Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter:• The Big Read: How a Chinese megabillionaire became the Jensen Huang of batteries. • Style and Shopping: Tech invaded Cannes. Then we went shopping.• Plus, Recommendations—our weekly pop culture picks: “Long Buried,” “How to Not Die in Prison” and “Dust Bunny”On Tuesday, a closely watched Congressional primary in New York City ended in defeat for Alex Bores, a former Palantir engineer turned state legislator who... Read more ›
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Mark Zuckerberg wants every creator to “have an AI that their community can engage with.”That’s part of his plans for the year, laid out during Meta’s fourth-quarter earnings call today.The announcements leaned heavily on artificial intelligence products and features, including that Meta AI—the company’s AI assistant—will become a bigger part of the company’s apps. “I would expect over the course of this year we are going to roll this out... Read more ›
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Elon Musk doesn’t abide by the norms of Silicon Valley, where startups looking to raise money hold formal pitch meetings, during which executives show off fundraising slide decks full of information about their businesses, and outline their expectations around check size and valuation.So when Musk posted a message on X last Friday, denying a Financial Times report that his artificial intelligence startup xAI was raising $6 billion at a $20... Read more ›
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A little-known startup that sells crucial data center components to customers like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft is aiming to become one of the first firms to go public off the back of the boom in generative artificial intelligence. Astera Labs, backed by Sutter Hill Ventures and Intel, has been meeting with prospective investors ahead of a potential March initial public offering led by Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, people... Read more ›
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Sam Altman’s younger brother Jack has raised a $150 million venture fund to invest in early-stage startups through his VC firm Alt Capital, the younger Altman said in an interview. The fund plans to lead or co-lead investments in startups right after they incorporate, with a focus on enterprise software, including artificial intelligence startups. The fundraising comes weeks after Jack Altman said he would step down as CEO of HR... Read more ›
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Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg had a rough time testifying in Congress on Wednesday about social media’s mental health effects, but he must have cracked a smile after seeing the latest example of his company’s impact on the AI sector. For the past few months, AI founders and Meta employees have quietly speculated that Meta’s flagship open-source Llama model had been used by fast-rising Mistral, a Paris-based startup now valued... Read more ›
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Facebook parent Meta Platforms is testing the patience of its advertiser clients. After two rounds of layoffs over the past 14 months, Meta’s ad sales team is operating with fewer people, which ad executives complain is affecting the service they receive from the company. Sean Johnston, vice president of digital advertising at Closed Loop, an ad agency, said the amount of support his firm gets from Meta “changed dramatically” over... Read more ›
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A Dutch messaging software startup is in talks with outside investors to raise money for a longshot bid to buy its much larger U.S. publicly traded competitor Twilio, according to people familiar with the discussions. The Accel Partners-backed startup, which was known as MessageBird but just renamed itself Bird, could take advantage of the recent pressure Twilio has been under from at least two activist investors to sell itself or... Read more ›
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U.S. mining company Albemarle and China’s Tianqi Lithium will cut production up to 13% at Australia’s giant Greenbushes lithium mine, in which they are joint venture partners, responding to a massive, yearlong drop in the price of the metal. In addition to the cuts, the two companies plan not to process all the lithium they do mine at Greenbushes, but to build stockpiles, further reducing the amount of the metal... Read more ›
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It’s doubtful much of substance was achieved from today’s Senate hearing into “big tech and the online child sexual exploitation crisis,” starring a lineup of social media CEOs. As is typical, the CEOs recited jargonistic talking points and floundered when a cavalcade of senators demanded yes-or-no answers to a variety of questions. The senators made some good points about the now widely chronicled harms young people experience on Instagram, TikTok... Read more ›
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Senators grilled the CEOs of Meta Platforms, TikTok, X, Snap and Discord for four hours at a hearing about child sexual exploitation online on Wednesday, criticizing how their platforms allowed child sexual abuse material to spread and enabled the extortion of young people. The senators used the opportunity to jab at executives —“You have blood on your hands,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—and quiz them about... Read more ›
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Gregory Varallo is a corporate lawyer in Delaware. But in the wake of a landmark Delaware court ruling on Tuesday night, he’s not just any lawyer. Varallo is one of the few people to win a courtroom battle with Elon Musk, who has repeatedly prevailed in contentious shareholder and defamation lawsuits. Varallo represented Tesla shareholder Richard Tornetta, whose lawsuit against Tesla’s board over its 2018 grant of a pay package... Read more ›
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The founders of artificial intelligence startups spent much of the past year seeking capital to fund the high cost of developing their software. Now those costs have pushed some to consider another alternative—merging with a larger company. Perplexity AI, a one-year-old San Francisco–based startup developing an AI-powered search engine, raised $25.6 million last March. By October, the company was generating around $3 million in annual recurring revenue, a measure of... Read more ›
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Microsoft investors tuned into the company’s earnings call with bated breath Tuesday night, looking to see how much its new AI products were boosting sales. Microsoft didn’t deliver an unequivocal blowout—revenue in the December quarter grew moderately faster, year over year, compared to the prior quarter’s growth—but positive signs abounded when it came to generative AI. Microsoft doesn’t break out specific figures for its Azure cloud server rentals and other... Read more ›
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There are companies that suffer from management messes, and there are companies whose businesses involve disposing of messes. Private equity giant KKR & Co. helped create a company that combines both qualities. Nearly seven years ago, KKR became the controlling shareholder of a company, Trilogy MedWaste, that was seeking to become a national powerhouse in the medical waste industry—the business of cleaning and disposing of hazardous materials like used needles... Read more ›
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Tuesday’s biggest tech news has to be the Delaware Court of Chancery’s stunning decision rescinding Elon Musk’s $56 billion Tesla pay package from 2018. The ruling, a big victory for the Tesla shareholder who sued to block the pay deal, should be a warning to all company boards that are dominated by a high-profile CEO: Make sure you’ve got some truly independent directors. That’s because a key point in Judge... Read more ›
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Before we get to Google parent Alphabet’s latest quarterly results, I wanted to highlight the news we broke earlier today that TikTok is planning to open locations in Los Angeles where creators will be able to livestream and sell products. The studios will be outfitted with camera equipment, lights and sample products available on TikTok Shop.TikTok’s studio plans copy a strategy that has worked for Douyin, the Chinese short-video app... Read more ›
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Meta Platforms is pulling back on its investment in augmented reality, in a nod to how far off a commercial release of AR glasses is. Meta executives have told staffers in the company’s Reality Labs division, which develops AR devices and virtual reality headsets, that it is ceasing development of “augments”—features that function a little like apps on a smartphone—for future AR devices, according to an internal post described to... Read more ›
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As OpenAI and Google develop artificial intelligence to power conversational AI chatbots like ChatGPT, a slew of startups is trying to stake out a lead in the nascent field of AI agents, which use similar technology to perform complex tasks such as booking flights or researching business competitors. The latest startup to go in this direction may be one planned by Ioannis Antonoglou, a longtime AI researcher who just quit... Read more ›
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PayPal began company-wide layoff on Tuesday, the latest tech company to cut jobs, as a newly appointed CEO looks to cut costs and improve profits. PayPal’s human resources team told staffers in a meeting of layoff plans, described as part of a cost-reduction effort, according to an employee who was in the meeting. The layoffs affected people across multiple teams, including engineering and research and development, according to LinkedIn posts... Read more ›
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For those overwhelmed by the flurry of new chip startups hoping to ride the AI wave, you’re in luck. This morning, we published our AI Chip Maker Database, which tracks both the startups building these chips and those building the software to run them.There’s lots in here. For instance, we make clear whether startups are making chips suitable for training AI models or using them and whether they’re specialized for... Read more ›
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04.07.2026 10:14
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