tesla CEO Elon Musk has staked the company’s future more clearly than ever on autonomous...

Photo via Adobe

Musk’s Tesla Turnaround

By Martin Peers · Oct 23, 2024 5:00pm PDT

Today Elon Musk had some good news to report about Tesla for a change. The electric vehicle maker’s third-quarter results on Wednesday were the strongest in 12 months, with a return to growth in auto revenues after two quarters of decline and the revelation that the Cybertruck had turned profitable. Tesla even projected it would finish this year... Today Elon Musk had some good news to report about Tesla for a change. The electric vehicle maker...

Photo via YouTube/Call Her Daddy.

Creator Economy

Podcasts Emerge as Battleground for Trump and Harris

By Rocket Drew · Oct 23, 2024 3:02pm PDT

With only 12 days (!) left before the presidential election, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are still trying to reach potential voters. One way is by appearing on popular podcasts, where they can speak to listeners directly—and often avoid tougher questions from traditional journalists. As the chart below shows, Trump has been on at... With only 12 days (!) left before the presidential election, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are...

Art via Clark Miller

The Startup Fueling OpenAI and Anthropic’s Coding Race

By Amir Efrati · Oct 23, 2024 11:55am PDT · 2 comments

Last fall, several Google artificial intelligence leaders met with Jonathan Siddharth, CEO of a startup that sells access to part-time software engineers on demand. The Google managers asked Siddharth whether the startup, Turing, could use its army of human programmers to teach Google’s AI to be better at completing coding tasks, according... Last fall, several Google artificial intelligence leaders met with Jonathan Siddharth, CEO of a...

Art by Mike Sullivan.

Temu 2.0 Attacks Amazon’s Achilles’ Heel

By Jing Yang and Theo Wayt · Oct 23, 2024 7:26am PDT

Art by Mike Sullivan.

Temu 2.0 Attacks Amazon’s Achilles’ Heel

By Jing Yang and Theo Wayt · Oct 23, 2024 7:26am PDT

Temu is making swift progress in winning over popular Amazon merchants to sell on its bargain site, thanks to a simple pitch: It’s much cheaper for merchants to sell on Temu than on Amazon. Temu has already added more than 60% of major China-based Amazon sellers of products like bedding sets and vacuum cleaners and is enlisting U.S.-based... Temu is making swift progress in winning over popular Amazon merchants to sell on its bargain...

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. Photo via Getty.

Anthropic Pulls Ahead in the AI Agent Race

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 23, 2024 7:00am PDT

In the tight race between well-funded developers of conversational AI, Anthropic has suddenly made some real gains.The startup on Tuesday announced new software that completes tasks for people, such as building a website or editing a spreadsheet. The feature, called “computer use,” means that Anthropic’s Claude model can actually view users’... In the tight race between well-funded developers of conversational AI, Anthropic has suddenly...

Apple Sharply Scales Back Production of Vision Pro

By Wayne Ma and Qianer Liu · Oct 23, 2024 6:00am PDT

Apple has sharply scaled back production of its Vision Pro mixed reality headset since the early summer and could stop making the existing version of the device entirely by year end, according to multiple people directly involved in building components for the device. The move suggests that Apple has enough inventory built up to meet demand for... Apple has sharply scaled back production of its Vision Pro mixed reality headset since the early...

MrBeast. Photo via Getty

Creator Economy

‘Let It Slowly Die.’ MrBeast’s Irate Texts Over Burger Deal Revealed in Court Docs

By Kaya Yurieff · Oct 22, 2024 5:15pm PDT

MrBeast so wishes he had not entered that burger deal! That’s one of the takeaways from a series of angry and regretful messages sent by YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson to a business confidant months before he sued the restaurant operator. The exchanges, part of a deluge of new court filings and exhibits, show Donaldson and colleagues discussing a... MrBeast so wishes he had not entered that burger deal! That’s one of the takeaways from a series...

Screenshot from Temu.

Amazon, Temu and $20 Couches

By Martin Peers · Oct 22, 2024 5:00pm PDT

Screenshot from Temu.

Amazon, Temu and $20 Couches

By Martin Peers · Oct 22, 2024 5:00pm PDT

Memo to the Kamala Harris campaign: Have you checked out Temu? The presidential candidate faces a bunch of voters unhappy with how prices for consumer goods have skyrocketed under President Joe Biden. But she could push back on those complaints by pointing people to the website of Temu, the Chinese-owned bargain-basement shopping service that... Memo to the Kamala Harris campaign: Have you checked out Temu? The presidential candidate faces a...

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Collage via Shane Burke

OpenAI, in Duel With Anthropic, Doubles Down on AI That Writes Software

By Erin Woo, Stephanie Palazzolo and Amir Efrati · Oct 22, 2024 3:59pm PDT · 1 comment

OpenAI’s ChatGPT has become a multibillion-dollar business in large part because programmers use it to write and check their code, fix bugs and translate code into different programming languages. Now, facing competition from rival artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, OpenAI is putting more effort into improving the tools it offers... OpenAI’s ChatGPT has become a multibillion-dollar business in large part because...

Stripe CEO and co-founder, Patrick Collison. Photo via Getty.

Stripe’s Crypto Deal Provides Momentary Relief to Investors

By Kate Clark · Oct 22, 2024 3:15pm PDT

Stripe’s announcement that it was buying cryptocurrency payments startup Bridge delivered a dose of optimism to venture capitalists this week. The deal is poised to become the largest-ever crypto acquisition and punctuated a particularly dreary market for mergers and public offerings.The purchase values the two-and-a-half-year-old company at... Stripe’s announcement that it was buying cryptocurrency payments startup Bridge delivered a dose...

Photo via Getty

Shein’s Rocky Financial Performance Complicates IPO Plans

By Jing Yang and Cory Weinberg · Oct 22, 2024 10:24am PDT

Shein’s march toward an initial public offering has gotten tangled in a web of regulatory scrutiny on three continents this year. Now, as its executives try to restart IPO talks, executives at the fast fashion retailer face another problem: having to explain a first-half slump in the business. The company’s revenue growth decelerated... Shein’s march toward an initial public offering has gotten tangled in a web of regulatory...

Photo via Getty

How AI Dealmakers Are Sidestepping Regulators

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 22, 2024 7:15am PDT

Photo via Getty

How AI Dealmakers Are Sidestepping Regulators

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 22, 2024 7:15am PDT

Attention: AI startups. What’s the best way to sell your company without the prying eyes of antitrust regulators? Make yourself so small you won’t attract attention!We’re serious, kind of. We’re hearing that a lesser-known loophole to the rules determining when companies have to notify antitrust regulators about an acquisition is based on the... Attention: AI startups. What’s the best way to sell your company without the prying eyes of...

Art by Mike Sullivan

Amazon Sofas for $20? Retailer Sets Price Caps for New Temu-like Store

By Theo Wayt · Oct 22, 2024 6:00am PDT · 5 comments

As Amazon prepares to launch a new low-price storefront to combat Temu, it’s imposing severe price caps on what merchants can charge for their wares on the outlet, including an $8 limit for jewelry, $9 for bedding sets, $13 for guitars and $20 for sofas, according to messages from Amazon to merchants seen by The Information. The price caps... As Amazon prepares to launch a new low-price storefront to combat Temu, it’s imposing...

Physical Intelligence CEO Karol Hausman. Photo: YouTube screengrab.

Robotics Startup Discusses $2 Billion Valuation Months After Founding

By Natasha Mascarenhas, Stephanie Palazzolo and Kate Clark · Oct 21, 2024 6:32pm PDT · 1 comment

The race to develop physical robots powered by artificial intelligence is on again, despite the industry’s track record of failures—and the threat that OpenAI, which has dominated advances in conversational AI, will become a bigger rival. Physical Intelligence, a startup developing software for robots that could work in a range of... The race to develop physical robots powered by artificial intelligence is on again, despite the...

Patrick Collison, CEO of Stripe, at an event by The Information in 2017. Photo by Erin Beach.

Stripe’s Bridge to Crypto

By Martin Peers · Oct 21, 2024 5:00pm PDT

Crypto is so back, baby! Payments firm Stripe confirmed that today with its deal—reportedly $1.1 billion—to buy Bridge, a startup that helps companies make payments using stablecoin (a type of cryptocurrency backed by dollars and other traditional currencies). Given that Bridge’s revenue may be around $12 million, as The Information... Crypto is so back, baby! Payments firm Stripe confirmed that today with its deal—reportedly $1.1...

Stripe headquarters in San Francisco. Photo by Getty.

How Stripe’s $1.1 Billion Crypto Bet Could Pay Off

By Yueqi Yang · Oct 21, 2024 4:07pm PDT

Stripe headquarters in San Francisco. Photo by Getty.

How Stripe’s $1.1 Billion Crypto Bet Could Pay Off

By Yueqi Yang · Oct 21, 2024 4:07pm PDT

Crypto fans have argued for years that blockchain technology could speed up global payments and make them cheaper. Now payments giant Stripe is making a more than $1 billion bet on that finally becoming a reality—and the crypto industry is rejoicing. Stripe announced on Monday that it had agreed to acquire Bridge, a two-and-a-half-year-old... Crypto fans have argued for years that blockchain technology could speed up global payments and...