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Art by Clark Miller
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Chip Startup Sued By Apple Has Struggled to Raise Capital

By Wayne Ma · Aug 23, 2023 7:40pm PDT
Rivos, a server chip developer that Apple sued for alleged trade secret theft, has since struggled to raise funds from investors and recruit employees, its co-founders have told some staff. Apple sued the startup last year after it hired numerous employees from Apple’s chip design unit. Rivos last week laid off nearly two dozen employees,... Rivos, a server chip developer that Apple sued for alleged trade secret theft, has since...
A SpaceX rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying 60 Starlink satellites in 2019. Photo by Getty
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SpaceX Working with Cloudflare to Speed Up Starlink Service

By Becky Peterson · Aug 23, 2023 12:38pm PDT
Space Exploration Technologies, Elon Musk’s rocket company, is working with Cloudflare to boost the performance of SpaceX’s satellite internet service Starlink, according to a person with direct knowledge of the project. The two companies are working on a way to increase Starlink’s terrestrial network of mini data centers... Space Exploration Technologies, Elon Musk’s rocket company, is working with Cloudflare to...
TikTokers advertising products for TikTok shop. Photos via TikTok. Art by Shane Burke.
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TikTok Shop on Track to Lose More Than $500 Million in U.S. This Year

By Erin Woo and Jing Yang · Aug 23, 2023 6:00am PDT · 5 comments
The cost of TikTok’s online shopping expansion in the U.S. is beginning to add up. TikTok Shop, the app’s nascent shopping service, is expected to lose more than $500 million in the U.S. this year, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. The loss reflects TikTok’s heavy investment in hiring, building a... The cost of TikTok’s online shopping expansion in the U.S. is beginning to add up. TikTok...
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. Photo by Getty
Salesforce Leads Financing of AI Startup at More Than $4 Billion Valuation
By Jon Victor and Amir Efrati · Aug 22, 2023 2:04pm PDT · 1 comment
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. Photo by Getty
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Salesforce Leads Financing of AI Startup at More Than $4 Billion Valuation

By Jon Victor and Amir Efrati · Aug 22, 2023 2:04pm PDT · 1 comment
Salesforce is leading a financing round in Hugging Face, one of the most highly valued startups helping businesses use artificial intelligence, at a valuation north of $4 billion, according to two people with knowledge of the situation. The roughly $200 million funding round more than doubles the share price and private valuation of the New... Salesforce is leading a financing round in Hugging Face, one of the most highly valued startups...
Aidan Gomez, CEO of Cohere. Photo by Bloomberg via Getty.
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Tiger Global Nears Deal to Sell Slice of Cohere Stake at $3 Billion Valuation

By Maria Heeter, Kate Clark and Jon Victor · Aug 22, 2023 1:19pm PDT
Tiger Global Management is nearing a deal to sell part of its stake in OpenAI rival Cohere at a roughly $3 billion valuation, a markup of more than 40% from Cohere’s last financing round in June, according to people familiar with the matter. Tiger is selling a stake of roughly 2.1% of Cohere for about $63 million, equal to the dollar... Tiger Global Management is nearing a deal to sell part of its stake in OpenAI rival Cohere at a...
Ant Group's office building in Nanjing, China. Photo by Getty.
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Ant Group Will Cut Foreign Investors Out of Fast-Growing Database Business

By Jing Yang · Aug 22, 2023 6:00am PDT · 1 comment
When international investors such as General Atlantic and the Carlyle Group invested in Chinese fintech firm Ant Group in 2018, they likely hoped for a big payoff given its dominance in facilitating payments for both Chinese brick-and-mortar merchants and e-commerce sites such as Alibaba. Those hopes were dashed in 2020, when Chinese authorities... When international investors such as General Atlantic and the Carlyle Group invested in Chinese...
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Instacart’s Revenue Rose More than 30% in First Half

By Cory Weinberg · Aug 19, 2023 10:54am PDT · 11 comments
When Instacart executives begin their initial public offering pitch to investors as early as next week, they face a challenge. Order volume in Instacart’s core grocery-delivery business is barely growing, new data reveals, although the company is showing revenue expansion by keeping more of the dollars spent on each order and from a... When Instacart executives begin their initial public offering pitch to investors as early as next...
President Biden. Photo by AP.
Biden Order Could Hit Chinese VC Firms Run by Americans
By Juro Osawa and Jing Yang · Aug 19, 2023 9:43am PDT · 10 comments
President Biden. Photo by AP.
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Biden Order Could Hit Chinese VC Firms Run by Americans

By Juro Osawa and Jing Yang · Aug 19, 2023 9:43am PDT · 10 comments
Some of China’s most prominent venture capitalists are U.S. citizens or green-card holders. That could soon become a problem for their firms. President Joe Biden’s executive order last week, limiting certain American investments in China, could also curtail the activities of Chinese investment firms whose leaders are U.S. citizens.... Some of China’s most prominent venture capitalists are U.S. citizens or green-card holders....
Photo by Getty.
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Verizon Has Talked With Disney About ESPN Partnership

By Sahil Patel · Aug 18, 2023 8:21am PDT
Disney CEO Bob Iger has said he’s looking for strategic partners to help launch a streaming version of the ESPN cable channel. One key distributor, Verizon, has already thrown its hat into the ring. The telecom giant has been in touch with Disney about potentially partnering on a new ESPN streaming service, according to people familiar... Disney CEO Bob Iger has said he’s looking for strategic partners to help launch a streaming...
Photos via Shutterstock and CoreWeave.
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Nvidia-Backed CoreWeave Feels the Pain of Rapid Growth

By Anissa Gardizy · Aug 18, 2023 6:00am PDT
CoreWeave, a fast-growing cloud computing provider that rents access to Nvidia’s hard-to-get artificial intelligence chips, has raised more than $2.7 billion in debt and equity this year to obtain more chips and space in data centers. Now CoreWeave may be feeling growing pains. The company recently lowered its projected revenue and capital... CoreWeave, a fast-growing cloud computing provider that rents access to Nvidia’s...
Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Photo via Getty/Shane Burke
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Meta’s Next AI Attack on OpenAI: Free Code-Generating Software

By Kevin McLaughlin, Amir Efrati and Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 17, 2023 3:58pm PDT · 1 comment
Meta Platforms is preparing to launch software to help developers automatically generate programming code, a challenge to proprietary software from OpenAI, Google and others, according to two people with direct knowledge of the product. Meta’s code-generating artificial intelligence model, dubbed Code Llama, will be open-source and could... Meta Platforms is preparing to launch software to help developers automatically generate...
From left, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi. Collage by Clark Miller
Microsoft Plans AI Service With Databricks That Could Hurt OpenAI
By Aaron Holmes and Kevin McLaughlin · Aug 17, 2023 2:03pm PDT · 4 comments
From left, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi. Collage by Clark Miller
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Microsoft Plans AI Service With Databricks That Could Hurt OpenAI

By Aaron Holmes and Kevin McLaughlin · Aug 17, 2023 2:03pm PDT · 4 comments
Microsoft has hitched its wagon to OpenAI when it comes to selling artificial intelligence that can understand language and write emails, meeting summaries and slide decks. Now Microsoft has found a second horse to ride in the AI race: Databricks, which has positioned itself as a kind of anti-OpenAI. Microsoft plans to start selling a new... Microsoft has hitched its wagon to OpenAI when it comes to selling artificial intelligence that...
Photo via Ramp.
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Fintech Ramp is Raising Capital at $5.5 Billion Valuation, Down 30%

By Kate Clark · Aug 17, 2023 8:16am PDT · 5 comments
Fintech startup Ramp is raising several hundred million from investors at a $5.5 billion valuation, measured before the investment, according to two people familiar with the matter. That’s a 32% cut to the $8.1 billion at which Ramp was valued at in early 2022, reflecting how startup values have fallen in the past two years. Thrive Capital... Fintech startup Ramp is raising several hundred million from investors at a $5.5 billion...
From left, Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat, Verily CEO Stephen Gillett, and Alphabet CEO Sundar PIchai.
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Alphabet’s Verily Moves Toward Spinoff as Revenue Surges

By Jon Victor · Aug 17, 2023 6:00am PDT · 3 comments
Alphabet’s biggest “other bet,” part of the blue-sky investment projects carved off from the company’s Google ad-based empire several years ago, is moving toward the exits. Stephen Gillett, CEO of Verily, an Alphabet subsidiary that aims to apply data analytics to healthcare, told employees this month that by... Alphabet’s biggest “other bet,” part of the blue-sky investment projects...
Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi. Photo by Bloomberg/Getty.
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Databricks, After $380 Million Loss, in Talks to Raise More Cash

By Cory Weinberg and Amir Efrati · Aug 16, 2023 12:59pm PDT · 8 comments
Enterprise software firm Databricks is in early discussions with investors for a new cash infusion, likely totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, as it looks to capitalize on the fervor over artificial intelligence, two people familiar with the matter said. The investment talks come as Databricks has moved closer to break-even, after losing a... Enterprise software firm Databricks is in early discussions with investors for a new cash...
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai in May. Photo via Getty
How Google is Planning to Beat OpenAI
By Jon Victor · Aug 15, 2023 6:00am PDT · 2 comments
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai in May. Photo via Getty
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How Google is Planning to Beat OpenAI

By Jon Victor · Aug 15, 2023 6:00am PDT · 2 comments
In April, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai took an unusual step: merging two large artificial intelligence teams—with distinct cultures and code—to catch up to and surpass OpenAI and other rivals. Now the test of that effort is coming, with hundreds of people scrambling to release a group of large machine-learning models—one of the... In April, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai took an unusual step: merging two large artificial...
From left: Kai-Fu Lee, Li Ruigang, Richard Zhijian Peng. Photos: Bloomberg via Getty Images
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Venture Capital Firms Struggle to Raise Funds in China

By Juro Osawa and Jing Yang · Aug 15, 2023 5:00am PDT · 2 comments
When CMC Capital, a Shanghai-based venture capital and private equity firm, started raising a new fund from global investors in 2021, its target size of more than $1 billion didn’t seem ambitious. The amount was only a tad more than the firm’s previous fund of $950 million. And CMC’s founder, Li Ruigang, is a well-known media... When CMC Capital, a Shanghai-based venture capital and private equity firm, started raising a new...
Cadre founder and CEO Ryan Williams. Photo by Getty
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Yieldstreet Nears a Deal to Buy Real Estate Tech Startup Cadre

By Lauren Tara LaCapra, Kate Clark and Maria Heeter · Aug 14, 2023 2:56pm PDT
Asset manager Yieldstreet is near a deal to buy Cadre, a once-promising real estate investment firm whose value has fallen sharply in recent years, said people familiar with the situation. If the two sides finalize an agreement, it would be the latest sign that mergers and acquisitions activity among troubled startups is beginning to pick... Asset manager Yieldstreet is near a deal to buy Cadre, a once-promising real estate...
Artwork by Clark Miller. Gracias photo by Marco Bello/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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How Antonio Gracias Became the Most Hardcore of Elon Musk’s Loyalists

By Becky Peterson · Aug 14, 2023 6:00am PDT
Early this year, as the interest costs from the $13 billion in loans Elon Musk took out to buy Twitter began weighing on his pocketbook, the billionaire turned for help to a longtime trusted partner. The investor, Antonio Gracias, head of Valor Equity Partners, got involved early in Musk’s effort last year to acquire Twitter, helping him... Early this year, as the interest costs from the $13 billion in loans Elon Musk took out to buy...
Databricks co-founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi. Photo by Bloomberg.
Without IPOs, Some Startup Workers Pay Steep Price to Get Cash
By Cory Weinberg · Aug 11, 2023 6:00am PDT · 3 comments
Databricks co-founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi. Photo by Bloomberg.
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Without IPOs, Some Startup Workers Pay Steep Price to Get Cash

By Cory Weinberg · Aug 11, 2023 6:00am PDT · 3 comments
Some Databricks employees and executives sitting on valuable stock options in the decade-old startup are considering going to extraordinary lengths to turn their private stakes into $30 million in cash. Investors say they have discussed a deal that would lend the employees money in exchange for a share in the proceeds of their stock if the... Some Databricks employees and executives sitting on valuable stock options in the decade-old...