The Briefing by Martin Peers, Jessica Lessin and the team at The Information

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The Briefing

By Martin Peers, Jessica Lessin and the team at The Information

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Recent Editions

Marc Rowan, chief executive officer of Apollo Global Management LLC. Photo by Michael Nagle/Getty Images.

Apollo Taps New AI Sector Head to Chase More Megafinancings

By Dakin Campbell and Valida Pau · Aug 5, 2026 11:35am PDT

Apollo Global Management is looking to turn its blockbuster $35 billion Broadcom financing deal into repeat business, naming a new leader to coordinate teams and land more financing business from chipmakers and other tech companies at the center of the AI build-out. The firm in recent months tapped partner Reed Rayman to lead its chip-focused... Apollo Global Management is looking to turn its blockbuster $35 billion Broadcom financing deal...

Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images

The Information Finance

Clarity Act Won’t Be Enough to Bring Crypto Boom Back

By Yueqi Yang · Aug 5, 2026 10:58am PDT

After helping elect President Trump in 2024, the crypto industry had high hopes for getting legislation providing a clear regulatory framework for the sector—which the industry hoped would unlock a huge wave of new interest from big money and mainstream investors alike. That bill, known as the Clarity Act, is now looking unlikely to pass... After helping elect President Trump in 2024, the crypto industry had high hopes for getting...

Getty Images.

How Meta Plans to Close the Gap with Anthropic and OpenAI in Coding

By Jyoti Mann · Aug 5, 2026 7:00am PDT

As Meta Platforms races to catch up with Anthropic and OpenAI, it’s asking thousands of engineers to use its in-house AI coding agent, MetaCode, in their day-to-day work in an effort to improve the coding capabilities of its AI models.Maher Saba, vice president of Meta’s Applied AI Engineering organization, last month asked engineers across the... As Meta Platforms races to catch up with Anthropic and OpenAI, it’s asking thousands of engineers...

ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming. VCG/Getty Images.

ByteDance’s Founder Rules Out Distillation on AI Models

By Juro Osawa and Qianer Liu · Aug 5, 2026 6:19am PDT

ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming. VCG/Getty Images.

ByteDance’s Founder Rules Out Distillation on AI Models

By Juro Osawa and Qianer Liu · Aug 5, 2026 6:19am PDT

ByteDance won’t resort to distillation as a shortcut to advancing its AI model capabilities, even if that means the company lags behind domestic rivals for now, founder Zhang Yiming told employees during a meeting last month. One reason, say people close to the company, is ByteDance’s complicated history with the U.S. government over the... ByteDance won’t resort to distillation as a shortcut to advancing its AI model capabilities, even...

Art by Mike Sullivan

China’s New AI Gold Rush: World Models

By Juro Osawa · Aug 5, 2026 6:00am PDT

When Hongyuan Lu finished his doctorate program in AI and engineering a year ago, he reached out to some investors to see if he could raise money for a startup to build world models, AI systems that can understand and simulate the physical world. But the investors, who were focusing on AI agent apps at the time, weren’t interested. This year,... When Hongyuan Lu finished his doctorate program in AI and engineering a year ago, he reached out...

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

SpaceX Reports Lots of Red Ink and Makes Big Promises

By Martin Peers · Aug 4, 2026 5:00pm PDT

Question: How is the 24-year-old SpaceX like a young startup? It’s burning twice as much cash as it brings in as revenue! That’s one takeaway from SpaceX’s first earnings report as a public company, in which the company revealed it burned $16 billion in the second quarter, on $7.8 billion in revenue. That’s thanks to a whopping $18.4 billion in... Question: How is the 24-year-old SpaceX like a young startup? It’s burning twice as much cash as...

Photo by Getty

Inside the Airtable-Bending Spoons Sale

By Valida Pau, Stephanie Palazzolo and Julia Hornstein · Aug 4, 2026 2:25pm PDT

What an ending. Airtable, valued at $11 billion in 2021 after a trio of funding rounds in under two years, is being acquired by Italian conglomerate Bending Spoons for just $1.285 billion in cash, the companies said on Tuesday. The price tag for the once-hot productivity app seems like a blow to shareholders, particularly those like hedge fund... What an ending. Airtable, valued at $11 billion in 2021 after a trio of funding rounds in under...

Art via Getty Images

How Firms Like Coinbase Are Building Coding Agents to Complement Anthropic's Claude Code

By Laura Bratton · Aug 4, 2026 10:03am PDT

Art via Getty Images

How Firms Like Coinbase Are Building Coding Agents to Complement Anthropic's Claude Code

By Laura Bratton · Aug 4, 2026 10:03am PDT

Coinbase and some other tech-savvy firms such as Shopify and Ramp have built their own AI coding agents for internal use, giving their employees an alternative to pricey options from firms like Anthropic and OpenAI.Coinbase, the cryptocurrency exchange, built an AI coding agent called Forge, which launched to all of its engineers in April of... Coinbase and some other tech-savvy firms such as Shopify and Ramp have built their own AI coding...

Art via Getty Images; Mike Sullivan

A Customer Feedback Startup Is in Talks For $125 Million Financing Led By Anthropic Investor

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 4, 2026 7:11am PDT · 1 comment

AI that generates realistic voices has come a long way. It powers applications like ChatGPT, phone-based customer support and increasingly helps businesses solicit verbal feedback from their customers about products or experiences.One AI startup in that field is San Francisco-based Listen Labs, which helps businesses automate interviews with... AI that generates realistic voices has come a long way. It powers applications like ChatGPT,...

Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images

Why a SpaceX-Tesla Merger Could Benefit Shareholders in Both Companies

By Anita Ramaswamy · Aug 4, 2026 6:00am PDT · 4 comments

In 2016, Elon Musk defended Tesla’s proposed acquisition of SolarCity, a solar energy firm co-founded and run by his first cousins, by calling it a “no-brainer.” As it turned out, the purported benefits of the $2.6 billion deal, which brought a cash-burning, debt-laden firm under the Tesla umbrella, never materialized, and SolarCity lost market... In 2016, Elon Musk defended Tesla’s proposed acquisition of SolarCity, a solar energy firm...

Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir. Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images

Palantir’s Rocket-Ship Growth

By Martin Peers · Aug 3, 2026 5:01pm PDT

Palantir is truly the Nvidia of AI software. On Monday, the company delivered another rip-roaring quarterly result, showing revenue up a blistering 93%, well ahead of what it had projected. The company has accelerated revenue growth every quarter for three years, from a 13% rate of expansion in the second quarter of 2023. In that time, Palantir’... Palantir is truly the Nvidia of AI software. On Monday, the company delivered another rip-roaring...

Boxing robots made by China's Unitree. Photo: Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty

What Thomas Edison Says About Who Will Win the AI and Battery Race

By Steve LeVine · Aug 3, 2026 9:01am PDT

Boxing robots made by China's Unitree. Photo: Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty

What Thomas Edison Says About Who Will Win the AI and Battery Race

By Steve LeVine · Aug 3, 2026 9:01am PDT

In the 1880s, Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse launched a savage industrial war over who would dominate the era’s powerful new innovation—electricity. In the 1880s, Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse launched a savage industrial war over who...

CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman, U.S. President Donald Trump and CEO of DeepMind Demis Hassabis at G7 Summit in June. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

White House to Host AI Companies on Tuesday to Review AI Framework

By Leo Schwartz and Stephanie Palazzolo · Aug 3, 2026 7:24am PDT · 2 comments

The Trump administration has invited staffers from major tech companies including OpenAI, Google and Anthropic to the White House on Tuesday to review the completed version of an AI oversight framework, according to five people familiar with the matter. The framework will create a voluntary procedure for AI labs to submit their models to the... The Trump administration has invited staffers from major tech companies including OpenAI, Google...

Jasjeet Sekhon, Chief Strategy Officer at Google DeepMind. Photo courtesy of the Berkeley Center for Responsible, Decentralized Intelligence.

Google DeepMind Exec Says Unprecedented Capex Is Actually a Bet On ‘RSI’

By Amir Efrati · Aug 3, 2026 7:01am PDT

Over the weekend, Jasjeet Sekhon, the chief strategy officer at Google’s DeepMind AI unit, used two words to describe what needs to happen to justify his industry’s unprecedented capital expenditures: recursive self-improvement. The white-hot term refers to AI that can automatically create better versions of itself.RSI is a “key part of the... Over the weekend, Jasjeet Sekhon, the chief strategy officer at Google’s DeepMind AI unit, used...

Art by Mike Sullivan

How an Apple iCloud Policy Fueled Employee Leaks Ahead of OpenAI Suit

By Aaron Tilley · Aug 3, 2026 6:00am PDT

In a lawsuit early last month, Apple accused former employees who are now at OpenAI of stealing a trove of trade secrets from the iPhone maker—in part by improperly accessing confidential Apple documents after they left the company. Even before the suit was filed, some of the more than 400 former Apple employees who now work at OpenAI... In a lawsuit early last month, Apple accused former employees who are now at OpenAI of stealing a...

Photo by Timothy A. Clary/ Getty Images

SpaceX Leads Crowded Earnings Week

By Martin Peers · Aug 2, 2026 3:01pm PDT

Photo by Timothy A. Clary/ Getty Images

SpaceX Leads Crowded Earnings Week

By Martin Peers · Aug 2, 2026 3:01pm PDT

Elon Musk fans have never had so many opportunities to hear from the man. On Tuesday, his newly public SpaceX will deliver its first earnings report, and we all expect Musk will be on the earnings call, in what would be his second call this earnings season following Tesla’s a couple of weeks earlier. (For a more expansive rundown of what will be... Elon Musk fans have never had so many opportunities to hear from the man. On Tuesday, his newly...

Art by Clark Miller

AI Infrastructure

Exclusive: Data Center Costs Set to Rise as U.S. States Move to Repeal Tax Breaks

By Ann Davis Vaughan · Aug 2, 2026 10:01am PDT · 1 comment

Governors and legislatures in U.S. states that previously welcomed data centers are suddenly moving to rip away sales tax breaks that could raise the price of every gigawatt of AI computing by several billion dollars, potentially adding 7% or more to equipment costs.In little-noticed moves that sharply accelerated this summer, four states rolled... Governors and legislatures in U.S. states that previously welcomed data centers are suddenly...

Art by Mike Sullivan.

Sunday Insights

Robinhood Now Makes More Revenue From Predictions Than From Stock Trades

By Yueqi Yang · Aug 2, 2026 8:00am PDT

Brokerage app Robinhood has quickly become a force in prediction markets, challenging the hold of Kalshi and Polymarket on the popular betting market. Robinhood’s prediction markets revenue surged more than tenfold year over year in the second quarter to $156 million, the company reported last week, as part of its second-quarter earnings update.... Brokerage app Robinhood has quickly become a force in prediction markets, challenging the hold of...

Art: Clark Miller

Why Apple Should Buy Granola

By Abram Brown · Aug 1, 2026 8:00am PDT · 1 comment

• The Big Read: Silicon Valley looks to a new biotech frontier—Montana • Garry Tan’s political dreams require this 32-year-old’s ‘grunt’ force • Plus, Recommendations—our weekly pop culture picks: “Dead Rabbit,” “The Amateur” and “The Drama”Here’s a thought that would’ve seemed startling not long ago: There’s a very good chance that... • The Big Read: Silicon Valley looks to a new biotech frontier—Montana • Garry Tan’s...

Art: Clark Miller; Liu photo courtesy of Forrest Liu

Garry Tan’s Political Dreams Require This 32-Year-Old’s ‘Grunt’ Force

By Eli Rosenberg · Aug 1, 2026 6:00am PDT · 2 comments

Art: Clark Miller; Liu photo courtesy of Forrest Liu

Garry Tan’s Political Dreams Require This 32-Year-Old’s ‘Grunt’ Force

By Eli Rosenberg · Aug 1, 2026 6:00am PDT · 2 comments

As Garry Tan, the Y Combinator CEO, has deepened his ambitions to become a political force, the task of turning his agenda into reality has often fallen on the shoulders of one guy: Forrest Liu, his political director. The work keeps Liu, 32, plenty busy—and occasionally requires him to put his body on the line as he drums up money and... As Garry Tan, the Y Combinator CEO, has deepened his ambitions to become a political force, the...