Nat Versus the Volcano: Can an AI Investor Solve an Ancient Mystery from the Ashes of Vesuvius?Read more

Briefing
e-commerce asia

Alibaba Swings to Quarterly Loss on Beijing’s Anti-Monopoly Fine

By
Juro Osawa
· · Source: The Information

Alibaba Group swung to an operating loss of more than $1.1 billion in the quarter through March because of the Chinese government’s recent $2.8 billion anti-monopoly fine. It was the Chinese e-commerce giant’s first-ever quarterly operating loss as a listed company since it went public in the U.S. in 2014. A big question is whether Alibaba will face any further consequences from China’s...

Get access to exclusive coverage
Read deeply reported stories from the largest newsroom in tech.
Latest Articles
 
The Briefing markets google
SpaceX, Klaviyo, LLMs: Highlight Stories From This Week
By Akash Pasricha · Sept. 22, 2023 4:01 PM PDT
Photo via Shutterstock
This week we were treated to not one but two big tech IPOs! Plus, two tech juggernauts—Amazon and Microsoft—held big, flashy product launch events. Through it all, The Information’s newsroom pumped out a string of scoops, analyses and meaty newsletters.
Latest Briefs
 
Apple Adds New Option to Switch From Google Search in Safari Browser
By Jon Victor · Sept. 22, 2023
Unity Technologies Issues Apology, Revises New Business Model
By Akash Pasricha · Sept. 22, 2023
Biden Administration Wants to Know Cloud Providers’ AI Customers
By Anissa Gardizy · Sept. 22, 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.
OpenAI's Greg Brockman (left) and Google's Demis Hassabis (right). Photos by Getty.
AI Agenda google ai
OpenAI Hustles to Beat Google to Launch ‘Multimodal’ LLM
By Jon Victor
As fall approaches, Google and OpenAI are locked in a good ol’ fashioned software race, aiming to launch the next generation of large-language models: multimodal.
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.
space Twitter
The Trouble With Walter: In His Elon Musk Tome, the Writer Shows Us the Perils of Access Journalism
By Adam Lashinsky
Walter Isaacson is the exotic bird of American letters, a charming and convivial bon vivant and raconteur, the life of many a dinner party, a studious biographer and a generous mentor.
Flexport founder Ryan Petersen. Photos via Getty and Flexport.
e-commerce
Can Ryan Petersen Fix Flexport?
By Ann Gehan and Theo Wayt
Ryan Petersen was getting antsy. This March, Petersen had handed over the CEO job at Flexport—the logistics company he’d founded a decade earlier, which had ballooned to an $8 billion valuation in 2022—to veteran Amazon executive Dave Clark.
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.