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

Figma CEO Dylan Field at SXSW 2024. Photo by Rick Kern/Getty Images.

Figma Shareholders to Sell Up to $900 Million of Stock at Deep Discount to Adobe Price

By Cory Weinberg · May 16, 2024 12:00pm PDT

Figma employees and early shareholders collectively will be able to sell as much as $900 million of their shares after lining up commitments from nearly two dozen new and existing backers that valued the design collaboration startup at $12.5 billion. The price represents a nearly 38% decline from Adobe’s proposed plan to buy the company... Figma employees and early shareholders collectively will be able to sell as much as $900 million...

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, left, and AWS's new leader Matt Garman. Photos via Getty

For AWS’ New Leader, Big Decisions Lie Ahead on AI, Business Apps

By Anissa Gardizy and Theo Wayt · May 16, 2024 11:39am PDT · 1 comment

For years, many current and former executives at Amazon expected Matt Garman to lead Amazon Web Services someday, given his long tenure at the cloud provider and reputation as a protégé of AWS’ first leader, Andy Jassy. But that day arrived a little sooner than they expected when Jassy, now Amazon’s CEO, said Tuesday... For years, many current and former executives at Amazon expected Matt Garman to lead Amazon Web...

Carnegie Mellon University. Photo via Adobe Stock.

Legal Problems Are Coming for AI Researchers in Academia; OpenAI Cofounder Shares His AGI Timeline

By Stephanie Palazzolo · May 16, 2024 7:30am PDT

Artificial intelligence developers have a long history of playing fast and loose with intellectual property rights when it comes to getting data to train their models. While data owners are increasingly suing OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta Platforms and other major firms over such alleged violations, the heat may soon be turned on academics who operate... Artificial intelligence developers have a long history of playing fast and loose with...

Photo by Bloomberg via Getty Images.

How Coinbase Is Seeking to Ease Crypto’s Credit Crunch

By Yueqi Yang · May 16, 2024 6:00am PDT · 1 comment

Photo by Bloomberg via Getty Images.

How Coinbase Is Seeking to Ease Crypto’s Credit Crunch

By Yueqi Yang · May 16, 2024 6:00am PDT · 1 comment

Crypto has always been a boom-and-bust business. And right now, Coinbase is flush. That has allowed the crypto exchange to lend more money to big traders, which have struggled to borrow since the 2022 market collapse wiped out Genesis, Voyager and most other big crypto lenders. Coinbase’s loans to customers swelled to nearly $800 million... Crypto has always been a boom-and-bust business. And right now, Coinbase is flush. That has...

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden announces tariffs on China. Photo by Getty.

Exclusive From The Electric: Biden to End Tariff Exemption on Synthetic Graphite from China

By Steve LeVine · May 16, 2024 4:30am PDT

In a new move meant to protect the nascent U.S. electric vehicle battery industry, the Biden administration will announce a 25% tariff on Chinese-made synthetic graphite later this month, to be imposed in stages over the next two years, a U.S. official said. In a new move meant to protect the nascent U.S. electric vehicle battery industry, the Biden...

A trader on the NYSE floor earlier this month. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Everything’s Coming Up Big Tech

By Cory Weinberg · May 15, 2024 5:00pm PDT

Wall Street traders sent U.S. stocks to all-time highs on Wednesday. An ebullient market, pleased with easing inflation, liked big tech even more. Most of the tech giants like Nvidia, Meta Platforms and Microsoft saw gains higher than the S&P 500. As if those companies need more help, the market’s friendliness plays into big tech’s... Wall Street traders sent U.S. stocks to all-time highs on Wednesday. An ebullient market, pleased...

Photo via YouTube.

Stability AI, Facing Cash Crunch, Discusses Sale

By Stephanie Palazzolo · May 15, 2024 4:51pm PDT · 2 comments

Stability AI, which has emerged as a poster child for investors’ rush to back unproven artificial intelligence startups, has talked to at least one potential buyer in recent weeks about a sale as its faces a cash crunch, according to a person involved in the conversations. The four-year-old startup raised at least $101 million from marquee... Stability AI, which has emerged as a poster child for investors’ rush to back unproven...

Photo via Duolingo.

Duolingo’s TikTok Famous Owl Is Spending More Time on YouTube

By Kaya Yurieff · May 15, 2024 2:00pm PDT

Photo via Duolingo.

Creator Economy

Duolingo’s TikTok Famous Owl Is Spending More Time on YouTube

By Kaya Yurieff · May 15, 2024 2:00pm PDT

Duolingo has made its TikTok account a hit with users, emerging as an example of how companies can find a voice on short-form video. It’s got a plan for a potential TikTok ban. The language learning app, best known by its pushy owl mascot, has been expanding its presence on YouTube Shorts since early last year. For example, it ran a... Duolingo has made its TikTok account a hit with users, emerging as an example of how...

Google DeepMind CEO, Demis Hassabis. Photo via Google.

Why Google and OpenAI Don’t See Eye to Eye on Voice Assistants

By Amir Efrati and Jon Victor · May 15, 2024 7:00am PDT · 2 comments

Google has spent the past year and a half chasing OpenAI’s conversational artificial intelligence. But as the technical gap narrows between their products, the companies this week revealed an important difference in how their AIs will interact with people. (To read the five main takeaways from Google’s two-hour spate of announcements, see this... Google has spent the past year and a half chasing OpenAI’s conversational artificial...

Introducing The Information’s Sports Rights Database

By Sahil Patel and Akash Pasricha · May 15, 2024 6:00am PDT · 3 comments

A New York Yankees fan who wants to watch all of the team’s games this year needs more than a cable TV subscription. They’ll also need access to Amazon Prime, Apple TV+ and Roku, each of which has exclusive rights to stream certain games. It’s not just baseball. The NBA is nearing rights deals beginning in 2025 with... A New York Yankees fan who wants to watch all of the team’s games this year needs more than...

Google AI chief Demis Hassabis, left, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai via Getty

The Good and Bad of Google’s AI Bash

By Jon Victor and Amir Efrati · May 14, 2024 6:02pm PDT · 7 comments

Google on Tuesday gave its supporters and detractors a lot of fodder after a two-hour showcase of new conversational artificial intelligence for consumers and businesses. Although CEO Sundar Pichai described relatively few major technological breakthroughs during the marathon session, the dizzying array of new AI features in dozens of existing... Google on Tuesday gave its supporters and detractors a lot of fodder after a two-hour showcase of...

Google CEO Sundar Pichai at Google’s I/O developer conference on Tuesday. Photo by Google

Google Serves a Multicourse AI Meal

By Nick Wingfield · May 14, 2024 5:00pm PDT · 1 comment

Google CEO Sundar Pichai at Google’s I/O developer conference on Tuesday. Photo by Google

Google Serves a Multicourse AI Meal

By Nick Wingfield · May 14, 2024 5:00pm PDT · 1 comment

The season of AI hype continues. Yesterday it was OpenAI. Today it was Google, which used its annual developer conference, Google I/O, to chronicle all of the ways it’s pushing the ball forward in artificial intelligence. Google is part of a $2 trillion–plus company, so it had a lot of ground to cover, which may explain why its event clocked in... The season of AI hype continues. Yesterday it was OpenAI. Today it was Google, which used its...

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Photo by Bloomberg via Getty Images.

Middle East Money Takes a Round Trip

By Kate Clark · May 14, 2024 3:00pm PDT

In the world of artificial intelligence, startups are raising heaps of cash from cloud and chip providers like Google and Nvidia. It’s a great deal for the big tech companies. The startups are also their customers, so much of that capital cycles back as revenue, a phenomenon some critics have dubbed “round-tripping.”A similar dynamic is... In the world of artificial intelligence, startups are raising heaps of cash from cloud and chip...

Photo via Google.

Creator Economy

Google’s Sora Competitor Is Coming to YouTube

By Kaya Yurieff · May 14, 2024 2:00pm PDT

Google is coming for OpenAI’s Sora—and the plethora of other young startups offering ways to create AI-generated video, ranging from Runway to Pika. On Tuesday at its annual developer conference Google I/O, the company announced Veo, which creates AI-generated videos from text, image and video prompts. Demis Hassabis, co-founder & CEO... Google is coming for OpenAI’s Sora—and the plethora of other young startups offering ways to...

Elon Musk, left, and Larry Ellison. Photos via Getty Images.

Musk’s xAI Nears $10 Billion Deal to Rent Oracle’s AI Servers

By Anissa Gardizy · May 14, 2024 9:00am PDT · 1 comment

Elon Musk’s 1-year-old artificial intelligence startup, xAI, has been talking to Oracle executives about spending $10 billion to rent cloud servers from the company over a period of years, according to a person who has been involved in the talks. The deal would make xAI one of Oracle’s largest customers as Musk tries to catch up... Elon Musk’s 1-year-old artificial intelligence startup, xAI, has been talking to Oracle...

OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati introducing GPT-4o. Photo via YouTube/OpenAI.

OpenAI’s Impressive Engineering Feat with GPT-4o AKA ‘Her’

By Stephanie Palazzolo and Kalley Huang · May 14, 2024 7:00am PDT

OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati introducing GPT-4o. Photo via YouTube/OpenAI.

OpenAI’s Impressive Engineering Feat with GPT-4o AKA ‘Her’

By Stephanie Palazzolo and Kalley Huang · May 14, 2024 7:00am PDT

OpenAI’s Google search killer may not yet be ready for prime time, and neither is the long-awaited GPT-5 large language model. But the ChatGPT developer on Monday may have still managed to steal some thunder ahead of Google’s annual conference for software developers, I/O, which starts later this morning.In a 26-minute demonstration, OpenAI COO... OpenAI’s Google search killer may not yet be ready for prime time, and neither is the...

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Photo via Shutterstock.

TPG, General Atlantic Back Saudi Startups After Taking Kingdom’s Money

By Kate Clark · May 14, 2024 6:00am PDT

The Middle East’s giant sovereign wealth funds have poured money into dozens of U.S. private tech funds with the expectation that some of those petro dollars will funnel back to the region’s startups. Now there are signs that venture capitalists and private equity funds are responding by scouting for investments in local startups. In... The Middle East’s giant sovereign wealth funds have poured money into dozens of U.S....

A truck enters a large regional Walmart distribution center in Washington, Utah. Photo by George Frey/Getty Images.

Walmart Lays Off Corporate Staff, Tells Workers at Three Tech Hubs to Relocate

By Theo Wayt and Ann Gehan · May 13, 2024 6:59pm PDT

Walmart is laying off hundreds of corporate staffers and ordering employees at tech hubs in Dallas, Atlanta and Toronto to relocate or lose their jobs, according to a person close to the company, as it grapples with slowing growth and prepares to open a massive new campus at its Bentonville, Ark. headquarters. Some tech employees in the... Walmart is laying off hundreds of corporate staffers and ordering employees at tech hubs...

OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati introducing GPT-4o. Photo via YouTube/OpenAI

OpenAI Outshines Apple

By Nick Wingfield · May 13, 2024 5:00pm PDT

Here at The Information we’ve written a lot over the past six years about Apple’s struggles to make technological progress with its Siri voice assistant. So it must have been painful to the folks at Apple’s giant donut in Cupertino, Calif., to see OpenAI waltz right onto their turf earlier today and show the kind of artificial intelligence–... Here at The Information we’ve written a lot over the past six years about Apple’s struggles to...

Food and beverage startups can struggle to finance inventory and other costs to get their products on shelves. Photo via Adobe Stock.

A Lender to Buzzy Brands Is Scrambling, Highlighting Consumer Crunch

By Ann Gehan · May 13, 2024 11:54am PDT

Food and beverage startups can struggle to finance inventory and other costs to get their products on shelves. Photo via Adobe Stock.

A Lender to Buzzy Brands Is Scrambling, Highlighting Consumer Crunch

By Ann Gehan · May 13, 2024 11:54am PDT

Ampla, a consumer startup-focused fintech that has loaned money to buzzy food and beverage brands like Carbone Fine Food pasta sauces and MrBeast-backed snack brand Feastables, is trying to find a buyer after failing to raise a fresh equity round, a person who has participated in deal talks said. The sale attempts highlight how a pullback in... Ampla, a consumer startup-focused fintech that has loaned money to buzzy food and beverage brands...