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Former Instacart President Carolyn Everson. Photo: Bloomberg

Instacart President’s Exit Followed Disagreement With CEO On Grocer Relationships

By Berber Jin · Dec 10, 2021 4:06pm PST

Carolyn Everson decided to depart as president of Instacart under pressure from CEO Fidji Simo, who had different expectations over how Everson should manage Instacart’s relationship with its grocery retailers, said a person with direct knowledge of the matter. Earlier on Friday, Everson announced her exit from a job she started just three... Carolyn Everson decided to depart as president of Instacart under pressure from CEO Fidji Simo,...

Tencent's headquarters in Shenzhen, China. Photo by Bloomberg.

Tencent in Talks to Boost Supercell Stake at $11 Billion Valuation Amid Sign of Rebound

By Wayne Ma, Juro Osawa and Shai Oster · Dec 10, 2021 6:00am PST

Tencent hasn’t given up on Supercell. The Finnish developer of mobile games such as Clash of Clans has seen revenue fall nearly every year since Chinese internet giant Tencent led a group of investors to buy a majority stake in it in 2016. Yet Tencent is now negotiating a new deal that would boost its stake in Supercell at a valuation of... Tencent hasn’t given up on Supercell. The Finnish developer of mobile games such as Clash...

Andrew Bosworth, in charge of Meta's virtual and augmented reality products, recently inherited Meta's AI team.

Meta’s AI Team, Which Tackles Harmful Facebook Posts, Moves to AR/VR Unit

By Sylvia Varnham O'Regan · Dec 9, 2021 3:52pm PST

Facebook parent Meta Platforms has moved its artificial intelligence group to the Reality Labs unit developing augmented and virtual reality products, according to a person familiar with the matter and confirmed by the company. The shift comes as Meta invests more money in AR and VR to develop the metaverse—virtual immersive worlds that... Facebook parent Meta Platforms has moved its artificial intelligence group to the Reality Labs...

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

Microsoft Seeks to Stem Employee Departures Through ‘Career Check-ins’

By Kevin McLaughlin · Dec 9, 2021 6:00am PST

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

Microsoft Seeks to Stem Employee Departures Through ‘Career Check-ins’

By Kevin McLaughlin · Dec 9, 2021 6:00am PST

Microsoft employees have been known to stick around. CEO Satya Nadella and several other senior executives joined the company more than 25 years ago. But that has changed amid the pandemic, as Microsoft, along with virtually every other technology company, has struggled to retain talent. Attrition at Microsoft has become a big enough problem... Microsoft employees have been known to stick around. CEO Satya Nadella and several other senior...

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan. Photo by Bloomberg

Why the FTC Rejected Nvidia’s Antitrust Settlement for $75 Billion Arm Deal

By Josh Sisco · Dec 8, 2021 6:00am PST · 1 comment

Regulators who normally seek to block mergers between companies that compete with one another are becoming increasingly combative about vertical mergers between companies that don’t. The latest example is how the Federal Trade Commission handled chipmaker Nvidia’s contentious takeover of Arm Holdings, a designer of chips for mobile... Regulators who normally seek to block mergers between companies that compete with one another are...

Apple CEO Tim Cook. Photo collage by Haejin Park. Photos by Bloomberg

Inside Tim Cook’s Secret $275 Billion Deal with Chinese Authorities

By Wayne Ma · Dec 7, 2021 6:00am PST · 8 comments

Apple’s iPhone recently became the top-selling smartphone in China, its second-biggest market after the U.S., for the first time in six years. But the company owes much of that success to CEO Tim Cook, who laid the foundation years ago by secretly signing an agreement, estimated to be worth more than $275 billion, with Chinese officials... Apple’s iPhone recently became the top-selling smartphone in China, its second-biggest...

Roblox's home page, as shown on a laptop. Photo by Bloomberg.

Apple’s Treatment of Roblox in Spotlight in DOJ Antitrust Probe

By Josh Sisco · Dec 6, 2021 12:20pm PST

As the U.S. government tries to put together an antitrust case against Apple for the way it controls iPhones, prosecutors are looking for instances in which the company is unevenly enforcing rules for app developers in ways that could hurt its potential rivals. One example they’re focused on is Apple’s hands-off approach with gaming... As the U.S. government tries to put together an antitrust case against Apple for the way it...

Illustration by Danielle Davis

Internal Google Data Reveals It’s Bigger Than Snowflake in Key Cloud Business

By Kevin McLaughlin and Amir Efrati · Dec 6, 2021 6:00am PST

Illustration by Danielle Davis

Internal Google Data Reveals It’s Bigger Than Snowflake in Key Cloud Business

By Kevin McLaughlin and Amir Efrati · Dec 6, 2021 6:00am PST

Google may lag far behind rivals Amazon Web Services and Microsoft in the cloud market. But at least the company can boast that it’s outselling one of the hottest cloud companies, Snowflake, in an important segment of the business—at least right now. Snowflake’s business is data warehousing, which uses a type of database... Google may lag far behind rivals Amazon Web Services and Microsoft in the cloud market. But at...

FTX co-founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. Photo: Bloomberg

Crypto Exchange FTX, U.S. Affiliate Seek to Raise $1.5 Billion

By Kate Clark, Berber Jin and Hannah Miller · Dec 3, 2021 8:09pm PST

FTX co-founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has told investors he is seeking a new round of funding for the global crypto exchange and he is also asking investors to buy shares in its U.S. affiliate, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. The new fundraising aims to value FTX at $32 billion and FTX’s U.S. affiliate... FTX co-founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has told investors he is seeking a new round of funding...

Howie Liu, co-founder and CEO of AirTable. Photo by Bloomberg

Airtable Valuation to Double to $11.7 Billion in New Funding

By Berber Jin · Dec 3, 2021 12:41pm PST

Airtable, a developer of cloud-based collaboration software, is finalizing a new round of funding that would value the San Francisco startup at $11.7 billion including the new capital, said two people familiar with the discussions. XN LP, a multibillion-dollar investment firm that backs both public and private companies, is set to lead the... Airtable, a developer of cloud-based collaboration software, is finalizing a new round of funding...

Amazon trailers at the entrance to an Amazon warehouse in Kolbaskowo, Poland, in 2018. Photo by Bloomberg

Amazon Expands Trucking Program to Europe

By Paris Martineau and Mark Di Stefano · Dec 2, 2021 6:01am PST

Bogged down by ballooning shipping costs at home and abroad, Amazon is looking to rapidly increase the number of small trucking companies that haul its goods around Europe. The internet retailer is expanding a little-known program called Amazon Freight Partner to Germany, Spain, Poland, France and Italy, and aims to train hundreds of would-be... Bogged down by ballooning shipping costs at home and abroad, Amazon is looking to rapidly...

An Instacart worker loads groceries into her car for home delivery. Photo by AP

Instacart Plans 15-Minute Delivery Trial as Rival Startups Grow

By Berber Jin · Dec 1, 2021 1:31pm PST · 3 comments

An Instacart worker loads groceries into her car for home delivery. Photo by AP

Instacart Plans 15-Minute Delivery Trial as Rival Startups Grow

By Berber Jin · Dec 1, 2021 1:31pm PST · 3 comments

For Instacart, the leading U.S. grocery delivery company, being fast may not be fast enough. The $39 billion-valuation startup is planning to launch a pilot program to provide delivery of groceries or convenience items in 15 minutes or less to U.S. customers, said two people with direct knowledge of the plan. As a part of the proposed program,... For Instacart, the leading U.S. grocery delivery company, being fast may not be fast enough. The...

Salesforce's co-CEOs, Bret Taylor and Marc Benioff. Photos by Bloomberg

Salesforce’s Taylor Will Report to Benioff, Despite Co-CEO Title

By Kevin McLaughlin · Dec 1, 2021 10:47am PST

Bret Taylor is co-CEO of Salesforce in name only, it turns out. The Information has learned that in his new role Taylor will continue to report to Marc Benioff, who is ostensibly his equal as co-CEO. The reporting arrangement, outlined in a Slack message Benioff sent to employees on Wednesday, contrasts with the structure put into place for... Bret Taylor is co-CEO of Salesforce in name only, it turns out. The Information has learned that...

SoFi CEO Anthony Noto. Photo by Bloomberg. Art by Mike Sullivan

‘Winner-Take-Most’: Anthony Noto’s Ambitions for SoFi Take Shape

By Aidan Ryan · Dec 1, 2021 6:01am PST · 1 comment

Anthony Noto has long had a knack for grabbing attention. When he was a top executive at Twitter, Noto struck a deal with the NFL to air Thursday night games, thrusting the social media service into the streaming market, to the surprise of even many Twitter employees, according to people who worked there at the time. More recently, SoFi... Anthony Noto has long had a knack for grabbing attention. When he was a top executive at Twitter,...

Fireblocks CEO Michael Shaulov. Sequoia Capital is investing in the crypto custodian, one of a trio of recent crypto deals by the VC firm. Photo: Saffello.

Sequoia Capital’s Crypto Frenzy Intensifies With Three New Deals

By Kate Clark · Nov 30, 2021 6:01am PST

Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and crypto trading firm FTX are co-leading an investment of more than $100 million in LayerZero Labs, a 10-month-old crypto firm that has yet to launch its product publicly, at a $1 billion valuation, according to two people familiar with the deal. LayerZero’s rapid rise to unicorn status, unusual for a... Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and crypto trading firm FTX are co-leading an investment of...

BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti. Photo by Bloomberg.

BuzzFeed’s Commerce Slowdown Undercuts Its Investor Pitch Ahead of Stock Listing

By Sahil Patel and Jessica Toonkel · Nov 29, 2021 6:00am PST

BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti. Photo by Bloomberg.

BuzzFeed’s Commerce Slowdown Undercuts Its Investor Pitch Ahead of Stock Listing

By Sahil Patel and Jessica Toonkel · Nov 29, 2021 6:00am PST

When BuzzFeed unveiled its planned deal to go public last June, its pitch to investors centered around the high growth potential of its commerce business. BuzzFeed, like many other media companies, makes money by inserting links to merchant websites in its articles. It’s a way for media companies to participate in the rapidly growing... When BuzzFeed unveiled its planned deal to go public last June, its pitch to investors centered...

YouTube chief Susan Wojcicki unveiling YouTube TV in 2017. Photo by Bloomberg.

YouTube TV in Talks to Add More Free Channels in Search for TV Ad Dollars

By Sahil Patel · Nov 23, 2021 6:00am PST

You won’t spot the series “Chicken Girls” from Brat TV on your regular cable service. But if all goes well, YouTube’s version of cable TV—its $65 a month YouTube TV service—will carry the comedy about teen girls in high school. Brat TV is one of several midsize digital media firms, including Vox Media and... You won’t spot the series “Chicken Girls” from Brat TV on your regular cable...

Dan Morehead, founder and chief executive officer of Pantera Capital, in Beverly Hills, Calif., in October. Photo by Bloomberg

More Institutional Investors Embrace Crypto VCs as Pantera Capital Raises $600 Million

By Kate Clark · Nov 23, 2021 6:00am PST

Pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, endowments and other institutional sources of capital used to shy away from cryptocurrencies over concerns about their use in illicit activity. Those reservations increasingly seem to be dissipating. The latest example comes from Pantera Capital, one of the first investment firms to focus exclusively on... Pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, endowments and other institutional sources of capital used...

FTC Chair Lina Khan. Photo by Bloomberg.

FTC Privacy Probe of Amazon Ring Puts Khan’s Agenda in the Spotlight

By Josh Sisco · Nov 22, 2021 9:01am PST

Federal Trade Commission staffers earlier this year recommended filing a lawsuit against Amazon over alleged privacy and data security breaches within Amazon’s Ring home security business, according to two people with knowledge of the investigation. But after Amazon lawyers began negotiating a settlement with the FTC, the agency’s... Federal Trade Commission staffers earlier this year recommended filing a lawsuit against Amazon...

A Rivian truck being tested by Amazon. Photo YouTube via Amazon.

Amazon’s Testing of Rivian Vans Reveals Questions About Battery Power and Cameras

By Mark Di Stefano · Nov 19, 2021 10:11am PST · 2 comments

A Rivian truck being tested by Amazon. Photo YouTube via Amazon.

Amazon’s Testing of Rivian Vans Reveals Questions About Battery Power and Cameras

By Mark Di Stefano · Nov 19, 2021 10:11am PST · 2 comments

The Amazon executive overseeing development of Rivian electric delivery vans says the company is on schedule to put 10,000 of the vans on the road next year, following months of testing in 15 cities. But according to one of the drivers involved with testing the vans, their range is more limited than what Rivian disclosed ahead of its blockbuster... The Amazon executive overseeing development of Rivian electric delivery vans says the company is...