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

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Recent Editions

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The Job Market Is Worsening. AI Is ‘Part of the Story,’ Fed Chair Says

By Amir Efrati and Laura Mandaro · Dec 11, 2025 10:49am PST · 1 comment

Is AI hurting American jobs? A bit, according to Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell, whose comments Wednesday gave the AI fearmongers a good amount of material to work with.In a press conference, Powell said AI was “part of the story” behind the worsening unemployment that prompted the Fed to lower interest rates for the second time in two... Is AI hurting American jobs? A bit, according to Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell, whose...

Getty Images

Disney-OpenAI; AI Startup Valuations Keep Falling as Revenue Rises

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 11, 2025 8:34am PST

Before we get to today’s column, we have to mention Disney and OpenAI’s big partnership announcement this morning. As part of a new three-year licensing agreement, OpenAI’s video app Sora and ChatGPT will be able to generate image and video content that includes characters such as Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Mickey Mouse and Iron Man from... Before we get to today’s column, we have to mention Disney and OpenAI’s big partnership...

Photo by Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

Tencent Poaches ByteDance Researchers as China AI Race Heats Up

By Juro Osawa, Qianer Liu and Jing Yang · Dec 11, 2025 5:00am PST · 1 comment

Throughout the past couple of years, as AI fever swept China’s technology sector, one giant—Tencent—seemed to mostly be sitting on the sidelines. The company, which owns the hugely popular WeChat app, didn’t seem enthusiastic to win a fierce race in the country to develop cutting-edge AI models, competing with the likes of DeepSeek,... Throughout the past couple of years, as AI fever swept China’s technology sector, one...

A stationary storage production line in Luoyang, China. Photo:VCG/Getty

The Electric: Batteries for AI Data Centers Have Dropped 45% In Price This Year

By Steve LeVine · Dec 11, 2025 4:30am PST

A stationary storage production line in Luoyang, China. Photo:VCG/Getty

The Electric: Batteries for AI Data Centers Have Dropped 45% In Price This Year

By Steve LeVine · Dec 11, 2025 4:30am PST

Last month, a senior Chinese government official told a gathering of a dozen of the country’s battery titans to scale back their “irrational” price war. One of the reasons: Their cutthroat competition had driven a startling 45% drop this year in the price of stationary storage batteries, used to back up electricity grids and AI data centers. The... Last month, a senior Chinese government official told a gathering of a dozen of the country’s...

Oracle co-CEO Clay Magouyrk. Getty Images

Oracle’s Costly AI Expansion Turns Off Wall Street

By Martin Peers · Dec 10, 2025 5:00pm PST

The costs of Oracle’s AI data center expansion is becoming clear—and Wall Street isn’t happy. The software and cloud firm, which until recently was a solid moneymaker, said Wednesday it burned through $10 billion in cash in the November quarter thanks to a big ramp-up in capital expenditures on AI-focused data centers for its cloud business.... The costs of Oracle’s AI data center expansion is becoming clear—and Wall Street isn’t happy. The...

Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Photo by Getty Images

UAE Fund MGX Quietly Becomes One of the Biggest Data Center Financiers

By Miles Kruppa and Anissa Gardizy · Dec 10, 2025 10:06am PST

MGX, a United Arab Emirates–backed fund, is only a year old but has already become one of the biggest data center financiers in the world, leading the largest data center sale negotiated so far and quietly scooping up a stake in another provider with ties to OpenAI. MGX will be the biggest shareholder in Aligned Data Centers, one of the... MGX, a United Arab Emirates–backed fund, is only a year old but has already become one of...

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off in September. Manuel Mazzanti/Getty Images.

The Information Finance

SpaceX's Retail Moment

By Cory Weinberg · Dec 10, 2025 8:00am PST · 1 comment

It’s Elon Musk. It’s space. It’s Elon Musk trying to put data centers in space and go to Mars. If Musk’s SpaceX does indeed list its shares in a blockbuster initial public offering next year, expect retail traders to hit the “buy” button furiously in their Robinhood app. Institutional investors, and later index funds, will face pressure to buy,... It’s Elon Musk. It’s space. It’s Elon Musk trying to put data centers in space and go to Mars. If...

Baseten cofounder and CTO Amir Haghighat and Parsed cofounders Mudith Jayasekara and Charles O'Neill. Photo courtesy of Parsed.

Inference Provider Baseten Acquires Reinforcement Learning Startup Parsed

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 10, 2025 7:00am PST

Baseten cofounder and CTO Amir Haghighat and Parsed cofounders Mudith Jayasekara and Charles O'Neill. Photo courtesy of Parsed.

Inference Provider Baseten Acquires Reinforcement Learning Startup Parsed

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 10, 2025 7:00am PST

AI firms are getting more interested in AI that continues to learn even after it’s been trained, otherwise known as continual learning, as we discussed in this recap from last week's NeurIPS conference. As an example, some small companies have used special techniques like finetuning and reinforcement learning to teach cheaper open-source models... AI firms are getting more interested in AI that continues to learn even after it’s been trained,...

Artwork by Clark Miller.

Jessica Lessin’s 2026 Tech Predictions

By The Information Staff · Dec 10, 2025 6:56am PST · 2 comments

In her annual predictions video summit, our founder and Editor-in-Chief Jessica Lessin set the stage for a pivotal year in technology. Drawing on insights from our global newsroom, she outlined the key themes and critical questions that will define the industry in 2026. While we have long made it a practice to look ahead, the current... In her annual predictions video summit, our founder and Editor-in-Chief Jessica Lessin set the...

Art by Mike Sullivan

DeepSeek is Using Banned Nvidia Chips in Race to Build Next Model

By The Information Staff · Dec 10, 2025 4:00am PST · 5 comments

DeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup, has been developing its next major model using several thousand Nvidia’s state-of-the-art Blackwell chips which the U.S. has forbidden from being exported to China, according to six people with knowledge of the matter. The chips DeepSeek is using were smuggled into China, the people said, through a convoluted... DeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup, has been developing its next major model using several thousand...

Art by Clark Miller.

China Weighs Nvidia Chip Purchase in Emergency Meetings With Tech Companies

By Qianer Liu · Dec 10, 2025 2:00am PST

China on Wednesday gathered its biggest tech giants to discuss whether to allow them to buy Nvidia’s advanced H200 chips, as President Donald Trump’s recent decision to allow the export of the powerful hardware to the country suddenly complicated Beijing’s goal to become technologically self-sufficient. Officials convened a series of emergency... China on Wednesday gathered its biggest tech giants to discuss whether to allow them to buy...

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

Trump's Disappearing Messages

By Martin Peers · Dec 9, 2025 5:00pm PST

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

Trump's Disappearing Messages

By Martin Peers · Dec 9, 2025 5:00pm PST

It sometimes feels there’s an element of the supernatural in the Trump administration’s dealings with the business world. Stuff gets announced and then disappears into the ether, never to be heard of again. Take President Donald Trump’s announcement in August that he’d let Nvidia sell its H20 AI chips to China, in exchange for a 15% cut of the... It sometimes feels there’s an element of the supernatural in the Trump administration’s dealings...

VC Fundraising Just Can’t Keep Up

VC Fundraising Just Can’t Keep Up

By Katie Roof · Dec 9, 2025 4:17pm PST · 1 comment

The sky’s the limit for valuations for companies like SpaceX, but the venture firms writing the checks have less money in total to spend.Recent data from PitchBook shows how steep the decline in cash is. Fund managers raised $45.7 billion in new funds in the first nine months of the year. At that pace, fundraising is headed for the lowest level... The sky’s the limit for valuations for companies like SpaceX, but the venture firms writing the...

Chart by Shane Burke.

Arista Is the AI Data Center Networking Stock to Watch

By Anita Ramaswamy · Dec 9, 2025 11:06am PST · 5 comments

All the data centers hastily going up around the country for AI need networking pipes and software for moving data around. A few companies specialize in selling the networking gear, but one company, Arista Networks, stands out as undervalued on Wall Street. Arista has a much higher gross margin—64%—than rival Celestica, whose margin... All the data centers hastily going up around the country for AI need networking pipes and...

Sam Altman, left, and Sundar Pichai. Photos by Getty Images

ChatGPT Nears 900 Million Weekly Active Users But Gemini is Catching Up

By Sri Muppidi · Dec 9, 2025 7:00am PST · 1 comment

The competition between AI chatbots has been heating up, with Google’s Gemini nipping at OpenAI’s heels. On Monday, I wrote about how Gemini’s share of weekly mobile app downloads increased in late November following the release of Gemini 3, according to data from research firm Sensor Tower, which says it tracks 5 million consumers... The competition between AI chatbots has been heating up, with Google’s Gemini nipping at OpenAI’s...

Dario Amodei. Photo by Chance Yeh/Getty Images

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Agree to Develop Agent Standards Together

By Aaron Holmes · Dec 9, 2025 6:30am PST · 2 comments

Dario Amodei. Photo by Chance Yeh/Getty Images

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Agree to Develop Agent Standards Together

By Aaron Holmes · Dec 9, 2025 6:30am PST · 2 comments

For AI agents to work properly in automating white-collar tasks, the companies developing the agents and the companies running the enterprise apps those agents use will need to agree on technical standards for how these technologies connect to each other.Some leading companies are preparing to do just that. As soon as this week, Anthropic,... For AI agents to work properly in automating white-collar tasks, the companies developing the...

From left: Justin Pearson, Maura Keller, Josh Hawley, Stephen Bannon and Alex Bores. Photos via Getty Images

How the AI Backlash Could Shape the Midterm Elections

By Sylvia Varnham O'Regan · Dec 9, 2025 6:00am PST · 1 comment

Lately, Maura Keller—a Democrat running in Georgia’s 3rd Congressional district in next year’s midterm elections—has been going to community meetings where one topic comes up again and again “almost on a weekly basis”: data centers. It’s not hard to understand why the subject has surged to the fore. Keller has seen the state... Lately, Maura Keller—a Democrat running in Georgia’s 3rd Congressional district in next...

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos and Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison. Ted Sarandos and David Ellison. Getty Images.

Nvidia, Confluent and WBD’s Happy Day

By Martin Peers · Dec 8, 2025 5:00pm PST

This could be big news: President Donald Trump said he would allow Nvidia to sell its advanced H200 AI chip to China, in exchange for the U.S. government getting a 25% cut of those sales. That could re-open the Chinese market to Nvidia—if the Chinese government allows its local companies to buy the chips. Chances of that are good. The H200s are... This could be big news: President Donald Trump said he would allow Nvidia to sell its advanced...

Aidan Gomez, CEO of Cohere. Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Cohere CEO Says His Gross Profit Margins Are Great; Takeaways From NeurIPS

By Aaron Holmes and Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 8, 2025 7:00am PST

Before we get to today’s column, check out this story about last week’s Neural Information Processing Systems conference, where a number of researchers cast doubt on some of today’s most popular techniques for improving AI. Some researchers, including at OpenAI, have ideas for new techniques that could produce better results.Other researchers... Before we get to today’s column, check out this story about last week’s Neural Information...

Art via Mike Sullivan

At AI’s Biggest Event, Some Researchers Said the Field Needs an Overhaul

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 8, 2025 6:00am PST · 18 comments

Art via Mike Sullivan

At AI’s Biggest Event, Some Researchers Said the Field Needs an Overhaul

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 8, 2025 6:00am PST · 18 comments

A small but growing number of artificial intelligence developers at OpenAI, Google and other companies say they’re skeptical that today’s technical approaches to AI will achieve major breakthroughs in biology, medicine and other fields while also managing to avoid making silly mistakes. That was the buzz last week among numerous researchers at... A small but growing number of artificial intelligence developers at OpenAI, Google and other...