The Information: Source: OpenAI mulls new tools to help business users understand the financial benefits of using its products and has made changes to its sales force strategy — Some of OpenAI's most attention-grabbing efforts over the past year have involved products for consumers, from a social app …
The Information: Source: Greenoaks, one of Brex's top investors, will return twice its investment after Capital One's Brex acquisition for $5.15B in a half-cash, half-stock deal — Brex's $5.15 billion agreement to sell to Capital One isn't the kind of exit employees or investors would have dreamed of four years ago …
The Information: Sources: OpenAI begins offering its chatbot ads to dozens of advertisers, initially charging per ad view, not per ad click, and asks them for <$1M commitments — OpenAI has started offering its new chatbot ads to dozens of advertisers, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The Information: Sources: after five Thinking Machines staff left, investors are rattled, potentially impacting fundraising; two researchers quit via Slack during an all-hands — The timing couldn't have been more awkward for Thinking Machines Lab. — On Wednesday, during an all-hands meeting at the AI startup …
The Information: Source: Lambda, which rents access to AI chips and is backed by Nvidia, is in talks to raise $350M+ led by Mubadala Capital, ahead of an IPO planned for H2 2026 — Lambda, an upstart cloud provider that rents out Nvidia AI chips—and whose biggest customer was recently Nvidia itself …
Miles Kruppa / The Information: Brookfield is starting cloud company Radiant and a new $10B AI fund, after saying it plans to acquire up to $100B in land, data centers, and power assets for AI — Private-equity firm Brookfield is starting its own cloud business, going up against tech giants like Amazon by arguing it can bring down the costs of developing AI.
Stephanie Palazzolo / The Information: Sources: OpenAI is taking steps to improve its audio AI models, in preparation for its AI-powered personal device, which is expected to be largely audio-based — OpenAI is taking steps to improve its audio AI models, in preparation for its eventual release of an AI-powered personal device, said a person with knowledge of the effort.
The Information: Sources: Nvidia's licensing deal with Groq, which has raised ~$1.8B, includes payouts to Groq's key execs and investors, including BlackRock and Tiger Global — Nvidia stunned Silicon Valley on Wednesday by agreeing to pay about $20 billion to license technology from Groq …
The Information: Sources: OpenAI staff discussed prioritizing sponsored content in ChatGPT when users ask relevant queries and created mockups with ads in sidebars or as pop-ups — OpenAI executives have kept a tight lid on how the company could show advertisements to users of its popular ChatGPT chatbot …
The Information: Sources: in recent months, Tencent aggressively hired AI researchers from ByteDance, including offering to double their salaries, and reorganized its AI team — Throughout the past couple of years, as AI fever swept China's technology sector, one giant—Tencent—seemed to mostly be sitting on the sidelines.
The Information: Sources: DeepSeek is developing its new AI model using several thousand Nvidia Blackwell chips, which were smuggled into China via third-party countries — DeepSeek, the Chinese AI startup, has been developing its next major model using several thousand Nvidia's state-of-the-art Blackwell chips …
Katie Roof / The Information: Sources: SpaceX has told investors and financial institution representatives that it is aiming for an IPO in the second half of 2026 — Elon Musk's SpaceX has told investors and financial institution representatives that it is aiming for an initial public offering in the second half of next year …
Abram Brown / The Information: A profile of Klay, whose app will let users remake songs using AI; Klay has raised ~$10M and is the first AI startup to close deals with the three major labels — “So here's a real surprise,” said Ary Attie, holding open a hidden door in the bowels of the Walker Hotel in the city's Greenwich Village neighborhood.
Qianer Liu / The Information: Sources: ByteDance bought more Nvidia chips than any other Chinese company in 2025, but Chinese regulators now block it from using the chips in new data centers — ByteDance bought more Nvidia chips than any other Chinese company in 2025, according to three people with direct knowledge of its purchases.
The Information: Internal memo: Sam Altman told OpenAI employees last month that Google's recent progress in AI could “create some temporary economic headwinds for our company” — OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told colleagues last month that Google's recent progress in artificial intelligence could …
Valida Pau / The Information: Dealogic: 51 US tech IPOs raised $16.8B in 2025, driven by AI and crypto, above the past three-year average but far below 2021's 127 IPOs raising $74.4B — The drought in initial public offerings ended this year, led by big winners in AI and crypto, but gains were rare for companies outside those industries.
The Information: Sources: Apptronik, a humanoid robot maker backed by Google, is in the process of raising at least $400M led by B Capital at a $5B pre-money valuation — Apptronik, a humanoid robot maker backed by Google, is in the process of raising at least $400 million at a $5 billion valuation not including …
Theo Wayt / The Information: Elon Musk says Grok 5 would be released “in Q1 sometime”, later than a deadline he previously set of releasing the model by the end of 2025 — XAI plans to release its next-generation Grok 5 artificial intelligence model in the first three months of next year, CEO Elon Musk said on Friday.
Qianer Liu / The Information: Sources: the White House has told others in the government it won't allow Nvidia to sell its scaled-down AI chip B30A to China, despite Trump's hints he might — The White House has told others in the federal government it won't allow Nvidia to sell its latest scaled-down AI chips to China …
Rocket Drew / The Information: Court documents: in a deposition, Ilya Sutskever documented significant internal conflicts at OpenAI prior to Sam Altman's firing and discusses his OpenAI exit — Anthropic initially expressed “excitement” about a possible merger with OpenAI two years ago, after OpenAI's board fired CEO Sam Altman …
Valida Pau / The Information: Sources: AI chip startup SambaNova is exploring a sale after it struggled to complete a fundraising round; SambaNova was last valued at $5B in 2021 — Artificial intelligence chip startup SambaNova Systems is exploring a sale, after it struggled to complete a fundraising round, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.
The Information: Sources: OpenAI is developing AI tools to generate music from text and audio prompts, including capabilities such as adding guitar accompaniment to vocal tracks — OpenAI recently made a splash with artificial intelligence that generates short videos from text prompts—say, a scene from …
The Information: With an influx of Meta alums, some OpenAI staffers worry it is adopting Meta's tactics, like using social media dynamics with Sora and a softening stance on ads — This summer, Fidji Simo wasted no time addressing a concern among many at OpenAI. — Leading her first all-hands meeting …
Juro Osawa / The Information: Internal memo: TikTok plans leadership changes, moving two teams under ByteDance veteran Fiona Zhi and undoing earlier efforts to empower Western executives — TikTok is implementing drastic leadership changes that pull the video app closer to the orbit of its parent ByteDance …
Natasha Mascarenhas / The Information: a16z hires ex-VMware CEO Raghu Raghuram as general partner overseeing AI infrastructure and growth investments and as a managing partner, replacing Scott Kupor — Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz says only a small subset of AI companies, such as portfolio companies Safe Superintelligence Inc …
The Information: Experts warn that Nvidia's large investments in data centers and startups, almost like a stimulus program, could be artificially inflating demand for its GPUs — Even by the standards of one of the most prodigious dealmakers in tech, the past month or so has been a head-spinning one for Nvidia's Jensen Huang.
The Information: Sources: data integration company Fivetran is in talks to acquire data management company dbt Labs in a deal valuing the combined entity at between $5B and $10B — Fivetran, a startup used by companies to manage and prepare data for analytics and artificial intelligence …
The Information: Perplexity struggles to scale its shopping and ad businesses nearly a year after launching ad sales and in-app purchasing, frustrating marketers and merchants — Perplexity has drawn plenty of its headlines for its relentless fundraising—which recently valued the artificial intelligence search firm …
The Information: Sources: OpenAI is recruiting from Apple's design, manufacturing, and supply chain teams, as it targets late 2026 or early 2027 for its first devices — As OpenAI's plans to make devices infused with its artificial intelligence get closer to reality, the company is increasingly plucking talent …
Anissa Gardizy / The Information: Source: Nvidia is scaling back DGX Cloud to primarily internal R&D use; DGX Cloud was initially envisioned to compete with major cloud providers like AWS — Nvidia is stepping back from its nascent cloud computing business, which had put it in quasi-competition with Amazon Web Services.
The Information: Sources: Amazon is developing consumer AR glasses codenamed Jayhawk with microphones, speakers, a camera, and color display, set for late 2026 or early 2027 — Amazon is developing a pair of augmented-reality glasses for consumers, say two people with knowledge of the plans.
Sri Muppidi / The Information: OpenAI told investors that it projects its cash burn this year through 2029 will rise to a total of $115B, about $80B higher than it previously expected — OpenAI recently had both good news and bad news for shareholders. Revenue growth from ChatGPT is accelerating at a more rapid rate than the company projected half a year ago.
Katie Roof / The Information: Source: AI contractor marketplace Mercor has received investment offers valuing it as high as $10B, just six months after raising $100M at a $2B valuation — The frothiness of the artificial intelligence boom is starting to look like 1999...or 2021. Startups are again receiving unsolicited …
Theo Wayt / The Information: Sources: plans for X Money, a nationwide peer-to-peer payments service integrated into X, have stalled as DFS NY and other state regulators raise concerns — For decades, one of Elon Musk's biggest ambitions has been using technology to disrupt and replace traditional banks and payments processors.
Cory Weinberg / The Information: Filing: StubHub, which is planning a September IPO, says revenue grew 3% to $828M in H1, missing its earlier projection of $885M, with adjusted EBITDA down 7% — Even as StubHub makes a renewed push to go public, its business isn't expanding as quickly as it had hoped.
The Information: Sources: Meta Superintelligence Labs' leaders have discussed using Google or OpenAI's models to power Meta AI and other AI features in Meta's social media apps — Meta Platforms' plans to improve the artificial intelligence features in its apps could lead the company to partner with Google or OpenAI, two of its biggest AI rivals.
The Information: Sources: DeepSeek plans to use Huawei's Ascend AI chips to train smaller versions of its upcoming R2 models but will still use Nvidia chips for largest models — DeepSeek, one of China's leading artificial intelligence developers, has decided to use Huawei Technologies' AI chips to train …
The Information: Sources: Apple executives have discussed acquiring Mistral AI and Perplexity, with Eddy Cue as the most vocal champion within the company for such AI deals — This summer, investment bankers came knocking on Apple's door with a pitch: Was the iPhone maker interested in doing a major acquisition …
The Information: Source: Snap is considering raising outside money to fund Spectacles development or spinning off Spectacles, to compete with deeper-pocketed rivals like Meta — For nearly as long as Evan Spiegel has run Snap Inc., his big bet has been on Spectacles, the company's augmented reality glasses.
The Information: Sources: OpenAI has been partially using Google search results scraped by a startup called SerpApi for ChatGPT responses on current events like news and sports — As it tries to unseat Google, OpenAI is relying on search data from an unlikely source: Google.
Qianer Liu / The Information: Sources: Nvidia told suppliers like Amkor and Samsung to halt H20 chip production after China urged local tech firms to avoid H20 over alleged security concerns — Nvidia has told some of its component suppliers to suspend production work related to the H20, its chip tailor-made for the Chinese market …
The Information: Source: investors have offered cloud startup Vercel hundreds of millions at an $8B-$9B valuation, which would nearly triple its $3B valuation from 15 months ago — Vercel, a nine-year-old cloud startup that companies use to host and develop websites and artificial intelligence apps …
Sri Muppidi / The Information: Source: Anthropic is nearing $5B in annualized revenue, up from $4B reported on July 1, as it nears a deal to raise $5B led by Iconiq at a $170B valuation — This year's torrid deal-making pace is definitely not taking a pause for summer. On Wednesday, I reported that OpenAI is months ahead …
The Information: Sources: Ramp is in talks to raise $350M led by Iconiq at a ~$21B valuation, after raising $200M at a $16B valuation in June — Ramp, a six-year-old corporate card and expense management startup, is in discussions with investors to raise $350 million at a valuation of about $21 billion with the investment …
Stephanie Palazzolo / The Information: Sources: GPT-5 shows improved performance in coding, particularly in practical software engineering tasks, outperforming prior OpenAI models and Claude Sonnet 4 — GPT-5 is almost here, and we're hearing good things. The early reaction from at least one person who's used the unreleased version was extremely positive.
The Information: Sources: the number of Optimus humanoid robots Tesla has made this year is in the hundreds, well behind the pace needed to meet Musk's goal of producing 5K+ — Elon Musk says humanoid robots will be the future of Tesla. The company has a long way to go. — Tesla is well behind …
Qianer Liu / The Information: Sources: after Trump let Nvidia resume H20 chip sales to China, Nvidia told Chinese customers it has limited stocks and doesn't plan to restart production — President Donald Trump's recent decision allowing Nvidia to resume sales of the H20 artificial intelligence chips to China sent its Chinese customers …
The Information: Sources: OpenAI and Windsurf talks ended after Windsurf raised concerns over how its tech would fit into OpenAI's agreement to share tech with Microsoft — OpenAI's discussions to buy Windsurf, the maker of a popular artificial intelligence coding assistant formerly known as Codeium, have ended.
Catherine Perloff / The Information: Sources: Google told publishers it is hiring new staff to market its ad tech to big advertisers and ad agencies, signaling a renewed focus on publisher ad tech — Google's relations with publishers have suffered lately, as its shift to AI-powered searches has hurt traffic being sent to publishers' web sites.
The Information: Sources: mass production of Microsoft's next AI chip is delayed to 2026 and is expected to underperform Nvidia's Blackwell chip, released in late 2024 — Microsoft has spent years designing its own artificial intelligence chips, in part to reduce its dependence on Nvidia. It isn't going so well.