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The Briefing

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

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Recent Editions

Intel headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif. Photo by Bloomberg via Getty.
The Briefing

Biden’s Intel Quandary

By Martin Peers · Sep 23, 2024 5:00pm PDT
Merger activity is alive! Well, maybe. Friday’s news that Qualcomm had made a friendly takeover overture to Intel has given a shot of adrenaline to deal junkies everywhere. This would be a big deal. Despite Intel’s travails—its revenue this year is expected to be less than in 2013, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence—the company... Merger activity is alive! Well, maybe. Friday’s news that Qualcomm had made a friendly takeover...
Elon Musk. Photo by Marc Piasecki/Getty.
The Briefing

Trumpism Is Here to Stay in Tech, Even If Trump Loses

By Cory Weinberg · Sep 20, 2024 3:00pm PDT · 7 comments
Just after Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz surprised the tech world by backing Donald Trump for the presidency a few months ago, liberals took glee in the fact that the two venture capitalists made the political equivalent of an investment no-no: They bought at the top of the market. After their endorsement, Joe Biden dropped out, paving... Just after Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz surprised the tech world by backing Donald Trump for...
Mathias Döpfner. Photo by Chesnot/Getty Images.
The Briefing

KKR Grabs the Best of Axel Springer

By Martin Peers · Sep 19, 2024 5:00pm PDT
Smart money and digital media don’t always mix well. Just ask KKR. Five years after the private equity firm, together with the Canada Pension Plan, bought a roughly 49% stake in German media giant Axel Springer, parent of Business Insider and Politico, the two investors are fleeing the scene.That might be hyperbolic. Technically what’s happening... Smart money and digital media don’t always mix well. Just ask KKR. Five years after the private...
PayPal's San Jose headquarters. Photo via Adobe
PayPal Makes Headway With Flurry of Deals
By Martin Peers · Sep 18, 2024 5:00pm PDT
PayPal's San Jose headquarters. Photo via Adobe
The Briefing

PayPal Makes Headway With Flurry of Deals

By Martin Peers · Sep 18, 2024 5:00pm PDT
Can an old dog learn new tricks? If the old dog is PayPal, the answer seems to be yes. Under newish CEO Alex Chriss—who’s about to celebrate his first anniversary in the job—the digital payments pioneer is striking deals that should rejuvenate its business and help it challenge newer rivals such as Silicon Valley star Stripe. Today, for... Can an old dog learn new tricks? If the old dog is PayPal, the answer seems to be yes. Under...
Instagram chief Adam Mosseri. Photo by Getty
The Briefing

Instagram’s Teen Safety Act

By Martin Peers · Sep 17, 2024 5:00pm PDT
Meta Platforms has come a long way from the “move fast” days. Instagram’s much-ballyhooed announcement on Tuesday—aimed at protecting teens from creepy adult stalkers as well as from bombardment by overnight notifications—will surely be welcomed by many parents and perhaps politicians. But it took several years of incremental Instagram... Meta Platforms has come a long way from the “move fast” days. Instagram’s much-ballyhooed...
The Briefing Newsletter
Get smarter about the most important stories in tech, media and finance by following Silicon Valley’s most-read executive newsletter.
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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Photo via AP.
The Briefing

Amazon’s Jassy Vows to Fight Bureaucracy

By Martin Peers · Sep 16, 2024 5:00pm PDT · 1 comment
CEO letters to staff are usually written with so much bombast and blather that they say little of note. But that’s not the case with one that came from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy today. Despite a sleepy headline, “Strengthening Our Culture and Teams,” Jassy’s letter delivers some home truths. Most notably, he made it clear his concern that Amazon is... CEO letters to staff are usually written with so much bombast and blather that they say little of...
Photo via Getty.
The Briefing

What Biden’s Temu and Shein Crackdown Means for Amazon

By Martin Peers · Sep 13, 2024 3:30pm PDT
It’s no surprise that President Joe Biden isn’t a TikTok fan: He’s not really the target demographic. But the president signaled today that he also isn’t a fan of Temu or Shein, two online shopping sites with ties to China that sell lots of cut-price clothing, housewares and other stuff. The Biden administration is taking new steps to close the... It’s no surprise that President Joe Biden isn’t a TikTok fan: He’s not really the target...
Sam Altman. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty.
What OpenAI Investors Are Risking
By Martin Peers · Sep 12, 2024 5:00pm PDT · 6 comments
Sam Altman. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty.
The Briefing

What OpenAI Investors Are Risking

By Martin Peers · Sep 12, 2024 5:00pm PDT · 6 comments
OpenAI today released its much-anticipated Strawberry artificial intelligence model, designed to “solve harder problems” than its previous models, as the company said in its blog post today. Here’s a problem it should try to tackle: How can investors justify investing money in the ChatGPT maker at a $150 billion valuation, the level at which... OpenAI today released its much-anticipated Strawberry artificial intelligence model, designed to...
A 5G cellular tower in San Mateo, Calif. Photo via Getty.
The Briefing

Cellular Data Use Has Exploded: Why That’s a Problem

By Martin Peers · Sep 11, 2024 5:00pm PDT · 2 comments
Here’s a quiz: What vital digital resource are we consuming as though it was water, apparently unaware that supply is finite? I’m not talking about electricity (well, not today), but wireless spectrum, the airwaves telephone giants use for cellular services like 5G. You know, the service we only pay attention to when it doesn’t work.Here’s a... Here’s a quiz: What vital digital resource are we consuming as though it was water, apparently...
Huawei's tri-fold smartphone, the Huawei Mate XT Ultimate Edition, at a Huawei today in Yantai, China. Photo by Tang Ke/VCG via AP.
The Briefing

Huawei Takes on Apple With Trifold

By Martin Peers · Sep 10, 2024 5:00pm PDT · 2 comments
Take that, Tim Cook! Chinese phone giant Huawei, a big Apple rival in China, tried to upstage the introduction of the iPhone 16 on Monday by unveiling a new foldable phone on Tuesday. This isn’t just any foldable—no, the Mate XT unfolds into three parts, compared to those low-ambition two-part designs from Samsung, Motorola and others. ... Take that, Tim Cook! Chinese phone giant Huawei, a big Apple rival in China, tried to upstage the...
The Briefing Newsletter
Get smarter about the most important stories in tech, media and finance by following Silicon Valley’s most-read executive newsletter.
By providing your email, you agree to The Information’s Privacy Policy
The U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., where the Department of Justice's second antirust trial against Google is underway. Photo by Bonnie Cash/Getty.
The Briefing

Google’s Antitrust Trial No. 2 Starts

By Martin Peers · Sep 9, 2024 5:00pm PDT
There may never be a company with a bigger demand for antitrust lawyers than Google has right now. A little over a month after a court issued its ruling in one Justice Department lawsuit against Google, the trial of the government’s second antitrust lawsuit against Google opened on Monday. This one centers on how Google dominates the market for... There may never be a company with a bigger demand for antitrust lawyers than Google has right...
Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff. Photo via Anadolu/Getty
Benioff Comes Into His Own
By Martin Peers · Sep 6, 2024 3:21pm PDT
Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff. Photo via Anadolu/Getty
The Briefing

Benioff Comes Into His Own

By Martin Peers · Sep 6, 2024 3:21pm PDT
Benioff is back! Well, at least as a dealmaker. As we close out the week in tech news, we have to acknowledge Salesforce’s first multibillion-dollar acquisition since its 2021 Slack purchase. On Thursday, the enterprise software firm unveiled a $1.9 billion acquisition of Own Co., a data security software company that Salesforce said would beef... Benioff is back! Well, at least as a dealmaker. As we close out the week in tech news, we have to...
Photo by ViewPress via Getty.
The Briefing

Verizon’s Backflip

By Martin Peers · Sep 5, 2024 5:00pm PDT
It’s the investment bankers’ dream—a company so desperate for growth that it engages in years of dealmaking under one CEO, while his successor spends years undoing all that earlier work. We’re talking about Verizon, whose $9.6 billion purchase of Frontier today is the culmination of nearly a decade of back-and-forth M&A negotiation. This is... It’s the investment bankers’ dream—a company so desperate for growth that it engages in years of...
Ilya Sutskever. Photo by Jack Guez/AFP via Getty.
The Briefing

What SSI’s $5 Billion Valuation Really Means

By Martin Peers · Sep 4, 2024 5:00pm PDT · 1 comment
It’s the billion-dollar baby of artificial intelligence. Safe Superintelligence Inc., the AI startup launched by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, announced Wednesday it had raised a whopping $1 billion from big-name venture capital firms, including Sequoia and Andreessen Horowitz. That’s a huge amount of money for a... It’s the billion-dollar baby of artificial intelligence. Safe Superintelligence Inc., the AI...
Photo by Bloomberg via Getty.
The Briefing

Tech’s Sea of Red

By Martin Peers · Sep 3, 2024 5:00pm PDT
Just what we needed: a stock market chill to remind us that summer is over. Investors on Wall Street were dumping stocks left, right and center on Tuesday, after anemic manufacturing data reminded people of economic uncertainties they had put out of their minds. Tech stocks were a sea of red, from the smallest to the biggest companies. But... Just what we needed: a stock market chill to remind us that summer is over. Investors on Wall...
The Briefing Newsletter
Get smarter about the most important stories in tech, media and finance by following Silicon Valley’s most-read executive newsletter.
By providing your email, you agree to The Information’s Privacy Policy
California State Senator Scott Wiener. Photo by Bloomberg via Getty.California State Senator Scott Wiener. Photo by Bloomberg via Getty.
What California AI Bill Could Mean
By Martin Peers · Aug 30, 2024 4:35pm PDT
California State Senator Scott Wiener. Photo by Bloomberg via Getty.California State Senator Scott Wiener. Photo by Bloomberg via Getty.
The Briefing

What California AI Bill Could Mean

By Martin Peers · Aug 30, 2024 4:35pm PDT
The constantly humming AI-news machine revved up a notch this week, what with Nvidia’s earnings report, news about OpenAI’s fundraising and the first ever data about how many people are using Meta AI. But potentially the biggest development was the passage in the California legislature of SB 1047, aimed at addressing the risks of AI. It has... The constantly humming AI-news machine revved up a notch this week, what with Nvidia’s earnings...
Sam Altman at WWDC this year. Photo via Getty.
The Briefing

Why OpenAI Needs an IPO

By Cory Weinberg · Aug 29, 2024 5:00pm PDT
The elite circle of the world’s most valuable private companies face a steady chorus of will-they-or-won’t-they IPO chatter from investors and bankers (and me). It helps to cut through the rumors by thinking through the reasons why a company might want or need to go through the expensive ritual (lawyer fees, new scrutiny, dealing with the... The elite circle of the world’s most valuable private companies face a steady chorus of...
Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang. Photo by I-Hwa Cheng/AFP via Getty.
The Briefing

Nvidia CEO Ducks Key Questions

By Martin Peers · Aug 28, 2024 5:00pm PDT · 1 comment
For all the Nvidia watchers out there, including superfans of the stock who have kept track at bars, we’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that Nvidia delivered another set of monster earnings. It reported top-line growth of 122%—a little above its own projections—lifting net income 168% to $16.6 billion. The bad news is that... For all the Nvidia watchers out there, including superfans of the stock who have kept track at...
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce after the Super Bowl in February. Photo by Michael Owens/Getty Images.
The Briefing

Amazon’s Swiftie Moment

By Martin Peers · Aug 27, 2024 5:00pm PDT
Here’s a question that’s sure to divide your household: Is Amazon’s $100 million podcast deal with the Kelce brothers a bet on Travis Kelce marrying Taylor Swift? The consensus here at The Information is yes, for sure. While the Kelce brothers’ podcast, “New Heights,” was popular before Travis and Taylor became a thing, it really took off... Here’s a question that’s sure to divide your household: Is Amazon’s $100 million podcast deal...
Telegram founder, Pavel Durov, in 2015. Photo by TechCrunch via Flickr.
Tech’s Premature Telegram Freakout
By Martin Peers · Aug 26, 2024 5:00pm PDT · 3 comments
Telegram founder, Pavel Durov, in 2015. Photo by TechCrunch via Flickr.
The Briefing

Tech’s Premature Telegram Freakout

By Martin Peers · Aug 26, 2024 5:00pm PDT · 3 comments
There’s nothing like a billionaire’s arrest as they get off their private jet to alarm other rich people. The apprehension of Telegram founder Pavel Durov by French police as he deplaned over the weekend has more than a few techies worked up, particularly Elon Musk and other like-minded folks. Their message: This is a threat to free speech.Well,... There’s nothing like a billionaire’s arrest as they get off their private jet to alarm other rich...