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.
The Information: Sources: DeepSeek's highly anticipated R2 model faces delays due to a shortage of Nvidia server chips in China, exacerbated by the US ban of Nvidia's H20 chips — The latest round of U.S. chip export controls may have curbed DeepSeek's rise, at least for now.
Sahil Patel / The Information: Sources: Google reduces its Google TV and Android TV budget by 10% and cuts Android TV and Google TV's ~300 employees by up to 25%, as it focuses on YouTube — Google has cut its smart TV budget and trimmed its team—marking the most concrete signs yet of the company's waning interest competing …
Natasha Mascarenhas / The Information: Current and former employees of OpenAI have sold nearly $3B worth of shares in tender offers since 2021, with $1.5B+ going to SoftBank alone — My colleague Sri Muppidi broke the news Wednesday of OpenAI's latest fundraising talks as it seeks to raise an unprecedented $40 billion.
Cory Weinberg / The Information: Source: Chime's IPO is expected to price at ~$11B, down from its $25B private valuation in 2021; every VC-backed IPO in the past 12 months has been a down round — When banking app Chime goes public next month, it will mark the eighth straight venture capital-backed initial public offering …
The Information: Sources on how Apple declined a deal from Elon Musk to use SpaceX instead of Globalstar for its iOS SOS feature and its 2015 plans to build satellite internet — Three years ago, Elon Musk approached Apple with an eleventh-hour offer. — Musk had heard that Apple was about to announce …
Cory Weinberg / The Information: Chime's S-1: MyPay revenue totaled $64.3M in Q1 vs. estimated credit losses from the product of $57.3M, highlighting the risks with the paycheck advance product — Last summer, banking app Chime introduced a lending product that let customers borrow small amounts to get them through to their next paycheck.
Qianer Liu / The Information: Sources: Chinese officials recently told some top local tech companies that the government will be more active in overseeing their AI data centers and AI chips — Chinese officials in the past two months told some of the country's top technology companies that the government …
Erin Woo / The Information: Sources: ahead of I/O on May 20, Google is developing an AI “software development lifecycle agent” to help coders, and a Pinterest-like feature for consumers — After weeks of news about Google's antitrust travails, the tech giant will try to reset the narrative next week …
Stephanie Palazzolo / The Information: Source: Anthropic offers to buy back shares from current and former employees, the first transaction of its kind for Anthropic, valuing the startup at $61.5B — Anthropic is offering to buy back shares from hundreds of current and former employees, the first transaction of its kind for the four-year-old company.
Qianer Liu / The Information: Sources: Nvidia told ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent, and others that it is tweaking its AI chips so they can be sold in China without breaching US export rules — The U.S. government is steadily tightening the noose on Nvidia's sales to China. But the AI chip giant isn't giving up on the market.
Sri Muppidi / The Information: Sales data: AI evaluation startups have modest revenue; Weights & Biases hit $50M ARR by Dec. 2024, but only 2% of that was from its AI evaluation product Weave — Startups whose products evaluate artificial intelligence to make sure it isn't making things up or delivering unsafe results …
Erin Woo / The Information: A look at Google's efforts to improve Search with AI; sources: its leaders have struggled to articulate a vision for how they want Search features to evolve — Next week, a federal judge will start the process of determining how to fix Google's search engine, which he ruled last summer was an illegal monopoly.