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

Leslie Feinzaig. Photo via Flickr.

The Seed Investor Who Launched ‘VCsForKamala’

By Kate Clark · Aug 1, 2024 3:05pm PDT · 1 comment

Leslie Feinzaig, a venture capitalist and founder of the community group Female Founders Alliance, buys web addresses often, usually shortly after she develops a new idea. “I have an embarrassingly long list of URLs,” she said in an interview Thursday afternoon. However, few of these URLs have sparked a movement in venture capital quite... Leslie Feinzaig, a venture capitalist and founder of the community group Female Founders...

Partner Content

Recap: Why Companies Are Betting on Small AI Models

By The Information Partnerships · Aug 1, 2024 1:53pm PDT

Ever since ChatGPT exploded, tech companies have been racing to replicate its success with their own large language models, from Google’s Gemini to Meta Platforms’ Llama. But bigger isn’t always better. Small language models promise enterprises less lag, lower costs and a smaller environmental footprint. Amir Efrati, executive... Ever since ChatGPT exploded, tech companies have been racing to replicate its success with their...

Art by Clark Miller. Michelle Ritter photo via BFA, Eric Schmidt via Getty.

An Eric Schmidt Investment Firm Crumbles After Mismanagement, Soured Romance

By Cory Weinberg and Michael Roddan · Aug 1, 2024 10:01am PDT · 14 comments

Michelle Ritter felt stuck. She knew it was an odd thing to say last month, as she sat on the living-room carpet of the 13-bedroom Bel Air mansion—previously owned by the Hilton family—that she currently lives in. The owner of the mansion is Eric Schmidt, the 69-year-old former Google CEO, whom Ritter, 30, began dating in 2020 when... Michelle Ritter felt stuck. She knew it was an odd thing to say last month, as she sat on the...

Photo via AP.

XAI Eyes Chatbot Maker Character.AI; Meta Spends Big on AI—Now, How Can It Make Money?

By Kalley Huang · Aug 1, 2024 7:00am PDT

Photo via AP.

XAI Eyes Chatbot Maker Character.AI; Meta Spends Big on AI—Now, How Can It Make Money?

By Kalley Huang · Aug 1, 2024 7:00am PDT

The big fish of artificial intelligence are again circling a minnow. Elon Musk’s xAI has considered buying Character.AI, which makes chatbots for hyperrealistic roleplay, my colleagues Natasha and Stephanie and I reported yesterday. Such a purchase would give xAI new avenues for testing and improving its models, as well as additional... The big fish of artificial intelligence are again circling a minnow. Elon Musk’s xAI has...

Art by Mike Sullivan

Cable’s Decline Loomed Large Over NBA’s Divorce From Warner

By Sahil Patel · Aug 1, 2024 6:10am PDT

How hard did the NBA try to keep its marriage to longtime cable television partner, Warner Bros. Discovery’s Turner Sports, going? During a new round of negotiations with media companies for rights to air the league’s games, the NBA made it practically impossible for Warner to win one of the multiple deals it was doling out. For... How hard did the NBA try to keep its marriage to longtime cable television partner, Warner Bros....

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Photo by Getty

Meta Flexes Financial Muscle in Costly AI Showdown With Microsoft and Google

By Amir Efrati · Jul 31, 2024 5:13pm PDT

Meta Platforms shareholders have had a singular concern lately: how the company can go toe-to-toe with Google and Microsoft (and Microsoft partner OpenAI) in developing cutting-edge artificial intelligence while expanding data centers and filling them with costly AI chips to enable future breakthroughs that result in profits.On Wednesday, Meta... Meta Platforms shareholders have had a singular concern lately: how the company can go toe-to-toe...

Photo by Getty.

Creator Economy

Online Commerce Ads Boost Meta; Threads Users Rise

By Julia Hornstein · Jul 31, 2024 4:48pm PDT

For all the talk about artificial intelligence, Meta Platform’s digital ad business continues to mint money. Advertising from apps including Instagram and Facebook rose 22% in the second quarter from the year-ago period, to $38 billion. Ads for online commerce sites were the largest contributor to year-on-year growth. The average price... For all the talk about artificial intelligence, Meta Platform’s digital ad business continues to...

XAI founder Elon Musk. Photo by Marc Piasecki/Getty Images

Musk’s xAI Has Considered Buying Character.AI

By Natasha Mascarenhas, Stephanie Palazzolo and Kalley Huang · Jul 31, 2024 4:18pm PDT · 2 comments

XAI founder Elon Musk. Photo by Marc Piasecki/Getty Images

Musk’s xAI Has Considered Buying Character.AI

By Natasha Mascarenhas, Stephanie Palazzolo and Kalley Huang · Jul 31, 2024 4:18pm PDT · 2 comments

XAI, Elon Musk’s one-year-old artificial intelligence startup, has considered acquiring chatbot maker Character.AI as it looks for more ways to test its Grok AI models, according to a person who spoke with xAI leadership about the deal. The discussion may not result in a deal. But the internal debate at xAI points to the types of pairings... XAI, Elon Musk’s one-year-old artificial intelligence startup, has considered acquiring...

Photo via Getty.

How an Old Google Search Trick is Solving AI Hallucinations

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Jul 31, 2024 7:00am PDT · 2 comments

If you’ve kept up with this newsletter, you’ve likely learned a lot about retrieval augmented generation, a commonly-used technique that reduces bad results from large language models by providing the models with access to data whose accuracy has been vetted.Artificial intelligence developers have improved traditional RAG (otherwise known as ... If you’ve kept up with this newsletter, you’ve likely learned a lot about retrieval augmented...

TikTok Spending Drove Microsoft’s Booming AI Business

By Aaron Holmes · Jul 31, 2024 6:00am PDT · 2 comments

Microsoft has had success reselling OpenAI’s artificial intelligence to its cloud customers, a core part of its plan to build a new multibillion-dollar profit machine. New data show which customers are powering the business. TikTok, for instance, was paying nearly $20 million per month to buy OpenAI’s models through Microsoft as of... Microsoft has had success reselling OpenAI’s artificial intelligence to its cloud...

Amy Hood. Photo by Bloomberg via Getty.

Microsoft Tests Investors’ Patience

By Anita Ramaswamy · Jul 30, 2024 6:03pm PDT · 4 comments

Patience may be a virtue, but Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood is asking investors to take it to extremes. Twice during the Tuesday conference call to discuss the company’s June-quarter results, Hood said Microsoft’s extraordinary investment in building and leasing data centers to support artificial intelligence would pay off over... Patience may be a virtue, but Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood is asking investors to...

Photo via Getty.

AI Anxiety and Political Spats Hang Over Silicon Valley

By Kate Clark · Jul 30, 2024 3:47pm PDT

Photo via Getty.

AI Anxiety and Political Spats Hang Over Silicon Valley

By Kate Clark · Jul 30, 2024 3:47pm PDT

There was a palpable sense of trepidation in the air in San Francisco and on Sand Hill Road during my latest visit last week.Venture capitalists are increasingly stressed by the frenetic pace of artificial intelligence deals, which they say resembles the frenzied check-writing of 2021. They are also growing more concerned about the lack of... There was a palpable sense of trepidation in the air in San Francisco and on Sand Hill Road...

Chart by Shane Burke

Creator Economy

AI Chatbots Go Mainstream on Social Media

By Kaya Yurieff · Jul 30, 2024 2:52pm PDT

As remarkable as it sounds, we’re already in the second wave of artificial intelligence chatbots. As Sylvia, Kalley and I reported earlier today, Meta Platforms has scrapped its high-profile celebrity chatbots—the ones modeled after public figures and creators such as Charli D’Amelio, whose avatar, Coco, offered dancing tips—after they... As remarkable as it sounds, we’re already in the second wave of artificial intelligence...

Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, introducing the celebrity AI chatbots at Meta Connect 2023 last September. Photo via YouTube.

Meta Scraps Celebrity AI Chatbots That Fell Flat With Users

By Kaya Yurieff, Sylvia Varnham O'Regan and Kalley Huang · Jul 30, 2024 12:55pm PDT · 1 comment

Meta Platforms has scrapped its first high-profile foray into consumer artificial intelligence—chatbots played by celebrities and social media influencers such as Charli D’Amelio, MrBeast and Paris Hilton. The reversal, less than a year after Meta launched the celebrity chatbots, shows how even the biggest tech companies... Meta Platforms has scrapped its first high-profile foray into consumer artificial...

Photo via Getty

How OpenAI's Smaller Rivals Are Developing Their Own AI That ‘Reasons’

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Jul 30, 2024 7:00am PDT

To expand the market for artificial intelligence, developers must create large language models that can reason through customers’ problems, not just parrot answers based on what’s in the models’ training data.While OpenAI and Google are throwing tons of capital at developing AI that solves problems it hasn’t seen before, small startups and... To expand the market for artificial intelligence, developers must create large language models...

Skims co-founder, Kim Kardashian. Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images.

Skims, Chime Take New Steps to 2025 IPOs

By Cory Weinberg · Jul 30, 2024 6:00am PDT · 1 comment

Skims co-founder, Kim Kardashian. Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images.

Skims, Chime Take New Steps to 2025 IPOs

By Cory Weinberg · Jul 30, 2024 6:00am PDT · 1 comment

The bankers, lawyers and other advisers who usher tech companies through initial public offerings have already written off 2024 as another lost year. That has put an added spotlight on which companies are taking new concrete steps to list publicly next year. The lineup is starting to take shape: Skims, the apparel company co-founded by Kim... The bankers, lawyers and other advisers who usher tech companies through initial public offerings...

Long waits at Madrid-Barajas International Airport on July 19 due to the global communications outage caused by CrowdStrike. Photo by Diego Radames/Anadolu via Getty.

CrowdStrike’s Comeback Hits an Air Pocket

By Laura Mandaro · Jul 29, 2024 5:00pm PDT

I just spent a relaxing week at the beach that started in turmoil: Mine was one of more than 3,500 Delta flights canceled as a result of a CrowdStrike-sparked outage that also shut down hospital, bank and courthouse systems. While Delta’s still on the hot seat with transportation regulators, Wall Street seems to have largely forgiven... I just spent a relaxing week at the beach that started in turmoil: Mine was one of more than...

John Chambers, former CEO of Cisco Systems. Photo by Thibault Camus/POOL/AFP via Getty.

Veteran Dealmaker John Chambers to Join Board of Embattled AI Startup Humane

By Stephanie Palazzolo and Natasha Mascarenhas · Jul 29, 2024 1:00pm PDT · 2 comments

Humane, the maker of a wearable device that aimed to replace smartphones, has told investors that former Cisco CEO John Chambers is joining its board of directors, according to two people with knowledge of the decision. The move came after the six-year-old San Francisco startup recently considered a sale after reviewers panned the device, and it... Humane, the maker of a wearable device that aimed to replace smartphones, has told investors that...

Vienna, Austria. Photo via Shutterstock.

The Hottest AI Research: Cutting Costs; OpenAI Director Says AGI in Five to 15 Years

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Jul 29, 2024 7:00am PDT

Machine learning conferences used to be about pushing boundaries and thinking outside the box. These days, they’re focused on practicality and helping businesses cut the cost of running artificial intelligence.Take the International Conference on Machine Learning, or ICML, in Vienna last week, where the desire to lower AI costs seemed front of... Machine learning conferences used to be about pushing boundaries and thinking outside the box....

A Pinterest banner at the New York Stock Exchange on May 15, marking the fifth anniversary of the company's listing. Photo via AP.

Pinterest, LinkedIn Team Up With Publishers to Sell Ads

By Sahil Patel · Jul 29, 2024 6:00am PDT

A Pinterest banner at the New York Stock Exchange on May 15, marking the fifth anniversary of the company's listing. Photo via AP.

Pinterest, LinkedIn Team Up With Publishers to Sell Ads

By Sahil Patel · Jul 29, 2024 6:00am PDT

Social media platforms such as Pinterest, TikTok and LinkedIn are trying a new tack to gain a bigger share of digital advertising—getting news outlets and other publishers to help them sell ads. Pinterest, for instance, is testing a new program through which publishers would be able to sell advertising on their Pinterest pages using the... Social media platforms such as Pinterest, TikTok and LinkedIn are trying a new tack to gain a...