The Briefing by Martin Peers, Jessica E. Lessin and the team at The Information

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The Briefing

By Martin Peers, Jessica E. 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 Clark Miller; Getty Images, YouTube.

Can Reed Jobs Be More Than the Son of Steve?

By Jemima McEvoy · Oct 3, 2025 6:06am PDT · 1 comment

Last month, Reed Jobs was on Capitol Hill meeting with lawmakers and representatives from America’s top hospitals, universities and medical organizations. He came to deliver an impassioned plea: Save the National Institutes of Health, which faces a push by President Donald Trump to slash its budget 40%. As a keynote speaker at the... Last month, Reed Jobs was on Capitol Hill meeting with lawmakers and representatives from America...

Photos via Getty

As AI Buying Frenzy Heats Up, Bending Spoons Looks Backward

By Martin Peers · Oct 2, 2025 5:00pm PDT · 1 comment

Anyone of a certain age will remember Uri Geller, the magician who became a big star in the 1970s for bending spoons with his mind, a trick that was later discredited. Given that sorry history, you might wonder why an internet conglomerate based in Italy chose Bending Spoons as its name. Is the management trying to prove it can perform acts of... Anyone of a certain age will remember Uri Geller, the magician who became a big star in the 1970s...

Paige and Leura Craig. Photo courtesy of Outlander VC.

How an Early Scale AI Investor Picks Founders

By Cory Weinberg · Oct 2, 2025 1:52pm PDT

How do early-stage venture capitalists pick which unproven founders to back? Most don’t overcomplicate things. Backing a Stanford University computer science grad or an early OpenAI employee often seems like a good bet. Some VCs even use AI to score early startups based on their technical expertise or past successes.Paige and Leura Craig, the... How do early-stage venture capitalists pick which unproven founders to back? Most don’t...

Photo by Craig Warga

Anthropic Says Its AI Can Clone Enterprise Apps Like Slack

By Aaron Holmes and Kevin McLaughlin · Oct 2, 2025 10:30am PDT · 2 comments

Photo by Craig Warga

Anthropic Says Its AI Can Clone Enterprise Apps Like Slack

By Aaron Holmes and Kevin McLaughlin · Oct 2, 2025 10:30am PDT · 2 comments

When AI coding tools came into vogue in 2023 and 2024, chief information officers salivated at the idea of using them to develop their own versions of Salesforce and Slack and stop paying a fortune for enterprise apps. But the AI wasn’t accurate or consistent enough to do that.Now Anthropic is reawakening these app-replacement dreams. In a... When AI coding tools came into vogue in 2023 and 2024, chief information officers salivated at...

Image via Getty.

Partner Content

What’s Holding Back Agentic AI? Not Employee Resistance

By The Information Partnerships · Oct 2, 2025 8:59am PDT · 1 comment

Read a handful of tech headlines, or even spend a few minutes on LinkedIn, and you’ll likely see the same hurdle to AI adoption cited over and over: a lack of employee buy-in, especially among workers who fear AI agents might one day be able to do large portions of their current jobs. But pushback from employees is not holding back agentic AI,... Read a handful of tech headlines, or even spend a few minutes on LinkedIn, and you’ll likely see...

Elon Musk. Photo via Getty

XAI Broke Its Safety Policy With Coding Model

By Rocket Drew · Oct 2, 2025 7:00am PDT

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed SB 53 on Monday, a law that will require the largest AI companies to abide by their own safety and cybersecurity policies. One company that should take heed of the new law is Elon Musk's xAI.The ink had barely dried on xAI’s safety policy, which it published in August, when the company released its model Grok... California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed SB 53 on Monday, a law that will require the largest AI...

Art by Clark Miller.

Beyond the Ban: The Complex Questions Raised by TikTok’s New Deal

By The Information Staff · Oct 2, 2025 6:39am PDT

Following the President’s recent executive order, a path has been created for TikTok to continue operating in the U.S. However, the proposed deal is proving to be a highly complex and controversial arrangement, raising new questions about the company’s future. We turned to our Deep Research AI to get insights. Following the President’s recent executive order, a path has been created for TikTok to continue...

Meta's Yann LeCun. Photo via Getty

A Meta Change on Publishing Research Causes a Stir in Its AI Group

By Kalley Huang and Cory Weinberg · Oct 2, 2025 6:00am PDT · 8 comments

Meta's Yann LeCun. Photo via Getty

A Meta Change on Publishing Research Causes a Stir in Its AI Group

By Kalley Huang and Cory Weinberg · Oct 2, 2025 6:00am PDT · 8 comments

In recent weeks, Meta Platforms made a change to its Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research lab that rubbed members of the group the wrong way: FAIR, as the group is known, would have to undergo additional review of its research before publishing it, according to two people familiar with the matter. The new policy was a tough pill to... In recent weeks, Meta Platforms made a change to its Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research...

Wildfires triggered blackouts in successive years in California. Above, the town of Sausalito in October 2019. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty

The Electric: Sunrun and Tesla Residential Batteries Could Help Power Data Centers

By Steve LeVine · Oct 2, 2025 4:30am PDT

At 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, California-based solar and battery provider Sunrun received an urgent email from Puerto Rico. Starting in just an hour, the U.S. territory needed a big infusion of electricity or it would have to initiate rolling blackouts across the island. At 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, California-based solar and battery provider Sunrun received an urgent...

Judson Althoff. Photo via Getty

Nadella Wants to Spend More Time With Engineers

By Martin Peers · Oct 1, 2025 5:00pm PDT

It seems Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wants to spend more time hanging out with engineers and less with customers and government officials. That’s the upshot of Microsoft’s announcement early Wednesday that Nadella would hand off some of his business responsibilities to Microsoft’s chief commercial officer, Judson Althoff. Nadella, an engineer by... It seems Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wants to spend more time hanging out with engineers and less...

Snyk CEO Peter McKay. Screenshot via YouTube

Cybersecurity Startup Snyk Considers Buyout Interest as IPO Plans Stall

By Valida Pau, Cory Weinberg, Katie Roof and Kevin McLaughlin · Oct 1, 2025 10:36am PDT · 3 comments

Snyk, a startup that sells security tools for developers, seemed like a shoo-in for a lucrative initial public offering a few years ago. Sales were doubling or tripling every year, reaching into the hundreds of millions of dollars annually, as exploding corporate use of open-source software code created vulnerabilities that businesses needed to... Snyk, a startup that sells security tools for developers, seemed like a shoo-in for a lucrative...

Adam Presser. Photo via Getty

TikTok Insiders Bet No. 2, Adam Presser, Will Run New Venture

By Sylvia Varnham O'Regan and Juro Osawa · Oct 1, 2025 10:08am PDT · 2 comments

Adam Presser. Photo via Getty

TikTok Insiders Bet No. 2, Adam Presser, Will Run New Venture

By Sylvia Varnham O'Regan and Juro Osawa · Oct 1, 2025 10:08am PDT · 2 comments

President Donald Trump’s recent announcement that a joint venture will oversee TikTok’s U.S. business left unanswered the important question of who will run the new company. Inside TikTok, executives say there’s a very obvious candidate: Adam Presser, the longtime No. 2 to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, and one of the top Americans at the company. In... President Donald Trump’s recent announcement that a joint venture will oversee TikTok’s U.S....

Art by Mike Sullivan

Fermi America IPO Is a Leap of Faith on Debt, Data Centers—and Trump

By Miles Kruppa · Oct 1, 2025 7:52am PDT · 2 comments

Fermi America has a grand plan: Assemble the largest data center complex ever, an Amarillo, Texas, facility that will suck up enough energy to power 8 million homes. Still, newly public Fermi is essentially asking investors to take a Texas-size leap of faith on a months-old business that could become the next topsy-turvy meme stock. Adding to... Fermi America has a grand plan: Assemble the largest data center complex ever, an Amarillo,...

Photo by Craig Warga

Will Reinforcement Learning Get Us to AGI? This Anthropic Researcher Thinks So

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Oct 1, 2025 7:00am PDT · 1 comment

Thanks to everyone who attended our AI Agenda Live event in New York yesterday! It was incredible to get to meet so many subscribers in person and hear from leaders in AI research, robotics and VC about what they’re seeing in this crazy industry right now. (For a full recap of the event, check out my colleagues’ write-up here.)My last panel with... Thanks to everyone who attended our AI Agenda Live event in New York yesterday! It was incredible...

Shohei Ohtani. Photo via Getty.

Slop-Proof Investing Strategies

By Cory Weinberg · Sep 30, 2025 5:18pm PDT

The biggest stars of MLB, Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees, are taking the field on day one of the playoffs this evening. The league’s attendance and TV ratings are up. America’s pastime, often left for dead, has proven to be good business for its players and owners.I mention this not just because... The biggest stars of MLB, Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Aaron Judge of the New...

Photos by Craig Warga

Business Adoption of AI Will Take Years, Say Venture Capitalists and Executives

By The Information Staff · Sep 30, 2025 3:50pm PDT · 6 comments

Photos by Craig Warga

Business Adoption of AI Will Take Years, Say Venture Capitalists and Executives

By The Information Staff · Sep 30, 2025 3:50pm PDT · 6 comments

Artificial intelligence services will take years to penetrate the economy, because businesses need to figure out how to use new AI products and train workers to use them, according to speakers at The Information’s AI Agenda Live conference on Tuesday. Sarah Guo, founder and partner at venture capital firm Conviction, noted that cloud computing... Artificial intelligence services will take years to penetrate the economy, because businesses...

Cyberstarts Founder Gili Raanan. Photo provided by Unlmtdpartners.

Cyberstarts’ New Fund Is a Bet on Cybersecurity M&A

By Natasha Mascarenhas · Sep 30, 2025 11:33am PDT

Venture capitalist Gili Raanan is best known for his first investments in cloud security startups Wiz and Cyera. But as startups stay private for longer, his Israel-based venture firm Cyberstarts is now also investing in later rounds. It now has another $380 million for those more mature investments, thanks to a new fund raised this week to... Venture capitalist Gili Raanan is best known for his first investments in cloud security startups...

Satya Nadella. Photo via Getty

Microsoft Hopes Anthropic Will Solve Its Copilot Problems

By Aaron Holmes · Sep 30, 2025 10:30am PDT

After AI coding apps like Cursor and Replit popularized “vibe coding,” Microsoft wants to make “vibe working” happen.Microsoft on Monday unveiled Office Agent, which lets people create complex PowerPoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets based on simple written prompts in the Copilot chatbot. After AI coding apps like Cursor and Replit popularized “vibe coding,” Microsoft wants to make “...

Subscriber Survey

Top AI Chatbots Lose Ground Among Our Readers

By Shane Burke · Sep 30, 2025 10:00am PDT · 1 comment

ChatGPT remains by far the most widely used chatbot among people responding to The Information Pro’s latest subscriber survey, but it lost ground over the past seven months. So did most other chatbots, possibly a sign that our readers are experimenting with fewer chatbots and have decided on those they want to primarily use. Overall, the use of... ChatGPT remains by far the most widely used chatbot among people responding to The Information...

Art by Clark Miller.

Three New Papers AI Researchers Are Reading; What To Expect at AI Agenda Live

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Sep 30, 2025 7:00am PDT

Art by Clark Miller.

Three New Papers AI Researchers Are Reading; What To Expect at AI Agenda Live

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Sep 30, 2025 7:00am PDT

It wouldn’t be the eve of our AI Agenda Live conference without a midnight scoop! In case you missed it, check out last night’s story from Amir, Cory and me on OpenAI’s financials for the first half of 2025.I might be slightly sleep-deprived, but I’m thrilled to be seeing many of you in just a few hours at our AI Agenda Live: The Next Wave event... It wouldn’t be the eve of our AI Agenda Live conference without a midnight scoop! In case you...