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

A promotional image for the Oculus Quest 2 VR headset. Credit: Facebook

Facebook’s Earnings; Google’s Police VR Training; Pimax’s Moonshot

By Mathew Olson · Oct 26, 2021 11:00am PDT

We can look forward to more details about Facebook’s AR/VR and metaverse efforts now that the company plans to report its Facebook Reality Labs unit as its own segment starting in the fourth quarter. After years of Facebook not disclosing headset sales figures and with only a handful of cherry-picked statistics to champion the strength of Oculus... We can look forward to more details about Facebook’s AR/VR and metaverse efforts now that the...

Photo by Bloomberg

ByteDance’s Stock Value Falls by 20% in Secondary Sale After China Crackdown

By Juro Osawa · Oct 26, 2021 8:33am PDT

Is TikTok cheap? Some investors think so and are buying private shares of TikTok owner ByteDance from existing investors at prices that value it at a steep discount compared to trades from earlier this year. Recently, the family office of a Middle Eastern billionaire struck a deal in the secondary market to buy shares that valued closely held... Is TikTok cheap? Some investors think so and are buying private shares of TikTok owner ByteDance...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at an Oculus Connect event in 2017. Photo by Bloomberg.

What Will Metaverse Be Worth in 2025? Our Guess Is $82 Billion

By Mathew Olson · Oct 26, 2021 6:01am PDT · 6 comments

Facebook is spending tens of billions of dollars in the next few years building the virtual immersive world dubbed the metaverse, CEO Mark Zuckerberg indicated on Monday night. But he also acknowledged that the metaverse won’t evolve into a money-making business until “later in this decade.” We decided to try to calculate the... Facebook is spending tens of billions of dollars in the next few years building the virtual...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Photo by Bloomberg.

Why Facebook Has to Make the Metaverse Investment

By Martin Peers · Oct 25, 2021 5:34pm PDT

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Photo by Bloomberg.

Why Facebook Has to Make the Metaverse Investment

By Martin Peers · Oct 25, 2021 5:34pm PDT

Facebook wants the world to know just how much money it is investing in the metaverse, the futuristic immersive world that CEO Mark Zuckerberg hopes will draw in a billion people at some point in the next few years. Superficially, the investment numbers are impressive—Facebook said today that its spending on the Reality Labs unit which is... Facebook wants the world to know just how much money it is investing in the metaverse, the...

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev. Photo: Bloomberg

Robinhood Earnings Preview; Facebook Whistleblower’s Crypto Cache

By Hannah Miller · Oct 25, 2021 4:33pm PDT

Robinhood will hold its second-ever earnings call late Tuesday, likely providing more details on its growing crypto business. CEO Vlad Tenev has already given a peek into what might be discussed on the call: he told CNBC on Thursday that more than 1 million people are on the waitlist for the company’s crypto wallet, which has a full launch... Robinhood will hold its second-ever earnings call late Tuesday, likely providing more details on...

Creator Economy

What Our Latest Database Launch Tells Us About the Creator Economy

By Kaya Yurieff · Oct 25, 2021 3:03pm PDT

Today we launched the latest version of The Information’s Creator Economy Database, with information on more than 100 companies focused on creators. That’s double what the database contained in June! Some of the recent entrants include StreamElements, a startup that provides tools like chatbots and virtual tip jars for streamers, and Mayk.it, a... Today we launched the latest version of The Information’s Creator Economy Database, with...

Outside an Apple store in New York. Photo by Bloomberg.

Apple Very Likely to Face DOJ Antitrust Suit

By Josh Sisco · Oct 25, 2021 1:18pm PDT

Apple so far has avoided the worst outcome in its U.S. legal battle with Epic Games, but its antitrust woes remain. In the last several months the U.S. Department of Justice has accelerated its two-year-old antitrust probe of the iPhone maker, according to two people with knowledge of the investigation, increasing the likelihood of a lawsuit. ... Apple so far has avoided the worst outcome in its U.S. legal battle with Epic Games, but its...

Attendees at Facebook's 2019 Connect event gather around a Horizon display. Photo: Bloomberg

How Long Will the Wait for Facebook’s Horizon Worlds Be?

By Wayne Ma · Oct 25, 2021 11:00am PDT · 1 comment

Attendees at Facebook's 2019 Connect event gather around a Horizon display. Photo: Bloomberg

How Long Will the Wait for Facebook’s Horizon Worlds Be?

By Wayne Ma · Oct 25, 2021 11:00am PDT · 1 comment

It’s Wayne Ma, filling in for Mat, who’s dealing with another project today.It’s the week of Facebook Connect, one of the most anticipated weeks in the VR/AR calendar. Some might be hoping for news of the next model of the Oculus Quest, new games or even better smart glasses. For my part, I’m hoping Facebook will finally reveal when Horizon, a... It’s Wayne Ma, filling in for Mat, who’s dealing with another project today.It’s the week of...

Illustration by Jesus Escudero

AI Weapons Need Human Safeguards

By Michael K. Atkinson · Oct 25, 2021 9:00am PDT · 1 comment

Frances Haugen, the former Facebook employee whose urgent concern about the lack of oversight for the company’s artificial intelligence systems have generated headlines and hearings in the U.S., the U.K., and soon the EU, may be the world’s most prominent AI whistleblower, but she will not be the last. Companies could spend nearly... Frances Haugen, the former Facebook employee whose urgent concern about the lack of oversight for...

Creator Economy Database

How Creator Economy Investments Could Hit $5 Billion This Year

By Kaya Yurieff and Mahira Dayal · Oct 25, 2021 6:00am PDT · 2 comments

Facebook wants to talk about its ties to creators. So do Chipotle, Disney and Stripe. The upswell of interest in people earning a living from their online followers means it has never been a better time for founders building startups that serve creators. New data show how successful these efforts have been. Some 101 U.S. startups focused on... Facebook wants to talk about its ties to creators. So do Chipotle, Disney and Stripe. The upswell...

Storing raw manganese. Ian Waldie/Bloomberg

Soaring Metals Prices Are Deepening Western Exposure to China

By Steve LeVine · Oct 24, 2021 2:00pm PDT

Welcome back to The Electric! Tune in to a special pop-up event on Wednesday: Will AI Transform Batteries? Machine learning has unleashed a new age for drug discovery and genomics, but it has barely penetrated battery science. Can it do so this decade? To discuss, I am excited to host a Live Chat with AI pioneer Andrew Ng, founder of... Welcome back to The Electric! Tune in to a special pop-up event on Wednesday: Will AI...

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks during a virtual developer conference in June. Photo by Bloomberg

Facebook’s Rebranding Is About Tim Cook, Not Whistleblowers

By Jessica E. Lessin · Oct 22, 2021 5:00pm PDT · 1 comment

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks during a virtual developer conference in June. Photo by Bloomberg

Facebook’s Rebranding Is About Tim Cook, Not Whistleblowers

By Jessica E. Lessin · Oct 22, 2021 5:00pm PDT · 1 comment

Next week is going to be a big one for Facebook. There will be a corporate rebrand from the company of some sort, a very high-stakes earnings report, and Facebook’s biggest event of the year, its Connect developer conference, featuring a keynote from CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Oh, and a storm of a document dump that will be fairly unprecedented in... Next week is going to be a big one for Facebook. There will be a corporate rebrand from the...

Art by Mike Sullivan

New Facebook Storm Nears as CNN, Fox Business and Other Outlets Team Up on Whistleblower Docs

By Sylvia Varnham O'Regan and Mark Di Stefano · Oct 22, 2021 2:55pm PDT · 6 comments

It’s not often that major news organizations coordinate to sift through a large trove of leaked company documents and agree not to publish stories about them until a certain date. But in the world of news related to Facebook, these are extraordinary times. Something similar happened in 2016 when the International Consortium of... It’s not often that major news organizations coordinate to sift through a large trove of...

Illustration by Josh Brill

No Longer Just Crypto Curious, Sand Hill Road Investors Get Blockchain Fever

By Kate Clark · Oct 22, 2021 6:01am PDT · 4 comments

For years, the most avid investors in crypto startups have been firms that specialize in the category—with the notable exception of Andreessen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm that got crypto religion early. Now, though, the most storied firms on Silicon Valley's Sand Hill Road are going from crypto curious to true... For years, the most avid investors in crypto startups have been firms that specialize in the...

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel. Photo by Bloomberg.

Snap’s Weak Q4 Projection Signals Sharp Slowdown in Ad Market

By Martin Peers · Oct 21, 2021 5:00pm PDT

Advertisers are hitting the brakes—hard. That’s the message today from Snap, the first of the digital ad companies to report third-quarter earnings. A combination of Apple’s ad-targeting clampdown and knock-on effects from supply shortages are expected to sharply slow fourth-quarter ad growth, Snap executives warned. It was a sobering portent... Advertisers are hitting the brakes—hard. That’s the message today from Snap, the first of the...

Charting FTX’s Rapid Rise in Valuation; Worldcoin Is Already a Unicorn

By Mahira Dayal · Oct 21, 2021 4:56pm PDT

Charting FTX’s Rapid Rise in Valuation; Worldcoin Is Already a Unicorn

By Mahira Dayal · Oct 21, 2021 4:56pm PDT

Today’s chart shows how quickly FTX’s valuation has risen this year. The crypto exchange said Thursday it was raising $420 million from 69 investors—numbers that have become talismans on the Internet—at a valuation of $25 billion. Meme jokes aside, that price reflects a nearly 40% rise from its last funding round just three months ago. ... Today’s chart shows how quickly FTX’s valuation has risen this year. The crypto exchange said...

Illustration by Mike Sullivan

Creator Economy

Stripe Shows Its Creator Chops; Snap Warning Sends Chill

By Kaya Yurieff · Oct 21, 2021 3:36pm PDT

Stripe may be best known as a payments tool for tech startups, but it wants the world to know it’s big with creators, too. The San Francisco company on Thursday published a ream of data showing how its payment processing services enable creators to earn money from features like Twitter’s Super Follows, where creators can charge for bonus tweets,... Stripe may be best known as a payments tool for tech startups, but it wants the world to know it’...

iPhones on display. Photo by Bloomberg

Apple Will Face Pressure to Store More Customer Data in China Under New Laws

By Wayne Ma · Oct 21, 2021 12:10pm PDT

Apple could be the next target of new Chinese government rules forcing U.S. companies to store more user data in the country, analysts and legal experts say. Those rules have so far forced Tesla to store local driver data in China and contributed to LinkedIn pulling back from its operations there. Legal experts say Chinese authorities... Apple could be the next target of new Chinese government rules forcing U.S. companies to...

The Aero VR headset. Photo: Varjo

Varjo’s New VR Headset; Unity’s Path From Multiplayer to Metaverse

By Mathew Olson · Oct 21, 2021 11:00am PDT

VR hardware maker Varjo is jumping into the consumer market, unveiling the new Aero headset earlier today. With a price tag of $1,990, the Aero reflects Varjo’s position at the high end of the market. To Varjo’s credit, though, it knows exactly what kind of buyer it’s pitching to: fans of simulator games.One simulator in particular is having a... VR hardware maker Varjo is jumping into the consumer market, unveiling the new Aero headset...

Art by Mike Sullivan

The Battle of the Streaming Gatekeepers Heats Up

By Jessica Toonkel and Sahil Patel · Oct 21, 2021 6:01am PDT · 4 comments

Art by Mike Sullivan

The Battle of the Streaming Gatekeepers Heats Up

By Jessica Toonkel and Sahil Patel · Oct 21, 2021 6:01am PDT · 4 comments

In 2019, David Limp, head of Amazon’s devices business, saw an opening. For years, Roku—Amazon’s chief rival in the market for devices that let you stream video onto television sets—had supplied software to TCL, one of the world’s leading TV makers, to power the Chinese company’s internet-connected TV sets.... In 2019, David Limp, head of Amazon’s devices business, saw an opening. For years,...