The Information’s 411 — Laurene Powell Jobs and Jenna Lyons (2020 WTF Summit)

This week we're presenting highlights from two interviews from the WTF Summit earlier this month. Emerson Collective's president Laurene Powell Jobs discusses her group's work on voting access as well as her ownership of The Atlantic magazine. Jenna Lyons, the former creative director for J Crew, talks about starting from the ground up with her new...

3h

In Ironic Twist, Google’s Pro-Privacy Move Boosted U.S. Antitrust Probe

Google has taken a lot of heat for violating people’s privacy. Now it could get in trouble for trying to protect it.When Google in January said it planned to follow Apple’s lead in increasing privacy protections by blocking most online advertising trackers, publishers of news and entertainment websites whose business relies on the trackers hit back.The...

10h

What TikTok’s Future Might Look Like Under Oracle and Walmart: The Information’s Tech Briefing

ByteDance’s hopes of getting President Trump’s approval for its proposed deal with Oracle appear to be dwindling by the day, judging by the blizzard of media reports about the debate going on inside the Trump administration. That raises the prospect that ByteDance will have to accept a less favorable deal by yielding control of the app to some conglomeration...

23h

Airbnb Opponents Take Fight to SEC Ahead of IPO

Dozens of affordable housing groups and community organizations that have long accused Airbnb of exacerbating housing shortages are taking their grievances to U.S. financial regulators just as the short-term rental giant prepares to go public.In a letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission viewed by The Information, the groups complain that...

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ByteDance Rival Kuaishou Seeks $50 Billion Valuation in Hong Kong IPO

Chinese online video startup Kuaishou, TikTok owner ByteDance’s biggest domestic rival, is seeking an initial public offering in Hong Kong as early as this year, according to people familiar with the matter. Kuaishou, which was valued at $28 billion in its most recent funding round last year, is aiming for a valuation of $50 billion in its planned IPO,...

1d

Snowflake Blitzes Wall Street: The Information’s Tech Briefing

We won’t make any more jokes about Snowflake melting under Wall Street’s spotlight. The data analytics firm had a spectacular opening day as a public company, its stock more than doubling from its $120 a share IPO price to close at $255 after trading as high as $299. It’s proof of the pent-up demand for tech IPOs, which should be good news for the flood...

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Bustle’s Goldberg Says Media Firm Is ‘Logical Candidate’ for SPAC Merger

If any digital media firm is likely to go public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company, it may well be Bryan Goldberg’s Bustle Digital Group, which has become an acquisition machine for troubled digital media firms like Mic and The Outline. In an interview with The Information, Goldberg said, “We would be logical candidates for something...

2d

With TikTok Deal, Oracle Could Gain Billion-Dollar Cloud Customer

Oracle’s deal to act as TikTok’s new “trusted technology partner” could be worth more than $1 billion in potential revenue annually for Oracle’s cloud business in the coming years, according to previously undisclosed data viewed by The Information.Revenue from housing TikTok’s data on Oracle’s servers would provide a major lift to the database company’s...

2d

Apple Gets Physical With New Service: The Information’s Tech Briefing

Apple today unveiled its latest foray into the subscription business with a new fitness service that will begin offering studio-style workouts later this year. You might think it would worry Peloton, whose business has lately been thriving, particularly as the new service, Fitness+, will be included in a new discounted bundle of Apple services. But...

2d

Zoom Invests in Big Messaging Upgrade in Challenge to Slack

Zoom Video Communications became a household name with a video conferencing service that has become a ubiquitous tool for businesses and students during the pandemic. Now Zoom is looking to seriously up its game in another important area: messaging. Zoom has been quietly working on a major upgrade to the messaging functions inside its video conferencing...

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