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

Get smarter about the day’s news in tech, media and finance by following Silicon Valley’s most-read executive newsletter.

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Recent Editions

Art by Clark Miller

Before Apple Lawsuit, a Growing Unease at iPhone Maker Over OpenAI

By Aaron Tilley · Jul 10, 2026 1:34pm PDT

In the months ahead of Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI on Friday, the iPhone maker’s concerns about OpenAI’s plans to compete in consumer hardware have mounted steadily. For starters, there was the seemingly never-ending stream of Apple employees jumping ship to join the AI startup. As those departures began to reach into the hundreds, Apple... In the months ahead of Apple’s lawsuit against OpenAI on Friday, the iPhone maker’s concerns...

Art: Clark Miller (photos: Getty Images)

How ‘Eggmaxing’ Became the Latest Fertility Quest

By Amy Dockser Marcus · Jul 10, 2026 7:32am PDT

Among the many private group chats circulating through Silicon Valley these days, one of the more unusual ones is a thread called “To Make an Omelette.” The chat, which was started last year, numbers more than 80 women, including tech founders and other white-collar professionals. (It was originally assembled by Aella, a figure within the Bay... Among the many private group chats circulating through Silicon Valley these days, one of the more...

Art by Mike Sullivan.

Susquehanna, an Early Backer of ByteDance, Is Stepping Back From China Venture Deals

By Juro Osawa and Jing Yang · Jul 10, 2026 6:00am PDT

U.S. investment firm Susquehanna International Group, one of ByteDance’s biggest shareholders, is winding down its China-based venture investment team, another sign of the challenges facing U.S. venture investors operating in China. SIG China’s managing director, Tim Gong, who ran the team, is expected to leave the firm, according to four people... U.S. investment firm Susquehanna International Group, one of ByteDance’s biggest shareholders, is...

How to Conduct a Competitive Analysis with Google Gemini

By The Information Partnerships · Jul 10, 2026 5:20am PDT

Partner Content

How to Conduct a Competitive Analysis with Google Gemini

By The Information Partnerships · Jul 10, 2026 5:20am PDT

Decisions about when, where, and how to expand a business are always fraught with uncertainty. The prospect of growing the business and reaching new customers with novel offerings is enticing, but a false step can be extremely costly. A well-researched competitive analysis can reduce this risk by surfacing potential stumbling blocks at the very... Decisions about when, where, and how to expand a business are always fraught with uncertainty....

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images.

Meta Finds a New Way to Spend a Fortune on AI

By Martin Peers · Jul 9, 2026 5:01pm PDT

The AI laggards are going on the offensive! Meta Platforms on Thursday unveiled its latest AI model, Muse Spark 1.1, a day after SpaceX’s AI unit introduced a new model of its own. Like SpaceX, Meta claimed its new model delivers performance comparable to that of established models from AI labs such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. We’ll have to... The AI laggards are going on the offensive! Meta Platforms on Thursday unveiled its latest AI...

Agility Robotics' Digit robot. Photo Courtesy of Citi.

Memory Startup ScaleFlux Plots IPO; Robots Descend on Citi HQ

By Valida Pau · Jul 9, 2026 3:21pm PDT

A $26 billion U.S. stock offering by South Korean memory chip giant SK Hynix looks likely to benefit from colossal investor interest in the hardware companies powering the AI boom. At least one smaller tech manufacturer is angling to take advantage of the investor frenzy. ScaleFlux, a 12-year-old startup that designs memory controllers and... A $26 billion U.S. stock offering by South Korean memory chip giant SK Hynix looks likely to...

Michael McNamara, CEO of Lancium. Photo by Jeenah Moon/ Getty Images

Power Developer Behind OpenAI’s Stargate Data Center Is In Talks to Sell Stake

By Valida Pau and Ann Davis Vaughan · Jul 9, 2026 3:00pm PDT

Lancium, a power infrastructure developer behind OpenAI and Oracle’s data center campus in Texas, is in talks with major tech companies to sell a minority stake, according to people familiar with the matter. Blackstone-backed Lancium’s portfolio of gigawatt-scale Texas campuses has drawn interest from several tech companies, including Nvidia,... Lancium, a power infrastructure developer behind OpenAI and Oracle’s data center campus in Texas,...

Art by Mike Sullivan.

Cursor Is Developing an AI Agent to Compete With Claude Cowork

By Grace Kay · Jul 9, 2026 12:57pm PDT

Art by Mike Sullivan.

Cursor Is Developing an AI Agent to Compete With Claude Cowork

By Grace Kay · Jul 9, 2026 12:57pm PDT

Cursor is developing a general-purpose AI agent meant to compete with popular tools like Anthropic’s Claude Cowork, two people familiar with the project said, part of a broader push by the company to diversify beyond coding-focused tools. Work on the new agent began after Cursor started leasing compute capacity in April from SpaceX’s AI unit,... Cursor is developing a general-purpose AI agent meant to compete with popular tools like...

Image via Shutterstock

Traditional SaaS Loses in Corporate Budget Shift

By Laura Bratton and Aaron Holmes · Jul 9, 2026 10:39am PDT

As businesses spend more on AI from Anthropic and other new providers, traditional enterprise apps and IT services providers are sometimes fighting for a smaller piece of the pie.In one example, French biopharmaceutical giant Sanofi told me it’s using its own in-house AI agent developed with Claude Code and software from an AI startup,... As businesses spend more on AI from Anthropic and other new providers, traditional enterprise...

Art by Clark Miller

Universities Fret as Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta and DeepMind Lure Their Professors

By Laura Bratton · Jul 9, 2026 7:01am PDT

Renowned university professors and academic researchers keep joining frontier AI labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Remaining faculty say the brain drain is threatening the development of open source AI models in the West.So far this year, at least 22 professors and researchers have taken leave or stepped back from their roles at Stanford, ... Renowned university professors and academic researchers keep joining frontier AI labs such as ...

Art by Clark Miller

Khosla-Backed Startup Claims Breakthrough With Largest-Ever AI Model on an iPhone

By Aaron Tilley · Jul 9, 2026 6:00am PDT · 2 comments

Apple is on a quest to shrink powerful AI models to run on iPhones, which could cut down on cloud computing costs and enhance user privacy. But a small startup that emerged from stealth mode earlier this year says it recently got an AI model running on an iPhone bigger than any previous mobile model. The startup, PrismML, said it has shrunk down... Apple is on a quest to shrink powerful AI models to run on iPhones, which could cut down on cloud...

Marc Lore, founder and CEO of Wonder. Getty Images.

Marc Lore’s Wonder Ties $9 Billion-Valuation Fundraise to Future IPO

By Julia Hornstein and Cory Weinberg · Jul 8, 2026 6:08pm PDT · 1 comment

Marc Lore, founder and CEO of Wonder. Getty Images.

Marc Lore’s Wonder Ties $9 Billion-Valuation Fundraise to Future IPO

By Julia Hornstein and Cory Weinberg · Jul 8, 2026 6:08pm PDT · 1 comment

Wonder, the owner of GrubHub and Blue Apron, is lining up hundreds of millions of dollars, at a valuation of $9 billion, in what could be its last round before going public. To seal the deal, founder Marc Lore has been offering investors sweeteners—and putting his own money in the pot. The company has arranged to give investors in the... Wonder, the owner of GrubHub and Blue Apron, is lining up hundreds of millions of dollars, at a...

Elon Musk. Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

SpaceX Makes AI Advances, With a Little Help From Cursor

By Martin Peers · Jul 8, 2026 5:01pm PDT

How about that? SpaceX’s AI unit is rolling out some AI products of value to businesses. On Wednesday, SpaceXAI—as the unit is called—and its soon-to-be subsidiary Cursor jointly introduced Grok 4.5, a model “built for coding, agentic tasks and knowledge work.” A week ago, SpaceX introduced a “Voice Agent Builder” enabling small businesses to... How about that? SpaceX’s AI unit is rolling out some AI products of value to businesses. On...

Art via Getty Images.

The Information Special Report

AI Borrowers Tap a $3.5 Trillion Market Hiding in Plain Sight

By Dakin Campbell · Jul 8, 2026 11:06am PDT

The longer I cover the money behind AI, the more I learn about new markets opening up to data center developers or operators, chip manufacturers and others looking for money to build ambitious AI projects. That’s what makes this job so interesting. For the past several months, I’ve been wondering about a market I keep hearing referred to by the... The longer I cover the money behind AI, the more I learn about new markets opening up to data...

Art by Mike Sullivan

Binance to Cooperate Less on Crypto Cases, Justice Department Warns Staff in Memo

By Leo Schwartz · Jul 8, 2026 9:33am PDT

In early June, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a memo to its attorneys working on digital currency cases with a warning: They should expect less cooperation from the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, on future cases. The email came from Rachel Jones, the Justice Department’s digital currency counsel, and cc’d top attorneys such as... In early June, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a memo to its attorneys working on digital...

Art by Mike Sullivan.

Trump’s Crypto Legacy Is Remaking Traditional Finance

By Yueqi Yang · Jul 8, 2026 9:12am PDT · 2 comments

Art by Mike Sullivan.

The Information Finance

Trump’s Crypto Legacy Is Remaking Traditional Finance

By Yueqi Yang · Jul 8, 2026 9:12am PDT · 2 comments

At a recent crypto VC lunch I attended in New York, everyone was asked to go around the table and answer the same question: Has Donald Trump, the first pro-crypto president, been good or bad for the industry? The responses were divided. Trump ushered in a friendlier regulatory environment. But he has also been one of the bigger personal... At a recent crypto VC lunch I attended in New York, everyone was asked to go around the table and...

Photo by Andrew Sozinov/Shutterstock

China Plans to Let Top AI Firms Buy Limited Amount of Nvidia H200 Chips

By Qianer Liu · Jul 8, 2026 7:54am PDT

China plans to allow some of the country’s biggest AI companies to buy a small number of Nvidia’s H200 chips, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. The chip purchase approvals would offset a shortage caused by soaring demand for AI chips. U.S. President Donald Trump gave Nvidia permission in December to ship H200 chips to... China plans to allow some of the country’s biggest AI companies to buy a small number of Nvidia’s...

OpenAI researcher Noam Brown. Art by Clark Miller; YouTube.

OpenAI Researcher Says GPT-5.6 is Better at AI Research Than Most Human Interns

By Stephanie Palazzolo · Jul 8, 2026 7:00am PDT

I’m reporting from Seoul, where thousands of AI researchers from around the world have gathered for this year’s International Conference on Machine Learning. One of the most popular spots at the conference is OpenAI’s booth, which has been consistently encircled by a line of young AI PhDs.They’re waiting for the chance to talk to OpenAI... I’m reporting from Seoul, where thousands of AI researchers from around the world have gathered...

Jay Janner/The Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images.

Tesla’s Robotaxi Push Tests New Blueprint for Scaling Fast

By Grace Kay · Jul 8, 2026 6:00am PDT

Before Tesla launched its Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, last summer, it recruited hundreds of workers to test and monitor the system. When it expanded the service to Miami this past weekend, it relied on fewer drivers, according to three people with knowledge of the program. The Miami launch marked the first time Tesla has debuted the... Before Tesla launched its Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, last summer, it recruited hundreds...

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Photo by I-Hwa Cheng/Getty Images.

Nvidia’s New Hedge Against Chip Competitors? Partner with Them

By Phoebe Liu · Jul 7, 2026 5:49pm PDT · 1 comment

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Photo by I-Hwa Cheng/Getty Images.

Nvidia’s New Hedge Against Chip Competitors? Partner with Them

By Phoebe Liu · Jul 7, 2026 5:49pm PDT · 1 comment

Nvidia has a plan to deal with the growing list of AI server chip competitors: partner with them. In the latest example, Nvidia and AI chip startup d-Matrix are combining their respective hardware in a new system to power AI models, the companies told The Information exclusively. Nvidia has a plan to deal with the growing list of AI server chip competitors: partner with them....