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

Collage via Mike Sullivan

OpenAI Takes a Page From Palantir, Doubles Down on Consulting Services

By Aaron Holmes and Sri Muppidi · Jun 29, 2025 6:00am PDT · 2 comments

As OpenAI pitches its artificial intelligence to big companies and government agencies, it’s taking a page from the playbook of many software firms by offering in-house researchers and software engineers to customize AI for customers. OpenAI is adding staff and resources for a consulting-like service, in which its engineers guide customers... As OpenAI pitches its artificial intelligence to big companies and government agencies, it’s...

Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg. Photos by Getty

Meta Hires Four More OpenAI Researchers

By Kalley Huang · Jun 28, 2025 9:49am PDT · 10 comments

Meta Platforms is hiring four more OpenAI artificial intelligence researchers as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg continues an unprecedented recruiting effort to catch up to his AI rivals. The researchers, Shengjia Zhao, Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi and Hongyu Ren, have each agreed to join, according to a person familiar with their hiring. They follow four... Meta Platforms is hiring four more OpenAI artificial intelligence researchers as Meta CEO Mark...

Art by Clark Miller (photo: Getty Images)

Nintendo, the Next Apple?

By Abram Brown · Jun 28, 2025 7:00am PDT

Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter:• The Big Read: The deals, free agents and egos fueling the AI talent grab • The Top 5: The most rigorous summer camps• Plus, our Recommendations: A Pablo Escobar tell-all; Netflix’s latest sleuths; and the amazing Gila monsterMamma Mia! Nintendo’s Switch 2, the latest console from the venerable... Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter:• The Big Read: The deals, free agents and egos fueling...

The Most Rigorous Summer Programs for Silicon Valley’s Next Generation

The Most Rigorous Summer Programs for Silicon Valley’s Next Generation

By Todd Plummer · Jun 28, 2025 6:03am PDT

The Most Rigorous Summer Programs for Silicon Valley’s Next Generation

The Most Rigorous Summer Programs for Silicon Valley’s Next Generation

By Todd Plummer · Jun 28, 2025 6:03am PDT

Summer is here, and so is the crushing pressure of what camps or programs to sign your kid up for in order to impress on college applications. Looking to help your little one become the next Bezos? There’s a camp for that. As it turns out: Play your cards right, and this time of year can be just as fruitful a period for college applications... Summer is here, and so is the crushing pressure of what camps or programs to sign your kid up for...

Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise at the European premiere of F1. Photo via Getty

Apple’s “F1” Movie Opens, Spotlighting Puzzle Over Strategy

By Martin Peers · Jun 27, 2025 3:00pm PDT

Can I have a show of hands of those who plan this weekend to see the new Apple-made Brad Pitt movie, “F1,” which opened today in theaters? It is the kind of film—full of shots of cars racing at high speed—that surely looks better on the big screen. That’s definitely the view of Eddy Cue, the Apple executive with responsibility for the company’s... Can I have a show of hands of those who plan this weekend to see the new Apple-made Brad Pitt...

Photos via Getty, collage by Mike Sullivan

Google Convinces OpenAI to Use TPU Chips in Win Against Nvidia

By Anissa Gardizy and Qianer Liu · Jun 27, 2025 1:09pm PDT · 1 comment

OpenAI, one of the world’s biggest customers of Nvidia artificial intelligence chips, recently began renting Google’s AI chips to power ChatGPT and other products, the first time it has used non-Nvidia chips in a meaningful way, according to a person who is involved in the arrangement. The move reflects OpenAI’s broader shift away from relying... OpenAI, one of the world’s biggest customers of Nvidia artificial intelligence chips, recently...

Art by Clark Miller.

The Private Market Trap That’s Endangering U.S. Innovation

By Rett Wallace · Jun 27, 2025 12:38pm PDT · 10 comments

Every investor knows what’s wrong with private markets right now. Venture capital and private equity funds have delivered weak returns, few exits and little cash for investors, resulting in a brutal fundraising climate for funds and therefore companies. The bigger picture reveals a much worse problem: There is roughly $13 trillion trapped in... Every investor knows what’s wrong with private markets right now. Venture capital and private...

Art by Clark Miller.

Inside the Great AI Talent Auction: The Deals, the Free Agents—and the Egos

By Erin Woo · Jun 27, 2025 9:04am PDT · 2 comments

Art by Clark Miller.

Inside the Great AI Talent Auction: The Deals, the Free Agents—and the Egos

By Erin Woo · Jun 27, 2025 9:04am PDT · 2 comments

Say you’re at the top of your field. Say you’ve been promoted to be a senior researcher at OpenAI, watching the paper value of your equity swell as your company’s valuation goes from less than $20 billion to $260 billion in just four years. Say Mark Zuckerberg—yes, Zuck, personally—comes texting and calling, offering you tens of... Say you’re at the top of your field. Say you’ve been promoted to be a senior researcher at...

Runway CEO Cristobal Valenzuela at The Information's Private Capital Conference in 2024. Photo by Nicole Perreira.

Pro Weekly: How AI Is Taking Over the Creator Economy

By Akash Pasricha · Jun 27, 2025 8:38am PDT

Creator economy investors are basically artificial intelligence investors these days. I took a look at second-quarter venture funding in our Creator Economy Database, and it’s clear that investors are looking beyond the now-common AI image- and video-generation tools to focus on a crop of specialized AI products for creators. AI... Creator economy investors are basically artificial intelligence investors these days. I took a...

Art by Mike Sullivan

Microsoft’s AI Chip Effort Falls Behind

By Wayne Ma and Qianer Liu · Jun 27, 2025 6:00am PDT · 1 comment

Microsoft has spent years designing its own artificial intelligence chips, in part to reduce its dependence on Nvidia. It isn’t going so well. The software giant, which Nvidia employees say was its largest customer by revenue last year, is taking much longer than expected to design its latest-generation AI chips, raising the possibility that the... Microsoft has spent years designing its own artificial intelligence chips, in part to reduce its...

Travis Kalanick. Photo via Getty

Kalanick May Ride Pony Back to Prominence

By Martin Peers · Jun 26, 2025 5:00pm PDT

Welcome back, Travis Kalanick! We’ve missed you as a generator of news. The New York Times scooped the juicy news today that Kalanick is in talks to get Uber’s backing for a buyout of Chinese autonomous vehicle developer Pony.ai’s U.S. assets. Assuming the deal gets done, it may not involve big dollars—Pony’s market capitalization of $5.2... Welcome back, Travis Kalanick! We’ve missed you as a generator of news. The New York Times...

Kirsten Green, Founder and Managing Partner of Forerunner Ventures. Photo via Getty

Forerunner’s Green: ‘Virality’ Won’t Last for Some Consumer AI Startups

By Natasha Mascarenhas · Jun 26, 2025 4:36pm PDT

Kirsten Green, Founder and Managing Partner of Forerunner Ventures. Photo via Getty

Forerunner’s Green: ‘Virality’ Won’t Last for Some Consumer AI Startups

By Natasha Mascarenhas · Jun 26, 2025 4:36pm PDT

For more than a decade, Forerunner Ventures founder Kirsten Green has had a front-row seat on what’s hot or not in consumer startups. After a particularly brutal period for these startups when interest rates spiked, investors like Green are especially optimistic—largely because they’ve seen artificial intelligence breakthroughs create... For more than a decade, Forerunner Ventures founder Kirsten Green has had a front-row seat on...

Unicorn co-founders Scott Dunn and Chris Gera. Photo: Unicorn/Chris Gera

Creator Economy

A New Startup Runs a Studio to Make Hit Creator Shows

By Kaya Yurieff · Jun 26, 2025 2:23pm PDT · 1 comment

Creator management firms help creators ink brand deals, but they typically don’t also have production facilities to help creators launch projects, such as recurring shows made for YouTube or TikTok.Scott Dunn and Chris Gera are taking a different approach with their new startup Unicorn, which is part talent management firm and part content... Creator management firms help creators ink brand deals, but they typically don’t also have...

Art by Mike Sullivan.

TikTok, Instagram Plot TV Apps Following YouTube’s Success

By Kaya Yurieff and Kalley Huang · Jun 26, 2025 12:01pm PDT

Rejoice, couch potatoes. TikTok and Instagram, following YouTube’s lead, are working on ways to make it easier for viewers to watch videos from their apps on TV screens. The social media giants see an opportunity to grab some of the ad dollars flowing to the streaming TV market. Meta Platforms’ leaders have said they are planning to develop a... Rejoice, couch potatoes. TikTok and Instagram, following YouTube’s lead, are working on ways to...

Partner Content

Panel Recap: Building the Internet of Agents

By The Information Partnerships · Jun 26, 2025 10:27am PDT · 1 comment

Since ChatGPT’s 2022 debut, businesses have envisioned generative AI creating not just chatbots, but also automated tools capable of complex, multi-step tasks like managing retail returns, generating research reports, and planning travel. This spring, new open-source protocols emerged to facilitate AI agent collaboration. Google introduced the... Since ChatGPT’s 2022 debut, businesses have envisioned generative AI creating not just chatbots,...

Photo via Getty

Is OpenAI About to Spice Up the Productivity App Market?

By Aaron Holmes · Jun 26, 2025 10:00am PDT

Photo via Getty

Is OpenAI About to Spice Up the Productivity App Market?

By Aaron Holmes · Jun 26, 2025 10:00am PDT

As if OpenAI isn’t fighting enough battles, the startup is now eyeing a new front line: productivity apps currently dominated by Microsoft’s Office 365 and Google’s Workspace.As my colleagues reported this week, OpenAI has been prototyping a new tool within ChatGPT that would let multiple people collaborate on documents and communicate with each... As if OpenAI isn’t fighting enough battles, the startup is now eyeing a new front line:...

Art by Mike Sullivan

Will Chains of Thought Stay Readable for Long?

By Rocket Drew · Jun 26, 2025 7:22am PDT

Chains of thought, the “reasoning” steps that many AI models take before delivering their final answer to a query, offer AI developers a precious window into their models’ decision-making. That’s why Google faced a backlash from its users earlier this month when it followed the lead of OpenAI and Anthropic by deciding to hide its models’ chains... Chains of thought, the “reasoning” steps that many AI models take before delivering their final...

A DeepSeek advertisement in a technology store in Hong Kong. Photo via Getty.

DeepSeek’s Progress Stalled by U.S. Export Controls

By Qianer Liu and Juro Osawa · Jun 26, 2025 6:00am PDT · 4 comments

The latest round of U.S. chip export controls may have curbed DeepSeek’s rise, at least for now. DeepSeek’s highly anticipated upcoming large language model, R2, may not be as quickly and extensively adopted in China as its predecessor, the wildly popular R1, due to a shortage of Nvidia server chips in the country, according to employees of... The latest round of U.S. chip export controls may have curbed DeepSeek’s rise, at least for now....

The Electric: In the Budget Brawl, Ford Reminds Trump That He Risks Job Cuts

The Electric: In the Budget Brawl, Ford Reminds Trump That He Risks Job Cuts

By Steve LeVine · Jun 26, 2025 4:30am PDT

The effort to rewrite President Donald Trump’s budget bill gained a big public backer this week, and one that holds some real power over the members of Congress who are voting on the measure. Ford publicly joined the fight to save electric vehicle and battery tax credits that would be cut or sharply reduced in the bill under consideration.... The effort to rewrite President Donald Trump’s budget bill gained a big public backer this week,...

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Photo via Getty

Microsoft’s Shaky AI Leadership

By Martin Peers · Jun 25, 2025 5:00pm PDT

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Photo via Getty

Microsoft’s Shaky AI Leadership

By Martin Peers · Jun 25, 2025 5:00pm PDT

Microsoft is on a hot streak. Its stock has soared in recent weeks and so far this year is up 17%, more than that of any other big tech name besides gravity-defying Meta Platforms. What makes Microsoft’s performance so striking is that the stock was not cheap before the rally—based on multiples of earnings and sales—and it is even less cheap... Microsoft is on a hot streak. Its stock has soared in recent weeks and so far this year is up...