Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter:• The Big Read: Pickleball is the past—the tech elite is obsessed with padel. • Plus, an Americana-themed batch of Recommendations—our weekly pop culture picks: “The Americans,” “East of Eden,” “High Desert Daydream,” “Lonesome Dove,” USA vs. Belgium, and “The Twilight Zone.” The year’s midpoint is an apt moment for some studied reflection, and I’ve been thinking about how much has changed in the last six... Read more ›
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Venture-backed consumer lending startups are starting to fold their cards. Happy Money, an online lending startup formerly known as Payoff, is in talks to sell itself, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. The Torrance, Calif.-based company, valued at $1.1 billion in a private financing announced in February last year, has held sale discussions with at least one financial institution, the person said. And Sable, a Y... Read more ›
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One of the more fun business stories of recent weeks was the pressure campaign waged by an activist investor against—wait for it—Carl Icahn, an activism icon for decades! Few other activists run public companies, as Icahn does, so we’re unlikely to see something like this repeated. But it is a good reminder that activists, who like to point out where CEOs go wrong, aren’t exactly infallible. One common activist shortcoming... Read more ›
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Asset manager Yieldstreet is near a deal to buy Cadre, a once-promising real estate investment firm whose value has fallen sharply in recent years, said people familiar with the situation. If the two sides finalize an agreement, it would be the latest sign that mergers and acquisitions activity among troubled startups is beginning to pick up as founders accept that valuations are not likely to recover. Cadre shareholders are expected... Read more ›
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Creators’ success on social media often has a limited shelf life. They need to generate a constant stream of new content, keep up with frequent changes on social platforms and deal with inconsistent income. So many are starting offline brands to expand their businesses and find new ways to connect with their fans. Take Cassey Ho, 36, who started her career on YouTube in 2009 posting Pilates videos and eventually... Read more ›
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You know those horror stories of people who leave a faucet running in their house while on vacation for a week, returning to a flooded residence? That kind of thing is happening in AI.Edo Liberty, founder of Pinecone, a buzzy infrastructure startup which helps developers build AI applications using their own data, says he heard about an intern at a company who accidentally spent half a million dollars worth of... Read more ›
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Early this year, as the interest costs from the $13 billion in loans Elon Musk took out to buy Twitter began weighing on his pocketbook, the billionaire turned for help to a longtime trusted partner. The investor, Antonio Gracias, head of Valor Equity Partners, got involved early in Musk’s effort last year to acquire Twitter, helping him line up financing. Ever since the deal closed last October, Valor’s team has... Read more ›
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On Aug. 2 in Tokyo, Toyota unveiled the first hybrid electric Land Cruiser, a refreshed version of a large SUV previously known for its off-road muscle-bound chops, now containing both a gasoline engine and a small electric motor. Toyota, which had pulled the Land Cruiser from its U.S. lineup in 2021 after Americans began to balk at its $85,000 base price, said the hybrid would cost around $55,000, and that... Read more ›
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Heads up, Weekenders: The Information is asking subscribers how much time and money they spend on their various fitness and wellness routines. Please fill out our completely anonymous Brain-Body Investment survey (done in five minutes, tops), and we'll share the results soon. Thanks for participating! Hi, welcome to your Weekend.This week we’ve got a pair of richly reported features about two fascinating women in tech: Alphabet’s venerated Chief Financial Officer... Read more ›
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In February, after Alphabet had put the finishing touches on the technology giant’s 2023 plan, CEO Sundar Pichai and Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat sat down to brainstorm about the future of the organization and its people. One of the people the two discussed was Porat herself, according to sources familiar with the conversation. The topic: Porat’s desire for a change in role. After eight years at Alphabet, 65-year-old Porat... Read more ›
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These must be lonely times for iPhone haters. Apple’s share of the mobile market has been growing, according to IDC, which has insulated the company a little from the shrinkage in the smartphone market. (Those damn iPhones are just so easy to use!) As the 2.4% iPhone sales decline in its recently reported June-quarter results showed, though, Apple isn’t entirely immune. Analysts expect the company to finish the fiscal year,... Read more ›
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Modular, a startup whose software aims to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold over in-demand artificial intelligence chips, has been in talks with investors including General Catalyst to raise Series A funding that would value it at roughly $600 million, according to two people with knowledge of the deal discussions. The new capital would come less than two years after two Google and Apple alumni co-founded the startup and only three months after... Read more ›
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For all the ways sports gambling has infiltrated American life since the Supreme Court legalized the industry five years ago, there was one area where betting still did not exist: within actual sports broadcasts. Bettors couldn’t watch a game on Fox or ESPN and point their remote at an on-screen button to place a wager. But all that is about to change. Tappp, a New York–based payments processor, has been... Read more ›
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It is not, shall we say, boom times in the media business. Even ESPN—the crown jewel, cash cow, you name it—of the business is on shaky ground. And it is freaking people—at least media people—out. So I had to ask the squad what they think? What saves live sports coverage? That, a snazzy new video introduction from Wizard Genius Productions, and more on this week’s episode. Hope you enjoy! Spotify... Read more ›
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On November 16, 2022, Silicon Valley came to Washington—specifically, to the airy, upscale Italian restaurant Piccolina da Centrolina, where the evening’s co-host, Andreessen Horowitz general partner Katherine Boyle, was waiting. It was the night before Andreessen’s American Dynamism summit, and Boyle had helped convene around 30 founders, investors and politicians for cocktails, dinner and light conversation about rising tension with China and the valley of death. Attendees at the dinner,... Read more ›
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Welcome back!Akash here—if you’re an avid reader of The Information’s newsletters, you might recognize me from The Briefing and Crypto Global. Now I’ll also be writing our Pro newsletter more frequently. I look forward to diving into our databases with you! Let’s talk about the matrix. No, not “The Matrix”—rather, Adobe’s matrix.My colleague Kalley published an org chart earlier this week outlining the 64 people with power at Adobe. Artificial... Read more ›
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Some Databricks employees and executives sitting on valuable stock options in the decade-old startup are considering going to extraordinary lengths to turn their private stakes into $30 million in cash. Investors say they have discussed a deal that would lend the employees money in exchange for a share in the proceeds of their stock if the enterprise software startup, valued at more than $30 billion, goes public. The deal, which... Read more ›
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There is something to the phrase “Follow the money.” Looking at the finances of a company can go a long way toward clearing up certain unanswered questions. And this is especially important for private enterprises, who don’t regularly disclose such information.And so, when Jing and Juro today reported extensive details about ByteDance’s financial performance, some of the mysteries about this company started to make sense. Read more ›
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While creators can quickly build audiences on YouTube and TikTok, they often find it hard to keep up communication with their fans. That’s encouraged some to embrace email publishing services such as Substack and Beehive. The founders of startup Braid want to make those direct connections to fans through text messaging.Braid, founded by ex-Facebook product manager Matthew Cahill and software developer Chris Piro, began building the product in the middle... Read more ›
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For a long time the debate around American venture capital investment in China has centered on Sequoia Capital, the blue-chip VC firm that’s earned billions of dollars from its overseas investments. But since Sequoia announced in June that it would split from its Chinese counterpart, the spotlight has expanded to a cohort of smaller firms that have invested heavily in China. The most notable is GGV Capital, based in Menlo... Read more ›
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ByteDance might be best known globally as the parent company of TikTok, but the bulk of its money comes from its home base of China, thanks to its Chinese video app Douyin. But previously unreported internal data shows that the tech giant’s red-hot pace of growth in China has slowed markedly, underscoring the importance of TikTok for the company’s future. Last year, ByteDance’s revenue in China grew 25% year on... Read more ›
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07.07.2026 08:54
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