Tim Kentley-Klay, the co-founder and CEO of Zoox, one of the most high-profile and well-financed startups in the self-driving car world, has left the company, according to a person familiar with the matter. Carl Bass, the former CEO of Autodesk who has been a board director of Zo … | Continue reading
Tim Kentley-Klay, the co-founder and CEO of Zoox, one of the most high-profile and well-financed startups in the self-driving car world, has left the company, according to a person familiar with the matter. Carl Bass, the former CEO of Autodesk who has been a board director of Zo … | Continue reading
Between 2007 and 2010, I lived in New York and worked on a startup called drop.io, whose goal was to make it easy to privately share files and content across platforms. Given what I was working on in that period, I spent a lot of time talking about privacy.One theme—which I would … | Continue reading
Amazon and Google both tout voice shopping—the ability to make purchases and check on the status of orders with verbal commands—as significant features of their smart speakers. Some forecasts call for annual voice shopping sales to reach $40 billion in just a few years. But it ap … | Continue reading
When GitHub was acquired for $7.5 billion by Microsoft in June, friends texted Rachelle Gupta, an early GitHub recruiter, to congratulate her on what they assumed to be a windfall from her stock options.She told them she didn’t have any options. She had unknowingly let her stock … | Continue reading
Jeff Cavins employed many typical Silicon Valley tactics as he tried to grow his new company. The startup Outdoorsy—which helps people rent out their RVs to other travelers—got into a Palo Alto-based accelerator, raised more than $25 million in venture capital and eventually show … | Continue reading
The dockless scooter wars are in full swing. With the announcement of huge funding rounds at billion-dollar valuations, deals with ride-hailing companies and a spate of local regulatory action, there is a lot of attention being paid to the scooter market, and a lot of wild predic … | Continue reading
In the summer of 2008, I got an unusual invitation: Steve Jobs, then Apple’s chief executive officer, wanted me, then a Wall Street Journal reporter, to come to Apple headquarters to hear how well a fledgling online service for the iPhone—the App Store—did in its first month in b … | Continue reading
Today, The Information and the Wall Street Journal published a never-before-released audio transcript of an interview I conducted with Steve Jobs in 2008, a month after Apple opened the mobile floodgates by launching the App Store. You can listen to the entire interview and read … | Continue reading
For years, Amazon Web Services has coaxed companies and organizations into moving their computing chores into big Amazon facilities known as “public” data centers. But in recognizing that many potential customers aren’t ready to do that, AWS is increasingly embracing one of the h … | Continue reading
Admit it. You’ve done it. That social media post you put up. The Instagram post of you on vacation in Mykonos with your family. The LinkedIn entry stating how great your company is doing. The Facebook post donating to a cause you know little about. Social media has created a neve … | Continue reading
Tom Gruber, one of the original Siri cofounders, has left Apple, where he was recently the head of Siri’s Advanced Development group, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. Apple’s head of search, Vipul Ved Prakash, has also left the company. An Apple spokeswoman … | Continue reading
Self-driving car developer Zoox made a splash on Tuesday when it announced it raised a big round of funding at a valuation of $3.2 billion. But there is more to the deal than that eye-popping price. Investors in the new round, which include Atlassian Co-CEO Mike Cannon Brookes an … | Continue reading
Walmart is considering launching a subscription streaming video service to compete with Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, people familiar with the situation told The Information. Such a move could be enormously costly for the retailer but would demonstrate its determination to comp … | Continue reading
Facebook, which stopped using Google email and productivity applications inside the company a few years ago, is now mulling a switch back to the Google services for its employees, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions. Such a move would be an embarrassing setb … | Continue reading
Amazon Web Services already dominates the market for cloud services. Now, it is eyeing a part of the cloud business it doesn’t already control: the $14 billion global market for data center switches.AWS is considering selling its own networking switches for business customers—har … | Continue reading
Facebook Watch, the company’s bid to dethrone YouTube, has had a shaky first year.In the months after Watch’s launch last August, the number of people who visited the social network’s new section every day to watch shows produced by ABC, A&E Networks, Discovery and other smaller … | Continue reading
Large investors are putting their weight behind bike and scooter startups, setting up what likely will be a years-long, multibillion-dollar fight over the future of urban transportation. (See chart.)Funding is pouring into scooters and bikes far faster than in the early days of r … | Continue reading
As electric scooter-rental startups like Bird and Lime battle for market share on American streets, one company is already a winner: Segway-Ninebot, the Beijing-based firm that makes the scooters both companies use.The tech industry’s go-to scooter maker, which first made headlin … | Continue reading
Google may be about to take its most serious steps to get into the videogame business. The company is developing a subscription-based game streaming service that could work either on Google’s Chromecast or possibly a Google-made console still being developed, according to people … | Continue reading
Apple is considering creating a single subscription offering that would encompass its original TV shows, music service and magazine articles, two people familiar with the company’s plans told The Information.Such an ambitious offering would bear some similarity to Amazon’s Prime … | Continue reading
When Google unveiled its $550 million investment in Chinese online retail giant JD.com, the companies described the deal as a global alliance to expand their e-commerce businesses. But behind the scenes, according to a person familiar with the conversations, Google discussed how … | Continue reading
When a self-driving car prototype operated by Uber fatally struck a pedestrian in Tempe, Ariz., in March, Uber quickly identified the likely cause in software that caused the vehicle to ignore certain objects that its sensors detected. But a further realization dawned on some exe … | Continue reading
The founder of Bird, a year-old scooter rental service that has attracted $450 million from investors, including Sequoia Capital, already has sold some of his shares, according to people who were briefed on the unusual move. A regulatory filing suggests that the founder, Travis V … | Continue reading
Apple has hired a high-profile senior engineer of Alphabet’s Waymo self-driving vehicle unit, Jaime Waydo, to join the iPhone maker’s own self-driving vehicle project, known as Titan, according to a person briefed about the move.Ms. Waydo’s hiring could elevate the stature of App … | Continue reading
Electric scooter startups are aggressively seeking to raise money, telling potential investors that restrictions cities have placed on their operations won't impede their long-term growth. So far, Silicon Valley venture capital firms are all in.Skip, a shared electric scooter ope … | Continue reading
When Chinese tech giant Baidu bought hardware startup Raven Tech early last year for about $90 million, executives hoped the maker of smart speakers would be a lynchpin of Baidu’s artificial intelligence strategy. Raven’s central role seemed to be cemented when its speaker receiv … | Continue reading
Snap built a business on messages that disappear. But to keep the business going it needs to make sure its cash doesn’t. The company burned through $1.1 billion in the last five quarters, just on running its business (it spent more cash on acquisitions). At that rate, and with ju … | Continue reading
Keiretsu Forum doesn’t have the name recognition of Y Combinator or Andreessen Horowitz. But by some measures, the lesser-known organization has become the world’s most active startup investing group. Keiretsu said it invested in 207 startups last year, which is more than any ang … | Continue reading
Earlier this month, Thomas Caulfield, the new CEO of chip manufacturer GlobalFoundries, went to Washington, D.C., to make his pitch that the U.S. federal government needs to do more to support domestic chip manufacturing.GlobalFoundries already has received funding and incentives … | Continue reading
Of all the factors that explain Netflix’s success in upending the media industry, the least understood may be just how little it operates like a traditional media company.At most studios and TV networks, decisions about whether to make a show or a movie can be made only by a hand … | Continue reading
Lyft has agreed to buy Motivate, which runs some of the biggest U.S. bike-share programs, according to two people briefed about the deal. The acquisition, which is likely to be worth $250 million or more, will quickly insert Lyft into the small but fast-growing U.S. bike-sharing … | Continue reading
Lyft has agreed to buy Motivate, which runs some of the biggest U.S. bike-share programs, according to two people briefed about the deal. The acquisition, which is likely to be worth $250 million or more, will quickly insert Lyft into the small but fast-growing U.S. bike-sharing … | Continue reading
Andy Rubin, the founder of a struggling Android smartphone maker that according to Bloomberg is considering selling itself, told employees in an email this afternoon that “no one (including me at this moment) knows what the best thing for the company will be.” In the email, obtai … | Continue reading
When a group of a dozen or more private technology executives gather at Andreessen Horowitz’s offices today, they will be taking notes instead of pitching. The topic at hand: “How to be a great CFO.”The pilot program, aimed at CFOs of small companies and finance professionals asp … | Continue reading
Oracle’s efforts to catch up to Amazon in the cloud market are running into obstacles—from Oracle customers upset with the company’s aggressive sales tactics.Several big Oracle customers, including oil and gas exploration company Halliburton, toy maker Mattel and electricity prov … | Continue reading
Lyft plans to seek permits to run an electric scooter service in San Francisco, The Information has learned. It is the clearest sign yet that the No. 2 ride-hailing firm plans to compete against its bigger rival Uber and a host of startups in the fast-growing market of electric s … | Continue reading
As a venture capitalist investing in applications of artificial intelligence for the future of work, especially the automation of offices, factories and farms, I try to regularly visit different places and work settings. Recently, I had the opportunity to return to the Midwest on … | Continue reading
Last fall, on a flight back from China, Evan Spiegel decided to remake Snapchat.Inspired by apps he’d seen in that country, Mr. Spiegel wanted to create a new version separating users’ friends’ content from the professional media. Each category would be sorted by an algorithm rat … | Continue reading
Amazon has rapidly expanded same-day and overnight delivery service in recent years, an expensive proposition for the online retailer. To control rising costs, the company has enlisted hundreds of thousands of independent drivers who use their own cars to deliver packages to cons … | Continue reading
Tesla CEO Elon Musk put into words what has been happening at Tesla, where he recently took personal control over sales and vehicle production. Musk sent a two-paragraph email to his employees this morning, first reported by Jalopnik, saying the company has been “undertaking a t … | Continue reading
One of the more out-there experiments in how the tech industry wants to shape the future of housing will kick off this summer in San Francisco’s South Park neighborhood, which is dotted with venture capital offices. In some small apartments in a renovated building, beds, closets … | Continue reading
Two years ago, Uber, already dominant in Brazil, considered buying a small local rival called 99. But then-Uber CEO Travis Kalanick wasn’t interested. He believed Uber could crush 99 instead.That left an opening for Uber’s archrival, China’s Didi Chuxing, to establish a beachhead … | Continue reading
Walmart and Target have decided that the best way to compete with Amazon in shopping is to follow its playbook in the cloud.Both companies are switching to cheap unbranded “white box” servers running open-source software for their data centers, instead of equipment made by firms … | Continue reading
One of the ideas I am most proud of contributing to was “Trust” on Venmo. Part of Andrew Kortina and Iqram Magdon-Ismail’s original version of Venmo, the idea was to allow people who signed up for Venmo to “trust” (vs. friend or follow) other users. That gave the trusted person t … | Continue reading
Until very recently, developers who wanted to add a skill to Microsoft’s digital assistant Cortana had to fill out a roughly 30-line form and paste it into an email to the Cortana team, with links to their privacy policies and terms and conditions. Then they had to wait for somet … | Continue reading
If the 2016 election taught social media platforms anything about their responsibility to prevent the spread of malicious disinformation, the companies still aren’t sure what, exactly, to do about it.At least that was the consensus at a panel discussion Thursday night at Stanford … | Continue reading
A month after debuting on the New York Stock Exchange by going public without selling new shares—an unprecedented direct listing—it is clear that Spotify’s experiment was a success. The Swedish music streaming company is trading 21% higher than where its stock traded in the priva … | Continue reading