The Briefing by Martin Peers, Jessica Lessin and the team at The Information

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The Briefing

By Martin Peers, Jessica Lessin and the team at The Information

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Recent Editions

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Klarna and StubHub Offerings Become Tariff Casualties

By Ken Brown · Apr 4, 2025 4:00pm PDT

That was fast. The window for technology company stock offerings slammed shut less than a week after it opened, dashing hopes that the moribund market would come to life this year.CoreWeave, the deal that was supposed to lead the pack in a reopened market, got done on Friday. StubHub and Klarna were waiting in the wings, until President Donald... That was fast. The window for technology company stock offerings slammed shut less than a week...

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What the Wall Street Bloodbath Reveals About Amazon

By Theo Wayt · Apr 3, 2025 5:00pm PDT · 1 comment

Wall Street wisdom says when a recession is on the horizon, investors should flock to defensive companies that sell things people always need, like groceries and healthcare. At the same time, they should flee cyclical firms that sell optional stuff cash-strapped shoppers will avoid or put off buying, like luxury goods and furniture. Which... Wall Street wisdom says when a recession is on the horizon, investors should flock to defensive...

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Musk Heading Home

By Sylvia Varnham O'Regan · Apr 2, 2025 5:00pm PDT · 2 comments

Is Elon Musk’s run as a government cost cutter coming to an end? According to a new Politico report, President Donald Trump has been telling members of his inner circle that Musk will step back in the coming weeks and return to his businesses, most notably his struggling electric vehicle maker, Tesla. The White House has downplayed the... Is Elon Musk’s run as a government cost cutter coming to an end? According to a new Politico...

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Roblox’s Revenue Grab

By Abram Brown · Apr 1, 2025 5:00pm PDT

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Roblox’s Revenue Grab

By Abram Brown · Apr 1, 2025 5:00pm PDT

You know what kids love? Videogames. And you know what they don’t really love—at least if the small children in my life are any barometer? Advertisements. Yet Roblox, the eponymous company behind one of the most popular videogame platforms for kids, is pinning at least a portion of its hopes for more revenue growth on…advertisements. You know what kids love? Videogames. And you know what they don’t really love—at least if the...

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AI's Trump Stress Test?

By Abram Brown · Mar 31, 2025 5:00pm PDT

Phewww. That was a close one. Tech stocks narrowly avoided another large, painful sell-off on Monday as investors continued to look at the uncertainty around President Donald Trump’s trade agenda. The Nasdaq ended the day down 0.1%, but at different points in the day, trading seemed much grimmer, and the index was down more than 2% at... Phewww. That was a close one. Tech stocks narrowly avoided another large, painful...

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Musk Solves X

By Martin Peers · Mar 28, 2025 3:38pm PDT · 2 comments

We have one less company called X to worry about. Elon Musk took a break from cutting costs in the federal government to reveal late Friday that he had merged his X social media platform into his xAI startup. It was a surprising but not completely unexpected move, one that removes any impediments to the two firms sharing resources—and should... We have one less company called X to worry about. Elon Musk took a break from cutting costs in...

CoreWeave co-founder and CEO Michael Intrator. Photo via Getty

CoreWeave’s Shaky IPO Signal

By Cory Weinberg · Mar 27, 2025 5:00pm PDT · 1 comment

CoreWeave is the first company trying to test Wall Street’s appetite for a new, tasty artificial intelligence offering. And investors don’t seem to like what they’re being served.The company priced its initial public offering tonight at $40 a share, putting a roughly $23 billion valuation on CoreWeave, according to CNBC. That’s way down from the... CoreWeave is the first company trying to test Wall Street’s appetite for a new, tasty artificial...

Stripe CEO Patrick Collison. Photo via Getty

Stripe Likes Its Privacy; Autodesk’s Activist Travails

By Martin Peers · Mar 26, 2025 5:00pm PDT

Stripe CEO Patrick Collison. Photo via Getty

Stripe Likes Its Privacy; Autodesk’s Activist Travails

By Martin Peers · Mar 26, 2025 5:00pm PDT

Why do profitable companies bother to go public nowadays? That’s a question my colleague Cory Weinberg raised today in this piece, which revealed that payments processing firm Stripe doubled its free cash flow to $2.2 billion in 2024 on just $5.1 billion in revenue. That’s a free cash flow margin of 43%, which is unusually high for a company... Why do profitable companies bother to go public nowadays? That’s a question my colleague Cory...

Alibaba chair Joe Tsai. Photo via Getty

Warnings of an AI Bubble

By Martin Peers · Mar 25, 2025 5:00pm PDT

We keep hearing that companies are still hesitating about paying for new artificial intelligence tools. Yet companies filing to go public nowadays appear to have no such hesitation. Trading app eToro, for instance, which filed to go public Monday night, said in its IPO paperwork, “We’re already using AI to provide users with personalized... We keep hearing that companies are still hesitating about paying for new artificial intelligence...

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Advertiser Anxiety is Rising

By Sahil Patel · Mar 24, 2025 5:00pm PDT

A truism in the media sector is that economic uncertainty leads marketers to reduce ad spending. And right now, President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico and other countries are beginning to make marketers question how much they actually want to spend on advertising in the coming months.In the past week,... A truism in the media sector is that economic uncertainty leads marketers to reduce ad spending....

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StubHub's Pricey IPO Ticket

By Cory Weinberg · Mar 21, 2025 3:52pm PDT

For the second Friday in a row, a long-anticipated IPO candidate made it official. Last week it was Klarna, and today it’s StubHub. And as I read StubHub’s prospectus today, I couldn’t help but think of a twist on an old idiom: Hell hath no fury like a founder scorned. The filing revealed that Eric Baker—StubHub’s founder, who was fired... For the second Friday in a row, a long-anticipated IPO candidate made it official. Last week it...

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Apple Can’t Beat Spotify

By Martin Peers · Mar 20, 2025 5:00pm PDT · 3 comments

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Apple Can’t Beat Spotify

By Martin Peers · Mar 20, 2025 5:00pm PDT · 3 comments

There are lots of reasons to be down on Apple nowadays. Its tentative steps into artificial intelligence have not gone well, leading to a high-profile executive shake-up today. Sales of its core product, the iPhone, are stagnant. The most recent attempt at a new product, the Vision Pro mixed reality headset, flopped. And as our Wayne Ma reported... There are lots of reasons to be down on Apple nowadays. Its tentative steps into artificial...

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Investors Are Overvaluing Musk’s X

By Martin Peers · Mar 19, 2025 5:00pm PDT · 1 comment

Wow. Elon Musk really is the Pied Piper of investors. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that the social media firm had raised “close to $1 billion” in fresh equity at a $32 billion valuation. Including X’s debt, that implies a roughly $44 billion enterprise value for the company, which is what it was worth in Musk’s 2022 buyout of the company then... Wow. Elon Musk really is the Pied Piper of investors. Bloomberg reported on Wednesday that the...

Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Photos via Getty

Why Google Wanted Wiz So Badly

By Aaron Holmes · Mar 18, 2025 5:00pm PDT

If at first you don’t succeed, try offering more money. That’s the strategy Google employed to ink its $32 billion deal to acquire cloud cybersecurity startup Wiz, which the two companies announced today. The deal reemerged from the ashes this week after Wiz last summer rejected a $23 billion bid from Google, deciding that it preferred to remain... If at first you don’t succeed, try offering more money. That’s the strategy Google employed to...

Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of Klarna. Photo via Getty

Klarna Affirms Marketing Savvy With Walmart Deal

By Martin Peers · Mar 17, 2025 5:00pm PDT

If the folks at Klarna ever decide to diversify from installment lending, they should give marketing a go. The Swedish company seems to be an expert in getting attention—and we’re not just talking about its frequent pronouncements about how it is using AI to cut costs. More to the point: Klarna’s announcement on Monday that it will become the... If the folks at Klarna ever decide to diversify from installment lending, they should give...

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Klarna’s Measly AI Savings

By Martin Peers · Mar 14, 2025 3:26pm PDT

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Klarna’s Measly AI Savings

By Martin Peers · Mar 14, 2025 3:26pm PDT

How much money can AI save a business? That’s a hugely important question for businesses nowadays—uncertainty about the answer is holding up wider adoption of various new AI products, as we described on several fronts this week. (See this piece on Salesforce’s struggles in selling its new AI agent tool, and these other two stories on the same... How much money can AI save a business? That’s a hugely important question for businesses nowadays...

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A Silent Oracle’s TikTok Edge

By Martin Peers · Mar 13, 2025 5:00pm PDT

It’s hard to walk down the street lately without tripping over someone who has expressed interest in buying TikTok. I’m kidding, but you get the point—everyone from AI startup Perplexity to billionaire Frank McCourt to the YouTube influencer MrBeast claims to be interested. As is often the case, however, it’s the people who aren’t talking that... It’s hard to walk down the street lately without tripping over someone who has expressed interest...

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Photo via Getty

AI’s Circular Money Flows

By Martin Peers · Mar 12, 2025 5:00pm PDT · 2 comments

If you want a sense of the risks that lurk in the great AI-data center investment boom now underway, check out our scoop today about Nvidia’s relationship with CoreWeave, the upstart cloud computing firm planning to go public in a couple of weeks. The story reveals that Nvidia, beyond both investing in CoreWeave and selling chips to it, also... If you want a sense of the risks that lurk in the great AI-data center investment boom now...

Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Asana. Photo via Flickr/Web Summit

Moskovitz Should Sell Asana

By Martin Peers · Mar 11, 2025 5:00pm PDT

We saw a muted recovery in some tech stocks on Tuesday, but there were a few notable exceptions. One was Asana, which makes a workplace collaboration software tool and is also known as the second act of Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. The stock plunged 24% today, the day after the company reported a middling quarter—and, perhaps more... We saw a muted recovery in some tech stocks on Tuesday, but there were a few notable exceptions....

Oracle's Larry Ellison. Photo via Getty.

Oracle’s Cash Squeeze

By Martin Peers · Mar 10, 2025 5:00pm PDT

Oracle's Larry Ellison. Photo via Getty.

Oracle’s Cash Squeeze

By Martin Peers · Mar 10, 2025 5:00pm PDT

Larry Ellison has done a remarkable job of making Oracle part of the conversation around artificial intelligence data centers alongside much bigger cloud rivals such as Microsoft and Google. But as Oracle’s February-quarter results, released on Monday night, show, the enterprise software firm is hitting the limits of what it can spend on new... Larry Ellison has done a remarkable job of making Oracle part of the conversation around...