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

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Alphabet Stands Out in a Trio of Unimpressive Earnings

By Martin Peers · Jul 25, 2023 5:00pm PDT

Meh. June-quarter earnings out Tuesday from Alphabet, Microsoft, Snap and Spotify shouldn’t excite anyone about the state of business in tech. The digital ad market is showing what can only be called an uneven recovery, while enterprise software appears to be still struggling. Alphabet seems to have had the best quarter of the companies... Meh. June-quarter earnings out Tuesday from Alphabet, Microsoft, Snap and Spotify shouldn’t...

Photo via Shutterstock

Creator Economy

YouTube Pops, Snap Fizzles

By Kaya Yurieff · Jul 25, 2023 3:00pm PDT

YouTube broke a streak of three straight revenue declines, which spells good news for creators who earn a portion of revenue from ads running on their videos, and indicates the broader digital advertising market is starting to recover—at least for some tech giants. Snap, on the other hand, reported that its revenue fell from last year. YouTube’s... YouTube broke a streak of three straight revenue declines, which spells good news for creators...

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, left, and Apple CEO Tim Cook. Photos by Getty.

How the Partnership Between Apple and Goldman Sachs Soured

By Lauren Tara LaCapra and Wayne Ma · Jul 25, 2023 11:54am PDT · 5 comments

Apple and Goldman Sachs were in test runs before embarking publicly on one of the biggest-name partnerships ever between tech and finance. Engineers from the Silicon Valley giant and the Wall Street titan were pulling an all-nighter a few months before launch, scrambling to find a solution to a problem that had cropped up: Tim Cook... Apple and Goldman Sachs were in test runs before embarking publicly on one of the biggest-name...

Photo generated by Midjourney.

Small Devices Could Soon Handle Large Language Models

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Jul 25, 2023 7:05am PDT · 1 comment

Photo generated by Midjourney.

Small Devices Could Soon Handle Large Language Models

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Jul 25, 2023 7:05am PDT · 1 comment

AI models that once took millions of dollars per month to run could soon fit into the three-by-five-inch phone in your pocket.That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but recent technological advancements have brought edge AI—a method to run AI models on devices—back into the limelight. Engineers from Carnegie Mellon University, University of... AI models that once took millions of dollars per month to run could soon fit into the...

An Amazon Project Kuiper display at the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Photo by Getty.

Investors Say They’re Fed Up With Amazon’s Big Bets

By Theo Wayt · Jul 25, 2023 6:00am PDT · 6 comments

A growing number of investors are complaining about Amazon’s management, specifically a lack of transparency about how much money it’s been pouring into ambitious satellite internet and grocery initiatives and how those bets have been paying off, investors and analysts told The Information. The complaints follow five years of Amazon... A growing number of investors are complaining about Amazon’s management, specifically a...

Photo by Getty

What Lyft and Altice Asset Sales Say About the Art of the Deal

By Martin Peers · Jul 24, 2023 5:00pm PDT

The deal business is definitely picking up—if only from troubled companies unloading stuff to raise cash. Take reports today that Lyft is looking to sell its bike-share business and that French-controlled cable firm Altice USA is contemplating ditching its Cheddar News financial news streaming channel. Both Lyft and Altice are in a bad way—as... The deal business is definitely picking up—if only from troubled companies unloading stuff to...

Twitter rebranded to X. Photo by Erin Woo

Creator Economy

What to Expect From Tech Earnings; Musk Rebrands Twitter

By Kaya Yurieff · Jul 24, 2023 2:00pm PDT · 1 comment

It’s already shaping up to be a busy week, with a parade of quarterly tech earnings and Elon Musk’s surprise announcement that he’s rebranding Twitter to X (more on that in a moment).Second-quarter results from Snap and Alphabet on Tuesday and Meta Platforms on Wednesday will give insight into the state of digital advertising. YouTube, owned by... It’s already shaping up to be a busy week, with a parade of quarterly tech earnings and Elon Musk...

Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Photo by Getty.

Pressure Grows on OpenAI to Respond to Meta’s Challenge

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Jul 24, 2023 10:24am PDT · 6 comments

Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Photo by Getty.

Pressure Grows on OpenAI to Respond to Meta’s Challenge

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Jul 24, 2023 10:24am PDT · 6 comments

Welcome to AI Agenda, The Information’s new newsletter that takes you inside the fast-paced world of artificial intelligence.Rapid advancements in the field have prompted companies and governments to grapple with how emerging technology such as ChatGPT and AI-generated video will shape our lives. Through it all, The Information has brought you... Welcome to AI Agenda, The Information’s new newsletter that takes you inside the fast-paced world...

Photo via Stitch FIx.

Stitch Fix Thinks Outside the Box With CEO Do-Over

By Ann Gehan · Jul 24, 2023 7:00am PDT

Stitch Fix’s new CEO, Matt Baer, grew up in South Florida, working at his family’s chain of furniture stores. But after studying business in college, Baer went to law school and took a job with hotshot lawyer David Boies’ firm. He returned to retail when he joined e-commerce startup Fab in 2011, which started a decade of work... Stitch Fix’s new CEO, Matt Baer, grew up in South Florida, working at his family’s...

Left to right: Kyriakos Mitsotakis, prime minister of Greece; Haris Karonis, CEO of Viva Wallet; and Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase. Photos by Getty.

JPMorgan’s Greek Fintech Unicorn Draws Regulatory Blitz

By Michael Roddan · Jul 24, 2023 6:00am PDT

When JPMorgan Chase signed a deal last year to buy 49% of Greek payments fintech Viva Wallet for $800 million, Jamie Dimon flew to Athens to stand alongside Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who hailed the purchase as a “vote of confidence in the country.” The deal crowned Viva Wallet as Greece’s first tech unicorn, valued at... When JPMorgan Chase signed a deal last year to buy 49% of Greek payments fintech Viva Wallet for...

Up to 1 billion combustion vehicles will still be on the road globally three decades from now despite the rapid shift to electric cars. Photo: Dünzl/ullstein bild/Getty.

The Electric: In 2050, There May Still Be 1 Billion Combustion Vehicles on the Road

By Steve LeVine · Jul 24, 2023 4:30am PDT

Sales of electric vehicles are growing at 55% a year. California and the EU have both banned the sale of new combustion vehicles after 2035. Yet in 2050 drivers will still be plying the world’s roads in up to 1 billion combustion vehicles, according to leading analysts. Combustion’s tenacity will exacerbate the extreme weather conditions... Sales of electric vehicles are growing at 55% a year. California and the EU have both banned the...

A Stripe Co-Founder’s Billionaire Flex

A Stripe Co-Founder’s Billionaire Flex

By Jon Steinberg · Jul 22, 2023 6:00am PDT

A Stripe Co-Founder’s Billionaire Flex

A Stripe Co-Founder’s Billionaire Flex

By Jon Steinberg · Jul 22, 2023 6:00am PDT

Hi, welcome to your Weekend.You’re likely not intimately familiar with the world of John Collison, and that is mostly by design. Unlike other millennial tech titans like Sam Altman, Brian Chesky and Brian Armstrong, relatively little has been written about Collison, the intensely private, Irish-born co-founder of the $50 billion payments... Hi, welcome to your Weekend.You’re likely not intimately familiar with the world of John...

Art by Clark Miller

Scene and Heard

The Cult of Notion: A Productivity App Becomes a Sensation for Creators

By Kalley Huang · Jul 22, 2023 6:00am PDT · 10 comments

In May, hundreds of people queued outside an auditorium in the San Isidro district of Lima, Perú. They had to wait another two hours before the event began, with the line nearly wrapping around the block and storm clouds looming in the late evening sky. As they killed time, the crowd buzzed in anticipation: “Notion! Notion!... In May, hundreds of people queued outside an auditorium in the San Isidro district of Lima,...

Ryan Breslow. Photo by Getty.

Bolt, Cameo and the Dangers of Having Too Much Money Too Soon

By Martin Peers · Jul 21, 2023 3:00pm PDT

Talk about shades of “Succession.” Investor Activant Ventures, a shareholder in e-commerce software firm Bolt, made some extraordinary allegations in a lawsuit filed today against Bolt co-founder Ryan Breslow—which The Information’s Erin Woo scooped here. Most stunning was that Breslow, in a move reminiscent of Logan Roy, last spring removed... Talk about shades of “Succession.” Investor Activant Ventures, a shareholder in e-commerce...

More or Less: Hollywood and AI. What IS Threads?

By Jessica E. Lessin · Jul 21, 2023 11:57am PDT · 3 comments

There was a moment in this week's episode that made me realize (yet again) that we are in interesting and important times. It was when Sam said, "It's not typical that you see VCs write down an investment in the same quarter they made it." He was talking about struggling AI startups, a big topic this week, along with the... There was a moment in this week's episode that made me realize (yet again) that we are...

Art by Clark Miller

Threading the Needle: Social Media Power Users Are Divided About Threads

By Chris Stokel-Walker · Jul 21, 2023 11:00am PDT · 12 comments

Art by Clark Miller

Threading the Needle: Social Media Power Users Are Divided About Threads

By Chris Stokel-Walker · Jul 21, 2023 11:00am PDT · 12 comments

When Chris Messina joined Google back in 2010 as a user experience designer, he was placed within a team devoted to making Google+, the company’s big bet in social media, a success. The network, launched in 2011, was designed to bring Google’s might to the world of social media and supplant some of the big beasts of the time,... When Chris Messina joined Google back in 2010 as a user experience designer, he was placed within...

Stripe president and co-founder John Collison, as imagined in front of his Abbey Leix estate in the Irish midlands. Photo-illustration by Clark Miller

John Collison’s Land Grab: A Stripe Co-Founder Grows in Power

By Cory Weinberg · Jul 21, 2023 9:00am PDT · 11 comments

Visitors to the Abbey Leix estate in County Laois, Ireland, must drive on an unkempt gravel road that leads through a thick forest and past a derelict corn mill to get to the giant old house in the country’s midlands. Stephen Kinsella, an Irish economist, made the journey last May at the invitation of a friend who had recently purchased... Visitors to the Abbey Leix estate in County Laois, Ireland, must drive on an unkempt gravel road...

Pro Weekly: The Information Readers Turn Bullish on Tech

Pro Weekly: The Information Readers Turn Bullish on Tech

By Kalley Huang · Jul 21, 2023 8:00am PDT

Welcome back!On Thursday, we published results from our monthly subscriber survey, revealing a sunnier outlook for the technology industry among readers of The Information.Nearly half of respondents—47%—said conditions for technology companies would improve over the next six months, while about a fifth—19%—said they would worsen. In June,... Welcome back!On Thursday, we published results from our monthly subscriber survey, revealing a...

Ryan Breslow. Photo by Getty

Bolt Probed by SEC, Investors Over Statements Made During Fundraising

By Erin Woo · Jul 21, 2023 7:10am PDT · 6 comments

The Securities and Exchange Commission subpoenaed e-commerce software startup Bolt and sent a notice to co-founder and former CEO Ryan Breslow last year over their past statements to current and potential investors, according to an April 2023 letter from a lawyer representing two of Bolt’s major investors. Brian Reinken of WestCap... The Securities and Exchange Commission subpoenaed e-commerce software startup Bolt and sent a...

Cameo CEO Steven Galanis. Photo by Getty

At Cameo, Deep Layoffs Followed a Dash for Cash

By Kaya Yurieff, Natasha Mascarenhas and Kate Clark · Jul 21, 2023 6:08am PDT · 4 comments

Cameo CEO Steven Galanis. Photo by Getty

At Cameo, Deep Layoffs Followed a Dash for Cash

By Kaya Yurieff, Natasha Mascarenhas and Kate Clark · Jul 21, 2023 6:08am PDT · 4 comments

Last week, things finally seemed to be stabilizing for employees of Cameo—an online marketplace where people can pay supporting cast members of “Seinfeld” and other celebrities to record personalized video messages. After two rounds of layoffs in 2022 that had gutted the size of its staff, Cameo had flown dozens of employees to... Last week, things finally seemed to be stabilizing for employees of Cameo—an online...