The Verge’s latest insights into the ideas shaping the future of work, finance, and innovation. Here you’ll find scoops, analysis, and reporting across some of the most influential companies in the world. Our coverage also includes interviews with innovators and policy makers at the frontiers of business and technology on Editor-in-Chief Nilay Patel’sDecoder; a behind-the-curtain look at Silicon Valley with Alex Heath’sCommand Line; and exclusive reporting on Microsoft’s strategy in Tom Warren’sNotepad.
In itsQ4 earnings report, the audio streaming service said it’s gained 38 million monthly active users (MAU) and nine million paying subscribers since its last quarter. Spotify now has 751 million MAUs and 290 million subscribers globally.
Weinterviewed Docusign CEO Allan Thygesen onDecoder this week, and one standout moment was when I asked Allan about his headcount. Docusign now employs around 7,000 people, which is a staggering number of employees for a company with a core product many think of as straightforward and simple.
But as you’ll hear Allan explain, the business of Docusign is actually quite a bit more complex than it appears, and he says the company needs a lot more people than you might think.
Even after his 2008 conviction as a sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein still had friends in Silicon Valley.TheNew York Times details the companies that took his money — including Coinbase, wearable manufacturer Jawbone, andPeter Thiel’s Valar Ventures — along with more he considered investing in, including Palantir, SpaceX, and Spotify.
[The New York Times]
Maybecombining Musk’s companies is really aboutspace AI data centers. But reports fromBloomberg and theWall Street Journal indicate that SpaceX’s IPO pursuit includes a push to have major index providers find a way around the usual waiting periods before they’ll add newly listed companies.
A report fromBloomberg lays out how theprediction market reportedly directly contacted Juice Reel CEO Ricky Gold, pressuring him to say the data his firm had provided to an analyst was inaccurate.
The analysis from Jordan Bender, an equity research analyst at Citizens, found that in their first three months, users on sites like Kalshi were losing more money than on established gambling sites like FanDuel and DraftKings, at least in proportion to the amount wagered. This cuts against Kalshi’s claims that it offers a customer-friendly way to bet on real-world events.
SpaceX is profitable, while xAI is burning about $1 billion a month. Is this another case of Musk bailing out himself?
Enrique Lores will head up PayPal after spending over six years as the president and CEO of HP, according to an announcement on Tuesday. Lores is taking over for Alex Chriss, whobecame the CEO of PayPal in 2023 as part of the company’s push into crypto.
[PayPal Investor Relations]
The companysells its tech to ICE, amongother government departments, and business is booming: its annual revenue from the US government grew 55 percent, to $1.855 billion, over the last year. That growth is speeding up, with $570 million of government revenue from the last quarter alone.
[Palantir]
Theacquisition includes “substantially all” of Lumen’s consumer fiber business, according to AT&T’s announcement. The company says it will add more than 1 million fiber customers across Denver, Seattle, Salt Lake City, and other cities as a result of the acquisition.
Docusign’s Allan Thygesen says ‘not providing an AI service isn’t really an option.’
Prices could increase (or profits thinned) once Apple’s current stock of components like DRAM, NAND, and advanced chips runs out,according toThe Wall Street Journal:
Artificial-intelligence companies are writing huge checks for chips, memory, specialized glass fiber and more, and they have begun to outduel Apple in the race to secure components. Suppliers accustomed to catering to Apple’s every whim are gaining the leverage to demand that the iPhone maker pay more.
What the bidding war over Warner Bros. Discovery says about the future of Hollywood, with Puck’s Julia Alexander.
Theclosure of its physical Amazon Go and Fresh stores also bringsan end to the Amazon One palm ID service by June 3rd for retail locations, includingover 500 Whole Foods stores, with all biometric data deleted. Amazon One will continue to function at healthcare facilities “until further notice.”
Thepreviously-rumored cuts followan accidental calendar invite sent last night. They come after14,000 corporate jobs were cut in October, attributed partially to advances in AI. Thislatest round of layoffs is less than 5 percent of Amazon’s 350,000 corporate workforce.
We’ve been working to strengthen our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy. While many teams finalized their organizational changes in October, other teams did not complete that work until now.
Mr. 420 hopes to raise $50 billion by taking SpaceX public with the largest initial public offering in history. The target date is mid-June, near Elon Musk’s 55th birthday on June 28th, and June 8th and 9th “when Jupiter and Venus will appear very close together, known as a conjunction, for the first time in more than three years.”
SpaceX wants the extra funds to help develop its beefier Starship rocket system, expand its Starlink constellation, and to putdata centers into space.
Samsung has been the leading TV maker globally for 20 years. China’s TCL isthis close to unseating the South Korean champ after posting a 20 percent surge in year-over-year global TV shipments, according toCounterpoint Research. ThatSony x TCL deal all but guarantees a new leader should it go through.
Today’s reports fromHunterbrook Media andPablo Torre Finds Out claim the company’s hardware is seemingly easily obtained and popularly used in Russia’s war effort through already-sanctioned distributors and other middlemen.
Ubiquiti, which wasfined $500k in 2014 over “reckless disregard” for Iran sanctions, did not respond to a request for comment.
According toPolitico, a notice will tell state officials to instead use the “secure and sovereign”French-made Visio platform.
David Amiel, Minister Delegate for the Civil Service and State Reform, announces the generalization of “Visio”, a tool developed by the Interministerial Directorate for Digital Affairs (DINUM), to all State services by 2027. The objective: to put an end to the use of non-European solutions, to guarantee the security and confidentiality of public electronic communications by relying on a powerful and sovereign tool.
Alex Lintner, Experian’s CEO of tech and software solutions, came onDecoder this week. When I asked Alex whether he thought the average person likes Experian as a company, he gave me one of the most memorable answers we’ve ever gotten. Check out theclip below, and catch thefull interview here onThe Verge.
Alex Lintner, head of tech for the global credit reporting company, on AI, privacy, and what data brokerages really do.
The chipmaker’s Q4 2025 earnings report reveals that it earned $13.7 billion in revenue over the past few months, a dip from the $14.3 billion it made at the same time last year.
Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tansays the company is “working aggressively to grow supply” of chips built on its 18A process, including itsnew Panther Lake laptop CPUs.
A survey of 5,000 white collar workers suggests experiences differ greatly between CEOs and non-management employees. Forty percent of workers say it saves them no time each week to use AI and just two percent say it saves them more than 12 hours. Meanwhile, two percent of executives say they don’t save any time, and 19 percent say it saves them more than 12 hours a week.
[The Wall Street Journal]
Sephora is partnering with Korean beauty retailers Olive Young to bring more K-beauty products to international consumers in-store and online. In the last decade, K-beauty has had a meteoric rise outside of Korea; the industry has especially thrived in the TikTok social media era, where new products and releases are used to relentlessly drive beauty trends. Now US retailersare in an “arms race” to cash in on the popularity.
[The Business of Fashion]
Razer’s Min-Liang Tan says the backlash to AI slop is understandable, but that he sees a future where AI can “help game developers make better games.”
From window shopping and browsing to reviews and recommendations, retailers and tech companies envision a future filled with artificial intelligence — whether shoppers want it or not.
The solution is using Bluesky, of course. Naturally, a user with a blue check next totheir name told Grok to put a bikini on the butterfly and the AI did — which seems like an even stronger advertisement for Bluesky than the one Bluesky itself posted.
