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Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, a longtime venture capitalist, early this year talked with directors of OpenAI about joining the board that governs the artificial intelligence startup valued at more than $80 billion, according to a person who has spoken to board members.
The talks were preliminary, and it’s not clear if the board is still considering Tan, whose career has intersected with that of...
Elon Musk seems to enjoy getting into verbal fisticuffs with other CEOs (as Bob Iger of Disney can attest). But his attacks on OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman in a lawsuit last week may have a strategic purpose. In artificial intelligence, talent has long been a priceless commodity. And it’s a good bet Musk’s OpenAI battle has something to do with his effort to recruit or retain key employees for...
Linktree, the largest and best known among the dozens of startups offering link-in-bio tools—the landing pages that link creators’ social media accounts to product pages, podcasts and videos—is expanding into social commerce. The seven-year-old startup is testing an affiliate marketing program with Sephora, Revolve and Urban Outfitters. Creators will earn commissions of about 12% to 15%, although...
Nvidia’s rapid climb to become the third most valuable company has drawn comparisons to Cisco, whose success in selling routers during the dot-com boom briefly made it the world’s most valuable public company in 2000. But Matt Wood, a vice president of artificial intelligence products at Amazon Web Services which is among Nvidia’s biggest customers, scoffs at the comparison.
That “doesn’t check...
The AI startup world is something of a paradox right now. We keep hearing talk that we're in a bubble. And there’s no doubt that venture funding for young artificial intelligence startups is (mostly) free-flowing, which is great for founders. But the market isn’t so great for investors, particularly early-stage VC firms which are often competing with big tech firms like Google, Microsoft and...
Snowflake’s new CEO, Sridhar Ramaswamy, who took over from retiring chief executive Frank Slootman last week, inherited an unusual corporate structure. Ramaswamy has only four direct reports, much fewer than CEOs at most technology companies. By comparison, the CEOs of Salesforce and ServiceNow, two other large public software companies, have 12 and seven direct reports, respectively, according...
OpenView Venture Partners, the Boston-based venture capital firm whose abrupt decision to wind down late last year epitomized the challenges facing startup investors in the aftermath of the tech funding boom, has figured out its final chapter.
The 18-year-old firm plans to return the majority of a $571 million fund it raised a year ago to its limited partners, according to a private presentation...
IPO watchers are gearing up. We’re likely only a couple of weeks away from the next high-profile IPO, this time of Reddit, a social media service. The first big-name tech debut since last fall’s flurry of offerings from Instacart, Arm and Klaviyo, Reddit’s debut presents a test of investor gullibility. The company has suggested in its IPO filing—and some on Wall Street are echoing the case—that...
Later this week, I’m heading to South by Southwest, the annual tech and arts festival in Austin. If you’ll be in town, let’s get coffee or some BBQ! I’d also love to see you at The Information’s cocktail party on Friday night here, and our Saturday brunch and panel here. (Be sure to RSVP today, space is limited!)Creators have increasingly become a bigger part of the conference, but this year is...
In the go-go days of 2020–22, venture capitalists poured billions of dollars into African payment startups, enthusiastic about their potential to revolutionize access to financial services on the African continent. Among the lucky startups was Chipper Cash, a San Francisco–based firm that raised $300 million from Jeff Bezos’s Bezos Expeditions, Ribbit Capital and others. In 2021, Chipper expanded...