The engineering manager who led digital mapping for Tesla Motors’ self-driving car system, Bill Chen, is moving to Uber.

Amazon.com is planning to give its Alexa voice-activated assistant the ability to speak up— unprompted—with alerts from apps and gadgets, possibly this fall. It’s a change that could make the service much more useful and a feature developers long have asked for.

Right now, users have to start conversations with Alexa, which lives inside devices like Amazon’s Echo ...

Snapchat has been talking to investment bankers about filing for an IPO towards the end of this year or early in 2017, according to people the company has spoken to. That could put the company on track for a public offering next year, coming out ahead of other hotly anticipated private tech startups.

Snapchat doesn't appear to have hired a banker to handle the IPO yet, suggesting there ...

Amazon Web Services has come up with a new strategy to lure banks to use its cloud computing service. AWS has discussed with financial institutions the idea of hosting their data on isolated “safe zones” across AWS’ data centers that would be walled off from other customers and the public internet, according to two people close to AWS.

The proposal is the latest in a series ...

Uber has seen an exodus of senior managers in recent months, including CEO Travis Kalanick, amid heightened scrutiny of its workplace culture prompted by sexual harassment allegations by a former engineer.

Among the people who’ve left or announced departures, either under pressure or for other reasons, are seven executives who had reported to Mr. Kalanick: SVP of Business Emil Michael, ...

UPDATE: Uber says Alphabet executive David Drummond has stepped down from Uber’s board. The move follows a report by The Information about Mr. Drummond being sidelined from the board for a significant period of time.

Uber has shut out an Uber board member and senior Alphabet executive, David Drummond, from attending board meetings, according to three people briefed about the unusual ...

When Google was planning to launch its Fiber broadband and TV service, Fiber executives had ambitious hopes of signing up around 5 million subscribers in five years, said a person close to Google's parent, Alphabet. But by the end of 2014, more than two years after service began, Google had only signed up around 200,000 broadband subscribers, said a former employee. The current number ...

Facebook’s mobile ad network is looking to sell more ads on a broader number of websites, diversifying beyond the game and utility apps that dominate its client base. Some of its new targets for mobile ad sales are large publishers such as USA Today and Hearst, which have started selling ads through Facebook Audience Network after plugging into the social network’s fast-loading ...

Big media companies are all rushing to stream more video. And as it becomes central to their business the media firms are increasingly trying to wrest control of the video technology.

Take Walt Disney’s acquisition of a 33% stake in BAMTech, the company that powers streaming video owned by Major League Baseball as well as video services for several media companies, including Fox, Time ...

WeWork, which built its business on luring freelancers and startups with no-strings-attached office space, may now be looking to protect itself against drops in demand by going after bigger tenants that commit to longer stays. The company has begun pushing to lock some companies into year-long rental agreements rather than month-to-month.

The New York-based company has started offering ...

Newly revealed internal data from Cyanogen, a closely-watched startup trying to make an alternative version of Android, undercut the company’s longstanding pronouncement that there are tens of millions of users of a smartphone operating system it distributes.

Cyanogen CEO Kirt McMaster said as of mid-2014 that the company tracked more than 20 million people who were using CyanogenMod, an ...

Bill Chen, who was leading maps and navigation engineering efforts at Tesla Motors, has left the company after nearly two years. Tesla and Mr. Chen confirmed his departure but declined further comment.

Mapping practitioners who have worked with Mr. Chen view the move as a negative sign for Tesla’s autonomous vehicle effort, which is already under pressure following the death of a driver ...

Unity Technologies, maker of Pokemon Go’s game engine, raised a series C round last month, around the time Pokemon Go had started a sensation among gamers. Within weeks, pitches for Unity shares available on the secondary market started moving across China’s most popular messaging app.

A WeChat group of more than 100 people interested in augmented reality technology received a ...

General Motors in recent weeks told Lyft it was interested in acquiring the company, according to a person briefed on the situation. After soliciting other potential strategic acquirers, Lyft rebuffed GM’s approach and decided to raise a new funding round instead, according to two people.

GM mentioned a price it was willing to pay but that amount couldn’t be learned, and it’s ...

Jawbone, the iconic but long-troubled wearable electronics maker, in recent months has approached at least one hardware manufacturer about possibly selling itself, according to a person with knowledge of the discussion.

There are other signs the company, which primarily makes bracelet-like fitness trackers, isn’t in great shape. Jawbone recently told one of its business partners it ...

If you know someone working in Silicon Valley in anything from software engineering to microchips to hardware marketing to PR, there’s a good chance that they’ve heard from a recruiter at LeEco this year. The company, often dubbed the “Netflix of China,” is aggressively adding employees to its U.S. arm based in San Jose.

According to recruits, LeEco is offering ...

Talk that Uber was selling its China business to Didi Chuxing had circulated internally at Uber for a couple of weeks before it was announced on Monday. For many of UberChina’s 800 employees, though, confirmation came in a more jarring way. When they got to work on Monday, they couldn’t get access to their Uber email and other Uber software tools.

At the same time, at Uber’s ...