Jessica E. Lessin
The Information
San Francisco, CA, United States
Contact Jessica
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Past articles by Jessica:
Fighting ‘Woke AI,’ Musk Recruits Team to Develop OpenAI Rival
Elon Musk has approached artificial intelligence researchers in recent weeks about forming a new research lab to develop an alternative to ChatGPT, the high-profile chatbot made by the startup OpenAI, according to two people with direct knowledge of the effort and a third person briefed on the ... → Read More
Why We Are Launching The Information Pro
I am delighted to share the launch of The Information Pro—a new tier of subscription that features our expanded org charts, brand-new databases based on our reporting, our new survey product and a specialized weekly newsletter. To understand why we are launching The Information Pro, you have to ... → Read More
Stripe in Talks to Raise Up to $3 Billion From Current Investors
Less than a week after telling employees that it would evaluate a public offering over the next year, payments giant Stripe is moving quickly on a deal to raise as much as $3 billion from its existing investors. The talks, which have heated up in recent days, are likely to value the company at ... → Read More
Stripe Plans to Go Public in Next Year or Make a Deal to Resolve Employee Stock Squeeze
Stripe plans to either go public or make a deal that will allow employees to sell stock within the next year, the company told employees and investors Thursday, moves that would be aimed at easing a looming stock crunch for some veteran employees. The company is considering both a direct listing ... → Read More
Sam Bankman-Fried’s Late-Night Move and How the FTX House Crumbled
Late last night, Sam Bankman-Fried sent a message he never thought he would send. He reached out to rival Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, CEO of crypto trading platform Binance and asked him if he would buy—and save—FTX, a person close to the deal told me. By early in the morning Pacific time, he ... → Read More
The Real Rationale Behind Adobe’s Figma Acquisition
Earlier this week, I asked our team for a copy of the slides for our annual Women in Tech, Media and Finance event and waited for a PowerPoint in my inbox. But instead of a slide deck, our team sent me a link to the slides using the design program Figma.I asked why we had switched up our methods ... → Read More
Which Digital Ad Businesses Work—and Which Don’t
Here’s a puzzle. The economy has tanked. The digital ad business is in chaos, with new regulations and technology that make tracking customers much harder. Ad budgets are getting slashed and everyone is…launching advertising businesses?Roblox, an online gaming platform, announced it’s doing so. ... → Read More
Emerson Collective Backing New Project to Encourage Civil Online Conversation
Laurene Powell Jobs’s Emerson Collective is backing a new effort to encourage more civil conversation online, according to people familiar with the project. The project—which is in its early days—is being led by Nick Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, and Raffi Krikorian, Emerson’s chief technology ... → Read More
Instagram Takes an Ax to E-Commerce
Imagine that you’re taking care of a tree—and all of a sudden it starts sprouting new limbs. And little by little those limbs start to suck more resources away from the heart of the tree. Then the main trunk gets hit with, I dunno, a big rock and all of a sudden is very weak.What do you do? You ... → Read More
With New TikTok CEO, ByteDance Roots Itself Firmly in Asia
TikTok said Friday that it had tapped Shouzi Chew as its new CEO, installing a lieutenant from its parent company, ByteDance, to oversee one of its most important and challenging businesses. The move is a big departure from the hiring of former Disney executive Kevin Mayer, the flashy U.S. ... → Read More
Walmart Joined Microsoft’s Bid for TikTok —
Microsoft and Walmart jointly bid to acquire TikTok's U.S. business, according to a person involved in the situation.The software giant brought the e-commerce company into the deal to provide a platform to support digital sales on the platform, this person said.The bids were submitted yesterday, ... → Read More
SoftBank Eyes Joining Deal for TikTok —
As President Donald Trump’s September deadline for TikTok to sell its U.S. business approaches, investors are scrambling to assess or participate in a deal. One party that has recently emerged as a possible buyer: SoftBank.It seemed unlikely that SoftBank, one of the most ambitious and deeply ... → Read More
Here’s an Idea for Advertisers Leaving Facebook—Support News —
The march of digital advertising heavyweights refusing to advertise on Facebook took some major steps forward this week, with Verizon and Unilever joining the boycott. The brands, and many others, want Facebook to do a better job removing hate speech and misinformation. Mark Zuckerberg announced ... → Read More
Announcing News Summer School —
Join leaders from across the news business for a free, four-week bootcamp to help you build a career in journalism during these unprecedented times.As many internships have gone remote or been rescheduled, we’re offering eight hour-long evening “classes” over the month of July, free of charge ... → Read More
ByteDance’s Big Ambitions —
Zhang Yiming, CEO of ByteDance—a $75 billion tech conglomerate from China that is behind some of the world’s most popular apps—needed help.Late last year, TikTok, the company’s app for sharing short videos, was exploding in popularity. It became the first social app from China to hit it big in ... → Read More
Google’s Parent Trap —
In early 2015, Google co-founder Larry Page had a problem. His once nimble startup had become a slow-growing behemoth, missing out on big tech innovations and struggling to incubate new products.Page’s answer was Alphabet, a new corporate entity that would allow Google’s cash cow—its search ... → Read More
Are Jack Dorsey’s Twitter Days Numbered? —
In 2016, as Twitter’s market capitalization shriveled to around $10 billion from a high of $35 billion, Silicon Valley investor Chamath Palihapitiya decided to make a bid for control of the onetime tech pioneer.He and a partner wanted to invest $1 billion in the company in a deal that would make ... → Read More
The Article Google Didn’t Want Us to Write —
A little over two years ago, I was sitting in my office with reporter Reed Albergotti and our managing editor Martin Peers wrestling with how to tell the story about the interoffice romances at Google that were long rumored but never published.Reed had new reporting about Alphabet’s chief legal ... → Read More
The Lesson from AB5 —
The big news of the week was the near passage of the California law that would require Uber, Lyft and other companies that rely on contractors to treat them more like full-time employees. Amir’s sources told him the move could add an estimated 20% to Uber’s costs.Some observers hailed the move ... → Read More
Marissa Mayer’s Lumi Labs Working on Contacts App —
Marissa Mayer, the former Yahoo CEO and early Google employee, has joined a wave of new entrepreneurs seeking to reinvent basic software tools aimed at making people more productive.Ms. Mayer’s new startup, Lumi Labs, is building a suite of such “productivity” apps, starting with software for ... → Read More