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

Michael Saylor, co-founder and executive chairman of Strategy Inc. Getty Images.

The Flaw With Strategy’s Stock-Selling Merry-Go-Round

By Martin Peers · Dec 1, 2025 5:00pm PST

You can always rely on Michael Saylor and the folks at Strategy to blaze new trails in corporate finance. Take Strategy’s announcement today that it had raised $1.44 billion by selling shares to—get this—establish a “USD reserve” to pay the $689 million it owes annually in dividends on its stock and interest on its debt. Usually companies try to... You can always rely on Michael Saylor and the folks at Strategy to blaze new trails in corporate...

Photo by Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Amazon Tests Ultrafast Delivery Offering

By Ann Gehan · Dec 1, 2025 1:01pm PST

Amazon is testing a new ultrafast delivery offering for groceries and other daily essentials in major urban areas in the U.S., a critical test of the e-commerce giant’s ambitions to sell more daily staples to consumers and supercharge its grocery business. In recent months, Amazon has approached large consumer packaged goods brands to ask them... Amazon is testing a new ultrafast delivery offering for groceries and other daily essentials in...

Ilya Sutskever and Dwarkesh Patel. Screenshot via YouTube

OpenAI Co-Founder Sutskever Joins the Skeptics

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 1, 2025 7:00am PST · 3 comments

As Sri and I head to San Diego for the annual Neural Information Processing Systems conference this week (get in touch if you’ll also be there!), we’re excited to learn more about reinforcement learning, the model training technique du jour at all the major AI developers.There’s rising skepticism among researchers, including OpenAI co-founder ... As Sri and I head to San Diego for the annual Neural Information Processing Systems conference...

Art by Mike Sullivan

As AWS Preps New AI Models, Relations With Anthropic Get Complicated

By Kevin McLaughlin · Dec 1, 2025 6:00am PST · 1 comment

Art by Mike Sullivan

As AWS Preps New AI Models, Relations With Anthropic Get Complicated

By Kevin McLaughlin · Dec 1, 2025 6:00am PST · 1 comment

There’s a lot about Amazon’s efforts to put itself in the middle of the AI frenzy that hasn’t gone to plan over the past couple years. Its attempt to develop Amazon AI models that can compete with the most cutting-edge technologies from OpenAI, Google and others is still a work in progress. To buy time to improve Amazon’s own models, its cloud... There’s a lot about Amazon’s efforts to put itself in the middle of the AI frenzy that hasn’t...

Chinese battery giant CATL's aggressive price cuts have forced U.S. startups to seek manufacturing partnerships in China. Photo: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg/Getty

The Electric: Failing to Score Big Sales in the West, U.S. Battery Startups Are Going to China

By Steve LeVine · Dec 1, 2025 4:30am PST

In the U.S. battery industry’s go-go days in 2021, Sepion Technologies raised an $18.7 million Series A round, sufficient capital to build a pilot manufacturing line and ship sample cells that seemed to garner a promising reception from multiple potential customers. In the U.S. battery industry’s go-go days in 2021, Sepion Technologies raised an $18.7 million...

Getty Images

ByteDance Challenges Alibaba’s Reign in China’s AI Cloud Market

By Juro Osawa · Dec 1, 2025 4:00am PST

ByteDance is best known in the U.S. as the owner of TikTok. In China, the tech giant is also becoming known as a major force in cloud computing—so much so that it is now threatening Alibaba Group, long the undisputed king of cloud services in China. In one sign of the intensifying rivalry, executives at Alibaba have started to focus on the... ByteDance is best known in the U.S. as the owner of TikTok. In China, the tech giant is also...

Amazon CEO Andy at Amazon Re:Invent 2024. Photo courtesy of AWS

AWS Beats the AI Drum in Vegas

By Kevin McLaughlin · Nov 30, 2025 4:07pm PST

Hopefully, everyone has digested their Thanksgiving leftovers. It’s going to be a busy week, tech event-wise. The biggest of them all is re:Invent, Amazon Web Services’ annual customer conference in Las Vegas that has become something like the Super Bowl of cloud computing. On Tuesday, AWS CEO Matt Garman is scheduled to take the stage for... Hopefully, everyone has digested their Thanksgiving leftovers. It’s going to be a busy week, tech...

Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi. AP Images

Databricks Boosts Sales Forecast, Driving Valuation to $134 Billion

By Cory Weinberg · Nov 30, 2025 11:00am PST · 4 comments

Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi. AP Images

Databricks Boosts Sales Forecast, Driving Valuation to $134 Billion

By Cory Weinberg · Nov 30, 2025 11:00am PST · 4 comments

Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi has been more vocal than other Silicon Valley executives about the dangers of an AI bubble. His company’s new $5 billion round of fundraising, at a higher valuation than ever, epitomizes the risks and rewards of the boom: While sales are growing faster than forecast, AI development costs are squeezing gross profit... Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi has been more vocal than other Silicon Valley executives about the...

Sunday Insights

Why China Doesn’t Want to Buy More Nvidia Chips

By Qianer Liu · Nov 30, 2025 7:59am PST · 3 comments

Three years after the U.S.’s sweeping export restrictions that cut off Chinese access to AI chips, China has managed to turn the situation around. For the next five years, it will have more AI chips than its companies need. The excessive supply is a combination of local chipmakers catching up and tech companies stockpiling Nvidia chips via both... Three years after the U.S.’s sweeping export restrictions that cut off Chinese access to AI...

Art by Clark Miller

How to Better Protect Your Crypto

By Abram Brown · Nov 29, 2025 8:55am PST

Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter:• The Big Read: Secretive startup Klay enters the fray over AI music• Lists: Our 2025 gift guide—38 items we absolutely recommend • Robotics: Meet Matic, the most wonderful little robot in the world• Plus, our Recommendations: “Adrift,” “Venetian Vespers” and “One Battle After Another” Since the... Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter:• The Big Read: Secretive startup Klay enters the fray...

Klay co-founder and CEO Ary Attie. (Art by Clark Miller; photo courtesy of Klay)

Secretive Startup Klay Jumps Into the Fray Over AI Music

By Abram Brown · Nov 29, 2025 6:00am PST

“So here’s a real surprise,” said Ary Attie, holding open a hidden door in the bowels of the Walker Hotel in the city’s Greenwich Village neighborhood. “There used to be a lot more cool, interesting places in New York—and there’s still a few left.” Attie, the 30-year-old founder of Klay, a new AI music startup, has a taste for such... “So here’s a real surprise,” said Ary Attie, holding open a hidden door in the bowels of the...

Art by Clark Miller; images courtesy of companies.

The Information’s 2025 Gift Guide

By The Information Staff · Nov 28, 2025 8:30am PST · 5 comments

Art by Clark Miller; images courtesy of companies.

The Information’s 2025 Gift Guide

By The Information Staff · Nov 28, 2025 8:30am PST · 5 comments

Here at The Information, we approach the holidays with the same mindset that guides our reporting on the world’s most powerful people and largest companies throughout the rest of the year. This is all to say: We focus on dispensing nothing but the no-holds-barred truth. So each year, our annual gift guide features only items we know and... Here at The Information, we approach the holidays with the same mindset that guides our reporting...

Art by Clark Miller

Forget Humanoids: Silicon Valley Is Going Nuts Over a Pixar-Like Robot

By Abram Brown · Nov 28, 2025 8:28am PST · 6 comments

Until recently, Mehul Nariyawala had a surefire way to kill a conversation at a Silicon Valley cocktail hour. All he had to do was tell someone what product his startup, Matic, hoped to sell: a robot that’s part vacuum, part mop. “What they would almost always then ask is, ‘That’s not the only product you’re doing: There’s more going on, right?’... Until recently, Mehul Nariyawala had a surefire way to kill a conversation at a Silicon Valley...

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Courtesy of Amazon.

Amazon’s AI Crackdown Hits More AI Search Startups

By Ann Gehan · Nov 28, 2025 6:00am PST · 2 comments

Black Friday, one of the biggest shopping days of the year, should be a big business event for AI-powered shopping search startup Dupe. People looking for a bargain can use Dupe to search for items across lots of shopping sites—including Amazon—either by typing in phrases to describe what they want or uploading a photo. Dupe says... Black Friday, one of the biggest shopping days of the year, should be a big business event for...

Art by Clark Miller; Getty Images, YouTube.

ServiceNow in Advanced Talks to Buy Security Startup For At Least $1 Billion

By Valida Pau, Aaron Holmes and Katie Roof · Nov 26, 2025 4:50pm PST

ServiceNow, an IT, HR and finance software provider, is in advanced talks to buy five-year-old security startup Veza for more than $1 billion, according to people with knowledge of the deal. Veza’s subscription software helps businesses see which of their employees, as well as AI agents that automate software tasks, have access to certain... ServiceNow, an IT, HR and finance software provider, is in advanced talks to buy five-year-old...

Getty Images.

Crypto Robbery Rattles Investors

By Yueqi Yang · Nov 26, 2025 2:48pm PST

Getty Images.

Crypto Robbery Rattles Investors

By Yueqi Yang · Nov 26, 2025 2:48pm PST

The recent bitcoin sell-off wasn’t the only cause for alarm among crypto investors this week. Many were rattled by news that a tech investor was robbed of $11 million worth of crypto at his home. Doorbell camera footage shows someone posing as a delivery worker approaching the home, accessible on street level in Mission Dolores, and asking for “... The recent bitcoin sell-off wasn’t the only cause for alarm among crypto investors this week....

Art by Clark Miller

The Information Finance

Crypto Winter Will Be Different This Time

By Ken Brown · Nov 26, 2025 8:00am PST · 5 comments

Winter is coming, not just in the seasons but in the crypto market. If the current downturn turns into another crypto winter, it will have a bigger impact on the mainstream financial system than it has in the past. Bitcoin has fallen 30% in less than two months and is down for the year, while other cryptocurrencies have crashed by much... Winter is coming, not just in the seasons but in the crypto market. If the current downturn turns...

Art by Clark Miller

Google’s Vertical Assault on the AI Market

By The Information Staff · Nov 26, 2025 8:00am PST

Google is leveraging its financial stamina and vertical integration to take share from markets dominated by OpenAI and Nvidia. We asked Deep Research to analyze how Google’s resurgence this year in AI software and its continued server hardware improvements are reshaping the industry. Here is the response. Google is leveraging its financial stamina and vertical integration to take share from markets...

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

What Trump's AI Manhattan Project Means for the AI Industry

By Rocket Drew · Nov 26, 2025 7:00am PST · 1 comment

On Monday, the President signed an executive order laying out his vision for a “Manhattan Project” for AI. The plan calls for the national labs—the Department of Energy-funded research centers—to work together with AI companies to train AI models based on government science data. For instance, it tasks the Secretary of Energy with assessing the... On Monday, the President signed an executive order laying out his vision for a “Manhattan Project...

Photo by Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Trump Family Crypto Deal Runs Aground

By Michael Roddan · Nov 26, 2025 6:00am PST · 5 comments

Photo by Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Trump Family Crypto Deal Runs Aground

By Michael Roddan · Nov 26, 2025 6:00am PST · 5 comments

Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. rang the bell at Nasdaq’s New York headquarters in August to celebrate the announcement of a deal that could have netted the family a windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars. The president’s oldest sons were combining their crypto startup, World Liberty Financial, with a publicly traded Canadian company, Alt5... Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. rang the bell at Nasdaq’s New York headquarters in August to...