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

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The Briefing

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

Get smarter about the day’s news in tech, media and finance by following Silicon Valley’s most-read executive newsletter.

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Recent Editions

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Workday's Potential Buyout Feeds Hope Saas Sell-off Is Over

By Laura Mandaro · Aug 16, 2026 3:00pm PDT

In software land, it’s getting harder and harder to call out a singular vibe shift when the vibes keep shifting every 24 hours. On Thursday, when news broke that Silver Lake was in talks to acquire Workday, the human resource software company’s stock shot up 19%. Such a deal would be a big vote of confidence in a prominent... In software land, it’s getting harder and harder to call out a singular vibe shift when the vibes...

OpenAI’s departing and incoming chief revenue officers Denise Dresser and Dali Rajic. Getty Images.

OpenAI’s Latest Hire Burnishes Its Cybersecurity Credentials

By Aaron Holmes and Laura Bratton · Aug 13, 2026 5:15pm PDT

It may be the dog days of summer, but the biggest AI labs are breaking up the monotony with a few executive changes. The latest is OpenAI Chief Revenue Officer Denise Dresser. The ChatGPT maker said Thursday she would leave the firm after just eight months on the job. In her place, OpenAI has hired Dali Rajic, formerly president and chief... It may be the dog days of summer, but the biggest AI labs are breaking up the monotony with a few...

Nebius CEO and founder, Arkady Volozh. Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images.

Nebius, CoreWeave Are Cashing In on Soaring AI Compute Prices

By Martin Peers · Aug 12, 2026 5:00pm PDT

Remember two weeks ago when Apple passed Nvidia in market capitalization? That’s now ancient history. At today’s close, Nvidia’s market capitalization was $1 trillion higher than Apple’s. In the past two weeks, Nvidia stock has risen 18% and Apple’s has fallen 10% or so. That seems to be mostly due to broad market dynamics, such as the state of... Remember two weeks ago when Apple passed Nvidia in market capitalization? That’s now ancient...

Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

How to Analyze CoreWeave’s Mounting Losses

By Martin Peers · Aug 11, 2026 5:01pm PDT · 1 comment

Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

How to Analyze CoreWeave’s Mounting Losses

By Martin Peers · Aug 11, 2026 5:01pm PDT · 1 comment

The business of running a fast-growing but young cloud computing firm in the age of AI is not necessarily a profitable one. Take CoreWeave, perhaps the best known of a crop of neoclouds trying to take on the well-established cloud firms. On Tuesday it reported second-quarter earnings showing that revenue rose 112% to $2.575 billion while cash... The business of running a fast-growing but young cloud computing firm in the age of AI is not...

Mark Zuckerberg. Getty Images.

Zuckerberg v. Amodei in AI Marketing

By Martin Peers · Aug 10, 2026 5:01pm PDT

If at first people don’t pay attention to what you say, say it again. That appears to be Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s philosophy. About two weeks after publishing a roughly 1,000-word opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal headlined “The AI Future Is for Everyone,” Zuckerberg published a 6,500 word version of the same piece on Meta.com... If at first people don’t pay attention to what you say, say it again. That appears to be Meta...

Tobias Lutke, co-founder and CEO of Shopify. Cole Burston/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

AI’s Software Winners and Losers Are Becoming Clearer

By Martin Peers · Aug 9, 2026 3:00pm PDT

After last week’s earnings onslaught, things will likely quiet down this week. Aside from neoclouds CoreWeave and Nebius, no major tech earnings announcements are scheduled, which gives us a chance to assess what we learned in the past week. One big takeaway is that the enterprise software sector has bifurcated between those firms that are... After last week’s earnings onslaught, things will likely quiet down this week. Aside from...

Masayoshi Son, chairman and CEO of SoftBank. Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

SoftBank’s OpenAI-Backed Loan Highlights Risks in Financing Strategy

By Martin Peers · Aug 6, 2026 5:00pm PDT · 1 comment

If you’re one of those executives at Alphabet, Meta Platforms or Amazon who deals with investors, here’s an idea: Put a large photo of SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son on the wall of your office. Next time a visiting investor complains about your AI spending, point to the photo. That should end the discussion.As much as big tech firms are spending on... If you’re one of those executives at Alphabet, Meta Platforms or Amazon who deals with investors,...

Demis Hassabis. Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance via Getty Images.

What Google’s AI Shake-Up Means for Pichai Succession

By Martin Peers · Aug 5, 2026 5:01pm PDT

Demis Hassabis. Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance via Getty Images.

What Google’s AI Shake-Up Means for Pichai Succession

By Martin Peers · Aug 5, 2026 5:01pm PDT

A flood of June-quarter earnings updates—from the likes of Uber, DoorDash, Shopify and Disney—was interrupted on Thursday by Google’s announcement that its AI guru, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, had been elevated to chair of the AI unit and chief scientist of Google’s parent company, Alphabet. That news coincided with the revelation that... A flood of June-quarter earnings updates—from the likes of Uber, DoorDash, Shopify and Disney—was...

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

SpaceX Reports Lots of Red Ink and Makes Big Promises

By Martin Peers · Aug 4, 2026 5:00pm PDT

Question: How is the 24-year-old SpaceX like a young startup? It’s burning twice as much cash as it brings in as revenue! That’s one takeaway from SpaceX’s first earnings report as a public company, in which the company revealed it burned $16 billion in the second quarter, on $7.8 billion in revenue. That’s thanks to a whopping $18.4 billion in... Question: How is the 24-year-old SpaceX like a young startup? It’s burning twice as much cash as...

Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir. Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images

Palantir’s Rocket-Ship Growth

By Martin Peers · Aug 3, 2026 5:01pm PDT

Palantir is truly the Nvidia of AI software. On Monday, the company delivered another rip-roaring quarterly result, showing revenue up a blistering 93%, well ahead of what it had projected. The company has accelerated revenue growth every quarter for three years, from a 13% rate of expansion in the second quarter of 2023. In that time, Palantir’... Palantir is truly the Nvidia of AI software. On Monday, the company delivered another rip-roaring...

Photo by Timothy A. Clary/ Getty Images

SpaceX Leads Crowded Earnings Week

By Martin Peers · Aug 2, 2026 3:01pm PDT

Elon Musk fans have never had so many opportunities to hear from the man. On Tuesday, his newly public SpaceX will deliver its first earnings report, and we all expect Musk will be on the earnings call, in what would be his second call this earnings season following Tesla’s a couple of weeks earlier. (For a more expansive rundown of what will be... Elon Musk fans have never had so many opportunities to hear from the man. On Tuesday, his newly...

Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon. Photo by Andrej Sokolow/Getty Images

Amazon’s Cloud Surge Wins Over Wall Street

By Martin Peers · Jul 30, 2026 5:01pm PDT

Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon. Photo by Andrej Sokolow/Getty Images

Amazon’s Cloud Surge Wins Over Wall Street

By Martin Peers · Jul 30, 2026 5:01pm PDT

There’s no doubt about it: AI gave the big cloud firms a lift in business in the June quarter. We’ve already heard that from Google and Microsoft, and on Thursday, Amazon, the biggest cloud firm, followed suit by posting 37% growth in its Amazon Web Services cloud unit for the quarter. That’s 9 percentage points faster than it reported for the... There’s no doubt about it: AI gave the big cloud firms a lift in business in the June quarter. We...

Mark Zuckerberg, left, and Satya Nadella. Photos via Getty Images

Meta Could Learn Cost Control From Microsoft

By Martin Peers · Jul 29, 2026 5:01pm PDT

Talk about a tale of two companies. Today’s June-quarter earnings reports from Meta Platforms and Microsoft showed very different approaches to cost control, a discipline that may never be more important for big tech companies. Meta, whose CEO Mark Zuckerberg seems to have a you-only-live-once approach to AI investment, reported a 55% surge in... Talk about a tale of two companies. Today’s June-quarter earnings reports from Meta Platforms and...

PayPal CEO shot credit: Art by Clark Miller; YouTube.

PayPal's Message to Shareholders: 'Trust Us'

By Martin Peers · Jul 28, 2026 5:01pm PDT

PayPal has a message for Wall Street and would-be buyers: “We got this.” That’s the upshot of CEO Enrique Lores’ response to what he called “recent M&A speculation”—also known as Stripe’s reported $53 billion takeover bid for the struggling payments firm. Lores wouldn’t comment about anything specific, but his comments implied Stripe’s offer... PayPal has a message for Wall Street and would-be buyers: “We got this.” That’s the upshot of CEO...

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Getty Images.

Why Investors Shouldn’t Panic About Nvidia’s Commitments

By Martin Peers · Jul 27, 2026 5:01pm PDT

Talk about a nervous market! Shares of Nvidia fell 5% on Monday on news of a $500 billion partnership the AI chip giant struck with South Korean conglomerate SK Group, along with a Wall Street Journal report that Nvidia was separately in talks to help OpenAI finance a $500 billion data center campus in Ohio. Investors should take a chill pill:... Talk about a nervous market! Shares of Nvidia fell 5% on Monday on news of a $500 billion...

What to Expect From Big Tech’s Earnings This Week

What to Expect From Big Tech’s Earnings This Week

By Martin Peers · Jul 26, 2026 3:01pm PDT

What to Expect From Big Tech’s Earnings This Week

What to Expect From Big Tech’s Earnings This Week

By Martin Peers · Jul 26, 2026 3:01pm PDT

Get ready. We’ve got a slew of big tech earnings reports this week—from Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple—that will pick up from Google’s report last week on the state of AI spending and business. PayPal is also reporting on Tuesday, so we should get some insight into the payment firm’s attitude toward Stripe’s recent takeover offer... Get ready. We’ve got a slew of big tech earnings reports this week—from Meta Platforms,...

Spencer Platt/Getty Images.

Wall Street Sends Google a Message

By Martin Peers · Jul 23, 2026 5:00pm PDT · 1 comment

Maybe, just maybe, big tech firms need to do a better job of explaining their AI investment strategies. Shares of Google parent Alphabet fell 7% on Thursday after the company disclosed a further increase in capital expenditures this year—money it will spend on new AI chips, servers and data centers. The drop all but wiped out the gains the stock... Maybe, just maybe, big tech firms need to do a better job of explaining their AI investment...

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. Getty Images.

Google Cloud’s Revenue Is Rocketing—but Costs of AI Expansion Are as Well

By Martin Peers · Jul 22, 2026 5:01pm PDT

Wow. Google Cloud’s business exploded in the second quarter, with revenue soaring 82%, nearly 20 percentage points faster than for the previous quarter. Rapid demand for AI services—and in this quarter, the impact of AI chip sales—has lifted Google Cloud’s growth rate by nearly 50 percentage points in the past four quarters. But while cloud... Wow. Google Cloud’s business exploded in the second quarter, with revenue soaring 82%, nearly 20...

Jack Dorsey, CEO of Block. Getty Images.

Dorsey Wants Buzz to Loosen Slack’s Hold on Workers

By Martin Peers · Jul 21, 2026 5:01pm PDT

Who says software is dead? Jack Dorsey’s Block today unveiled a new “collaboration workspace”—software people can use to communicate and work together—which Dorsey says aims to reduce “our dependency on Slack and GitHub.” That’s a bit of a provocative statement from Dorsey, who also co-founded Twitter and therefore knows a thing or two... Who says software is dead? Jack Dorsey’s Block today unveiled a new “collaboration workspace”—...

David Sacks. Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images.

The Debate About Chinese Open-Source AI; Ellison’s Bad Day

By Martin Peers · Jul 20, 2026 5:00pm PDT

David Sacks. Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images.

The Debate About Chinese Open-Source AI; Ellison’s Bad Day

By Martin Peers · Jul 20, 2026 5:00pm PDT

How protectionist is the Trump administration? Sure, President Donald Trump loves tariffs. But does he really want to drive up AI costs for U.S. business by banning Chinese open-source AI? Chatter about that is growing in the wake of a story we published on Saturday, which revealed that the administration had discussed the idea of banning open... How protectionist is the Trump administration? Sure, President Donald Trump loves tariffs. But...