Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter:• The Big Read: Meet the father of Claude Code• Artificial Intelligence: The hijinks around tokenmaxxing • Plus, Recommendations—our weekly pop culture picks: “Who Blew Up the Georgia Guidestones?” “Those Who Are About to Die” and “It Was Just an Accident”Over a good many years, “Silicon Valley,” the HBO show, accomplished a very rare feat: It got the elite of Silicon Valley, the place, to laugh... Read more ›
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If you’re a founder or you work in the startup space, you can’t afford to be ignorant about tax law, especially in a down market. One day a piece of paper says you’re worth tens of millions of dollars; the next day, pennies. Many first-time founders saw their valuations drop for the first time in 2022—and with April 18 fast approaching, many are learning of the tax consequences of that... Read more ›
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The first big change made by Y Combinator’s new CEO and president Garry Tan—to shutter a fund investing in mature startups so it could sharpen its focus on much younger companies—has set off an uproar among founders backed by the esteemed startup accelerator. Ten startups, including YC graduates such as payroll provider Deel and credit card startup Brex, said they were “surprised and deeply disappointed” with YC’s recent decision to... Read more ›
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Here’s a question: What incentives does a CEO need to stick around to work hard to advance the company’s priorities? If they’re a founder with a decent equity stake, the answer should be none. The opportunity to lift the value of their existing shares should be incentive enough. That’s apparently the view of big tech firms like Meta Platforms, which doesn’t pay its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Not everyone... Read more ›
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TikTok invited hundreds of U.S. merchants to join its shopping service in November, but fewer than 100 of them were using it as of last month, my colleagues Juro, Theo, Ann and Kaya reported on Monday. That’s just some of the reporting that shows how few inroads TikTok has made in U.S. e-commerce so far.Yes, the U.S. version of TikTok Shop is still in testing, but it’s live, available on... Read more ›
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Amazon has started charging fees to make some returns at UPS Stores, marking the latest effort by the e-commerce giant to cut down on costs associated with customers sending back items. Returns have been an expensive headache for e-commerce companies after they skyrocketed during pandemic lockdown and have remained stubbornly high. Amazon’s UPS fee, along with a new “frequently returned” warning on some items that The Information first reported last... Read more ›
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When Helen Min and Meena Harris started raising money for their debut venture capital fund in January of last year, they expected that their combined 30 years of experience at tech companies would allow them to collect $15 million, a standard first-time fund target. Then interest rates spiked, sending tech stocks careening. By December, when their firm, Phenomenal Ventures, finished fundraising, the duo had raised just $6 million. “We were... Read more ›
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The tech sector was taken by surprise when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed back in March. Startups faced uncertainty around what the news meant for their money and questions about how to make payroll arose. Brex —the six-year-old fintech company that specializes in credit cards and spend management solutions—took quick action by maintaining credit limits on their cards and establishing an emergency credit line for startups. Now that the dust has... Read more ›
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As TikTok tries to win over U.S. politicians, it may have kneecapped its shopping service, TikTok Shop. Relatively few U.S. merchants are showing interest in signing up for the nascent service, both because they’re more focused on expanding in bricks and mortar and because they’re concerned the app could be banned, merchants say. Overseas sellers, in contrast, are eager for a new way to tap into the world’s second-largest e-commerce... Read more ›
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For all the talk of lithium as the driver behind the nascent electric vehicle industry, a second, much less-discussed battery metal has been attracting recent attention. It is sodium, a cheap ingredient of ordinary salt. Long derided as lithium’s poorer cousin in terms of battery value, it is surprisingly showing better performance in some electric vehicles. Since sodium is found nearly everywhere, leading Chinese battery makers and some Western analysts... Read more ›
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Hi, welcome to your Weekend. This week, Annie brings us the story of a family-run startup arming young women with a new kind of safety device: The Birdie. Invented by two sisters whose children had been sexually assaulted, the emergency alarm attaches easo;u to bags or belt loops and screeches like a smoke detector when it’s activated. It is a simple piece of technology, but for Annie and other women... Read more ›
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As a technology, the bicycle hasn’t changed much since 1885, when designer J.K. Starley decided to use a chain to drive the rear wheel. Nearly 140 years later, a foot still turns a crank that pulls a chain that spins a wheel. But the tech that’s layered on top of the modern bicycle is the stuff of sci-fi. I spoke with a number of hardcore amateur riders (aka roadies)—the kind... Read more ›
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When Michael Brancato began working with Chess.com in late 2017, it wasn’t particularly popular. A product manager at Twitch, Brancato was tapped to spearhead a two-year partnership between the chess site and the video streaming giant, hoping to grow the 1,500-year-old game’s reputation as a legitimate e-sport. He had his work cut out for him. Chess.com, which was launched a decade earlier by former Brigham Young University dorm mates Erik... Read more ›
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A few months ago, I broke down and bought myself a Birdie, a $30 personal safety device that’s the size of a canary and the color of a candy bracelet. When activated, it emits an electronic shriek that is said to reach 130 decibels, loud enough to make your ears hurt and, theoretically, to keep bad guys at heel. Already my relationship with my Birdie is a complicated one. I’m... Read more ›
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Welcome back!Scott is on vacation, and so I’m coming to you Pro subscribers this week to say a quick hello and share some thoughts ahead of this holiday weekend. It’s a pretty lively time between technology and Washington. Over the last few years, all anyone wanted to talk about was antitrust. And while those cases and issues are still intensifying, there’s all of a sudden a whole big patchwork of... Read more ›
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Startups and other companies trying to capitalize on the artificial intelligence boom sparked by OpenAI are running into a problem: They can’t find enough specialized computers to make their own AI software. A spike in demand for server chips that can train and run machine-learning software has caused a shortage, prompting major cloud-server providers including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Google and Oracle to limit their availability for customers, according to... Read more ›
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Sibling rivalry. It’s a real thing, as any parent with more than one child knows, and it can either motivate a kid to work harder or alienate them. No, you haven’t accidentally opened a newsletter about parenting. Sibling rivalry turns out to be a big problem in tech. It prevented the two AI labs within Google’s parent Alphabet from working together, at least until very recently, which likely slowed Alphabet’s... Read more ›
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So many TikTok videos on my For You Page the last few weeks have featured a CapCut overlay of “The Last of Us” actor Pedro Pascal eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The template, made on the app owned by TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has been used more than 1.15 million times on TikTok and other apps, according to metrics from the CapCut app. The viral spread of the... Read more ›
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A few weeks ago, at the SXSW conference, I sat down with journalist and the host of “Pivot” and “On with Kara Swisher,” Kara Swisher. With Silicon Valley Bank imploding around us, and technology companies on edge about all sorts of issues, it felt like a good time to check with Swisher on not just the state of tech, but also the state of news. Swisher’s career in journalism has... Read more ›
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After months of writing about layoffs and cram downs, I stumbled across the rare buzzy deal in Silicon Valley this week. More than half a dozen venture capital firms have been vying for a stake in a San Francisco startup—EvenUp—that uses artificial intelligence to help personal injury lawyers compile claims using medical documents and case files. Bessemer Venture Partners won the deal and is leading the Series B round at... Read more ›
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Historically, India has been a software kingdom, a place where more advanced economies such as the U.S. outsource their development jobs. Lacking both the infrastructure and the expertise necessary to be competitive in manufacturing, India rarely produced any major consumer electronic products. That is poised to change. As major tech companies—including Apple—begin to shift more of their manufacturing away from China due to its aging population and uncertain geopolitical position,... Read more ›
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13.04.2026 06:29
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