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

Art by Mike Sullivan

AI’s ‘Split-Brain’ Problem

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

Developing new artificial intelligence models can sometimes seem like a game of whack-a-mole: fixing a model’s bad answers to certain questions can cause the model to give bad answers to other questions.One version of this problem, according to researchers at OpenAI and elsewhere, is known as a split-brain problem, in which changes to how a... Developing new artificial intelligence models can sometimes seem like a game of whack-a-mole:...

Art via Clark Miller

Microsoft Lowers Sales Staff’s Growth Targets For Newer AI Software

By Aaron Holmes · Dec 3, 2025 6:00am PST · 8 comments

Executives at Microsoft and other enterprise software firms heralded 2025 as the year artificial intelligence would be capable of automating tasks that involve multiple steps, such as generating dashboards based on company sales data. But as the year comes to a close, Microsoft has lowered expectations for how quickly it can get customers to... Executives at Microsoft and other enterprise software firms heralded 2025 as the year artificial...

Eventbrite CEO Julia Hartz. Getty Images.

Eventbrite Punches Exit Ticket

By Martin Peers · Dec 2, 2025 5:00pm PST

For all the venture capitalist–inspired hype around tech startups, it’s always good to remember that many are too niche to ever amount to anything—and should never go public. We got a reminder of that on Tuesday when Italian conglomerate Bending Spoons said it would buy ticketing firm Eventbrite for $500 million in cash. That’s a stunning... For all the venture capitalist–inspired hype around tech startups, it’s always good to remember...

Amit Zavery, president and chief product officer at ServiceNow. Getty Images.

ServiceNow’s $1 Billion-Plus Acquisition Aimed at Winning Agent War

By Valida Pau · Dec 2, 2025 3:10pm PST

Amit Zavery, president and chief product officer at ServiceNow. Getty Images.

ServiceNow’s $1 Billion-Plus Acquisition Aimed at Winning Agent War

By Valida Pau · Dec 2, 2025 3:10pm PST

Dealmakers apparently did not get much of a break over the Thanksgiving weekend, as a flurry of recent merger announcements showed. In just the last day, The Information broke the news that Marvell Technology was buying photonics startup Celestial for billions of dollars and Anthropic was making its first outright acquisition, for coding tools... Dealmakers apparently did not get much of a break over the Thanksgiving weekend, as a flurry of...

AWS CEO Matt Garman. Photo by Noah Berger/Getty Images

In a Reversal, AWS Makes it Easier For AI Customers to Use Rival Clouds

By Kevin McLaughlin and Aaron Holmes · Dec 2, 2025 10:33am PST

Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud are arch-rivals in the cloud computing market, so it was surprising to hear them announce Monday that they’re working to make it easier for their joint customers to move data and develop applications that run on both clouds. Tech companies are constantly issuing announcements about working together, but... Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud are arch-rivals in the cloud computing market, so it was...

Anthropic in Advanced Talks to Buy Developer Tool Startup in First Acquisition

By Sri Muppidi · Dec 2, 2025 9:11am PST · 1 comment

Anthropic is in advanced discussions to buy Bun, a maker of software used to run and manage code more efficiently, according to a person with knowledge of the deal. The artificial intelligence company is in talks to pay in the low hundreds of millions of dollars for the startup, which would be Anthropic’s first acquisition, according to the... Anthropic is in advanced discussions to buy Bun, a maker of software used to run and manage code...

Subscriber Survey

Survey: Daily AI Use Is High, but Mostly for Simple Tasks

By Shane Burke · Dec 2, 2025 8:00am PST · 2 comments

Four out of five readers of The Information say they use new AI tools daily, mostly as a search and information tool, according to our latest subscriber survey. The next most common use cited by subscribers is handling small, routine tasks at work such as drafting messages and summarizing content. A smaller but notable share is taking advantage... Four out of five readers of The Information say they use new AI tools daily, mostly as a search...

Photo by Getty Images; Art by Mike Sullivan

OpenAI Developing ‘Garlic’ Model to Counter Google’s Recent Gains

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 2, 2025 7:00am PST · 2 comments

Photo by Getty Images; Art by Mike Sullivan

OpenAI Developing ‘Garlic’ Model to Counter Google’s Recent Gains

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 2, 2025 7:00am PST · 2 comments

OpenAI, which in recent weeks has appeared to fall behind Google in AI development, is fighting back with a new large language model codenamed Garlic.Last week, OpenAI’s chief research officer Mark Chen told some colleagues about the new model, which was performing well on the company’s evaluations, at least when compared to Gemini 3 and ... OpenAI, which in recent weeks has appeared to fall behind Google in AI development, is fighting...

Art by Clark Miller.

How Google’s AI Chips Stack Up to Nvidia’s

By Wayne Ma and Qianer Liu · Dec 2, 2025 6:00am PST · 2 comments

Google’s efforts to sell or lease its artificial intelligence server chips so they can run in any company’s data center—and not just in Google Cloud—have generated headlines, stock moves and a noteworthy response from AI chip leader Nvidia. It’s not lost on Nvidia that two of the world’s best AI models, from Google and Anthropic,... Google’s efforts to sell or lease its artificial intelligence server chips so they can run in any...

Marvell headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif. Photo by Bloomberg via Getty

Marvell In Advanced Talks to Buy Celestial AI in Multibillion Deal

By Valida Pau and Anissa Gardizy · Dec 1, 2025 8:24pm PST

Marvell is in advanced talks to buy Santa Clara-based chip startup Celestial AI in a cash-and-stock deal worth several billion dollars, according to people with knowledge of the deal. Under the deal being discussed, Marvell would pay several billion dollars upfront for the startup, which has yet to generate any revenue, according to... Marvell is in advanced talks to buy Santa Clara-based chip startup Celestial AI in a...

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Image via Getty, art via Clark Miller

OpenAI CEO Declares ‘Code Red’ to Combat Threats to ChatGPT, Delays Ads Effort

By Stephanie Palazzolo and Erin Woo · Dec 1, 2025 8:11pm PST · 12 comments

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Monday told employees he was declaring a “code red” to marshal more resources to improve ChatGPT as threats rise from Google and other artificial intelligence competitors, according to an internal memo. As a result, OpenAI plans to delay other initiatives, such as advertising, Altman said. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Monday told employees he was declaring a “code red” to marshal more...

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

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

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

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 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...

Why China Doesn’t Want to Buy More Nvidia Chips

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

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...