A few years ago, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the storied venture capital firm known for blockbuster bets on Amazon and Google, was in a funk. The firm had lost some of its luster by missing out on early investments in social media, while its reputation was battered by a sexual discrimination lawsuit filed by a former partner.

To lead a turnaround, Kleiner in 2017 recruited Mamoon ...

Movie studio MGM Holdings is looking for a strategic partner for its Epix cable channel, to help grow the business and gain access to more programming  and distribution, according to two people familiar with the situation. The search comes less than two years after MGM paid nearly a billion dollars for control of Epix.

MGM Chairman Kevin Ulrich is working informally with boutique ...

Thomas Cute, a former bus driver, will be among the first to take a ride this spring in Providence, R.I.’s new, self-driving shuttle. He and other local bus drivers will survey how the small, driverless bus makes its way from the downtown train station, over the Woonasquatucket River, to a neighborhood where few public buses currently run. But one question that’s likely to be on ...

As the war between video streaming services heats up, the biggest battleground is being fought over cartoons like “Kung Fu Panda,” “Captain Underpants” and “Curious George.”

Hoping to draw in families and children, services like Amazon, Apple, Hulu and especially Netflix are ordering so many new animated movies and series that studios are struggling to keep ...

India’s Oyo Hotels and Homes, a $5 billion travel startup backed by SoftBank’s Vision Fund and Sequoia Capital, has started to expand into the U.S., The Information has learned. The company, which is one of India’s largest private tech companies, manages a network of budget hotels in India, Indonesia and China, and faces a significant test moving into the more mature U.S. ...

There are bad tech businesses and very bad ones. And then there is Ofo.

At the height of its growth in late 2017, the bicycle-rental startup had trucks driving around cities across China, dropping off brand-new yellow bikes continuously throughout the day for customers to use. Each bike cost Ofo nearly $100. They were meant to last two years. Instead, many lasted only a month or two, either ...

The Apple executive responsible for overseeing Siri for the past seven years recently left that role, said five people with knowledge of the change.

Bill Stasior, who was recruited from Amazon in 2012 to lead Siri after two of the technology’s creators left Apple, is no longer heading the voice assistant group, though he remains at Apple, the people said. The change appears to be part of ...

Mexico City’s Grin and Sao Paulo’s Yellow, which each took in tens of millions of dollars from Silicon Valley investors to run scooter rental businesses last fall, have merged and raised $150 million in fresh capital, according to executives at both firms.

The merger is the latest sign of consolidation in the electric scooter industry, which includes at least 20 companies on ...

Ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing is considering layoffs as it grapples with tighter regulations that limit its supply of drivers and cars, joining other Chinese tech companies whittling costs amidst the slowest economic growth in three decades.

While plans haven’t been finalized and the figures may still change before a decision is made, senior managers are looking at cutting headcount at ...

Payments startup Stripe has raised an additional $100 million from Tiger Global Management, boosting the firm’s valuation to $22.5 billion, according to a person close to the company.

The fundraising is a follow-on round to a $245 million round led by Tiger Global last year, which valued Stripe at $20 billion. The money will be used for growth areas including international expansion, the ...

China’s online English tutor VIPKid is seeking to raise between $400 million to $500 million at a pre-money valuation of $6 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

If successful, the financing would nearly double the education startup’s value from $3.5 billion just a year ago, after it said it raised about $500 million. The company’s backers include Coatue ...

Walt Disney Co.’s ambitious plans to reinvent itself for the streaming era has brought with it an equally ambitious rethinking of how the company runs.

At the heart of the changes is the newly created direct-to-consumer and international division, which will house Disney’s new streaming services—ESPN+, which has already launched, and the forthcoming Disney+ that will stream ...

Amazon looked intent on becoming a powerful player in the streaming video market by allowing people to sign up for a wide variety of services through their Prime Video accounts—so much so that Apple, Roku and potentially Facebook are now copying the company’s approach. But even as competition increases, Amazon is scaling back its ambition to expand the service, three people ...

McAfee has laid off around 200 employees in the past two weeks, about 4% of its workforce, and eliminated hundreds more open positions, several people familiar with the matter said. At the same time, several senior sales executives, including Bill McAlister, senior vice president of sales for the Americas, have left.

The job cuts are the latest sign of turmoil at McAfee, a company that was once ...

Two years ago, streaming-device maker Roku circulated a presentation to partners that showed a school of fish swimming toward an area marked “subscription.” Meanwhile, a lone fish labeled “Roku” was heading away from the group toward an area called “advertising.” The implication: Roku was swimming against the tide by launching a free, ad-supported streaming ...

The news that Slack wants to go public through a highly unconventional direct listing, in which it doesn’t sell new shares to raise money, has come as a surprise to some. But the messaging startup has built a strong enough cash position to pull it off, according to financial documents viewed by The Information and a person familiar with the matter.

As of October 2018, the firm had ...

Last January, at drinks before an offsite for NBCUniversal’s digital executives in New York City, someone asked NBCU CEO Steve Burke when the Comcast-owned entertainment company was going to launch a service to compete with Netflix, according to a person who was there.

Mr. Burke went through an analysis of how much it would cost to compete with the streaming giant. He told the group, ...

SoftBank’s Vision Fund plans to double down on Katerra, a startup run by electronics industry veterans trying to build apartments and hotels faster and cheaper than traditional construction firms. The massive fund is expected to lead a $700 million round of financing that would value Katerra at more than $4 billion, up slightly from its previous valuation, people familiar with the matter ...

Didi Chuxing is restructuring for the second time in a year, placing new emphasis on safety and user experience to jump-start domestic growth in its ride-hailing business.

Nearly every major media company in recent years has launched video streaming services that cost viewers a few dollars a month and don't carry ads, looking to compete with Netflix, Hulu and Amazon. Viacom, owner of MTV and Nickelodeon, wants to expand in a different part of the market—free, ad-supported streaming video.

Viacom in recent weeks has held talks to acquire Tubi TV, a free ...