Briefing
asia

ByteDance to Scale Back Fintech Services

By
Shai Oster
· · Source: Reuters

ByteDance will scale back its fintech operations and sell its brokerages, Reuters reported, amid tightening oversight of online financial services. The owner of TikTok, the global hit short-video app, operates stock brokerages Songshu Zhengquan in Hong Kong and Haitun Gupiao in mainland China. Last year, China ordered Alibaba’s financial services affiliate Ant Financial to restructure after...

Get access to exclusive coverage
Read deeply reported stories from the largest newsroom in tech.
Latest Articles
 
The Briefing crypto
Let’s Talk About Jack Dorsey
By Jessica E. Lessin · March 23, 2023 5:00 PM PDT
Jack Dorsey, head, chairman and cofounder of Block. Photo by Bloomberg.
Well, it’s been a minute since Jack Dorsey has been in the news. But lest you think that Elon Musk—and Congress’s favorite punching bag, TikTok—get all the fun, today short seller Hindenburg Research sent Block’s stock down 15% with a report saying the payments company, formerly known as Square, had been inflating its user metrics by serving criminals with shady “Wild West compliance.”You can...
Latest Briefs
 
U.S. Prosecutors Charge Do Kwon with Fraud after Arrest in Montenegro
By Aidan Ryan · March 23, 2023
Mysten Labs to Buy Back Investment From FTX for $96 Million
By Aidan Ryan · March 23, 2023
Slack’s Sales Chief Departing Salesforce Next Month
By Kevin McLaughlin · March 23, 2023
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.
Sarah Nagy gives a demo of her startup, Seek.ai, at an AI event at the San Francisco Wine Society in January. Photography by Laura Morton
First Look startups ai
Boom Times in San Francisco’s AI Underground
By Arielle Pardes
Not even a banking crisis could chill the fever sweeping San Francisco. Last Wednesday, as the tech industry recoiled from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, a party was scheduled at the offices of Maverick Ventures in an old army hospital in the Presidio.
Cover art and portraits by Clark Miller
The Big Read
The Instant Oral History of the Silicon Valley Bank Collapse
By Abram Brown, Annie Goldsmith, Margaux MacColl, Arielle Pardes, Nick Wingfield and Kaya Yurieff
On a cosmic level, the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank was a mere blip. The murmurs about trouble began last Wednesday, the panic spread via group texts and Twitter threads on Thursday, the bank went under on Friday, the government got its act together on Saturday, and on Sunday every current and former customer of SVB could breathe a cautious sigh of relief.
Art by Clark Miller.
Opinion startups economy
SVB Is Dead. Long Live SVB.
By Jason Pontin
We all know how it began. It started on March 9, when the run on Silicon Valley Bank made the innovation economy totter and threatened a global financial crisis.
Clockwise from top left: Julie Bornstein, Esther Crawford, Mark Hammond, Max Cutler, Kağan Sümer. Photos via Julie Bernstein, Robert Cowherd, Microsoft, Wikimedia and Kağan Sümer.
Free Agents startups
On the Market: The Founders Who Joined Microsoft, Spotify, Coinbase and Twitter
By The Information Staff
Call them acqui-fires. Several founders who took positions at the bigger tech companies that bought their startups recently lost their jobs when layoffs rolled through Silicon Valley.
Tonal’s now-shuttered Palo Alto, Calif. retail store. Photo by Getty.
Exclusive startups
Tonal’s Valuation May Fall 90% in ‘Cram-Down’ Financing
By Maria Heeter
Tonal, a fitness startup with a cadre of celebrity backers, is crunched for cash after failing to find a buyer.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk last August. Photo by Bloomberg
Exclusive startups electric vehicles
SpaceX Plans New Funding With Backing From Saudi, UAE Investors
By Becky Peterson
A subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s investment fund and an Abu Dhabi investment firm are planning to invest in a multibillion-dollar funding round for SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company, according to people familiar with the investor discussions.