China’s ByteDance, the world’s most valuable startup worth $75 billion, is in talks to raise the equivalent of more than $1 billion for its first venture fund to invest in artificial intelligence and media content, people familiar with the matter said.   

The Beijing-based company, whose popular video app TikTok is growing in the U.S. and other overseas markets, seeks to ...

On the 20th floor of a nondescript office building in China’s southern boomtown of Shenzhen, employees from small businesses such as electronic-component makers can often be seen in a colorful bright office checking out big TV screens displaying Google Search, Gmail and YouTube—which are otherwise blocked in China.

They are in one of more than two dozen Google Export Experience ...

A few years ago, Rethink Robotics was hailed as a revolutionary company that would change the course of industrial robots. Featured on the cover of Time magazine in 2015, the company raised $150 million in financing from backers such as Jeff Bezos and Goldman Sachs at a valuation that reached $291 million.

Its relatively low-cost machines were designed to work closely with people, unlike heavy ...

Uber has held talks recently with electric scooter rental startup Bird to acquire the company in what could be a multibillion-dollar deal, said several people briefed on the discussions.

But Uber is considering another option: The company has also recently held acquisition talks with the scooter company, Lime, said one of the people. While Uber hasn’t yet arrived at a  decision ...

In recent years, the chip giant Intel sought to burnish its brand with a series of whimsical marketing antics—from a light show at the 2018 Winter Olympics consisting of Intel drones to a collaboration with Lady Gaga, who performed at the 2016 Grammy Awards with dancing robotic arms and interactive holograms.

Now Intel is sharply scaling back an in-house advertising group, called Agency ...

Sidewalk Labs executives were full of ambition two years ago when they pitched their parent company, Alphabet, more than 600 pages of plans for building a city neighborhood from scratch.

The 2016 proposal, which Sidewalk described as preliminary, was designed to stretch the conventions of urban planning, proposing things like enclosing the newly created district with a 260-foot-tall plastic ...

Waymo has only weeks to meet its self-imposed deadline to launch a public taxi service using fully automated cars by the end of 2018. And right now, that deadline looks tough for the company to meet.

The Information has learned that within the past month or so, due to concerns about safety, the Alphabet company put so-called “safety drivers” back behind the wheel of its most ...

In the race to develop autonomous cars, Silicon Valley companies like Alphabet’s Waymo are far ahead. But a wave of Chinese startups are raising of hundreds of millions of dollars to try to catch up. And these companies, including Pony.ai, Roadstar.ai, WeRide.ai and Momenta, have an edge: Their U.S. competitors may be shut out of the Chinese market.

Investors at least seem to think they ...

Amazon’s cloud unit is working on two new services to help customers identify security threats, as the company steps up its use of artificial intelligence to protect customers’ applications and data, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter and two people briefed on the cloud unit’s plans.

Both of the new services are designed to improve security for ...

To get more viewers for its upcoming TV streaming service, Apple has contemplated going downmarket on its TV hardware.

The tech giant has had internal discussions about introducing a low-priced streaming “dongle” that people could plug into the back of their TV sets, similar to Amazon’s Fire Stick or Google’s Chromecast, people familiar with the project said. The dongle ...

Apple has quietly acquired a startup, Silk Labs, that specializes in making artificial intelligence software lightweight enough to fit onto consumer hardware like cameras, another sign of its growing ambitions around AI and smart home devices.

The acquisition, which hasn’t been reported before, occurred earlier this year, according to a person briefed on the transaction. The deal was ...

Companies that manage open-source software have a message for cloud computing providers like Amazon: pay up, share your code or stop using our technology for free.

The tension stems from the fact that cloud providers like Amazon Web Services are increasingly relying on open-source software—which is generally available to use free of charge, with the expectation that companies will ...

Until a few months ago, Snap’s board meetings could be tense affairs. Benchmark partner Mitch Lasky, a Snap director until August, on occasion would challenge CEO Evan Spiegel about the company’s failure to meet Wall Street expectations for user growth and profits. Mr. Spiegel, who spends most board meetings looking at his phone and messaging people on Snapchat, was dismissive of ...

Instagram notified some users of a new security flaw that could have inadvertently exposed their passwords to public view, raising questions among security researchers about the effectiveness of Instagram’s security measures.

The security flaw was tied, ironically, to a tool Instagram introduced in April to let users see how much of their personal data the site had collected. ...

Vacasa became the largest vacation rental management company in North America this year, operating homes in beach and mountain towns. Now, backed by more than $200 million from tech investors on the road to a potential public offering, Vacasa wants to move into the big city.

Vacasa see an opportunity in managing tourist lodgings in city apartment buildings that might attract both business ...

At first glance, the small Walmart store in the New York suburb of Levittown seems unexceptional, but hovering above the aisles of water bottles, pet food and cookies are clues to an important technology experiment the giant retailer is conducting.

A halo of cameras hangs above shelves throughout the store, the sheer number of which—roughly 100 devices in each of eight ...

AT&T’s WarnerMedia has approached Comcast’s NBCUniversal to discuss ways of working together, including about licensing films or TV shows for WarnerMedia’s planned new streaming service, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

The approach signals that AT&T wants to strengthen its hand in competing with Walt Disney, Netflix and other rivals. In ...