As the only non-venture capitalist on the More or Less podcast, I sometimes view these episodes as my window into VC therapy. And so, with Taylor Swift on my mind, I felt the angst of my VC compatriots as we recorded this week. We spent most of the time talking about another asset class: hedge funds and why there isn't likely to be another Bobby Axelrod of tech anytime soon.... Read more ›
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As the market for creators continues to grow, it’s not all about creating engaging videos. As their channels get bigger, creators have become entrepreneurs. So what’s the best way for creators to successfully expand a small business into a larger one—and find new sources of revenue? What technologies exist to help them? And how have large brands jumped at the chance to reach these new audiences? Laura Mandaro, reporter for... Read more ›
50
In February, we launched the Creator Startup Takeover List, listing 45 startups in the sector that are potential acquisition targets. Most companies hadn’t raised any capital since 2021, and, based on our reporting, some were actively seeking buyers. This week, one of those companies struck a deal. On Monday, Snipfeed agreed to sell its link-in-bio tool to Planoly, which sells a tool creators use to schedule social media posts. I... Read more ›
0
Just south of the vast Imperial Palace in downtown Tokyo lies the Kasumigaseki district, with blocks of offices constructed mostly during the last century when the country rose as one of the world’s largest economic powers after World War II. Much of the Japanese government does its work here: A walk through this neighborhood of concrete and steel presents a slideshow of the numerous ministries and agencies that comprise the... Read more ›
12
Venture capitalists should try this fun game at their next (increasingly alcohol-free) game night: artificial intelligence funding mad libs.[VC fund 1] and [VC fund 2] lead funding round for [number]-year-old [type of AI startup], founded by professors at [name of university], at a $[some-billion] valuation.This week, that formula would have yielded announcements about robotics startup Skild one day and coding assistant startup Cognition the next. (To fill in the other... Read more ›
2
Artificial intelligence development may be sucking up vast amounts of money from big tech—but hey, at least business is good! That’s the picture painted by earnings updates from both Alphabet and Microsoft on Thursday—echoing a similar state of play reported by Meta Platforms on Wednesday. All three companies reported strong operating profit growth for the March quarter—46% for Alphabet and 23% for Microsoft, neither as good as Meta’s 91% jump... Read more ›
11
Is it possible that YouTube has figured out how to sell Shorts to advertisers? On a call with investors in parent Alphabet, executives indicated the monetization of YouTube Shorts is showing signs of improvement. That’s good news for creators (and Alphabet shareholders) who have seen advertisers pay far less for YouTube Shorts than longer videos, as we reported here. Executives said the monetization rate of Shorts in the U.S. compared... Read more ›
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Elon’s Musk xAI is close to having billions of dollars more in its coffers to make its chatbot Grok a more fearsome competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Musk’s year-old startup is raising $6 billion at a valuation of $18 billion not including the investment, according to two people close to the deal. Sequoia Capital is one of the investors participating in the xAI round, according to one of the people, and... Read more ›
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If you weren’t careful, you may have missed some important news from Apple that was overshadowed by Meta Platforms’ earnings yesterday. The iPhone-maker released a new family of open-source language models, dubbed OpenELM, on Hugging Face. The models, ranging in size from 270 million to 3 billion parameters (as a reminder, “parameters’ refers to the “settings” that determine how AI models respond to questions) are significantly smaller than open-source releases... Read more ›
0
Huawei Technologies is leading a group of Chinese semiconductor companies seeking memory chip breakthroughs that could help China develop home-grown alternatives to Nvidia’s cutting-edge artificial intelligence chips, which can’t be sold to the country. The Huawei-led consortium, backed by funding from the Chinese government, aims to produce high-bandwidth memory chips—a crucial component in advanced graphic processing units—by 2026, according to two people close to the company. Read more ›
30
ByteDance is internally exploring scenarios for selling a majority stake in TikTok’s U.S. business, preferably to companies outside the tech industry, and without the algorithm that recommends videos to TikTok users, said three people with knowledge of the deliberations. ByteDance’s internal discussions come as President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed into law a requirement that TikTok cut its ties with ByteDance within nine to 12 months or face a U.S.... Read more ›
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Next-generation battery developer SES AI pushed further ahead in the race to commercialize lithium-metal anodes, moving to the B Sample qualification stage with South Korea’s Hyundai Motor. The automaker has not committed to deploying the anodes in its electric vehicles, but the deal sets SES on the path of putting its anodes in Hyundai test vehicles as soon as next year, said SES CEO Qichao Hu. Read more ›
0
Meta Platforms may have just got kicked off Wall Street’s favorites list. Stock of the Facebook owner dropped 16% after CEO Mark Zuckerberg warned the company was entering a new investment cycle, this time in artificial intelligence, that would take a while to flow through to create “profitable services.” Zuckerberg’s comments hit a nerve: Investors have increasingly fretted about how AI developers will generate a return from their investments. But... Read more ›
1
Meta Platforms’ warning of slowing growth and higher expenses Wednesday night sank the stock, which had run up 43% this year. But Meta executives, not surprisingly, focused on the bright spots —among them, video. Instagram Reels—Meta’s answer to TikTok—now makes up 50% of the time spent on the app, a pretty big number when you think about the feature’s somewhat patchy beginnings as a forum for day-old TikTok videos. The... Read more ›
0
During the artificial intelligence boom, chipmaker Nvidia became one of the most active corporate venture capitalists, investing in over 30 startups last year alone, according to PitchBook. Now it may become one of the most active acquirers of AI startups. Nvidia has recently struck two agreements to buy Israeli AI startups, including one of Run:ai, announced Wednesday, and another of Deci, yet to be announced, according to a person involved... Read more ›
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The next big test of the big IPO market for software firms comes later on Wednesday, when data security firm Rubrik is expected to price its initial public offering. On the surface, the company would be an unlikely IPO success right now. It is small and its business very niche, and it is losing money, which might turn off investors. To get Wall Street to dream bigger, Rubrik CEO Bipul... Read more ›
2
The promise of a chatbot that can write and fix code has attracted repeat investments in a six-month-old startup—even after it appeared to flub its product launch. Founders Fund has led a $175 million investment in Cognition, a startup that recently launched an artificial intelligence–powered coding assistant called Devin, according to an investor who reviewed terms of the deal. The venture firm valued the startup at $2 billion, including the... Read more ›
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It’s been five days since the release of Meta Platforms’ highly-anticipated Llama 3 models, and the new large language models have seemingly won the mindshare of AI developers—so much so that barely anyone was talking about new model releases from Microsoft, Adobe and Amazon on Monday.A number of developers told me that they’re already experimenting with the two smaller Llama 3 models Meta released and, after getting great results, are... Read more ›
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As companies lose faith in the effectiveness of cybersecurity software and reexamine or rein in their spending on it, startups that sell that type of software have struggled to grow. Many of them will have little choice but to look for a buyout, some of their shareholders say, despite having raised record amounts of capital during the pandemic-fueled startup boom. In the latest example, The Information reported on Thursday that... Read more ›
0
The political debate about TikTok is all but over, with the sell-or-ban bill now virtually assured of becoming law, judging by its progress in the Senate today. Once the formalities are over, we’ll see TikTok or its users file a legal challenge, which could delay implementation. Even so, the final passage of this legislation is momentous. The warnings about TikTok have circulated for so long—Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg warned of... Read more ›
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21.06.2026 14:40
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