The Information

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Photo via YouTube/OpenAI

OpenAI Ramps Up Audio AI Efforts Ahead of Device

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Jan 1, 2026 7:00am PST

OpenAI is taking steps to improve its audio AI models, in preparation for its eventual release of an AI-powered personal device, said a person with knowledge of the effort. The device is expected to be largely audio-based, said three people with knowledge of it. When people speak to ChatGPT, the chatbot can talk back but the large language model... OpenAI is taking steps to improve its audio AI models, in preparation for its eventual release of...

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Uber Considers Deal for Parking App SpotHero

By Valida Pau and Cory Weinberg · Dec 31, 2025 7:58am PST · 1 comment

Uber has been in talks to acquire parking app SpotHero, a popular service that allows drivers to reserve parking spaces, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. Founded in 2011, SpotHero connects drivers looking to reserve and pay for parking spaces with parking lots, parking garages and valet services. SpotHero raised more than... Uber has been in talks to acquire parking app SpotHero, a popular service that allows drivers to...

Sikander Rashid, Brookfield Asset Management's global head of AI infrastructure. Cyril Marcilhacy/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

Brookfield to Start Cloud Business to Lower Cost of AI

By Miles Kruppa · Dec 31, 2025 6:00am PST

Private-equity firm Brookfield is starting its own cloud business, going up against tech giants like Amazon by arguing it can bring down the costs of developing AI. The firm, which has long invested in infrastructure and energy, is becoming the first major investment firm to try to lease chips inside data centers directly to developers, rather... Private-equity firm Brookfield is starting its own cloud business, going up against tech giants...

Art by Clark Miller

Elon Musk’s xAI Buys Building for Third Supersized Data Center

By Theo Wayt · Dec 30, 2025 10:56am PST · 1 comment

Art by Clark Miller

Elon Musk’s xAI Buys Building for Third Supersized Data Center

By Theo Wayt · Dec 30, 2025 10:56am PST · 1 comment

Elon Musk’s xAI has bought a building for a third supersized data center it’s planning outside Memphis, Tennessee, in pursuit of the company’s goal of getting 1 million chips online to power its artificial intelligence models, according to property records and a person with direct knowledge of the project. The expansion plan shows xAI is... Elon Musk’s xAI has bought a building for a third supersized data center it’s planning outside...

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Stablecoin Startups Spark Trouble for JPMorgan

By Michael Roddan and Yueqi Yang · Dec 26, 2025 6:00am PST

JPMorgan Chase in recent months has frozen accounts used by at least two fast-growing stablecoin startups, highlighting the risk that cryptocurrency transactions pose for banks, which are required to know the people they do business with and the source of their cash. The stablecoin startups did business in Venezuela and other places that posed... JPMorgan Chase in recent months has frozen accounts used by at least two fast-growing stablecoin...

Art by Clark Miller.

OpenAI’s Ads Push Starts Taking Shape

By Sri Muppidi and Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 24, 2025 6:00am PST · 4 comments

OpenAI executives have kept a tight lid on how the company could show advertisements to users of its popular ChatGPT chatbot, leaving the broader digital ad industry eager for clues. Behind the scenes, staff are working through key details. Employees have discussed ways for AI models to prioritize sponsored information in ChatGPT’s responses... OpenAI executives have kept a tight lid on how the company could show advertisements to users of...

Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Snowflake in Talks to Buy App Monitoring Startup Observe Inc. For Around $1 Billion

By Valida Pau, Kevin McLaughlin and Katie Roof · Dec 23, 2025 4:12pm PST

Snowflake is in talks to buy app monitoring startup Observe Inc. for around $1 billion, which would likely be the biggest deal in Snowflake’s history, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. Observe, based in San Mateo, Calif., sells so-called observability tools that help developers to understand how their applications are... Snowflake is in talks to buy app monitoring startup Observe Inc. for around $1 billion, which...

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Nvidia Restructures Cloud Team After Retreating From AWS Competition

By Anissa Gardizy and Wayne Ma · Dec 22, 2025 12:40pm PST

Photo by An Rong Xu/Getty Images

Nvidia Restructures Cloud Team After Retreating From AWS Competition

By Anissa Gardizy and Wayne Ma · Dec 22, 2025 12:40pm PST

More than two years after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shared his vision to develop a cloud service that could rival Amazon Web Services, he has backed away from competing with such firms and last week reorganized his company’s cloud team, according to several people with knowledge of the organizational change and an internal memo about it. The... More than two years after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shared his vision to develop a cloud service...

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Microsoft’s Nadella Pressures Deputies to Accelerate Copilot Improvements

By Aaron Holmes, Erin Woo and Amir Efrati · Dec 22, 2025 6:00am PST · 4 comments

A few weeks ago, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sent an email to engineering leaders at the company who were working on a consumer version of Copilot, the AI-powered assistant inside several Microsoft products. A Microsoft manager on the email thread noted that Google’s Gemini chatbot had recently gotten better at connecting with Google Drive for... A few weeks ago, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sent an email to engineering leaders at the company...

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Salesforce Executives Say Trust in Large Language Models Has Declined

By Aaron Holmes and Kevin McLaughlin · Dec 19, 2025 7:54am PST · 4 comments

Over the past year, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has touted his company’s main AI product, Agentforce, as a money saver for businesses looking to automate work using the power of large language models. More recently, though, Salesforce executives have delivered a different message to customers: Agentforce sometimes works better when it doesn’t... Over the past year, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has touted his company’s main AI product,...

Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind. Photo by Chris J. Ratcliffe/Getty Images

Inside the Balancing Act Over Google’s Compute Crunch

By Erin Woo · Dec 19, 2025 6:00am PST · 1 comment

Earlier this year, Google convened a group of its top executives to address what some staffers see as an existential problem: the company doesn’t have enough computer chips for everyone who wants them. A shortage of computing capacity was creating internal tensions, as leaders of Google’s varied product areas struggled to agree on where Google... Earlier this year, Google convened a group of its top executives to address what some staffers...

OpenAI executives Fidji Simo, Sam Altman and Mark Chen. Images via Getty. Art by Clark Miller.

How OpenAI’s Organizational Problems Hurt ChatGPT

By Stephanie Palazzolo, Sri Muppidi and Amir Efrati · Dec 18, 2025 6:00am PST · 8 comments

OpenAI executives Fidji Simo, Sam Altman and Mark Chen. Images via Getty. Art by Clark Miller.

How OpenAI’s Organizational Problems Hurt ChatGPT

By Stephanie Palazzolo, Sri Muppidi and Amir Efrati · Dec 18, 2025 6:00am PST · 8 comments

Over the past year, some OpenAI staffers noticed a concerning change in the way people who used ChatGPT were reacting to improvements in the chatbot. In prior years, every time OpenAI made a big upgrade to the artificial intelligence that powers the chatbot, usage surged as people easily found ways to get useful responses out of it, one employee... Over the past year, some OpenAI staffers noticed a concerning change in the way people who used...

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Art by Clark Miller; Getty Images.

OpenAI Has Discussed Raising Tens of Billions at Valuation Around $750 Billion

By Sri Muppidi and Katie Roof · Dec 17, 2025 4:15pm PST · 11 comments

OpenAI has held preliminary discussions with some investors about raising new funding at a valuation of around $750 billion, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions. It could raise tens of billions of dollars, and as much as $100 billion, according to two of the people. Talks are early and nothing has been finalized. A... OpenAI has held preliminary discussions with some investors about raising new funding at a...

Sam Altman. Photo by Yoshikazu Tsuno/ Getty Images

OpenAI, Anthropic Discuss Data Deals With Biotech and Other Companies

By Valida Pau and Stephanie Palazzolo · Dec 17, 2025 6:30am PST

OpenAI, Anthropic and Google have been on the prowl for specialized data to train their AI models, discussing deals with startups and public companies to license datasets on topics such as genomics. In the last several months, for instance, staff at OpenAI spoke to life sciences diagnostics vendor Revvity, accounting software firm Xero and... OpenAI, Anthropic and Google have been on the prowl for specialized data to train their AI...

Art by Mike Sullivan

Banks Pitching Mega IPOs Like SpaceX Seek to Limit Mass Selling

By Cory Weinberg and Valida Pau · Dec 17, 2025 6:00am PST · 1 comment

Wall Street is gearing up for three potentially record-setting initial public offerings over the next 18 months. The talk among bankers is not about what SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI will do on their big days but about what happens after that, when the companies’ existing shareholders try to unload their multibillion-dollar stakes. Each of the... Wall Street is gearing up for three potentially record-setting initial public offerings over the...

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, left and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy via Getty. Collage by Clark Miller.

OpenAI in Talks to Raise At Least $10 Billion From Amazon and Use Its AI Chips

By Anissa Gardizy, Sri Muppidi, Cory Weinberg and Amir Efrati · Dec 16, 2025 6:19pm PST · 1 comment

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, left and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy via Getty. Collage by Clark Miller.

OpenAI in Talks to Raise At Least $10 Billion From Amazon and Use Its AI Chips

By Anissa Gardizy, Sri Muppidi, Cory Weinberg and Amir Efrati · Dec 16, 2025 6:19pm PST · 1 comment

Amazon is in talks to invest $10 billion or more in OpenAI, according to three people familiar with the discussions. The valuation would be higher than $500 billion, one of the people said. The Amazon investment would help OpenAI afford some of the commitments it has made to rent servers from cloud providers, including from Amazon Web Services.... Amazon is in talks to invest $10 billion or more in OpenAI, according to three people familiar...

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Waymo Discusses Raising Billions at More Than $100 Billion Valuation

By Katie Roof · Dec 16, 2025 2:29pm PST · 7 comments

Waymo is in early talks with potential investors to raise more money at a valuation of at least $100 billion, according to people familiar with the company’s plans. The size of the round will at least be several billions of dollars, possibly even more than $10 billion, one of the people said. The exact valuation has not been set and the funding... Waymo is in early talks with potential investors to raise more money at a valuation of at least...

Art by Mike Sullivan

Small Bank Critical to Stablecoin Payments Tightens Risk Controls

By Yueqi Yang and Michael Roddan · Dec 16, 2025 6:00am PST

In just two years, Kansas City, Missouri–based lender Lead Bank has emerged as a major link between stablecoin startups and the traditional financial system, powering billions of dollars of payments around the world. But lately, signs have emerged that both the bank and its stablecoin clients are tightening their risk controls, potentially... In just two years, Kansas City, Missouri–based lender Lead Bank has emerged as a major link...

Elon Musk. Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

Why xAI Has an Uphill Battle Selling Grok to Businesses

By Theo Wayt · Dec 15, 2025 8:00am PST · 12 comments

Elon Musk’s xAI wants companies around the world to buy its Grok AI models as it tries to build a moneymaking business. To get there, xAI has created an enterprise AI sales group over the past half-year that has expanded to more than a dozen people. But xAI’s lack of experience in selling to big businesses is holding many potential customers... Elon Musk’s xAI wants companies around the world to buy its Grok AI models as it tries to build a...

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Data Center Firm Rowan Explores Capital Raising or Sale

By Anissa Gardizy and Valida Pau · Dec 12, 2025 3:24pm PST

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Data Center Firm Rowan Explores Capital Raising or Sale

By Anissa Gardizy and Valida Pau · Dec 12, 2025 3:24pm PST

A spike of investor interest in the data center sector has prompted one major data center developer, Rowan Digital Infrastructure, to consider whether this is a good time to raise fresh capital or possibly even sell, say people familiar with the company’s thinking. If it were to raise money or sell, it would likely be valued at more than $10... A spike of investor interest in the data center sector has prompted one major data center...