The Information

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Google Nears Release of Gemini AI to Challenge OpenAI

By Jon Victor · Sep 14, 2023 4:52pm PDT · 2 comments

Google has given a small group of companies access to an early version of its highly anticipated conversational artificial intelligence software, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter. Giving outside developers access to the software, known as Gemini, means Google is getting close to incorporating it in its consumer... Google has given a small group of companies access to an early version of its highly anticipated...

Flexport founder, Ryan Petersen. Photo by Bloomberg via Getty.

Flexport’s Revenue Dropped 70% in First Half of 2023

By Maria Heeter, Aaron Holmes, Ann Gehan and Theo Wayt · Sep 14, 2023 12:40pm PDT · 10 comments

Flexport’s revenue fell nearly 70% in the first half of the year to $700 million and the company burned through cash, people familiar with the company’s financials said. The decline shows how the SoftBank- and Andreessen Horowitz-backed logistics startup’s performance has been deteriorating rapidly amid a broader freight market... Flexport’s revenue fell nearly 70% in the first half of the year to $700 million and the...

Paradigm co-founders Fred Ehrsam (left) and Matt Huang (right). Photos via Flickr and AP

The Paradigm Shift in Crypto That Wasn’t

By Aidan Ryan · Sep 14, 2023 6:00am PDT · 4 comments

Earlier this year, as some of the less die-hard crypto investors and entrepreneurs began distancing themselves from that turbulent sector, Paradigm—one of the largest venture firms specializing in crypto—also seemed to wobble. In May, Paradigm scrubbed any mention of crypto from the homepage of its website and Twitter bio, changing... Earlier this year, as some of the less die-hard crypto investors and entrepreneurs began...

Why the Two Biggest Winners in Instacart’s IPO Clashed

By Cory Weinberg · Sep 13, 2023 5:57pm PDT · 5 comments

Why the Two Biggest Winners in Instacart’s IPO Clashed

By Cory Weinberg · Sep 13, 2023 5:57pm PDT · 5 comments

By far, the two biggest winners of Instacart’s long-awaited initial public offering next week will be the grocery company’s largest individual shareholder, co-founder and former CEO Apoorva Mehta, and its largest venture backer, Sequoia Capital. Mehta’s profit from the listing stands to be more than $780 million, while Sequoia... By far, the two biggest winners of Instacart’s long-awaited initial public offering next...

Deel CEO and co-founder Alex Bouaziz. Photo by Getty.

Deel Changes Terms of Service, Cuts Off High-Risk Trading Sites

By Natasha Mascarenhas · Sep 12, 2023 7:13pm PDT

Human resources startup Deel revamped its terms of service, banning several additional types of transactions and effectively ending support for some retail trading websites whose activities have lately drawn the scrutiny of securities regulators. The four-year-old startup, best known for services that help companies hire remote workers, had... Human resources startup Deel revamped its terms of service, banning several additional types of...

Art by Clark Miller.

Can Yahoo Be Saved? How Apollo Is Rebuilding an Internet Icon

By Rachel Graf · Sep 12, 2023 6:00am PDT · 9 comments

When speaking about the company he inherited in September 2021, Jim Lanzone is remarkably blunt. “I always knew these products had seen better days,” said Lanzone, the CEO of Yahoo, over a video call in late August. “Even though they still have large audiences, they needed to be modernized—pretty much every single one of... When speaking about the company he inherited in September 2021, Jim Lanzone is remarkably blunt....

Photo by Getty.

Deel Halts Services to Several Prop Trading Firms Pending Compliance Review

By Natasha Mascarenhas and Jessica E. Lessin · Sep 11, 2023 6:19pm PDT

Deel, the human resources startup embroiled in a government crackdown on online trading sites, has paused providing payout services to several businesses in the category, as it conducts a review of their operations. An executive at MyFundedFX who identified himself as the firm’s chief operating officer said on Discord that for the next 24... Deel, the human resources startup embroiled in a government crackdown on online trading sites,...

Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi. Photo via YouTube/Databricks.

Inside Databricks’ Contrarian Playbook: Burn $1.5 Billion to Buy Big Growth

By Cory Weinberg · Sep 11, 2023 3:54pm PDT · 5 comments

Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi. Photo via YouTube/Databricks.

Inside Databricks’ Contrarian Playbook: Burn $1.5 Billion to Buy Big Growth

By Cory Weinberg · Sep 11, 2023 3:54pm PDT · 5 comments

Much of the startup world has gotten a clear message from investors: Stop bleeding cash. Databricks, one of the software startups trying to benefit most from rabid corporate interest in artificial intelligence, is taking a different tack—and getting rewarded for it. Databricks, on the verge of raising a new round of funding at a $43... Much of the startup world has gotten a clear message from investors: Stop bleeding cash....

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Photo by Bloomberg via Getty

Nvidia Muscles Into Cloud Services, Rankling AWS

By Anissa Gardizy and Aaron Holmes · Sep 11, 2023 1:17pm PDT · 6 comments

Last year, Nvidia made an unusual proposal to Amazon Web Services and other cloud providers that have long been the biggest buyers of Nvidia’s specialized artificial intelligence server chips. Nvidia wanted to lease Nvidia-powered servers in the cloud providers’ data centers so it could turn around and rent the same servers to AI... Last year, Nvidia made an unusual proposal to Amazon Web Services and other cloud providers that...

Apple CEO Tim Cook at the site of the TSMC plant in Phoenix in December. Photo by AP.

The Flaw in Apple’s Plan to Make Chips in Arizona

By Wayne Ma · Sep 11, 2023 6:00am PDT · 18 comments

In December last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook traveled to Phoenix, stood with President Joe Biden in front of a high-profile factory Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. was constructing and said the facility would produce chips for the iPhone maker. The comments seemed to commit Apple to aid Biden’s goal of lessening reliance on foreign... In December last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook traveled to Phoenix, stood with President Joe Biden in...

Dave Clark. Photo by AP

Dave Clark’s Last Days at Flexport

By Nick Wingfield · Sep 7, 2023 3:52pm PDT · 5 comments

Dave Clark knew something was off when the executive chairman of Flexport, Ryan Petersen, showed up on the video call on Wednesday with Robert Swan, a board member at the freight forwarder. Clark—a former star Amazon executive whom Petersen had lured to Flexport to become its CEO last year—had expected Petersen to be on the call by... Dave Clark knew something was off when the executive chairman of Flexport, Ryan Petersen, showed...

Left: Dave Clark. Photo by AP. Right: Ryan Petersen. Photo by Getty.

Why Dave Clark and Ryan Petersen Butted Heads at Flexport

By Theo Wayt, Ann Gehan, Paris Martineau and Nick Wingfield · Sep 7, 2023 12:34pm PDT · 7 comments

Left: Dave Clark. Photo by AP. Right: Ryan Petersen. Photo by Getty.

Why Dave Clark and Ryan Petersen Butted Heads at Flexport

By Theo Wayt, Ann Gehan, Paris Martineau and Nick Wingfield · Sep 7, 2023 12:34pm PDT · 7 comments

Dave Clark, a veteran Amazon executive who helped transform the company into a logistics juggernaut, made a huge splash last summer when he announced he was joining Flexport, a startup looking to shake up the old school freight business that had ballooned to an $8 billion valuation with backing from SoftBank and Andreessen Horowitz. But Clark,... Dave Clark, a veteran Amazon executive who helped transform the company into a logistics...

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son. Photo by Getty.

Arm’s IPO Pitch to Wall Street: Don’t Worry, Growth Is Coming

By Cory Weinberg · Sep 6, 2023 5:40pm PDT · 3 comments

Behind the scenes of its much-anticipated initial public offering, SoftBank-owned chip designer Arm has pushed a clear message to skeptical analysts and investors: Growth is coming soon. The company told investment banking analysts last month in Cambridge, England, that its recently flat revenue growth would re-accelerate over the next few... Behind the scenes of its much-anticipated initial public offering, SoftBank-owned chip...

Apple's AI chief, John Giannandrea. Photo via Getty

Apple Boosts Spending to Develop Conversational AI

By Wayne Ma · Sep 6, 2023 10:49am PDT

Apple has been expanding its computing budget for building artificial intelligence to millions of dollars a day. One of its goals is to develop features such as one that allows iPhone customers to use simple voice commands to automate tasks involving multiple steps, according to people familiar with the effort. The technology, for instance,... Apple has been expanding its computing budget for building artificial intelligence to millions of...

Illustration by Clark Miller

Delivering in the Dark, Amazon’s Gig Drivers Face Guns and Death

By Theo Wayt · Sep 6, 2023 6:00am PDT · 3 comments

In February 2022, Chris Fear was sitting in her car outside Scottsdale, Ariz., a couple of hours after sunset with the windows down, when she heard a man’s voice. “Get out of your car,” the man said from the darkness. Fear had spent the prior couple of hours delivering packages for Amazon, but she had gotten lost on the way to... In February 2022, Chris Fear was sitting in her car outside Scottsdale, Ariz., a couple of hours...

Deel photo by Getty. Background reflects prop trading websites that use Deel and YouTube video tutorials for them. Art by Shane Burke.

How Deel Became Payout Provider for Prop Trading Firms, Including Site Frozen by CFTC

By Natasha Mascarenhas and Jessica E. Lessin · Sep 5, 2023 5:27pm PDT · 2 comments

Deel photo by Getty. Background reflects prop trading websites that use Deel and YouTube video tutorials for them. Art by Shane Burke.

How Deel Became Payout Provider for Prop Trading Firms, Including Site Frozen by CFTC

By Natasha Mascarenhas and Jessica E. Lessin · Sep 5, 2023 5:27pm PDT · 2 comments

Four-year-old Deel has become one of the fastest-growing and most valuable startups by positioning itself as a way for businesses to hire contract employees anywhere in a snap. What the human resources startup doesn’t talk about in its prolific marketing is the fact that the company, last valued by investors at $12 billion, has also become... Four-year-old Deel has become one of the fastest-growing and most valuable startups by...

Illustration by Harol Bustos.

Inside Meta’s AI Drama: Internal Feuds Over Compute Power

By Kalley Huang and Sylvia Varnham O'Regan · Sep 5, 2023 9:16am PDT · 2 comments

Meta Platforms’ releases of its large-language models, Llama and Llama 2, in the past six months have won the company praise for offering free, open-source alternatives to models from OpenAI and Anthropic. But for some of the scientists and engineers who worked on Llama, that praise was too little, too late. Many have quit, embittered by a... Meta Platforms’ releases of its large-language models, Llama and Llama 2, in the past six...

Tyler (left) and Cameron Winklevoss, co-founders of Gemini. Photo by Bloomberg via Getty.

Gemini Tries to Line Up Other Creditors in New Genesis Bankruptcy Plan

By Aidan Ryan · Sep 1, 2023 4:45pm PDT

The high-profile spat between Gemini co-founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Digital Currency Group founder Barry Silbert is poised to get even uglier. Gemini is trying to rally other creditors behind a plan to wring more money out of DCG to help pay back the more than $3.5 billion owed by its bankrupt lending subsidiary, Genesis, two... The high-profile spat between Gemini co-founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and Digital...

Nvidia-Backed Cloud Provider Hires Morgan Stanley to Sell $500 Million of Employee Shares

By Anissa Gardizy · Aug 31, 2023 4:52pm PDT · 5 comments

CoreWeave, a fast-growing cloud computing startup that rents specialized servers for developing artificial intelligence, has hired Morgan Stanley to sell employee stock to investors at a valuation of at least $6 billion, three times higher than its valuation in an equity financing in May, according to someone with direct knowledge. The deal... CoreWeave, a fast-growing cloud computing startup that rents specialized servers for developing...

Photo via Shutterstock.

Shopify Rolling Out TikTok Shop Integration, Adding New Twist to Rivalry

By Ann Gehan · Aug 31, 2023 1:45pm PDT · 3 comments

Photo via Shutterstock.

Shopify Rolling Out TikTok Shop Integration, Adding New Twist to Rivalry

By Ann Gehan · Aug 31, 2023 1:45pm PDT · 3 comments

Shopify is making peace with the threat posed by TikTok Shop. This week, the Canadian e-commerce software firm quietly began rolling out a way for merchants using its software to integrate more closely with TikTok’s small but growing online shopping service, according to a person familiar with the matter. The arrangement is a concession of... Shopify is making peace with the threat posed by TikTok Shop. This week, the Canadian e-commerce...