🧶+☕️+ ✈️ = ⁉️ Howard Schultz stood down from his post at Starbucks for the third time last year—but his exit only went so far A jet, pseudo board seat & lifetime HQ badge access tie the $1.6bn shareholder to $SBUX W/ rhea basarkar+Anjli Raval 4 Financial Times ft.com/content/e37d19…

The VC universe depends largely on the success of cloud software companies. What happens when growth at many of the most highly valued of those firms sputters? We're about to find out. Financial deets on the SaaS slowdown, w/ Jon Victor natasha mascarenhas theinformation.com/articles/once-…

Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt had Stanford pull a recent talk he gave where he said Google was caught off guard by ChatGPT because employees were working from home. It turns out that wasn't the only eye-popping thing he said during the talk: theverge.com/2024/8/14/2422…

An Editor Honored: The Information's Martin Peers was honored this week with a prestigious Loeb journalism prize. This story chronicles his career. theinformation.com/articles/the-i…

Nearly 1 year since Instacart went public, the biggest question still hanging over the company is: Will Uber just buy it? A look at a growing strategic alliance that could lead to industry shaping M&A Plus, Instacart's short-selling defense & strategy theinformation.com/articles/why-i…

More exciting news from Weekend & The Information! Weekend wants to add a reporter to cover the future and business of sports—with a major focus on women's sports. This is a new entirely new coverage universe for us, and we couldn't be more excited. Pls RT! Email in bio. 1/2

investors love palantir ceo alex karp, and the company is making big moves in data and AI. but does it deserve the highest valuation multiple in all of cloud software? i unpack that question in my latest 'true value' column The Information $PLTR theinformation.com/articles/patri…

The Briefing: Why OpenAI Needs an IPO News about OpenAI’s latest fundraising is a reminder that the AI firm likely will go public within the next couple of years. Plus, what Meta AI and ChatGPT user numbers tell us. theinformation.com/articles/why-o… From Cory Weinberg

Is the capital intensity of AI too much for the existing VC / private capital ecosystem? Only so much AUM + a limited # of mega-check writers Inspired by Cory Weinberg / The Information "Why OpenAI Needs an IPO" theinformation.com/articles/why-o…

“I never thought that the board of Bytedance would be a full-time job,” Laffont joked at The Information’s private capital conference in April. Well now:

🚨STRIPE🚨 Wells Fargo dumped it. Goldman Sachs refused to deal with it. The chief compliance officer was...the founders’ cousin. Dominatrixes love it–but does it even know? Welcome to the sometimes wacky world of Silicon Valley’s highest-valued startup. theinformation.com/articles/strip…

For Stripe, growing the world's GDP is full of compliance land mines—so much so that Wells Fargo ended its relationship w/Stripe and even Goldman Sachs didn't want the business. theinformation.com/articles/strip… Michael Roddan

Scoop: Abu Dhabi's $100 billion AI fund MGX is in talks to invest in OpenAI. theinformation.com/articles/opena… w/ Cory Weinberg

After this OpenAI round, who will boast better returns: Investors in the latest $150B round? Or real estate owners in Mission Bay? bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/n…