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

From left: Larry Ellison, Zhang Yiming, Donald Trump. Photos by Getty.

Oracle Is Leading Contender to Help Run TikTok in New Deal

By Jing Yang, Juro Osawa, Anissa Gardizy and Sri Muppidi · Mar 13, 2025 6:51am PDT · 4 comments

Oracle has emerged as a leading contender to help run TikTok as part of a deal President Donald Trump is orchestrating to satisfy last year’s divest-or-ban law, say investors, bankers and former executives familiar with the Chinese tech giant. ByteDance management prefers Oracle, while President Trump has also indicated his support for Oracle... Oracle has emerged as a leading contender to help run TikTok as part of a deal President Donald...

Photo via Harbinger Motors

The Electric: EV Truck Startup Harbinger Says Some Rivals Took Money and ‘Lit It on Fire’

By Steve LeVine · Mar 13, 2025 4:30am PDT

Perhaps no segment of the nascent electric vehicle industry has had a sorrier few years than commercial trucking. Since 2022, at least six electric van and truck startups have filed for bankruptcy, and a seventh seems to be just hanging on.In January, though, electric truck startup Harbinger Motors raised a $100 million Series B round, which it... Perhaps no segment of the nascent electric vehicle industry has had a sorrier few years than...

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Photo via Getty

AI’s Circular Money Flows

By Martin Peers · Mar 12, 2025 5:00pm PDT · 2 comments

If you want a sense of the risks that lurk in the great AI-data center investment boom now underway, check out our scoop today about Nvidia’s relationship with CoreWeave, the upstart cloud computing firm planning to go public in a couple of weeks. The story reveals that Nvidia, beyond both investing in CoreWeave and selling chips to it, also... If you want a sense of the risks that lurk in the great AI-data center investment boom now...

Influencer Marketing Growth to Slow on TikTok Ban, Tariffs

Influencer Marketing Growth to Slow on TikTok Ban, Tariffs

By Kaya Yurieff · Mar 12, 2025 3:45pm PDT · 2 comments

Influencer Marketing Growth to Slow on TikTok Ban, Tariffs

Creator Economy

Influencer Marketing Growth to Slow on TikTok Ban, Tariffs

By Kaya Yurieff · Mar 12, 2025 3:45pm PDT · 2 comments

Influencer marketing budgets are still expected to grow in the U.S., but the fate of TikTok’s future in the country, as well as economic uncertainty spurred by the Trump administration’s tariffs, could contribute to a slowdown in growth this year. Spending on U.S. influencer marketing is expected to rise 15% to $10.5 billion in 2025,... Influencer marketing budgets are still expected to grow in the U.S., but the fate of TikTok’s...

Art by Mike Sullivan.

TikTok Executives Bail as Ban Deadline Looms

By Kaya Yurieff, Juro Osawa and Jing Yang · Mar 12, 2025 3:07pm PDT · 1 comment

The groups of buyers circling TikTok’s U.S. operations are likely to find it a more svelte company than it was a year ago, after a string of senior managers left the popular video app. At least eight TikTok executives, including music chief Ole Obermann, global head of litigation Emily Stubbs and Sameer Singh, head of North American ad sales,... The groups of buyers circling TikTok’s U.S. operations are likely to find it a more svelte...

Photo by Getty.

BNY Boosts Business With Circle, as Banks Warm to Crypto

By Yueqi Yang · Mar 12, 2025 10:57am PDT

BNY, the nation’s oldest bank, is expanding the services it handles for stablecoin giant Circle, the latest sign that U.S. banking access for the crypto industry is easing under a friendlier regulatory environment. The bank will allow some clients to send money to and from Circle through BNY for purchase or sale of Circle’s stablecoins, people... BNY, the nation’s oldest bank, is expanding the services it handles for stablecoin giant Circle,...

Courtesy of Dexterity

Robots That Don’t Walk Are Making Strides

By Rocket Drew · Mar 12, 2025 7:00am PDT

Humanoid robots that walk around on two legs have been attracting attention and money, but they are still a long way off from being mass produced. Traditional robots that don’t have legs, however, are moving ahead in places like agricultural fields, stores and warehouses.One example is Mech, an artificial intelligence-powered robot for logistics... Humanoid robots that walk around on two legs have been attracting attention and money, but they...

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, left, and CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator. Photos by Getty

‘Project Osprey:’ How Nvidia Seeded CoreWeave’s Rise

By Cory Weinberg and Anissa Gardizy · Mar 12, 2025 6:00am PDT · 3 comments

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, left, and CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator. Photos by Getty

‘Project Osprey:’ How Nvidia Seeded CoreWeave’s Rise

By Cory Weinberg and Anissa Gardizy · Mar 12, 2025 6:00am PDT · 3 comments

In early 2023, Nvidia was seeing near-endless demand for its artificial intelligence chips. Cloud computing giants such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud were increasing their orders, sending Nvidia’s revenue to new heights. Developers were scrambling to access the chips, which were hard to come by. Then Nvidia made a... In early 2023, Nvidia was seeing near-endless demand for its artificial intelligence chips. Cloud...

Qasar Younis, co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition. Photo via Getty.

Self-Driving Software Supplier Applied Intuition in Talks for Funding at $15 Billion Valuation

By Natasha Mascarenhas, Sri Muppidi and Alex Perry · Mar 11, 2025 8:27pm PDT

Applied Intuition, an eight-year-old developer of simulation software for training self-driving vehicles, is in talks with investors to raise capital at a $15 billion valuation, more than double its valuation from a year ago, according to a person with direct knowledge of the discussions. Existing investor Kleiner Perkins is in talks to... Applied Intuition, an eight-year-old developer of simulation software for training self-driving...

Photo via Getty

Creator Economy

What TikTok Didn't Say at SXSW

By Kaya Yurieff · Mar 11, 2025 5:22pm PDT

I’m just back from the tech and arts festival South by Southwest in Austin. TikTok was there: it held a private, invite-only “leadership summit” on Monday as well as a happy hour. TikTok staffers talked up products such as Symphony, its suite of AI tools to make it easier to create content for the app. Executives scheduled to speak... I’m just back from the tech and arts festival South by Southwest in Austin. TikTok was...

Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Asana. Photo via Flickr/Web Summit

Moskovitz Should Sell Asana

By Martin Peers · Mar 11, 2025 5:00pm PDT

We saw a muted recovery in some tech stocks on Tuesday, but there were a few notable exceptions. One was Asana, which makes a workplace collaboration software tool and is also known as the second act of Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. The stock plunged 24% today, the day after the company reported a middling quarter—and, perhaps more... We saw a muted recovery in some tech stocks on Tuesday, but there were a few notable exceptions....

Photo via Getty

A VC-Backed Startup Tempts Volatile Stock Market

By Cory Weinberg · Mar 11, 2025 2:54pm PDT

Photo via Getty

A VC-Backed Startup Tempts Volatile Stock Market

By Cory Weinberg · Mar 11, 2025 2:54pm PDT

Venture capitalists backing Hinge Health, which sells software to help people dealing with chronic pain, were likely cheering on Monday when the company filed to go public. It turned out to be the worst day of the year for the stock market, with the S&P 500 falling nearly 3%. Hinge was one of the few tech firms to attempt to go public... Venture capitalists backing Hinge Health, which sells software to help people dealing with...

Photo by Shutterstock

$120 Billion Fintech Firm Trains Chatbot—on Customer Data

By Anita Ramaswamy, Jon Victor and Aaron Holmes · Mar 11, 2025 10:21am PDT

Seemingly every week, a large company in an old, regulated industry is taking the cover off an artificial intelligence application that would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago.The latest example is Fiserv, a 41-year-old provider of software for thousands of financial firms to process payments, manage operations and provide banking... Seemingly every week, a large company in an old, regulated industry is taking the cover off an...

Dario Amodei. Photo by Getty.

Anthropic’s Claude Drives Strong Revenue Growth While Powering ‘Manus’ Sensation

By Juro Osawa, Natasha Mascarenhas and Stephanie Palazzolo · Mar 11, 2025 8:30am PDT

Anthropic’s year is off to a good start. Its annualized revenue—a measure of the past month's revenue multiplied by 12—has grown from $1 billion at the end of last year to $1.4 billion as of earlier this month, according to a person who has seen the numbers. In other words, Anthropic is generating more than $115 million a month. That’s... Anthropic’s year is off to a good start. Its annualized revenue—a measure of the past...

Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy via Getty

Snowflake, Databricks Discuss AI Data Security Deals With Google, Anthropic

By Kevin McLaughlin · Mar 11, 2025 8:00am PDT

After Sridhar Ramaswamy became CEO of database provider Snowflake a year ago, customers such as banks and healthcare firms said they might move their business elsewhere because they felt they couldn’t safely access artificial intelligence from OpenAI, Anthropic or Google through Snowflake’s core product. Some customers considered switching to... After Sridhar Ramaswamy became CEO of database provider Snowflake a year ago, customers such as...

Europe’s Banks, Unlike U.S. Rivals, Play With DeepSeek

By Michael Roddan · Mar 11, 2025 6:00am PDT · 1 comment

Europe’s Banks, Unlike U.S. Rivals, Play With DeepSeek

By Michael Roddan · Mar 11, 2025 6:00am PDT · 1 comment

The sudden rise of DeepSeek represents an opportunity for banks and financial firms to access a low-cost but still sophisticated artificial intelligence model—if only it wasn’t from China. Geopolitical tensions between Washington and Beijing, along with perceived security risks posed by the Chinese-made AI tool, have kept U.S. banks from... The sudden rise of DeepSeek represents an opportunity for banks and financial firms to access a...

Oracle's Larry Ellison. Photo via Getty.

Oracle’s Cash Squeeze

By Martin Peers · Mar 10, 2025 5:00pm PDT

Larry Ellison has done a remarkable job of making Oracle part of the conversation around artificial intelligence data centers alongside much bigger cloud rivals such as Microsoft and Google. But as Oracle’s February-quarter results, released on Monday night, show, the enterprise software firm is hitting the limits of what it can spend on new... Larry Ellison has done a remarkable job of making Oracle part of the conversation around...

Left to right, Mike Lewis, Ethan Perez, Summer Yue, Ronen Eldan, Rafael Rafailov, Evan Hubinger, Tengyang Xie. Images courtesy of subjects

20 Rising Stars at OpenAI and Its Rivals

By Stephanie Palazzolo, Kalley Huang, Rocket Drew, Aaron Holmes and Jon Victor · Mar 10, 2025 11:43am PDT

Sam Altman, Elon Musk and other artificial intelligence leaders dominate headlines as they raise unprecedented funds. But talent, not capital, has separated the winners and losers in generative AI. We’ve identified 20 up-and-coming researchers who have been at the forefront of their firms’ successes but whose names typically aren’t found in news... Sam Altman, Elon Musk and other artificial intelligence leaders dominate headlines as they raise...

Larry Page. Photo via Getty

Why is Google’s Owner Developing AI Outside of Google?; DeepSeek Gets Microsoft’s Attention

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Mar 10, 2025 7:00am PDT

ServiceNow is buying AI startup Moveworks for $2.85 billion, the enterprise software firm announced first thing this morning, an effort by ServiceNow to get a jump on agent-powered services. We included Moveworks in our Generative AI Takeover List, which you can see here. And now on to the rest of the column…We’ve written a lot about how... ServiceNow is buying AI startup Moveworks for $2.85 billion, the enterprise software firm...

Art by Clark Miller; photos via Shutterstock.

Eight Food and Drink Startups Primed for a Takeover

By Ann Gehan · Mar 10, 2025 6:00am PDT · 1 comment

Art by Clark Miller; photos via Shutterstock.

Eight Food and Drink Startups Primed for a Takeover

By Ann Gehan · Mar 10, 2025 6:00am PDT · 1 comment

Celsius’ $1.8 billion purchase of influencer-founded energy drink brand Alani Nu last month sparked fresh hope among investors in startups touting healthier versions of mainstream food and beverage brands. Among the fast-growing brands that could be the next targets for purchase are Good Culture, which sells cottage cheese packaged in single... Celsius’ $1.8 billion purchase of influencer-founded energy drink brand Alani Nu last month...