The Information — AI
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The Information — AI news-outlet 25d ago
Where Musk and Altman See Eye to Eye
Elon Musk and Sam Altman don’t often see eye to eye, as they made clear in their recent legal dispute . But when it comes to making outlandish projections about future growth, the two men seem to share a common philosophy. As we reported earlier on Thursday, SpaceX’s lead bank…
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Benchmark Joins the Late-Stage Crowd
For most of this decade, venture capital has morphed from a game of spotting the best young startups to making a more complex range of investments—from public stocks and cryptocurrencies to multibillion-dollar bets on older startups. General Catalyst even bought a hospital…
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S&P 500 Won’t Make Change That Would Have Fast-Tracked SpaceX
S&P Dow Jones Indices said Thursday it had decided not to change its rules to make it easier and faster for SpaceX to quickly join the S&P 500 and other indices after it goes public. The group’s index committee had been considering a series of changes that would have let…
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Brian Chesky in Talks to Back New AI Lab
Airbnb chief executive Brian Chesky is in early stage talks to fund a new AI lab, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions. The lab will aim to develop models with a possible design focus, according to a Bloomberg report. In recent months, Airbnb has made strides…
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Rubrik Stock Slides On Tame 2027 Growth Outlook
Cybersecurity and data recovery firm Rubrik reported 39% higher revenue of $387 million for the April quarter, far exceeding what Rubrik had projected for the quarter. Rubrik, which in February released a new software tool to help companies manage intelligence agents, also upped…
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Exclusive: Nadella Rebukes Microsoft Executive’s Plan to Make Users “Addicted” to AI Agents
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Thursday rebuked an internal memo that another company executive had written advocating to “make people addicted” to its new AI agent product called Scout. “This is absolutely a non goal! If anything we are doing the exact opposite. We want to make…
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Rubrik Deserves a Palo Alto Networks–Like Premium
Cybersecurity stocks CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks have risen 50% or more this year based on the perception that an AI-driven increase in cyberthreats will make their services all the more important. Yet Rubrik, which also stands to benefit from that trend, is up only 1% so…
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Wall Street Expects SpaceX to Burn $350 Billion of Cash Through 2030
SpaceX, planning the largest initial public offering of all time next week, will already need to raise more cash by next year if private forecasts from analysts at Goldman Sachs come to fruition. SpaceX’s lead bank on the IPO, in aggressive forecasts shared with prospective…
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Snowflake CIO Says He Used Layoffs to Convince Staff to Use AI
Tech firms ranging from Block to Meta Platforms have announced mass layoffs in the past year, frequently citing AI as allowing them to do more with less people. In a variation on that approach Snowflake says it used layoffs to force software engineers to use AI tools and become…
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Bipartisan AI Regulatory Framework Released That Would Override Some State Rules
Two members of Congress released a sweeping discussion draft for an AI regulatory framework on Thursday, proposing a bipartisan federal approach ahead of November’s midterm elections. Led by Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) and Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), the bill represents the latest…
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Pinterest Commits to Using Trainium Chips, Spend $4 Billion with AWS
Pinterest said it would spend $4 billion on Amazon Web Services infrastructure through 2031, the largest infrastructure commitment in the company’s history. As part of the deal, Pinterest will use AWS’ Trainium chips for AI workloads and expand its use of Amazon’s CPU Graviton.…
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Billionaire Databricks and Perplexity Co-Founder Pitches AI Researchers to Not Work for Big Tech
The billionaire co-founder of Databricks and Perplexity AI , Andy Konwinski , is singularly focused on plugging the years-long drain of talent from academia to Big Tech. He wants to encourage academics to focus on publishing more openly available research, a reaction to the move…
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Fusion Startup Helion Nearly Triples Valuation to $15.5 Billion in Thrive-led Round
Helion Energy, a nuclear fusion startup backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, still has to prove it can produce electricity to serve data centers and other customers. But investors seem confident it can deliver. The Everett, Wash.–based company said it has raised $465 million in…
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Meta Looks to Charge Up to $200 a Month for Planned ‘Hatch’ AI Agent
Meta Platforms is considering charging up to $200 a month for its planned consumer version of the OpenClaw AI agent tool, The Information reported , an ambitious target that would rival top tier offerings from established AI giants. The product, currently called Hatch, could…
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Benchmark Raises $1.25 Billion Fund to Back Mature Startups
Benchmark has raised two new funds, one of which will invest in later-stage startups, breaking with the firm’s tradition of exclusively backing early-stage companies. The firm will invest in those more mature companies through a $1.25 billion fund and earlier ones through a $750…
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Cybersecurity’s AI Paradox
It's no secret that criminals are using AI to streamline computer hacks in hopes of emptying out people’s bank accounts (never has it looked more appealing to stash cash under the mattress!). Cybersecurity executives, meanwhile, are rubbing their hands with glee at the influx of…
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SpaceX Sets $135 Per Share Target Price for IPO
SpaceX plans to sell 555.6 million shares at an expected price of $135 each when it goes public, the company said in a securities filing on Wednesday. SpaceX is expecting to raise $75 billion, more than twice as much as any other IPO in history, at a valuation of $1.77 trillion.…
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Apple to Launch New Siri in September With Help of Google, Nvidia
Apple is currently on track to launch its overhauled Siri in September, to run in part on Google’s cloud computing servers using Nvidia chips, according to people familiar with the matter. While Apple will try to run as much as possible of the new Siri on devices such as…
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Broadcom Reports 48% Revenue Growth as AI Chip Business Expands
Broadcom reported 48% higher revenue for its second fiscal quarter, ended May 3, as its AI chip revenue jumped 143% to $10.8 billion. Overall revenue of $22.187 billion was roughly in line with the company’s projection issued in early March. Broadcom has benefited from growing…
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Meta Looks to Charge Up to $200 a Month for Planned ‘Hatch’ AI Agent
Meta Platforms is considering charging up to $200 a month for its planned consumer version of the OpenClaw AI agent tool, according to internal documents, an ambitious target that would rival top tier offerings from established AI giants. The product, currently called Hatch,…
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Nvidia Buys Enterprise Model-Maker Kumo AI for at Least $400 Million
Nvidia has bought Kumo AI, a five-year-old startup that sells predictive AI software to enterprises, for more than $400 million, said a person with knowledge of the deal. The acquisition, first revealed by an Nvidia executive in a LinkedIn post on Tuesday, should expand Nvidia’s…
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Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Coinbase to Form Consortium to Issue New Stablecoin
Stripe, Visa, Mastercard and Coinbase are planning to form a consortium to issue a new stablecoin, according to people familiar with the matter, seeking to challenge the dominance of Circle and Tether, the two biggest issuers that make up 80% of market share currently. The new…
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Alphabet’s Fine Print Reveals Hidden Cost of the AI Talent War
Alphabet’s plan to sell $80 billion worth of shares, billed as a way to pay for AI infrastructure and compute, is surprising enough, given the capital raise’s size and the fact that the company last raised equity 21 years ago, when Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” was the song of…
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Meta Rolls Out AI Business Agents Globally
Meta Platforms is expanding its AI agent offerings for businesses as part of its broader push to monetize AI products and services. At its Conversations business messaging conference on Wednesday, Meta announced it is bringing Meta Business Agent to Instagram and launching the…
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Google Increases Equity Raise to $84.75 Billion
Google’s parent company Alphabet said on Wednesday that it was increasing the size of its equity raise to $84.75 billion from $80 billion. The bulk of the money—Google’s first time selling new stock since 2005—is earmarked for spending on AI infrastructure and compute,…
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How to Streamline Employee Engagement Surveys with the Google Gemini app
Employee engagement and satisfaction surveys sound simple: Ask your workers about their experience, and then see what they have to say. But in practice, these survey cycles often turn into months-long marathons, with HR teams sometimes taking weeks to agree on the right…
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The Unintended Consequences of Codex’s Comeback
OpenAI’s Codex —which was once pitched as a coding agent for developers and is now being framed as a more general-purpose agent for knowledge workers—is having a moment, as OpenAI chief revenue officer Denise Dresser put it on Tuesday. As I wrote about in this story from Tuesday…
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Walmart Looks Offline for AI Shopping Data Advantage
Walmart is trying to make its Sparky assistant smarter and more capable for shoppers by collecting more real-world data on how people shop inside its 3,500-plus U.S. superstores. Gathering more in-store information has been a focus for the company since Sparky launched about a…
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The SpaceX IPO Domino Effect
SpaceX’s $75 billion offering will impact a lot more than just the employees and investors who are looking to cash in on their stock. It will also be a gauge of enthusiasm for tech IPOs, helping set the stage for other mega IPOs like Anthropic and OpenAI. If SpaceX’s IPO doesn’t…
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OpenAI (and Microsoft) Make New AI Pitches to Businesses
The poor souls responsible for technology buying decisions at companies must be overwhelmed these days. Not only does seemingly every other tech firm want to send consultants—invariably calling themselves forward-deployed engineers as though they’re on maneuver in the desert—to…
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Snowflake, Startup AtScale Building Bridge to Microsoft’s Power BI
Snowflake and AtScale, a startup provider of software that companies like Toyota and Cardinal Health use to define consistent business metrics from their data, announced that they’re working together on a product that could help customers avoid getting caught in the AI data…
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Shopify Becomes Latest Software Firm To Buy Back Shares
Shopify said Tuesday that it would expand its share buyback authorization by $3 billion to a total authorization of $5 billion, becoming the latest software firm to unveil expanded share repurchase plans as AI fears have battered stock prices. Several software firms have…
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Anthropic Expands Glasswing to 150 New Organizations
Anthropic is quadrupling the number of companies allowed to use its Claude Mythos model for cybersecurity testing under its Project Glasswing initiative. The company announced Tuesday that the project will be expanded to 150 new organizations, from the roughly 50 that were…
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Inside OpenAI’s Decision to Combine Codex and ChatGPT
Early last year, after Anthropic released a preview of its coding tool, Claude Code, OpenAI realized it had allowed the then-smaller AI rival to surpass it in coding. Around that time, OpenAI threw resources behind a new dedicated team that would focus specifically on developing…
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Meta Adds Limits to Employee Tracking Tool After Staff Backlash
Meta Platforms is scaling back elements of its employee tracking tool after staff raised concerns about the tool, The Information reported . A Meta executive told employees in the memo that the company is updating its Model Capability Initiative, or MCI, launched in April to…
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Meta Adds Limits to Employee Tracking Tool After Staff Backlash
Meta Platforms is scaling back elements of its employee tracking tool after staff raised concerns about the tool, according to an internal memo reviewed by The Information. A Meta executive told employees in the memo that the company is updating its Model Capability Initiative,…
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Microsoft Unveils New Homegrown AI, OpenClaw-Inspired Agents for Businesses
Microsoft on Tuesday revealed new AI software geared towards developers and corporate customers, including homegrown AI models and new tools that aim to let corporate customers develop AI agents that can draw on internal company data to automate workplace tasks. The…
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Microsoft Debuts New Nvidia-Powered “Dev Box” PC; OS for Wearable and Desktop “Agent First” Devices
Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled a new desktop PC powered by an Nvidia processor geared towards developers who want to run AI models locally. The new PC, called the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, is powered by Nvidia’s new Arm-based chips announced earlier this week. Microsoft…
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OpenAI Says It Will Combine Codex and ChatGPT Soon, Announces Business Tools
OpenAI announced specialized features within its Codex coding app designed to help with tasks ranging from product design to investment banking, as it seeks to compete with Anthropic for business customers. At an event Tuesday emphasizing its enterprise efforts, OpenAI also said…
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5 Ways Companies Keep AI Bills in Check
Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy on Monday became the latest executive to voice concerns over rising AI costs . “Are we worried about how much we are spending on AI inference across our internal teams? Absolutely,” he told my colleague Laura during Snowflake’s annual conference…
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President Trump Signs Scaled-Back AI Executive Order
President Trump signed a revised version of a long-anticipated executive order on Tuesday that creates cybersecurity guardrails around frontier AI models. The signing, which was done in private, comes less than two weeks after Trump canceled a signing ceremony for a different…
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SpaceX Targets $1.75 Trillion Valuation Ahead of IPO Roadshow
SpaceX is seeking a valuation of $1.75 trillion in its initial public offering next week, including additional shares the underwriting banks could sell if investor demand is strong, according to people familiar with the matter. The latest valuation target solidifies earlier…
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SpaceX Pushes for IPO Banks to Cut Fees
SpaceX is negotiating to pay the banks working on its potentially record-breaking initial public offering a smaller than normal slice of the proceeds even by mega-IPO standards, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. SpaceX is aiming to raise about $75 billion, more than any other IPO…
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Cognition Aims to Be the Switzerland of AI Agents with App Makeover
AI coding startup Cognition is revamping its app to help users manage coding agents from many providers, executives told The Information. Cognition is betting that being a neutral platform will strengthen its hand in the increasingly competitive market for AI coding tools. The…
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Amazon’s Media Empire Quietly Taps Outside Ad Sales Help
Amazon has been pitching its advertising business as an “everything store” for media—where brands can buy ads that run on everything from Thursday Night Football and streaming site Twitch to media it does not own, like Netflix and Spotify. Despite that united front, behind…
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SK Hynix to Double Capacity as AI Strains Memory Supply
SK Hynix plans to double its memory chip capacity within five years as AI demand keeps straining global supply, Bloomberg reported. The expansion can ease one of the biggest hardware constraints facing AI data centers. Chairman Chey Tae-won said in Taipei that the memory crunch…
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Salesforce Stake in Anthropic Reaches $5 Billion
Salesforce’s stake in frontier AI model provider Anthropic has reached a roughly $5 billion following multiple investments and Anthropic’s latest funding round, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. Bloomberg first reported the value of Salesforce’s stake in…
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Salesforce Acquires Contentful in Latest Move to Boost AI
Salesforce is acquiring Contentful, a provider of content management software for businesses, in the latest sign of its efforts to make its customer data more easily accessible to AI agents. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but Salesforce paid between $1 billion and $1.5…
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Google’s AI Fundraising; Anthropic’s IPO Option
How is running an AI firm like running for Congress? In either case, you have to spend half your time raising money! Take Google’s surprising announcement on Monday afternoon that it plans to raise a total of $80 billion in equity “as part of its plan to fund investments” in AI.…
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Google to Raise $80 Billion for AI Spending, Employee Equity
Google parent company Alphabet announced plans to sell new stock for the first time since 2005, aiming to raise $80 billion in equity to spend on AI infrastructure and compute. As part of the plans, announced Monday, Berkshire Hathaway has agreed to purchase $10 billion in stock…
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