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

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DeepSeek’s Implications For AI; Why Stargate Should Be Taken Seriously

By Anissa Gardizy · Jan 27, 2025 7:00am PST · 2 comments

Before we get to our main item, I’d recommend you read yesterday’s scoop about Meta Platforms and other American developers reacting to the threat posed by DeepSeek, the hottest new artificial intelligence model (and consumer mobile app!) that has been sweeping the industry.On to the news…Last week I was at one of the largest data center... Before we get to our main item, I’d recommend you read yesterday’s scoop about Meta Platforms and...

Art by Mike Sullivan

Before Google’s $2.7 Billion Deal With AI Startup, a Stark Warning on Safety

By Kalley Huang and Paris Martineau · Jan 27, 2025 6:00am PST

Late last summer, leaders at Character.AI were worried: The company—which offers artificial intelligence chatbots that simulate conversations with Aristotle, Pikachu and other historic or invented characters—was seeing a sharp slowdown in user growth. In September messages to staff, which The Information viewed, Character’s... Late last summer, leaders at Character.AI were worried: The company—which offers artificial...

Digit, Agility Robotics' humanoid. Photo: Getty

The Electric: Humanoid Robots Are Cool—but How Will Their Battery Problem Be Solved?

By Steve LeVine · Jan 27, 2025 4:30am PST · 3 comments

Adam Jonas made his name as one of the biggest Tesla bulls. These days, people are flooding the Morgan Stanley analyst with questions about humanoid robots. The volume of calls has exceeded “the entirety of our [automaker], dealer and supplier coverage combined,” he said in a note Friday. Adam Jonas made his name as one of the biggest Tesla bulls. These days, people are flooding the...

Art via Clark Miller

Meta Scrambles After Chinese AI Equals Its Own, Upending Silicon Valley

By Kalley Huang and Stephanie Palazzolo · Jan 26, 2025 12:51pm PST · 8 comments

Art via Clark Miller

Meta Scrambles After Chinese AI Equals Its Own, Upending Silicon Valley

By Kalley Huang and Stephanie Palazzolo · Jan 26, 2025 12:51pm PST · 8 comments

Artificial intelligence researchers at Meta Platforms have been in panic mode. In recent days, leaders of some of the company’s AI teams openly worried that new conversational AI made by a Chinese hedge fund meant Meta was falling behind in the AI race. Leaders including AI infrastructure director Mathew Oldham have told numerous colleagues they... Artificial intelligence researchers at Meta Platforms have been in panic mode. In recent days,...

Donald Trump at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville last summer. (Getty Images)

Crypto’s Glory Days Hide An Uncomfortable Reality

By Abram Brown · Jan 25, 2025 7:00am PST · 1 comment

Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter:• The Big Read: How Poppi hopes to win the battle of the bubbles • Space Inc.: What India’s space odyssey could look like • Plus, our Recommendations: An explanation for our problematic shopping; a master novelist’s slim oeuvre; and a movie podcast for the nerdiest film nerdsThe most powerful and... Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter:• The Big Read: How Poppi hopes to win the battle of the...

Art by Clark Miller

A Satellite Startup Envisions a Top Spot in India’s Space Odyssey

By Anita Raghavan · Jan 25, 2025 5:00am PST · 3 comments

Back in November, Awais Ahmed, dressed all in black from his glasses to his trousers, paused for a moment outside his startup’s Bangalore laboratory to peer through a glass window at a stout contraption: a 2.5-foot-tall satellite partially covered in gold foil. A giant eye stared back at him. Mounted atop the satellite was a hyperspectral... Back in November, Awais Ahmed, dressed all in black from his glasses to his trousers, paused for...

Photo via Getty

How Trump’s Order Blitz Played Out for Tech

By Rocket Drew · Jan 24, 2025 3:47pm PST · 1 comment

What a week! President Donald Trump had promised a slew of executive orders once he took office, and the tech and finance industry executives who threw their support behind him expected several would address their long-held beefs with Biden administration policies.Trump delivered on the deluge. The crypto industry got almost everything it... What a week! President Donald Trump had promised a slew of executive orders once he took office,...

Trump Inauguration, Stargate, and the Meme Economy

By Jessica E. Lessin · Jan 24, 2025 10:35am PST

Trump Inauguration, Stargate, and the Meme Economy

By Jessica E. Lessin · Jan 24, 2025 10:35am PST

On this week's More or Less: Silicon Valley goes to Trump's inauguration and the truth behind Stargate. Apple Spotify On this week's More or Less: Silicon Valley goes to Trump's inauguration and the truth...

Art by Clark Miller. Ellsworths image via Getty.

How Poppi Hopes to Win the Battle of the Bubbles

By Ann Gehan · Jan 24, 2025 9:01am PST

On the ground floor of a nondescript condo building in east Austin last month, the wife-and-husband co-founders of Poppi made good on a promise they made to me: that they would offer me a taste test of their beverage company’s in-the-works flavors. It wasn’t quite like getting access to the secret Coca-Cola recipe, but it was as... On the ground floor of a nondescript condo building in east Austin last month, the...

Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk at Donald Trump's inauguration on Monday. Photo by Getty

Pro Weekly: The Trump Bump on Reader Sentiment

By Akash Pasricha · Jan 24, 2025 8:00am PST

Call it the Trump effect. Leaders of Google, Meta Platforms, Amazon and Apple all appeared at the president’s inauguration Monday. And respondents to our latest reader survey said they were decidedly more optimistic about the outlook for those four companies. The survey drew 803 responses between Jan. 15 and Tuesday, covering the long... Call it the Trump effect. Leaders of Google, Meta Platforms, Amazon and Apple all appeared at the...

Andy Jassy photo by Getty. Art by Mike Sullivan

Amazon’s Prime Video Shifts to Profits, Promoting Rival Streamers

By Sahil Patel · Jan 24, 2025 6:00am PST · 1 comment

In the summer of 2022, a year after becoming CEO of Amazon, Andy Jassy wanted the executives running the company’s Prime Video business to tell him why it was spending billions of dollars a year on expensive shows such as “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” and “Citadel.” At an annual planning meeting, Jassy... In the summer of 2022, a year after becoming CEO of Amazon, Andy Jassy wanted the executives...

Donald Trump, left, and Xi Jinping. Photo by Getty.

Trump Loves TikTok—Does Xi?

By Martin Peers · Jan 23, 2025 5:00pm PST · 1 comment

Donald Trump, left, and Xi Jinping. Photo by Getty.

Trump Loves TikTok—Does Xi?

By Martin Peers · Jan 23, 2025 5:00pm PST · 1 comment

It’s a good bet that President Donald Trump cares a lot more about TikTok than Chinese President Xi Jinping does. That suggests the Chinese leader will have some bargaining leverage over Trump in whatever discussions the two have about the fate of the ByteDance-owned app. You can just imagine Xi pressing for big concessions on tariffs or Chinese... It’s a good bet that President Donald Trump cares a lot more about TikTok than Chinese President...

From Left: Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Jensen Huang, Satya Nadella, Masayoshi Son, Larry Ellison and Sam Altman. Photos by Getty; AP.

Behind the OpenAI-Oracle Pact, an Elon Musk Threat Loomed

By Aaron Holmes, Anissa Gardizy and Amir Efrati · Jan 23, 2025 3:00pm PST · 1 comment

As 2024 was drawing to a close, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman faced two major problems. He wasn’t getting enough server capacity from Microsoft, his company’s biggest backer, to stay ahead of rivals developing artificial intelligence. And he was facing a legal challenge from one of his biggest foes, Elon Musk, who had forged a close bond... As 2024 was drawing to a close, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman faced two major problems. He wasn’t...

Chart by Shane Burke

Creator Economy

U.S. TikTok Employees Flee to Meta, Google

By Kaya Yurieff · Jan 23, 2025 2:00pm PST · 2 comments

As uncertainty around TikTok’s future has built for months, some U.S.-based employees at the short-form video app have left for other companies. Nearly one in ten of those departures have been to Meta Platforms, the parent of Instagram and Facebook, according to a new analysis from Live Data Technologies, which tracks personnel movements... As uncertainty around TikTok’s future has built for months, some U.S.-based employees at the...

Art by Mike Sullivan via Midjourney

Automating Senior Software Engineers Will Take Longer Than OpenAI Says

By Jon Victor · Jan 23, 2025 10:43am PST

OpenAI’s development of an “agent” to automate the work of a senior software engineer—which my colleagues scooped yesterday—will raise the stakes in an already competitive market for AI coding tools. But OpenAI still has to overcome a major data problem before such a product can become widely available.While the internet is full of coding... OpenAI’s development of an “agent” to automate the work of a senior software engineer—which my...

Matt McIlwain. Photo via Madrona

Armed With $770 Million, a Seattle VC Firm Hunts for AI Apps

By Natasha Mascarenhas · Jan 23, 2025 9:59am PST

Matt McIlwain. Photo via Madrona

Armed With $770 Million, a Seattle VC Firm Hunts for AI Apps

By Natasha Mascarenhas · Jan 23, 2025 9:59am PST

Seattle-based venture capital firm Madrona Ventures, an early backer of Amazon and Snowflake, has some strong takes on where artificial intelligence is going next—and fresh capital to back them up.The firm, which turned 30 this year, has raised $770 million for new funds to invest in private AI, cloud and software companies. Madrona raised $495... Seattle-based venture capital firm Madrona Ventures, an early backer of Amazon and Snowflake, has...

Subscriber Survey

The Sharp Divide Over OpenAI’s Future Value

By Akash Pasricha · Jan 23, 2025 9:00am PST · 1 comment

Readers of The Information are sharply divided on the future value of OpenAI, with roughly one-fourth expecting the value of the ChatGPT maker to soar past $500 billion in three years—and an almost equal number expecting it to plunge below $100 billion. OpenAI was most recently valued at $157 billion in October. Separately, readers are... Readers of The Information are sharply divided on the future value of OpenAI, with roughly...

Photo by Getty

An OpenAI Math Test Raises Eyebrows

By Rocket Drew · Jan 23, 2025 7:00am PST

When OpenAI previewed o3, its latest reasoning model, in December, one of the ways the company demonstrated its strength was by showing off its 25.2% score on FrontierMath, a test of AI models’ math abilities that Epoch AI developed. (You might remember Epoch, the nonprofit research organization, from their work on AI scaling laws.)That’s not... When OpenAI previewed o3, its latest reasoning model, in December, one of the ways the company...

Left to right: Incoming crypto-friendly Trump appointees Caroline Pham, Paul Atkins, and Hester Peirce; President Trump; and protestors for the release of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht. Photos via Getty.

Trump Speeds Through Crypto Industry’s Wish List

By Yueqi Yang · Jan 23, 2025 6:00am PST · 2 comments

It’s been four days since President Donald Trump’s White House return, and swift changes for the crypto industry are already underway. In his latest move, Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to support the growth of digital assets, including creating a regulatory framework and protecting banking access, fulfilling several of... It’s been four days since President Donald Trump’s White House return, and swift...

With an executive order this week. Photo: Getty

The Electric: Battery Makers Scramble to Save Their Federal Grants and Loans

By Steve LeVine · Jan 23, 2025 4:30am PST

With an executive order this week. Photo: Getty

The Electric: Battery Makers Scramble to Save Their Federal Grants and Loans

By Steve LeVine · Jan 23, 2025 4:30am PST

U.S. auto and battery makers are scrambling to safeguard more than$100 billion in loans, grants and tax credits that President Donald Trump froze this week in a crackdown against what he called the “green new deal. U.S. auto and battery makers are scrambling to safeguard more than$100 billion in loans, grants...