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Late last year, in a meeting between Google and Meta Platform staffers, Google suggested that Meta partner on Android XR, the new software platform Google is developing for virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed-reality headsets, according to a person involved in the talks.
The two companies had long been in regular contact over Meta’s Quest VR headsets. The devices run on an open-source...
Venture capital leaders flew to Los Angeles this week for the annual Upfront Summit, a two-day conference featuring investors, founders and a smattering of celebrities like Lady Gaga. The energy was high and the references to the painful VC correction that pummeled valuations and knocked out VC firms were rare. The downtown is over, apparently!The cast of characters that hit the stage ran the...
My writing and reporting workload over the last few days has gotten pretty heavy, so I’ve regularly been grabbing Celsius energy drinks. The sleek cans have become ubiquitous in grocery and convenience stores. Celsius drinks, which taste better than Red Bull, contain a crazy caffeine jolt and have no added sugars. They’re favored by TikTokers, fitness buffs and finance bros alike.The South...
TikTok’s standoff with Universal Music Group is the latest example of how the app has changed from its roots as a lip-syncing platform toward one more focused on shopping.To recap: Late last month, TikTok and Universal Music Group, one of the biggest record labels in the world, failed to reach an agreement to let TikTok license UMG songs for use on its platform. TikTok removed UMG’s catalog,...
“Promoting or encouraging harmful or illegal activities is not acceptable,” Meta AI, an artificial intelligence assistant, told me the other day. “It's important to respect the safety and well-being of individuals and property.”I had asked the assistant, which is embedded in Meta Platforms’ apps and Ray-Ban smart glasses, how to kill the engine of a car—a question that most people would...
Nextdoor once looked like the next great bet for Bill Gurley, the prominent Benchmark venture capitalist known for early investments in Uber, Zillow and Stitch Fix. Now the neighborhood social network is looking like a missed opportunity for him.
Gurley urged Nextdoor co-founder Nirav Tolia not to sell the startup in 2018, when it was valued at $1.5 billion, according to people close to Tolia...
A new, ultracheap battery, a $233,000 electric supercar and a big five-year deal for iron-based batteries all deliver a single, pointed message—a fresh threat to Western auto and battery manufacturers already struggling to compete with their Chinese rivals.
We live in a consumer-driven economy—consumer spending accounts for two-thirds of the U.S. GDP. Yet Carta recently reported that just 7% of seed capital raised on the site last year went to consumer companies, the smallest share since 2018. Andreessen Horowitz meaningfully cut its consumer investing team and folded it under its finance investing lead partner. Lerer Hippeau, another venture firm...
On February 28, 2024, The Information published an article “Apollo Names Partner to Lead Its $100 Billion Climate Push.”
The article did not meet The Information’s editorial standards and has been retracted. Any links to it have been disabled.
Big news tonight in the enterprise software sector—and we’re not talking about Salesforce introducing a dividend (although that’s notable). No, the real headline is an AI-inspired changing of the guard at Snowflake, until recently a fast-growing enterprise software hotshot whose 2020 IPO turned into a blockbuster. Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman is retiring, to be succeeded by Sridhar Ramaswamy, a...