The Information Media Bias

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Amazon in Talks With Disney About ESPN Streaming Partnership

tech

Amazon has had early talks with Disney about working on the streaming version of ESPN it is developing, said people familiar with the matter. The tech giant could offer the service through one of its streaming offerings, helping to expand its distribution, while possibly also taking a minority stake in ESPN. Such an arrangement could shore up ESPN’s status as the biggest force in sports media, even as declining TV viewership and advertising, combined with rising sports programming costs, have squeezed the sports channel and Disney, its majority owner. It could also reposition the tech behemoth, which has been trying to make a dent in sports streaming,as more friend than foe to ESPN.

The Information     Aug 24, 2023

A New Creator Union Launches

The Hollywood strike has highlighted the lack of a similar labor movement within the creator economy, but new efforts to change that are emerging.The latest: the Creators Guild of America, a new group that aims to protect the rights and promote the interests of digital creators, launches Thursday. The nonprofit advocacy organization backed by creators such as YouTuber Justine Ezarik (iJustine) plans to provide its members with benefits such as accreditation for their projects, education, career mentorship, job opportunities and networking events. It also plans to launch a database that provides a record of creators’ work, similar to Amazon’s IMDb movie and TV database.

The Information     Aug 24, 2023

IPO Candidate StubHub Hires New CFO

tech

Ticket-reselling company StubHub has hired a new finance chief to try to take it public next year, following the departure of its previous CFO in 2022, according to people familiar with the matter. StubHub’s new CFO is Connie James, the people said. She stepped down last month from the same post at Light & Wonder, a publicly traded company that sells slot machines to casinos. StubHub is one of many firms eyeing a 2024 debut after a year-plus freeze in the market for initial public offerings. IPO activity is heating up, with anticipated listings this fall from chip designer Arm, grocery delivery company Instacart and marketing tech startup Klaviyo.

The Information     Aug 24, 2023

Digital Trucking Company Convoy Explores Options Including a Sale

Convoy, a digital trucking marketplace that counts Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates as angel investors and Fidelity and T. Rowe Price as later-stage backers, is weighing strategic options that could include a sale of the company, according to people familiar with the matter. The company, which competes with Uber Freight, hired an investment bank within the past few months to explore options that could also include a merger or a large investment from a strategic investor, the peoplesaid.

The Information     Aug 24, 2023

Apple Needs to Think Differently About Vision Pro for a Fractured World

Apple in June revealed its Vision Pro mixed-reality headset, which it hopes will change how humans engage with technology as much as—or perhaps more than—the iPhone and mobile computing did. Developers building for this new platform don’t think of themselves as just creating applications, but new digital worlds that users will inhabit.

The Information     Aug 24, 2023

Eight Startups Challenging Nvidia in AI Chips

tech

Nvidia dominates the market for graphics processing units used to train artificial intelligence models, although rivals like AMD and Intel are trying to catch up. Now some scrappy startups are entering the fray with alternative designs for AI chips they claim work better and more efficiently than Nvidia’s GPUs. Other startups are targeting Nvidia’s app-writing software, which keeps companies using its chips. Young companies such as d-Matrix and Rain Neuromorphics are pitching their chips and software as a way for companies to reduce the costs of training and running machine-learning models compared with Nvidia’s products. Tiny Corp and Modular are developing alternatives to Cuda, an Nvidia programming language that lets developers speed up their applications and that ...

The Information     Aug 24, 2023

Chip Startup Sued By Apple Has Struggled to Raise Capital

Rivos, a server chip developer that Apple sued for alleged trade secret theft, has since struggled to raise funds from investors and recruit employees, its co-founders have told some staff. Apple sued the startup last year after it hired numerous employees from Apple’s chip design unit. Rivos last week laid off nearly two dozen employees, 6% of staff, and its leaders made comments to remaining staff implyingit had limited access to new capital. Itsco-founders separately told some staff that Apple’s lawsuit against the company and several of its ex-Apple employees had affected its fundraising process. A judge recently dismissed Apple’s lawsuit against the company, but Apple’s case against several individual Rivos employees continues.

The Information     Aug 24, 2023

SpaceX Working with Cloudflare to Speed Up Starlink Service

tech

Space Exploration Technologies, Elon Musk’s rocket company, is working with Cloudflare to boost the performance of SpaceX’s satellite internet service Starlink, according to a person with direct knowledge of the project. The two companies are working on a way to increase Starlink’s terrestrial network of mini data centers around the globe—known as points of presence. That, in turn, could help it deliver faster network speeds to its customers, the person said. Such improvements could help overcome one obstacle to Starlink’s long term growth, as future bandwidth-hungry applications become commonplace. Starlink is SpaceX’s most ambitious new effort after its rocket launch business.

The Information     Aug 23, 2023

NFT Startup Casualties Pile Up

The past week has been filled with NFT drama, with OpenSea changing its policy for collecting royalty fees and drawing the ire of investors and NFT creators alike. But first, let’s take a look at the latest in a string of NFT startups that are calling it quits.Recur, a startup that helps other businesses create and manage NFT collections, said on Friday that it’s shutting down on November 16. Backed by metaverse investment firm Digital, billionaire hedge fund manager Steve Cohen’s family office and musicians Jason Derulo and David Choi, Recur announced it raised a $50 million Series A round at a $333 million valuation in September 2021.

The Information     Aug 23, 2023

😊 The Information Readers Expect More IPOs - The Information

Chip designer Arm filed its prospectus for an initial public offering Monday and readers of The Information expect more IPOs to follow soon. More than 40% of respondents to our latest reader survey expect the pace of IPOs to accelerate later this year. Nearly 60% of the respondents expect IPOs to pick up by the first half of next year.

The Information     Aug 23, 2023

Ex-Pinterest Staffer Launches AI App to Beat Pinterest, Raises $5 Million

A smattering of artificial intelligence apps have emerged recently to help consumers organize their lives. Some, like Rewind, help people keep track of all their digital activity so they can always remember what happened in the past. Others, such as HyperWrite, aid users with tedious web tasks like booking restaurant reservations or flights.The latest entrant is Crate, which launched today, and can best be described as an AI-fueled version of Pinterest, the scrapbooking site. Crate analyzes content people like, from TikTok videos to news articles, to give them personalized recommendations about what products they should buy. For instance, if a Crate user saves lots of photos of Los Angeles, the app can pull in customized activities and ...

The Information     Aug 23, 2023

TikTok Shop on Track to Lose More Than $500 Million in U.S. This ... - The Information

TikTok Shop, the app’s nascent shopping service, is expected to lose more than $500 million in the U.S. this year, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. The loss reflects TikTok’s heavy investment in hiring, building a delivery network and subsidizing merchants that offer double-digit–percentage discounts and free shipping.

The Information     Aug 23, 2023