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☆ Inside the AI talent wars: Tech companies are ransacking university AI programs at Stanford, MIT, and Cornell in search of engineers
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

Driven by the recent AI boom, companies are raiding top college campuses for rare technical talent. She's currently on leave from her Stanford AI Ph.D. program to focus on Moonhub. In 2011, new AI Ph.D. graduates took jobs in the tech industry and academia in about equal measure. But since then, the majority of new grads have headed to the AI industry, with nearly double the percentage of AI Ph.D. grads taking industry jobs versus academic roles in 2021, according to Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered AI's 2023 AI Index Report. "All AI companies have roles for people with Ph.D.s and without," said Attaluri, the soon-to-be researcher at DeepMind.

☆ TikTok is looking more and more like a record label. It’s annoyed many in the music industry.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( Diamond Naga Siu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Allbirds is one of the brands I'm looking at. TikTok is looking more and more like a record label. When TikTok launched SoundOn, a song-distribution and artist-services platform, some in the industry wondered whether it was trying to muscle its way into record labels' territory. TikTok is now looking to hire people who will "identify, sign, and develop new artists" as well as "design live show and merchandise strategies for artists globally." Get a front-row seat to TikTok's transformation into a record label here.

☆ Google's 80-acre San Jose mega-campus is on hold as company reckons with economic slowdown
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( Jennifer Elias | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +9 min

The city of San Jose may now be paying the price. CNBC has learned that, as part of Google's downsizing that went into effect early this year, the company has gutted its development team for the San Jose campus. By then, the company had already completed much of its multi-year land grab of downtown San Jose for the future campus. Google spent several years planning for the San Jose complex and invested significant resources in winning over the local community. "We all originally knew that it's going to be a long-term plan," San Jose councilmember Omar Torres, who represents the downtown area, told San Jose Spotlight in February.

☆ The rise and fall of Allbirds: How Silicon Valley's favorite sneaker lost its edge — and how its plan to save itself includes removing a key part of your shoe
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Matthew Kish | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: 1 min

In 2016, Allbirds received B Corp certification, a designation given to companies that work to advance environmental and social causes, as well as shareholder concerns. AllbirdsFor Allbirds, the designation codified, "how we take into account the impact our actions have on all of our stakeholders, including the environment, our flock of employees, communities, consumers, and investors." Sources: Harvard Business Review, Allbirds S-1

☆ Inside the AI talent wars: Tech companies are ransacking university AI programs at Stanford, MIT, and Cornell in search of rare talent
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-12 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

☆ The EV revolution has never felt farther away as inflation, rocky supply chains, and Tesla threaten billions of dollars of investment
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-12 | by ( Alexa St. John | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

In the United States, automakers face major headwinds as they look to establish an all-new EV supply chain, catch Tesla, and win over skeptical buyers — all on top of an increasingly negative economic backdrop. The extent of China's role in the EV supply chain, including with lithium, is coming to light. "The epicenter of where minerals reside, where processing resides, where EV production resides, all are outside of the US," Douglas Kent, EVP of corporate and strategic alliances at the Association for Supply Chain Management, said. Tesla was long past the worst of its production snafus by the time other automakers got serious about EVs. By the time other automakers got serious about EVs, Tesla was long past its biggest manufacturing snafus and profitability challenges.

☆ Theranos' Elizabeth Holmes loses bid to stay out of prison
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-11 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Disgraced Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes has been rebuffed in her attempt to stay out of federal prison while she appeals her conviction for the fraud she committed while overseeing a blood-testing scam that exposed Silicon Valley's dark side. The judge's decision means Holmes, 39, will have to surrender to authorities April 27 to start the more than 11-year prison sentence that Davila imposed in November. Holmes could still file another appeal of the ruling Davila's latest ruling, a maneuver that her co-conspirator at Theranos – Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani – successfully used to delay his scheduled March 16 date to begin a nearly 13-year prison sentence. Davila has recommended that Holmes serve her sentence in a Byron, Texas, prison. Although they had separate trials, Holmes and Balwani were accused of essentially the same crimes centered on a ruse touting Theranos' blood-testing system as a breakthrough in health care.

☆ Can ChatGPT be a doctor?
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-10 | by ( Asia Martin | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

My colleague Emilia David will take over for the rest of this week until Diamond Naga returns from her much-needed vacation. Can ChatGPT be a doctor? One physician said the AI chatbot was "better than many doctors" he's observed when it came to clinical diagnosis. The doctor said the diagnosis didn't differ from what he would have determined. ChatGPT may have passed the exam, but it's still unable to take the Hippocratic oath, where doctors swear to abide by a set of professional ethical standards.

☆ CHART: We analyzed Apple's revenue per employee to show how it's avoided tech bloat and delayed layoffs
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Hasan Chowdhury | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Data shows its revenue per employee trumps the rest of Silicon Valley, a sign of its efficiency. Apple's comparative efficiency is visible through one particular metric that is back in vogue: Revenue per employee. Insider analyzed revenue per employee at major tech firms between 2018 and 2022. Revenue per employee is a get-back-to-basics measure of efficiency and productivity, assigning a hard dollar value to individual workers. Rabois also criticized tech firms, specifically Google and Meta, for "over-hiring" — a practice Apple avoided during tech's boom years.

☆ Peace, love, and Hitler: How Lex Fridman's podcast became a safe space for the anti-woke tech elite
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-03 | by ( Julia Black | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +26 min

Seemingly overnight, episodes of Fridman's podcast began racking up millions of views. YouTube/Lex FridmanIn his podcast, Fridman asks world-renowned scientists, historians, artists, and engineers a series of wide-eyed questions ("Who is God? But recently, "The Lex Fridman Podcast" has become a haven for a growing — and powerful — sector looking to dismantle years of "wokeness" and cancel culture. Twitter"The Lex Fridman Podcast" offered a rare opportunity to listen to four-hour conversations with luminaries of tech and science. Bhaskar Sunkara, the founder and publisher of the socialist magazine Jacobin who appeared on Fridman's podcast in December, praised Fridman's interviewing style.

☆ Jamie Dimon is riding to the rescue again. This time, he's poised to come out on top.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( Carter Johnson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +15 min

Why, then, has Dimon been so willing to swing back into action in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank's collapse? But it's starting to look like JPMorgan — and Dimon — will end up winners no matter how things turn out. In backstopping First Republic, JPMorgan helps a client and a bank that experts say would fit nicely into its business. By saving First Republic, JPMorgan also stands to gain goodwill from Silicon Valley startups, which are customers of the smaller bank. The paper also reported that regulators asked Dimon, Bank of America, and other banks to buy Silicon Valley Bank and pay out depositors over the insured limit.

☆ Commercial real estate loans are the next major risk for banks, a top analyst said. Here are the top 20 institutions exposed to property debt.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Alex Nicoll | Daniel Geiger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Silicon Valley Bank's historic collapse this month helped trigger the failures of a few other financial institutions and weeks of chaos in the world of finance. On Friday, a Bank of America analyst pinpointed commercial-real-estate loans as the next major risk for banks. Regional banks like Silicon Valley Bank hold 68% of all commercial-real-estate loans, many tied to struggling sectors, like office buildings. Even more worrisome, a massive $450 billion in commercial-real-estate loans is maturing this year, and most of that is held by banks. Silicon Valley Bank wasn't a major lender to the sector, but the failed Signature Bank, the 10th-largest lender on this list, was.

☆ Y Combinator's head of admissions is reviewing over 20,000 startups for its summer 2023 cohort. Here's what she's looking for.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Madeline Renbarger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

For early-stage founders looking to grow their startups in an accelerator, few names spark as much excitement as Y Combinator. Several of Silicon Valley's marquee companies are Y Combinator graduates, including Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox. While the number of startups that were part of last year's summer cohort were down 40% from the previous batch, this winter batch had 17.5% more startups accepted, said a Y Combinator spokesperson. Now, Y Combinator is looking ahead to its next batch, accepting applications for the summer 2023 cohort, which are due by April 7th. Stephanie Simon, the head of Y Combinator's admissions team, wants founders to know she's still sifting through all those applications.

☆ For battered U.S. bank shares, earnings may make or break
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-28 | by ( Caroline Valetkevitch | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Even so, the S&P 500 bank index (.SPXBK) is down 16% since March 8, two days before Silicon Valley's collapse, with the failure of Signature Bank and problems at other banks adding to the turmoil. Some say quarterly results could be key to what happens next with bank shares. Among other financials, Jefferies Financial Group (JEF.N) is expected to report quarterly results after the closing bell Tuesday. Analysts expect S&P 500 earnings to fall 4.6% in the first quarter of 2023 from the year-ago period. They are forecasting S&P 500 financials (.SPSY) to post year-over-year earnings growth in the first quarter of 5.4%, making it among just four sectors whose earnings are expected to climb.

☆ This bank stock can rally nearly 70% as investors overlook a key metric, Citi says
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-27 | by ( Alex Harring | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

But KeyCorp could benefit from asset repricing and is considered a strong bank when looking at the average size of deposits. Investors have been closely following banks' shares of uninsured deposits, meaning those over $250,000, after the closure of Silicon Valley Bank prompted concerns that other banks could be subject to a bank run next. Horowitz said that looking at the percentage of uninsured deposits can be a poor way to identify bad business models, especially for small and medium sized banks as all uninsured deposits are not the same. A large share of uninsured deposits can actually be among the most valuable to a bank, he said, because they are core operating commercial accounts. In other words, KeyCorp's average uninsured deposits represent a much smaller risk to the bank than those at Silicon Valley Bank.

☆ Tech Companies Are Ruining Their Apps, Websites, Internet
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-27 | by ( Ed Zitron | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

Google, Amazon, Meta, and other tech companies have monetized confusion, constantly testing how much they can interfere with and manipulate users. Abandoning the core productIn the 2000s and early 2010s, tech companies actually produced new, interesting products. This fueled Silicon Valley's explosive growth: Companies saw their valuations soar, revenue growth was exponential, and new users were joining by the boatload. There are ways to integrate new technology into a core product that doesn't end in disaster. Netflix was able to iterate on their core product — letting people watch movies — in a way that actually made that experience better.

☆ Wall Street says TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew had a 'disaster' day in Congress — but the internet is loving him
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-24 | by ( Reena Koh | Nidhi Pandurangi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

On Thursday, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew appeared before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Wall Street slammed Chew's testimony, dubbing it a "disaster moment" for TikTok. The video has over 1.2 million views, over 215,000 likes, and a range of comments expressing their approval for Chew. Two days before the Congressional hearing, TikTok's official account shared a rare video of Chew casually introducing himself to people. In the video, Chew gave context about the hearing and asked viewers to tell him what they enjoyed about the app.

☆ Why some Silicon Valley CEOs don't blame SVB for its crash: 'I still fundamentally believe' nothing was 'wrong with the bank'
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( Megan Sauer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

SVB was a great partner to all the innovation that's happened in Silicon Valley," Varun Badhwar, CEO and co-founder of Palo Alto, California-based security software startup Endor Labs, tells CNBC Make It. "I still fundamentally believe there was nothing foundationally wrong with the bank." Before the crash, SVB counted nearly half of the country's venture-backed startups as clients, according to its website. CNBC Make It spoke with a group of startup bosses across a variety of industries, all of whom lost access to some, or all, of their company's money during the crash. But as investors' and other founders' attitudes changed throughout the afternoon, he decided to get the company's money out.

Brian Chesky, a former hockey player and industrial design student, is now worth $9.6 billion. Chesky started Airbnb after renting out his apartment to conference-goers who couldn't find a hotel. download the app Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy PolicyBefore running Airbnb, Brian Chesky attended art school. As of March 2023, Airbnb is worth $76 billion. Here's how the Brian Chesky, an upstate New York native, became one of the richest young tech founders in America.

Silicon Valley Bank spent decades building trust with tech startups and venture capitalists. A Twitter panic, triggered by the people who placed their trust in the bank, took down the bank in days. Darius Rafieyan walks us through the rise and fall of Silicon Valley's exclusive boutique bank. download the app Email address By clicking ‘Sign up’, you agree to receive marketing emails from Insider as well as other partner offers and accept our Terms of Service and Privacy PolicySilicon Valley Bank spent decades building trust and relationships with Silicon Valley tech startups. But a Twitter panic took the bank down in days — triggered by the same people who placed their trust in the bank in the first place.

☆ The SVB fallout has been a wake up call for startup founders. Many are rethinking their VC relationships: 'There's certain people I wouldn't want to take money from now.'
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-21 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Startup founders are wary of some VCs after their actions during the SVB crisis. Some founders were disheartened by investor advice on what to do with their money in SVB. "There's certain people I wouldn't want to take money from now," Sami Khan, cofounder and CEO of mobile games company Atlas Reality told Insider. He adds that it's difficult to blame people, both investors and founders, for the decisions they make in fast-moving situations. Without access to the dependable venture debt SVB offered, more founders may be forced to turn to dilutive venture capital for financing instead.

☆ Picking up the pieces in the wake of SVB's collapse
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-20 | by ( Dan Defrancesco | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

It's just over a week from Federal regulators announcing they would be bailing out depositors of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. Now, the FDIC said Sunday that New York Community Bancorp's Flagstar Bank will take on nearly all of Signature Bridge Bank's deposits. Credit Suisse, whose problems long preceded SVB's downfall, to be fair, is getting acquired by Swiss rival UBS. Silicon Valley Bank was the bank for tech. The people backing venture capitalists, known as limited partners, share their thoughts on how VCs handled the crisis at Silicon Valley Bank.

☆ Deel Speed: The inside story of a $12 billion HR startup's breakneck growth
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-20 | by ( Rob Price | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +32 min

Insider spoke with more than 30 current or former Deel workers about the HR company's extraordinary rise, and the unconventional tactics that made it possible. "I think if you talk to anyone, they would say that Alex is the face but all decisions run through Phillipe," one former Deel worker told Insider. "They lose every employment and labor protection," Valerio De Stefano, a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, said of independent contractors. Alex Bouaziz, Deel on Centre Stage during day two of Collision 2022 at Enercare Centre in Toronto, Canada. The company didn't have an internal human-resources team until sometime in 2021, by which point it had grown to hundreds of people.

☆ Failure of Silicon Valley Bank Mirrors the Myth of the Wild West
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-19 | by ( Adam Rogers | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

As Silicon Valley Bank went down the tubes, it wasn't surprising that the loudest mouths in Techworld started demanding that the federal government cover everyone's losses. They were pioneers on the frontier of tech and finance, and as such they acted the way pioneers always do. Myths of the frontiersIt's unfashionable for people in the tech industry to dispute the central role that government-funded infrastructure and academic projects have played in the development of Silicon Valley and the digital age. Shout down into Silicon Valley and you'll hear echoes of this same pioneer myth. They see themselves as heroes not of a Western frontier but of space — the Final one — as refracted by the legendary writers of the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

☆ The Biden administration is offering to pay Colorado River farmers to let fields go dry during a devastating drought. They're worried it's just the first step in losing their way of life.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-19 | by ( Ethan Dodd | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

The Biden administration is paying Colorado River farmers and ranchers to let their fields run dry. Climate change has made the Colorado River the dryest it's been in more than a thousand years. Knowing they have to do something, Grand Valley farmers and ranchers want better compensation to make fallowing worth their while. At this better price they received enough applications from agricultural producers to cover the thousand acres Grand Valley offered, he said. Are you a farmer, rancher, or resident of the Colorado River basin concerned about water conservation?

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