Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter:âą The Big Read: Pickleball is the pastâthe tech elite is obsessed with padel. ⹠Plus, an Americana-themed batch of Recommendationsâour weekly pop culture picks: âThe Americans,â âEast of Eden,â âHigh Desert Daydream,â âLonesome Dove,â USA vs. Belgium, and âThe Twilight Zone.â The yearâs midpoint is an apt moment for some studied reflection, and Iâve been thinking about how much has changed in the last six... Read more âș
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There was a time, not long ago, when Masayoshi Son couldnât keep his hands off the Vision Fund, the swashbuckling investment firm overseen by the Japanese conglomerate he runs, SoftBank Group. He micromanaged the firmâs partners, frequently butting in on deals to play Silicon Valley kingmaker by throwing billions of dollarsâfrom both outside investors and SoftBankâs own coffersâat startups like WeWork and Uber. In many cases, he pressured startup founders... Read more âș
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Engineers have improved lithium-ion batteries little by little since the debut of the first modern electric vehicles a decade and a half ago, making tweaks that together have tremendously reduced cell prices and boosted driving range. But a truly blockbuster breakthrough has evaded the industry, something that in a single stroke could make EVs go farther, cost less or both.Now, though, an increasing number of automakers, including Mercedes, Porsche, Tesla... Read more âș
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Hi, welcome to your Weekend.Silicon Valley loves a wunderkind, as we covered extensively last spring. It also loves to pattern-match, projecting visions of future success on entrepreneurs who look a lot like winners of the past. So what happens when an obvious wunderkind doesnât look anything like her predecessors? It took a lot of persistence for Melanie Perkins to convince investors to fork over money for her design software company... Read more âș
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âPharma Broâ Martin Shkreli, Y Combinator president Garry Tan and Notion co-founder Chris Prucha looked up at the cartoon of a shirtless man, his six-pack abs gleaming against a swirling galactic background. They were eager to listen to what the man had to say. The cartoon was the avatar for Beff Jezos (nope, not Jeff Bezos), the pseudonymous co-founder of effective accelerationism (nope, not effective altruism), Silicon Valleyâs new eccentric... Read more âș
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You might have missed it, with all the drama this week about Sam Bankman-Friedâs trial (for our deep dive, see here) and the latest updates from the world of AI, but we got a detailed update on ByteDanceâs robust financial performance. And what that told us is that shareholders in the parent company of TikTok have reason to be very frustrated. The value of the privately held Chinese tech giant... Read more âș
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Flanked by his two top lawyers, former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried sat, mostly silent, on the 26th floor in a Manhattan courtroom for the first week of his criminal trial, where heâs being tried for fraud and conspiracy charges related to his role in the collapse of one of the worldâs biggest crypto exchanges. One of the first witnesses to take the stand was Gary Wang, co-founder of FTX and... Read more âș
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Microsoft next month plans to unveil the companyâs first chip designed for artificial intelligence at its annual developersâ conference, according to a person with direct knowledge. The move, a culmination of years of work, could help Microsoft lessen its reliance on Nvidia-designed AI chips, which have been in short supply as demand for them has boomed. The Microsoft chip, similar to Nvidia GPUs, is designed for data center servers that... Read more âș
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On More or Less, we often like to discuss how startups are changing and how investors will adapt (and vice versa). And so, I took the opportunity this week to deliver a little rant about the term "lifestyle business," which has often irked me. Lots of other discussion on what's next for Twitter, Threads, social andâbecause we do read the internetâTaylor Swift. Hope you enjoy. Apple Spotify YouTube Read more âș
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For the last five years, a Silicon Valley supergroup has been plotting a secret city in Solano County, Calif., spending $800 million on 50,000 acres of land. Then, in August, The New York Times broke open the story, and the truth poured out. The projectâdubbed âCalifornia Foreverâ and financed by a whoâs who of tech investorsâsought to build a newer, better urban experience in an area currently dominated by grazing... Read more âș
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In little more than a decade, the expectations placed on 36-year-old Melanie Perkins have gone from negligible to near impossible. Perkins, CEO and co-founder of Canva, a rapidly-growing graphic design platform and one of techâs most highly valued private companies, was a complete unknown from Perth, Australia, when she appeared on the Silicon Valley scene in 2013. Today, sheâs talked about by investors and colleagues in almost mythic terms. âShe... Read more âș
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Our Generative AI database includes 78 companies, more than half of which are developing their own machine-learning models. The others rely on models from OpenAI or rivals such as Anthropic and Cohere. But a growing number of companies in our database use more than one machine-learning provider, including Pathlight, which uses five.San Franciscoâbased Pathlight, which has raised $35 million from investors including Kleiner Perkins and Insight Partners, helps businesses analyze... Read more âș
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When Ju Rhyuâs Hero Cosmetics, a brand known for its Mighty Patch acne treatments that got its start selling on Amazon, was closing in on $100 million in revenue in mid-2021, she and her co-founders began to think about selling the five-year-old brand to a bigger company. Rhyu and the companyâs board began interviewing bankers that summer, and Vennette Ho and her team at Financo Raymond James quickly emerged as... Read more âș
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When lingerie manufacturer Ariela & Associates International announced its purchase of buzzy direct-to-consumer intimates startup Parade in August, the deal appeared to be yet another example of larger holding companies and licensing firms buying up popular digitally native brands. Parade, valued by investors last year at about $200 million, wound up with a last-ditch sale, in a process similar to a bankruptcy liquidation. The process wiped out essentially all its... Read more âș
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Maybe, just maybe, startup employees who held onto their jobs amid spurts of mass layoffs over the last year and a half can exhale. They have survived. The number of monthly job cuts at tech companiesâjust over 4,600âhit an 18-month low in September, according to Layoffs.fyi, the venerable tracker of employee career pain. The recent sprinkling of venture-backed IPOs helped lift the mood, too.But now isnât the time for employees... Read more âș
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Logistics startup Flexport plans to lay off up to 30% of its workforce, according to a person close to the company. That would represent about 1,000 people based on a headcount of around 3,300 people. The cuts are the latest and most drastic in a series of cost-cutting moves founder Ryan Petersen has made at the decade-old company since he returned as CEO in September. Account management, customer service and... Read more âș
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Investment firm Andreessen Horowitz recently signaled to another firm that it was discussing leading a new equity financing for Ideogram, a startup that uses artificial intelligence to create unique images, said a person with knowledge of the situation. The Toronto startup, which has been seeking a $500 million pre-money valuation, doesnât generate revenue. Four former Google AI researchers last year founded the company, and in August this year they launched... Read more âș
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Meta Platformsâ decision to create artificial intelligence characters based on the likeness of some of the most famous people on the planet is paying off handsomelyâfor the stars themselves. Last week, the parent of Facebook and Instagram said it was paying stars including Snoop Dogg, Tom Brady, MrBeast and Charli DâAmelio for allowing Meta to use their likenesses for fictional AI characters. For several top creators, the payments can amount... Read more âș
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The trial of Sam Bankman-Fried is officially underway and the spotlight is back on the bankrupt crypto exchange he founded. Recall that FTX launched a $2 billion venture fund early last year and bought stakes in some of the top crypto companies. When FTX imploded late last year, its decision to play venture capitalist seemed like an embarrassment. But maybe those investments, which extended beyond the struggling crypto industry, will... Read more âș
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A startup seeking to bring robotaxis to dedicated roads surrounding airports and transit hubs is inching closer to realizing its vision. The startup, Glydways, has raised a $56 million Series B fundraising round, including about half of it from convertible debt that the notes holders are converting to equity. New Science Ventures led the round, while other investors include the ACS Group, a global construction company based in Spain; Gates... Read more âș
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As large-language model developers such as OpenAI, Meta Platforms and Google battle for global supremacy, European LLM providers are trying to carve off that region for themselves. Thatâs a bad idea.Letâs back up. A number of European Union members have poured resources into promising AI startups. In last Wednesdayâs release of Mistral 7B, an open-source LLM developed by Paris-based Mistral AI, the startup thanked the operators of Leonardo, a supercomputer... Read more âș
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06.07.2026 17:27
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