Patrick Coffee / Wall Street Journal: Amazon debuts a chatbot-style assistant to help advertisers use AI to make ads, which can run across Amazon's ad inventory and platforms that have Amazon deals — The biggest names in tech are racing to make advertising easier, especially for small businesses and consumer goods companies
Nicholas G. Miller / Wall Street Journal: HR software provider Workday agrees to acquire Sana, an AI startup specializing in workplace tools, for $1.1B; the transaction is set to close in Workday's Q4 — the Sana acquisition also will deepen Workday's educational offerings — Workday is acquiring Sana, an AI company focused on workplace tools …
Ben Fritz / Wall Street Journal: Penske Media sues Google, says ~20% of Google search results linking to its sites now include AI Overviews, and affiliate link revenue fell 33%+ since late 2024 — Penske Media alleges artificial-intelligence-generated answers steal its content and have reduced traffic and revenue for its sites
Sam Schube / Wall Street Journal: Interviews with Tim Cook, Apple VP of Industrial Design Molly Anderson, and others about iPhone Air design choices, cross-body straps, the iPhone Pro, and more — As Apple releases its lightest, leanest iPhone ever, the company explains the thinking behind its ultra-slim design, which has buyers deciding between capacity and chic
Katherine Hamilton / Wall Street Journal: Opendoor names Shopify COO Kaz Nejatian as its CEO, following Carrie Wheeler's ouster, and appoints co-founder Keith Rabois as its chairman; OPEN jumps 50%+ — Kaz Nejatian will help Opendoor incorporate more artificial intelligence into its real estate platform, the company says
Angel Au-Yeung / Wall Street Journal: Databricks raised $1B from Thrive, a16z, and others at a $100B valuation and is on track to generate $4B in revenue in its FY ending in January 2026, up 50% YoY — The data analytics company is close to completing its latest financing, raising $1 billion at a $100 billion valuation
Tim Higgins / Wall Street Journal: A book excerpt details Spotify's decade-long push against Apple's App Store commissions and steering rules, including pushing the EU to pass new antitrust laws — The music service's rebellion against an App Store ‘tax’ over the past decade has significantly weakened Apple's grip on the mobile world
Wall Street Journal: At a White House dinner, tech CEOs thanked Trump for promoting chip and AI investments, while Trump promised an easy energy permitting process for data centers — Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and Sam Altman salute president's leadership on innovation as industry seeks his favor
Micah Maidenberg / Wall Street Journal: Amazon's Project Kuiper signs up JetBlue as its first airline customer to use its satellite internet for in-flight Wi-Fi in 25% of JetBlue's fleet from 2027 — JetBlue plans to use Kuiper satellite internet on 25% of its fleet, with some passengers gaining access to the service in 2027
Heather Somerville / Wall Street Journal: The US Army awards a $98.9M contract to TurbineOne to deploy AI software that helps infantry identify drones and other threats locally on soldiers' devices — Infantry will use software from startup TurbineOne to identify drones and other threats, even when signals are jammed
Alistair MacDonald / Wall Street Journal: How Ukraine is using AI to allow groups of drones, known as swarms, to coordinate with each other to attack Russian positions for much of the past year — In a new frontier for warfare, Ukraine is using technology to allow groups of drones to communicate and make decisions independent of their operator
Wall Street Journal: Xi Jinping is pushing the country's tech industry to be oriented toward applications for AI, charting a pragmatic alternative to Silicon Valley's pursuit of AGI — With growing fears of an AI bubble, Beijing is charting a pragmatic alternative to Silicon Valley's pursuit of artificial superintelligence
Angel Au-Yeung / Wall Street Journal: An interview with Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd on AI being the “most emotionally intelligent matchmaker”, planning an AI-powered matchmaking app, and more — She's spent nearly all of her working life atop the dating-app business, and believes artificial intelligence could be the matchmaker we all need
Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal: The price per token for AI models has fallen, but costs for developers are rising as newer reasoning models require more tokens to complete tasks — With models doing more ‘thinking,’ the small companies that buy AI from the giants to create apps and services are feeling the pinch
Katherine Hamilton / Wall Street Journal: Filing: Intel says its funding deal with the US loosens its requirements under the CHIPS Act, including removing the need to meet certain project milestones — The company no longer needs to meet certain project milestones or adhere to some workforce policies, among other conditions
Wall Street Journal: Sources: Alibaba developed a new AI inference chip to compete with H20; it is manufactured by a Chinese company unlike an earlier AI chip made by TSMC — Chinese tech companies spark market exuberance by signaling they are catching up to U.S. — SINGAPORE—Chinese chip companies …
Wall Street Journal: Police are investigating a murder-suicide in what appears to be the first documented murder involving someone who engaged extensively with an AI chatbot — “Erik, you're not crazy.” ChatGPT fueled a 56-year-old tech industry veteran's paranoia, encouraging his suspicions that his mother was plotting against him.
Rolfe Winkler / Wall Street Journal: Apple partners with TuneIn to make Apple Music's six radio stations available outside its app, a first, as it seeks to compete with Spotify; TuneIn has 75M MAUs — The tie-up with TuneIn to distribute Apple's radio stations aims to introduce the company's music service to more people
Vicky Ge Huang / Wall Street Journal: An interview with Eric Trump on how he became a crypto evangelist after several banks cut off the Trump family's accounts following the January 6 Capitol riot — Real-estate executive has been at the vanguard of the first family's rapid entry into the cryptocurrency business
Wall Street Journal: a16z, OpenAI's Greg Brockman, and others launch Leading the Future, a pro-AI super PAC network with $100M+ in funding, hoping to emulate crypto PAC Fairshake — Venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI President Greg Brockman are among those helping launch and fund Leading the Future
Wall Street Journal: Sources detail Intel's two-week roller-coaster ride, from Trump demanding CEO Lip-Bu Tan step down to the US government becoming Intel's biggest shareholder — The Truth Social post, the White House meeting, the deal: How the struggling chip company managed a two-week roller-coaster ride
Lane Florsheim / Wall Street Journal: How Raya, a privately held dating app with a waitlist of 2.5M people, found success through its rigorous user selection process and Fight Club-style rules — The privately held company has attracted an A-list clientele and even gotten Gen Z onboard with online dating.
Liz Young / Wall Street Journal: Austin-based Overhaul, an in-transit supply chain risk management company, raised a $105M Series C led by Springcoast Partners and Edison Partners — The company, which helps shippers track shipments and fight cargo theft, plans more acquisitions — Supply-chain risk management company …
Dean Seal / Wall Street Journal: FanDuel partners with CME Group to offer event-based contracts, letting users wager “yes” or “no” on financial events and benchmarks, starting later this year — The sports-betting platform's deal with CME Group might ultimately lead it to making markets for sports-related events
Wall Street Journal: Sources: Nvidia has shown new versions of its Blackwell-based AI chips for Chinese customers to US officials, including one with ~80% of the peak performance — Chip designer hopes Trump will approve new design for sale in China, after Beijing tells its companies not to buy older product
Isabelle Bousquette / Wall Street Journal: An interview with GM SVP of Software and Services Engineering David Richardson on GM's new AI team, developing “cobots”, or collaborative robots, and more — So far the team includes hires from Google, Meta, AWS and even a Pixar vet who is helping GM develop new factory ‘cobots’
Brian Schwartz / Wall Street Journal: Sources: Elon Musk is quietly pumping the brakes on his plans to start a US political party, telling allies he wants to focus his attention on his companies — The billionaire has sought to maintain ties with JD Vance, a potential heir to Trump's MAGA political movement
Angel Au-Yeung / Wall Street Journal: Databricks is finalizing a Series K round at a $100B valuation, up 61% from December 2024; sources say it is co-led by Thrive and a16z is set to participate — The data analytics company, fueled by the AI boom, was valued at $62 billion less than a year ago
Marc Vartabedian / Wall Street Journal: NYC-based IVIX, which uses AI to help regulators detect financial fraud, raised a $60M Series B led by OG Venture Partners, bringing its total funding to $85M — IVIX, which sells its software to regulators around the world, is the latest beneficiary of venture interest in the once-shunned area of government contracts
Angel Au-Yeung / Wall Street Journal: A look at the “Palantir Mafia”, a group of Palantir alumni who have started or are leading 350+ tech companies, including at least a dozen valued at $1B+ — The network connects founders and venture capitalists with ‘Palantir Pals’ and a Russian River camping trip
Asa Fitch / Wall Street Journal: Big Tech's reverse acquihires for AI talent are hollowing out startups and eroding the culture that has made Silicon Valley an unparalleled source of innovation — Tech companies' scramble for AI talent uses unorthodox methods that imperil Silicon Valley's startup culture
Belle Lin / Wall Street Journal: XOPS, which uses AI and knowledge graphs to automate enterprise IT tasks, emerges from stealth with $40M in funding led by Activant Capital and FPV Ventures — The startup XOPS is using artificial intelligence and ‘knowledge graphs’ to build a new platform for automating corporate IT departments …
Kelly Cloonan / Wall Street Journal: Applied Materials Q3: revenue up 8% YoY to $7.3B, vs. $7.22B est., profit up 4% YoY to $1.78B, and projects Q4 revenue and profit below est. on China challenges — The semiconductor-equipment maker had expected a slowdown in China after two years of rapid build-out, CFO Brice Hill says in an interview
Katherine Hamilton / Wall Street Journal: Lyft co-founders Logan Green and John Zimmer step down as board chair and vice chair, convert their Class B stock to Class A, completing the succession plan — Logan Green and John Zimmer are stepping down from their roles as chair and vice chair of the board of directors
Wall Street Journal: US tech startups are reviving US hiring plans as President Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill lets companies accelerate R&D tax deductions, starting in 2025 — Faster deductions make adding staff cheaper when cash flow is critical, executives say — Tech startups are dusting off U.S. hiring plans …
Wall Street Journal: Sources: World Liberty Financial's partnership with Binance-run PancakeSwap is helping boost demand for USD1, generating profit for Trump, as CZ seeks a pardon — The under-the-radar trading platform is quietly administered by Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, whose founder is seeking a pardon from President Trump
Raffaele Huang / Wall Street Journal: Open-source AI models from DeepSeek, Alibaba's Qwen, and others driving global adoption of Chinese AI tech jolts US policymakers and companies to respond — Free-to-use models from DeepSeek, Alibaba and others gain users worldwide — China's ambition to turn its open-source artificial-intelligence models …
Nicole Friedman / Wall Street Journal: How Google, Meta, and Apple's pledges to spend billions on new Silicon Valley housing failed to meet expectations; Apple spent $1.6B by July 2024, the most — Google, Meta and Apple have helped fund construction of thousands of new units, but some efforts have slowed
Wall Street Journal: How Jensen Huang successfully lobbied Trump to resume Nvidia's H20 sales to China; US officials hadn't vetted the 20% pay-to-play proposal when Trump offered it — Jensen Huang tried diplomacy to sell chips in China, but it took a last-minute deal with the White House
Peter Rudegeair / Wall Street Journal: AI-focused hedge funds have raised billions; source: ex-OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness manages $1.5B+ as a “brain trust on AI” — A 23-year-old former OpenAI researcher quickly amassed more than $1.5 billion for ‘brain trust on AI’
Isabelle Bousquette / Wall Street Journal: Silver Lake unveils a $400M project to secure powered land for data center developers; it has secured 3GW of power and is developing sites in Texas and Georgia — The private-equity firm is looking to bundle land parcels with power availability, which it said is now the biggest obstacle to data-center development
Wall Street Journal: An analysis of 96K public ChatGPT transcripts finds 100+ lengthy chats, of which dozens exhibited delusional traits where ChatGPT reinforced users' fringe ideas — Online trove of archived conversations shows model repeatedly sending users down a rabbit hole of fringe theories about physics, aliens and the apocalypse
Isabelle Bousquette / Wall Street Journal: SignalFire: as the AI talent race explodes, Anthropic is hiring engineers 2.68x faster than losing them, above OpenAI's 2.18x, Meta's 2.07x, and Google's 1.17x — The AI startup isn't matching Meta's sky-high salary offers. It's still dominating when it comes to engineer retention.
Mauro Orru / Wall Street Journal: The EU says companies exporting chips to the US will face a 15% tariff ceiling despite President Trump's new “approximately 100%” chip levy announcement — Companies that export chips to the U.S. from the European Union will face a 15% tariff ceiling even after President Trump …
Kosaku Narioka / Wall Street Journal: Sony reports Q1 revenue up 2.2% YoY to ~$17.8B, net profit up 23% YoY to ~$1.8B, 2.5M PS5s sold, up from 2.4M in Q1 2024, and expects a lower FY tariff impact — The company expects uncertainty over the economy to increase due to U.S. tariffs — Sony Group reported higher quarterly net profit …
Wall Street Journal: Index Ventures is set to receive $11B+ in proceeds after Figma's IPO, Google's Wiz acquisition, and Meta's investment in Scale AI, which paid out shareholders — Index Ventures was among the first investors in startup hits Figma, Scale AI and Wiz — Index Ventures, a venture firm …
Wall Street Journal: How Palantir won over US lawmakers, leveraging geopolitical crises, technological trends, and DC connections, as CEO Alex Karp adopts a persona not unlike Trump — The onetime Silicon Valley upstart has emerged as a power player in Trump's second term—and adopted his persona
Belle Lin / Wall Street Journal: ElevenLabs launches Eleven Music, letting individuals and businesses use its AI model to generate music cleared for commercial use via English-language prompts — New model allows customers to create music with AI that is cleared for commercial use. But AI-generated music still faces legal battles and stiff opposition from artists.
Wall Street Journal: A draft White House EO shows President Trump plans to step up pressure against big banks over alleged discrimination against crypto companies and conservatives — The president is expected to sign an executive order as soon as this week that targets so-called debanking of businesses including crypto companies
Lauren Thomas / Wall Street Journal: Connecticut-based Amphenol plans to acquire North Carolina-based CommScope's broadband connectivity and cable unit for ~$10.5B, including debt, amid the AI boom — Maker of interconnect products is buying CommScope's broadband connectivity and cable unit — Amphenol said it would buy …