The Information

Photo via Allen Control Systems.

Anti-Drone AI Startup in Talks for $2 Billion Valuation

By Julia Hornstein · May 7, 2026 12:32pm PDT · 1 comment

Allen Control Systems, a four-year-old startup building an autonomous weapons station that can shoot down drones, is aiming to raise new funding at a valuation of $2 billion before the investment, according to two people with knowledge of the efforts. The startup is targeting a round size of roughly $200 million, the people said. The company’s... Allen Control Systems, a four-year-old startup building an autonomous weapons station that can...

From left, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella via Getty. Art by Clark Miller.

OpenAI’s AI Chip Deal With Broadcom Hits $18 Billion Financing Snag

By Anissa Gardizy · May 7, 2026 11:09am PDT

When OpenAI and chip designer Broadcom announced last fall that they would make custom artificial intelligence chips together, they positioned it as a done deal. The companies said the deal would bring enough chips online before 2030 to consume 10 gigawatts of power, equivalent to five Hoover Dams’ worth of electricity, in a bid to lessen OpenAI... When OpenAI and chip designer Broadcom announced last fall that they would make custom artificial...

Binance's Yi He, left, and Richard Teng. Photos by Getty Images

Treasury Department Demands Binance Compliance After Iran Crypto Reports

By Leo Schwartz · May 7, 2026 9:05am PDT

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has privately demanded that Binance comply with a monitoring program U.S. regulators imposed on the crypto exchange in 2023, when it pleaded guilty to charges related to sanctions and anti–money-laundering violations, The Information has learned. The Treasury Department’s request—which it sent to... The U.S. Department of the Treasury has privately demanded that Binance comply with a monitoring...

Polymarket's Situation Room pop-up in Washington in March. Alex Kent/The Washington Post/Getty Images.

Polymarket’s Homecoming Is Shaky and its U.S. CEO Is AWOL

By Michael Roddan and Yueqi Yang · May 6, 2026 6:00am PDT

Polymarket's Situation Room pop-up in Washington in March. Alex Kent/The Washington Post/Getty Images.

Polymarket’s Homecoming Is Shaky and its U.S. CEO Is AWOL

By Michael Roddan and Yueqi Yang · May 6, 2026 6:00am PDT

Four years after its was exiled from the U.S., Polymarket was desperate to get back into the country. To make that happen, the prediction market bought a derivative and futures exchange that had just gotten a U.S. license and retained its chief executive, Justin Hertzberg, to run Polymarket U.S. Hertzberg appears to be CEO in name only. His main... Four years after its was exiled from the U.S., Polymarket was desperate to get back into the...

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta. Photo by David Paul Morris/Getty Images

Meta Is Building an AI Agent Called ‘Hatch’ and an AI Shopping Tool in Instagram

By Jyoti Mann · May 5, 2026 3:33pm PDT

Meta Platforms is building a consumer version of the AI agent OpenClaw and a new agentic shopping tool, people familiar with the efforts said, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg pushes for products to deliver returns on the company’s huge artificial intelligence investments. Meta is training the OpenClaw-inspired agent, internally called “Hatch,” with the... Meta Platforms is building a consumer version of the AI agent OpenClaw and a new agentic shopping...

Anthropic Co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei. Photo by Chance Yeh/Getty Images

Anthropic Commits to Spending $200 Billion on Google’s Cloud and Chips

By Sri Muppidi, Erin Woo and Amir Efrati · May 5, 2026 1:20pm PDT

When Google last month said it would supply Anthropic with an astonishing five gigawatts of server capacity, the companies didn’t put a dollar figure on that commitment. But as part of the deal, which begins next year, Anthropic plans to spend about $200 billion with Google over five years, according to a person with knowledge of it. The... When Google last month said it would supply Anthropic with an astonishing five gigawatts of...

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xAI’s Fast, Cheap Data Center Build-Out Has Hidden Costs

By Theo Wayt and Valida Pau · May 5, 2026 10:10am PDT · 3 comments

SpaceX is touting xAI’s ability to build data centers quickly and cheaply as a major advantage over rival AI labs, part of a pitch for its upcoming initial public offering. For instance, in SpaceX’s draft IPO prospectus, the company said xAI brought the first two chip clusters at its second data center online at roughly a quarter of what it... SpaceX is touting xAI’s ability to build data centers quickly and cheaply as a major advantage...

Art by Shutterstock; Mike Sullivan.

Amazon Weighs ‘Hybrid Mode’ AI Searches on Retail Site

By Catherine Perloff · May 5, 2026 6:00am PDT

Art by Shutterstock; Mike Sullivan.

Amazon Weighs ‘Hybrid Mode’ AI Searches on Retail Site

By Catherine Perloff · May 5, 2026 6:00am PDT

Amazon has so far kept its Rufus AI shopping assistant largely separate from its main commerce search bar. But the retail giant is leaving the door open to adding AI commentary to search results, bringing browsing and researching more seamlessly into the buying process. That includes hybrid modes, such as Amazon showing a conversational blurb... Amazon has so far kept its Rufus AI shopping assistant largely separate from its main commerce...

Anthropic co-founder and president, Daniela Amodei. Kimberly White/Getty Images.

Anthropic in Talks to Buy AI Chips From U.K. Startup

By Stephanie Palazzolo and Anissa Gardizy · May 2, 2026 7:00am PDT · 2 comments

As Anthropic’s sales explode, straining the servers it uses, the company is considering adding another source of AI server chips in addition to existing suppliers Google, Amazon and Nvidia. The maker of Claude has recently been in talks with London-based startup Fractile to buy its inference chips, which aim to run AI models efficiently, when... As Anthropic’s sales explode, straining the servers it uses, the company is considering adding...

Philip Johnston, CEO of Starcloud. Screenshot via YouTube

Starcloud in Talks for $2.2 Billion Valuation as SpaceX Stirs Interest

By Theo Wayt and Julia Hornstein · Apr 30, 2026 2:24pm PDT · 1 comment

Starcloud, a two-year-old startup building orbital data centers, has told investors it’s in talks to raise at least $200 million at a valuation of around $2.2 billion after the investment, according to a person involved in the deal. The discussions come just one month after Redmond, Wash.-based Starcloud said it raised $170 million at a $1.1... Starcloud, a two-year-old startup building orbital data centers, has told investors it’s in talks...

Photo by David Kawai/ Getty Images.

Shopify Seeks Licenses to Push Deeper Into Fintech

By Ann Gehan · Apr 30, 2026 6:00am PDT

Commerce giant Shopify is seeking regulatory approvals to take a bigger role in offering financial and payments services to the millions of merchants using its software. Shopify has already secured money transmitter licenses in more than a dozen U.S. states to hold and move funds itself, and it is seeking them nationwide. If that happens, the... Commerce giant Shopify is seeking regulatory approvals to take a bigger role in offering...

Michael Nicolls, senior vice president for Starlink at SpaceX, during a keynote speech at MWC Barcelona 2026 in Barcelona, Spain, on Monday, March 2, 2026. Photo by Angel Garcia/Getty Images

SpaceX’s Starlink Revenue Per User Fell 18% As Customers Quadrupled

By Valida Pau and Theo Wayt · Apr 29, 2026 10:53am PDT

Michael Nicolls, senior vice president for Starlink at SpaceX, during a keynote speech at MWC Barcelona 2026 in Barcelona, Spain, on Monday, March 2, 2026. Photo by Angel Garcia/Getty Images

SpaceX’s Starlink Revenue Per User Fell 18% As Customers Quadrupled

By Valida Pau and Theo Wayt · Apr 29, 2026 10:53am PDT

SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service quadrupled its individual subscribers between 2023 and 2025—but the average revenue each subscriber brought in fell 18% to $81 a month in that period, a draft version of SpaceX’s initial public offering prospectus shows. The decline in Starlink’s ARPU reflects the service’s introduction of... SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service quadrupled its individual subscribers between 2023...

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Photo by Getty.

OpenAI Sees $8 ChatGPT Driving Consumer Subscribers to 122 Million This Year

By Sri Muppidi · Apr 28, 2026 2:56pm PDT · 6 comments

For three years, OpenAI has generated most of its revenue from people paying $20 a month for subscriptions to ChatGPT. This year, it is forecasting a massive shift, expecting a cheaper, ad-supported tier will both draw new users and cause tens of millions of its paying subscribers to downgrade, according to previously undisclosed projections. ... For three years, OpenAI has generated most of its revenue from people paying $20 a month for...

Satya Nadella, left, and Sam Altman. Photos by Getty Images.

How Nadella and Altman Averted a Legal War Over AWS

By Aaron Holmes and Sri Muppidi · Apr 28, 2026 6:44am PDT

For years, executives at Microsoft have become accustomed to tussling with OpenAI over the terms of the companies’ complicated business partnership, which gave Microsoft exclusive rights to sell OpenAI’s technology to cloud customers. Then two months ago, the ChatGPT maker announced a surprise deal to sell its AI to businesses through Amazon, a... For years, executives at Microsoft have become accustomed to tussling with OpenAI over the terms...

Tencent headquarters in Shenzhen. Photo by Cheng Xin/Getty Images

Tencent’s New Model Shows Improvement, Partly Thanks to Anthropic

By Juro Osawa · Apr 28, 2026 6:00am PDT

Chinese tech giant Tencent’s latest AI model has generated positive reviews from developers. But the company probably owes some of that success to Anthropic. Tencent employees used Anthropic’s Claude to assist them with evaluating and fine-tuning the model, known as Hy3, to improve its performance, according to two people with direct knowledge... Chinese tech giant Tencent’s latest AI model has generated positive reviews from developers. But...

Google CEO Sundar Pichai attends a dinner with U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in the State Dining Room at the White House on March 19, 2026 in Washington, DC. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Google Signs Classified AI Deal With Pentagon Amid Employee Opposition

By Erin Woo · Apr 27, 2026 9:55pm PDT · 1 comment

Google CEO Sundar Pichai attends a dinner with U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in the State Dining Room at the White House on March 19, 2026 in Washington, DC. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Google Signs Classified AI Deal With Pentagon Amid Employee Opposition

By Erin Woo · Apr 27, 2026 9:55pm PDT · 1 comment

Google and the Department of Defense signed a deal allowing the Pentagon to use Google’s AI models on classified work, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. The agreement allows the Pentagon to use Google’s AI for “any lawful government purpose,” according to the person—echoing language that has been controversial in other... Google and the Department of Defense signed a deal allowing the Pentagon to use Google’s AI...

Art via Mike Sullivan

Microsoft Tightens Grip on GPUs, Pressuring AI Customers

By Aaron Holmes, Anissa Gardizy and Stephanie Palazzolo · Apr 24, 2026 6:00am PDT · 1 comment

AI startups are struggling to access Nvidia graphics processing units as Microsoft and other cloud providers divert GPU stockpiles to their internal teams or bigger cloud customers, leaving smaller firms scrambling for the remaining servers at higher prices. The supply crunch is impacting well-funded AI startups that have raised money from... AI startups are struggling to access Nvidia graphics processing units as Microsoft and other...

Michael Truell, CEO of Cursor. Photo by Big Event Media/Getty Images.

Behind Cursor’s Deal With SpaceX, Anthropic and Compute Costs Loomed Large

By Cory Weinberg, Julia Hornstein, Erin Woo and Katie Roof · Apr 23, 2026 7:41pm PDT

Weeks before Cursor agreed to a $60 billion potential takeover from SpaceX, the hot AI coding startup set out to raise billions of dollars. As its leaders made the rounds among tech’s largest investors, they started to hear an unfamiliar message: No, thanks. Many investment firms usually capable of writing the largest checks into startups,... Weeks before Cursor agreed to a $60 billion potential takeover from SpaceX, the hot AI coding...

Art via Mike Sullivan

Berkshire Hathaway, Chubb Win Approval to Drop AI Insurance Coverage

By Laura Bratton · Apr 23, 2026 6:00am PDT · 2 comments

Major insurers including Berkshire Hathaway and Chubb are taking steps to cut AI-related damages from corporate insurance policies, and U.S. state regulators are giving them the green light. Insurers are trying to get ahead of risks from companies that use generative artificial intelligence to automate tasks, stoked by the fast pace of... Major insurers including Berkshire Hathaway and Chubb are taking steps to cut...

Art via Shutterstock

Tencent, Alibaba in Talks to Invest in DeepSeek at $20 Billion-Plus Valuation

By The Information Staff · Apr 22, 2026 4:17am PDT

Art via Shutterstock

Tencent, Alibaba in Talks to Invest in DeepSeek at $20 Billion-Plus Valuation

By The Information Staff · Apr 22, 2026 4:17am PDT

Chinese tech giants Tencent Holdings and Alibaba Group are in talks to invest in DeepSeek, the AI upstart that recently started fundraising for the first time, according to four people with knowledge of the conversations. DeepSeek, owned by Chinese hedge fund High-Flyer Capital Management, is now seeking to raise funding at a valuation of more... Chinese tech giants Tencent Holdings and Alibaba Group are in talks to invest in DeepSeek, the AI...