Briefing
startups e-commerce asia

Travis Kalanick’s CloudKitchens Valued at $5 Billion by Saudi Backers

By
Zoë Bernard
· · Source: The Wall Street Journal

Travis Kalanick’s kitchen rental company CloudKitchens has received a $400 million investment from Saudia Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund that values the startup at around $5 billion, the Wall Street Journal reports. Kalanick has a longstanding history with Saudia Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, known as the Public Investment Fund or PIF. The fund first poured $3.5 billion into Uber in 2016....

Get access to exclusive coverage
Read deeply reported stories from the largest newsroom in tech.
Latest Articles
 
The Briefing cloud ai
Amazon’s Anthropic Deal Signals Cloud Sector Turbulence
By Martin Peers · Sept. 25, 2023 5:00 PM PDT
Photo by Getty
You know the cloud industry is in upheaval when industry leader Amazon Web Services has to copy a tactic used by its smaller rivals to compete more effectively. The Amazon unit’s decision on Monday to invest up to $4 billion in AI startup Anthropic, as part of a broader deal in which AWS becomes the startup’s “primary cloud provider,” looks a lot like the type of equity-for-business deals AWS...
Latest Briefs
 
OpenAI’s ChatGPT Will Offer Voice Conversations, Mimicking Siri
By Laura Mandaro · Sept. 25, 2023
Outgoing Amazon Devices Chief to Lead Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin
By Theo Wayt · Sept. 25, 2023
Amazon Agrees to Invest up to $4 Billion in AI Startup Anthropic
By Jing Yang · Sept. 25, 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.
From left, a Google TPU, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan and Google Cloud chief Thomas Kurian. Photos via Getty, Google and YouTube.
Exclusive google semiconductors
To Reduce AI Costs, Google Wants to Ditch Broadcom as Its TPU Server Chip Supplier
By Wayne Ma, Anissa Gardizy and Jon Victor
Google executives have extensively discussed dropping Broadcom as a supplier of artificial intelligence chips as early as 2027, according to a person with direct knowledge of the effort.
Art by Clark Miller
Exclusive startups entertainment
MasterClass Takes a Crash Course in Frugality
By Paris Martineau
MasterClass had a problem with the shoot featuring its latest star instructor, Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Iger.
Photo via Midjourney.
AI Agenda startups ai
The Rise of Startups That Help Other Startups Evaluate LLMs
By Stephanie Palazzolo
All but a handful of artificial intelligence startups typically fall into one of two camps. The first group uses a single large-language model, typically OpenAI’s GPT-4, to power their applications.
Photos via Eiso Kant (left) and YouTube/VMWare Tanzu (right)
AI Agenda startups ai
How GitHub Copilot’s Co-Creator Raised $126 Million to Compete with His Former Employer
By Stephanie Palazzolo
Recent interest in artificial intelligence has focused on large-language models that aim to do everything from writing Shakespearean poetry to solving math riddles.
If AI researchers can meet Nat Friedman's Vesuvius Challenge, “It’ll be the first time we’ve read handwriting that hasn’t been seen in 2,000 years.” Art by Clark Miller
The AI Age culture ai
Nat Versus the Volcano: Can an AI Investor Solve an Ancient Mystery from the Ashes of Vesuvius?
By Margaux MacColl
Long before men’s daily thoughts about ancient Rome became a TikTok meme , former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman’s mind was regularly turning toward the Roman Empire.
Photo via Jacopo Pantaleoni.
AI Agenda ai
Nvidia Engineer’s Message to Google AI Researchers: Leave Your Company
By Stephanie Palazzolo
Jacopo Pantaleoni joined Nvidia in 2001 when the company had less than 500 employees. He worked on what was then a small research project to improve Nvidia’s graphics processing units so they could better render images on computers and gaming consoles.