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

Bob Iger and Josh D'Amaro. Getty Images. Disney/Getty Images.

Disney’s CEO Choice Reflects Entertainment’s Decline

By Martin Peers · Feb 3, 2026 5:00pm PST

It’s CEO replacement time. Both Walt Disney Co. and PayPal named new chief executives on Tuesday, with each appointment symbolizing major business shifts. Disney named parks chief Josh D’Amaro to succeed longtime CEO Bob Iger, who turns 75 next week (D’Amaro is Iger’s second successor, after the first one flopped so badly Iger had to return to... It’s CEO replacement time. Both Walt Disney Co. and PayPal named new chief executives on Tuesday,...

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Photo by Getty Images

Meta Officially Ties Employee Performance to AI Usage; Microsoft On OpenClaw Security Risks

By Jyoti Mann and Aaron Holmes · Feb 3, 2026 10:31am PST · 3 comments

Businesses such as Microsoft are increasingly nudging their employees to utilize AI to get more done. Others are forcing the issue.One of the biggest firms to take the more aggressive path is Meta Platforms, which at the end of December had 78,865 employees. Businesses such as Microsoft are increasingly nudging their employees to utilize AI to get more...

Carina Hong, founder and CEO of Axiom. Screenshot via YouTube

A Major Anthropic Backer Quintuples an AI Math Startup’s Valuation in New Deal

By Stephanie Palazzolo and Valida Pau · Feb 3, 2026 7:00am PST

Investors usually fund startups based on metrics involving revenue, profits or product usage. But investors backing newer AI research startups that are taking on Anthropic and OpenAI have to rely on other measures of success, such as incremental research breakthroughs or recent talent hirings. One example is AI math startup Axiom, which is... Investors usually fund startups based on metrics involving revenue, profits or product usage. But...

Stripe co-founder John Collison. Photo by Jeenah Moon/Getty Images.

Stripe’s Stablecoin Startup Tangles With Sanctions and Scammers

By Michael Roddan and Yueqi Yang · Feb 3, 2026 6:00am PST · 1 comment

Stripe co-founder John Collison. Photo by Jeenah Moon/Getty Images.

Stripe’s Stablecoin Startup Tangles With Sanctions and Scammers

By Michael Roddan and Yueqi Yang · Feb 3, 2026 6:00am PST · 1 comment

When Stripe acquired crypto startup Bridge last year, it described stablecoins as financial services “superconductors.” Thanks to Bridge, Stripe has since integrated stablecoins into an array of products, such as stablecoin cards that allow customers to spend crypto anywhere. Using stablecoins for payments turns out to be harder than it looks.... When Stripe acquired crypto startup Bridge last year, it described stablecoins as financial...

Photo of Elon Musk by Getty Images; art by Mike Sullivan

Inside Musk’s SpaceX-xAI Megamerger

By Cory Weinberg, Theo Wayt, Miles Kruppa, Amir Efrati and Katie Roof · Feb 2, 2026 6:13pm PST · 3 comments

Elon Musk rammed through the combination of his space company, SpaceX, with his AI startup, xAI, on Monday, merging the shiniest jewel in his business empire with his most money-losing firm. The deal—which valued xAI at $250 billion and SpaceX at $1 trillion, according to people familiar with the situation—comes as xAI battles to... Elon Musk rammed through the combination of his space company, SpaceX, with his AI startup, xAI,...

Elon Musk. Getty Images.

What’s Really Driving Musk’s SpaceX-xAI Merger

By Martin Peers · Feb 2, 2026 5:00pm PST · 5 comments

Talk about pie in the sky. On Monday, Elon Musk announced that his SpaceX had acquired his cash-eating xAI, at a price we reported to be $250 billion. SpaceX was already planning to go public, but now xAI will be able to get some of the cash the newly enlarged company will raise. Of course, that’s not how Musk explained the combination. Instead,... Talk about pie in the sky. On Monday, Elon Musk announced that his SpaceX had acquired his...

Art by Clark Miller (photos: YouTube, Getty Images)

Epstein Files Reveal Deep Relationship With Venture Capitalist Masha Bucher

By Jemima McEvoy · Feb 2, 2026 1:10pm PST · 10 comments

There are plenty of tech luminaries whose correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein has turned up in the files of the disgraced financier. But few of those exchanges are quite like those that Epstein had with Masha Bucher, who is now a well-known venture capitalist. On June 25, 2019, 11 days before Epstein was arrested and charged with sex trafficking... There are plenty of tech luminaries whose correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein has turned up in...

Art by Getty Images

Betting That AI Can Ease AI Infrastructure Pains

By Ann Davis Vaughan · Feb 2, 2026 8:00am PST · 2 comments

Art by Getty Images

AI Infrastructure

Betting That AI Can Ease AI Infrastructure Pains

By Ann Davis Vaughan · Feb 2, 2026 8:00am PST · 2 comments

Right now, money and attention is focused on building infrastructure for AI. What’s coming next, though, is AI for infrastructure: using the very same technology to make the power and industrial systems we’re building cheaper, better and faster.Since its founding in 2016, venture investor Blue Bear Capital has allocated about $350 million across... Right now, money and attention is focused on building infrastructure for AI. What’s coming next,...

Art by Getty Images

Why OpenClaw FKA Clawdbot Matters

By Rocket Drew · Feb 2, 2026 7:30am PST

If you’ve been online in the past few days, you’ve likely been bombarded with words like “Moltbook,” “OpenClaw” and “Clawdbot.” We’re here to break down what it means and how it’s giving us a peek into how AI might evolve.OpenClaw is an open-source AI agent released late last year that can write code, edit files and surf the web to complete... If you’ve been online in the past few days, you’ve likely been bombarded with words like “...

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Jason Redmond/Getty Images.

Microsoft Is Striking the Right Balance Between Software and Cloud

By Anita Ramaswamy · Feb 2, 2026 6:00am PST · 2 comments

Microsoft is in Wall Street’s doghouse. The company’s shares have lagged the S&P 500 index for the past few months, and the big stock sell-off that followed last Wednesday’s earnings report has left them trading at their lowest value, as a multiple of operating profits, since 2022. Investors were responding to a slight slowdown in growth at... Microsoft is in Wall Street’s doghouse. The company’s shares have lagged the S&P 500 index...

A home battery in Houston, which has been hit hard by power outages in recent years. Photo: Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle/Getty

The Electric: Amid the Flurries, Home Battery Installers Are Going After Grid and Data Center Demand

By Steve LeVine · Feb 2, 2026 4:30am PST

Heavy snow and Arctic temperatures last week strained the natural gas-powered electric grid across the Northeastern U.S. states and inland as far as Virginia, leaving utilities to ask customers to curtail their use of power and causing thousands of homes to go dark. Heavy snow and Arctic temperatures last week strained the natural gas-powered electric grid...

Palantir CEO Alex Karp. Fabrice Coffrini/Getty Images

What to Expect From Palantir, Google and Amazon Earnings This Week

By Martin Peers · Feb 1, 2026 3:00pm PST · 2 comments

Palantir CEO Alex Karp. Fabrice Coffrini/Getty Images

What to Expect From Palantir, Google and Amazon Earnings This Week

By Martin Peers · Feb 1, 2026 3:00pm PST · 2 comments

If you like poring over earnings reports (and who doesn’t!), then you’ll be in your happy place this coming week. We’ve got so many tech earnings announcements that we can barely keep track. I’m not kidding—couldn’t these tech executives space things out a little bit? The biggest reports will be on Wednesday, when Google parent Alphabet reports... If you like poring over earnings reports (and who doesn’t!), then you’ll be in your happy place...

How a Big Agent Bet Reshaped AWS

By Catherine Perloff · Feb 1, 2026 11:00am PST · 1 comment

Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman has been overhauling the cloud giant’s AI product leadership to speed its development of new AI software for businesses. Among more recent moves, AWS hired a former Microsoft executive to lead a suite of enterprise search and agent-building tools, and brought back a former AWS executive who did a stint at... Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman has been overhauling the cloud giant’s AI product leadership...

Chart by Shane Burke.

Sunday Insights

In AI Shopping Wars, Rivals Team Up to Take On Amazon

By Ann Gehan · Feb 1, 2026 8:00am PST · 1 comment

AI firms are promoting shopping as a new area of growth for chatbots, and retail giants and payments companies don’t want to be left out. That’s spawned a web of partnerships among companies that could make money off AI-fueled purchases. We’ve mapped out the alliances between 10 companies at the center of the high-profile AI shopping efforts in... AI firms are promoting shopping as a new area of growth for chatbots, and retail giants and...

Art by Clark Miller

Weekend: Moltbook, Clawdbot and Their AI Hijinks—A Quick Explainer

By Abram Brown · Jan 31, 2026 7:14am PST

Welcome, Weekenders! Firstly, I want to tell you about an exciting addition to The Information’s Weekend section: reporter Eli Rosenberg, an alum of The New York Times, The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle. He’ll cover tech wealth and culture—just as a slate of potential mega-IPOs from the likes of SpaceX, OpenAI and... Welcome, Weekenders! Firstly, I want to tell you about an exciting addition to The...

Art by Clark Miller

In Silicon Valley, A Priest and the Thinking Machines

By Abram Brown · Jan 31, 2026 6:50am PST · 4 comments

Art by Clark Miller

Artificial Intelligence

In Silicon Valley, A Priest and the Thinking Machines

By Abram Brown · Jan 31, 2026 6:50am PST · 4 comments

Reaching for a metaphor to describe AI and today’s moment of technological upheaval, the Rev. Brendan McGuire picked out a whopper. “When fire was first discovered, it changed humanity: We learned how to reward ourselves,” hunting and then cooking over the flames, said McGuire, pastor of St. Simon Catholic Parish in Los Altos, Calif. “And it... Reaching for a metaphor to describe AI and today’s moment of technological upheaval, the Rev....

Art by Clark Miller

I Built a Word-a-Day App With Anthropic’s Cowork. It Took a Lot of Work

By Rocket Drew · Jan 31, 2026 6:29am PST · 3 comments

In the last several weeks, Anthropic’s Cowork has captured considerable attention. And no wonder—Cowork has an alluring promise: that it can apply all the power of Anthropic’s coding agent, Claude Code, to nonprogramming tasks in a simple tool. The reality is, like many freshly hired human co-workers, Anthropic’s tool has some... In the last several weeks, Anthropic’s Cowork has captured considerable attention. And no...

Art by Clark Miller

The Information’s Weekend Section Adds Eli Rosenberg to Cover Tech Wealth and Culture

By Abram Brown · Jan 31, 2026 6:22am PST

Another boom time has come to Silicon Valley, pouring an unprecedented amount of capital into AI—and making the industry’s moguls richer. How are they spending that money today, and what will interest them in the future—especially with mega-IPOs for OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX on the horizon? How will such an influx of money alter... Another boom time has come to Silicon Valley, pouring an unprecedented amount of capital into...

Art by Clark Miller

The Space Baby Era Is Here

By Amy Dockser Marcus · Jan 30, 2026 9:10am PST

Last fall, a plane took off from Ottawa, Ontario, with some unusual cargo: a collection of nonviable human embryos and eggs. Once the aircraft reached a high altitude, the pilot made arcs in the air, creating short intervals of weightlessness that gave researchers on board a chance to study the possible effects of space-like microgravity on... Last fall, a plane took off from Ottawa, Ontario, with some unusual cargo: a collection of...

Duane Kuang, founding managing partner of Qiming Venture Partners. Photo courtesy of Qiming.

U.S. Investors Should Return to China, Says Top Chinese Venture Capitalist

By Jing Yang · Jan 30, 2026 6:02am PST · 1 comment

Duane Kuang, founding managing partner of Qiming Venture Partners. Photo courtesy of Qiming.

Q&A

U.S. Investors Should Return to China, Says Top Chinese Venture Capitalist

By Jing Yang · Jan 30, 2026 6:02am PST · 1 comment

China’s AI startups need backing, and a slew of recent initial public offerings in the country should convince U.S. venture capitalists to return to its tech sector, says a top Chinese investor. “U.S. capital has the highest propensity to invest in breakthrough technology, and this pocket of capital has been hesitant about China,” said Duane... China’s AI startups need backing, and a slew of recent initial public offerings in the country...