Exclusive: Tiger Global, Alkeon Slash Startup Valuations Amid Public Stock Selloff Read Now

About Us
Pricing
Briefing

Jack Ma’s Ant Group Gets Approval to Launch Consumer Finance Company

By Shai Oster
· · Source: The Wall Street Journal

China’s banking authorities approved Jack Ma’s Ant Group’s application to set up a consumer finance company, a major milestone in the restructuring of the massive online financial group after regulators suddenly pulled the plug on its IPO late last year. Ant will control half of the new entity, with six other partners owning the rest. One of the key reasons for the halt of the IPO was worry...

Get access to exclusive coverage
Read deeply reported stories from the largest newsroom in tech.
Latest Articles
 
The Briefing Google Policy
The Dangers of War Against Google’s Ad Tech
By Martin Peers · Jan. 28, 2022 5:00 PM PST
Alphabet's Mountain View headquarters. Photo by Bloomberg.
Google’s legal department has its hands full these days, given numerous antitrust lawsuits filed both by the Justice Department and individual states targeting different parts of its business. Our scoop today—about how a bipartisan group of senators is putting together a bill to force Google to divest its ad tech operations—will only add to the lawyers’ workload. Where is this all heading?...
Latest Briefs
 
Climate Startups Raised $40 Billion Last Year
By Mahira Dayal · Jan. 28, 2022
Meta Pauses New Users From Accessing CrowdTangle Tool
By Sylvia Varnham O'Regan · Jan. 28, 2022
Airbnb Exec Chris Lehane Joins Katie Haun’s Crypto Fund
By Hannah Miller · Jan. 28, 2022
Stay in the know
Receive a summary of the day's top tech news—distilled into one email.
Access on the go
View stories on our mobile app and tune into our weekly podcast.
Join live video Q&A’s
Deep-dive into topics like startups and autonomous vehicles with our top reporters and other executives.
Enjoy a clutter-free experience
Read without any banner ads.
Photo by AP.
Exclusive
Tiger Global, Alkeon Slash Startup Valuations Amid Public Stock Selloff
By Berber Jin and Kate Clark
For more than a year, startup founders have watched in awe and some trepidation as hedge funds and other large investors flooded private startups with big checks, pushing up valuations and making it easier than ever to raise money.
Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman (left) and Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi. Photos by Snowflake, Bloomberg. Collage by Mike Sullivan
Exclusive Cloud
Snowflake vs. Databricks: How Onetime Friends Became Fierce Cloud Rivals
By Kevin McLaughlin
A few years ago, Snowflake and Databricks were up-and-coming cloud software startups that were so friendly, their sales teams regularly passed customer leads to each other.
Pinterest headquarters office in San Francisco. Photo by Bloomberg
Exclusive Entertainment E-commerce
Pinterest Has Lost at Least 7 Senior Execs in Recent Weeks
By Jessica Toonkel and Sahil Patel
Pinterest has lost at least seven senior executives in roles ranging from creator marketing to corporate development in recent weeks as the online scrapbooking app grapples with a drop in U.S.
Photos by AP; Bloomberg
Enterprise Markets
M&A Watch: 8 Potential Targets as Tech Stocks Sink
By Aidan Ryan
A sharp sell-off in tech stocks over the past few months has caused investors a lot of pain—but could be the trigger for more mergers.
Art by Mike Sullivan
Exclusive Venture Capital Startups
Tech’s Great Headhunter Shortage: Employers Shower Recruiters With Better Pay, Benefits
By Mark Matousek
In the middle of 2020, not long after the Covid-19 pandemic began sparking layoffs across the country, Joe Price watched as eight members of the recruiting department at an automotive software company he worked for lost their jobs.
Art by Shutterstock; Mike Sullivan
Opinion Crypto Economy
Bitcoin Is Failing Its Original Mandate. That Doesn’t Mean It’s Worthless
By Eswar Prasad
By plenty of standards, Bitcoin is a failure. Transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain take at least 10 minutes to process, which would make it cumbersome for day-to-day transactions if its wildly fluctuating price hadn’t already rendered it useless as a means of exchange.