Alice Tecotzky

JPMorgan will spend almost $20 billion on technology this year

by with No Comment Xpandfy

JPMorgan plans to boost its technology budget by almost $2 billion this year, to $19.8 billion — a roughly 10% increase compared to 2025.

Speaking at the firm’s 2026 company update on Monday, CFO Jeremy Barnum said “technology remains a major driver of our expense growth,” which is up around $9 billion for the year. The bulk of the tech expenses comes from $1.2 billion in investments, including some AI-related projects.

Later in the presentation, CEO Jamie Dimon said that returns on AI are difficult to quantify initiative by initiative. Answering a question from Wells Fargo analyst Mike Mayo, who pressed him on the bank’s technology spend on a recent earnings call, Dimon said that time saved is often “too vague” to measure concretely.

“I think the hardest thing to measure has always been tech projects,” Dimon said. “That’s been true my whole life.”

When it comes to where the firm is investing, Barnum said it’s focusing on “the highest impact areas,” such as customer service in call centers, personalized insights for clients, and technology for software engineers. GenAI is, Barnum told investors, growing as a proportion of the bank’s AI usage.


JPMorgan Company Update

A slide from the company update presentation breaks down technology spending.

JPMorgan



Some of the $2 billion increase is due to inflation hitting everyone, including higher AI hardware costs. Technology head count growth isn’t a major driver — Barnum said the bank has budgeted in some additional head count in the area to work on new products, but that the culture generally discourages hiring more people whenever a new opportunity arises.

Despite JPMorgan’s status as a tech-forward firm — and No. 1 ranking on Evident AI’s index of AI maturity at banks — executives didn’t brush off competition. Marianne Lake, in response to an earlier question from Mayo, said the bank has some strategic assets, including in data.

“Only the paranoid survive,” Lake, the CEO of consumer and community banking, said. “We aren’t walking around thinking we have the divine right to success, we are walking around thinking about how to optimize the value that we give to our customers, how to perfect our processes and our systems.”

JPMorgan isn’t the only bank spending big on technology. Its rivals are also rapidly integrating AI throughout trading floors, back offices, and more to create efficiencies and improve customer experiences. Bank of America said it plans to spend around $14 billion on technology this year.

Dimon has previously asked investors to “trust him” on his bank’s spending, saying he is trying to keep the company from falling behind during its January earnings call.

“We need to have the best tech in the world,” he continued. “That drives investment, it drives margin, it drives competition.”




Source link

charles

$20 billion Perplexity is making a big bet on ditching ads

by with No Comment Xpandfy

Perplexity is going full steam ahead with subscriptions and business sales and plans to focus more on monetization than it has in the past, executives said at a roundtable with reporters on Monday.

The AI search startup, based in San Francisco, is the latest to publicly distance itself from putting ads in chatbot answers, with one executive saying it isn’t exploring any ad deals at the moment. That’s a contrast to OpenAI, which is going all in on ads, while arch-rival Anthropic has publicly touted the opposite.

One Perplexity executive said the startup is increasingly targeting large businesses. The company has only five people on its enterprise sales team and plans to ramp that up, the executive added. It also wants to serve high-powered users such as finance professionals, doctors, and CEOs.

The focus on selling to businesses positions Perplexity more directly as a competitor to startups like Glean, which lets employees search internal files and data more efficiently with AI.

The move comes amid some VC skepticism about Perplexity’s prospects, with Silicon Valley investors voting it the company they’d most like to bet against in an informal poll at an AI conference last year, amid back-to-back funding rounds and talks of a wider AI bubble.

Perplexity will focus more on revenue and revenue retention than on other metrics, such as the number of questions it answers, the executive said. Perplexity also pledged to keep allowing people to use the product for free, with rate limits.

At the roundtable, the company declined to share specific financials and shared that revenue grew 4.7 times last year. Perplexity generated over $150 million in annual recurring revenue by mid-last year, its head of communications Jesse Dwyer told Business Insider in August. It hit $200 million in ARR in October, Alex Heath of Sources reported.

The news comes after several months of the AI startup lying low, as Perplexity said in a press invite. The company’s leaders said it was busy building and not focusing on AI-related drama.

Perplexity had announced in 2024 that it would start experimenting with ads. That effort stalled, with the top ads leader, Taz Patel, quietly leaving last year. One consistent issue with ads in AI-generated answers is that users won’t believe them, the Perplexity executive said.

Perplexity also launched a product for enterprises in 2024 that uses internal and external data to generate research reports, among other features.




Source link

Sales-reps-at-11-billion-AI-startup-ElevenLabs-have-to.jpeg

Sales reps at $11 billion AI startup ElevenLabs have to bring in 20 times their base salary, or they’re out — VP says

by with No Comment Xpandfy

At $11 billion AI startup ElevenLabs, the message to sales reps is simple: Hit 20x your base salary, or you’re out.

Speaking on the 20VC podcast on Friday, Carles Reina, VP of sales at the voice-cloning startup, talked through its “ruthless” quotas.

“So if I pay you $100,000 a year, your quota is $2 million. That’s it. If you don’t achieve your quota, then you’re going to be out, right?” Reina said. “And we’re ruthless on that end.”

ElevenLabs — which was recently valued at $11 billion after closing a $500 million funding round — operates in micro-teams of five to ten people each, according to CEO and cofounder Mati Staniszewski, who spoke on a separate 20VC podcast episode in September.

Reina said he prefers to operate in smaller teams that hit their quotas, and pay them more.

Small teams have become a growing trend in tech, with AI startups touting their ability to scale with far fewer employees by working alongside AI agents.

LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman wrote in January that a team of 15 people using AI can rival a team of 150 who aren’t.

Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg said on a Meta earnings call in July that he has “gotten a little bit more convinced around the ability for small, talent-dense teams to be the optimal configuration for driving frontier research.”

Reina said the “ruthless” quota has been successful at ElevenLabs, saying on the 20VC podcast that more than 80% of reps hit their sales quota.

ElevenLabs did not respond to a request for a comment.

He added that the firm compensates both the account executive and customer success manager if they upsell a company within the first 12 months.

“I’m paying double, but I don’t care,” Reina said. “It makes perfect sense because then I have these two people busting their ass to make sure that they actually can make more money, which is fantastic for me as a company.”

The push for higher performance isn’t limited to AI startups.

In April, Google said it was restructuring its compensation structure to increase rewards for top performers. “High performance is more important than ever,” Google’s head of compensation told staff at the time.




Source link

Amazons-8-billion-Anthropic-investment-balloons-to-61-billion.jpeg

Amazon’s $8 billion Anthropic investment balloons to $61 billion

by with No Comment Xpandfy

Talk about return on investment. Amazon’s bet on Anthropic looks like an enormous win, at least on paper.

The cloud giant disclosed on Friday that it holds $45.8 billion of convertible notes and $14.8 billion of nonvoting preferred stock in the AI startup. Taken together, the figures show that Amazon’s Anthropic stake is now worth $60.6 billion.

Amazon has invested $8 billion in Anthropic since late 2023, indicating a seven-fold increase in value. If borne out, that would rank among the most lucrative strategic technology investments the company has ever disclosed.

The two companies have a deep commercial tie-up. Anthropic has committed to buy 1 million of Amazon’s Trainium chips, binding one of the leading AI labs closely to Amazon Web Services.

Anthropic last raised $13 billion in September at a $183 billion post-money valuation, following a $3.5 billion round in March that valued the company at $61.5 billion. The AI startup is in talks for another funding round that would push its value to $350 billion.

The convertible notes held by Amazon convert to preferred stock as Anthropic raises additional capital. So every time the startup closes a round, Amazon gets valuable new stock in one of the hottest AI companies on the planet.

Some of the upside has already flowed through to Amazon’s earnings. Conversions in 2025 generated about $5.6 billion in recognized gains, and Amazon booked a further $7.2 billion upward adjustment to its “other income” in the third quarter as Anthropic’s valuation climbed.

An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider that the value of the company’s Anthropic stake rose from $38.5 billion in the third quarter to $60.6 billion in the fourth. The company expects to book a further $15 billion gain in first-quarter “other income” as some of the notes convert to nonvoting preferred stock, the spokesperson added.

Amazon also disclosed that these valuations relied on “significant judgment.” The company classified the convertible notes as “Level 3” assets, meaning their values are based on unobservable inputs and Amazon’s own assumptions rather than market prices, the company disclosed.

That’s common with stakes in startups, which don’t have securities that trade regularly on liquid public markets. That’s what IPOs are for — and Anthropic is reportedly eyeing a listing this year.

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at ekim@businessinsider.com or Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp at 650-942-3061. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.




Source link

OpenAI-could-generate-25-billion-in-annual-ad-revenue-by.jpeg

OpenAI could generate $25 billion in annual ad revenue by 2030, and that should worry Google, top tech analyst says

by with No Comment Xpandfy

Advertising could become a $25 billion business for OpenAI — and pose a threat to Google, according to new estimates on Monday from a top tech analyst.

Evercore ISI’s Mark Mahaney sees the startup generating that level of annual ad revenue by 2030 if it executes well on rolling out this new business.

OpenAI said on Friday that free and Go users of ChatGPT would start seeing ads “in the coming weeks.” OpenAI also laid out its advertising principles, such as clearly labeling them and not sharing user conversations with advertisers.

“A path to generating several billion dollars in ad revenue in 2026, going to $25B+ by 2030, seems reasonable,” Mahaney wrote in a note to investors.

That’s based on the likely scale of ChatGPT by that time, the proven monetization of high-intent performance marketing platforms, and the current size of this market, the analyst added.

OpenAI’s revenue is growing fast already. CFO Sarah Friar said in a recent blog post that the startup’s annualized revenue topped $20 billion in 2025, up from $2 billion in 2023. However, there are big question marks over OpenAI’s losses and whether it can become profitable in the future.

Advertising could be one way for OpenAI to boost its top and bottom lines.

Mahaney noted that Google’s Search and YouTube businesses likely generated close to $300 billion in ad revenue in 2025, with Meta generating an additional $180 billion. These are highly profitable operations, with operating profit margins of 40%, according to the analyst.

ChatGPT has almost 1 billion weekly average users, many of whom share valuable details with the chatbot, such as what they want and need. Advertisers are willing to pay up for access to this treasure trove. This is the type of intent-based information that forms the backbone of the massive digital ad businesses run by Google and Meta.

OpenAI has said that initial test ads will appear at the bottom of ChatGPT answers and be relevant to the user’s conversation with the chatbot. That approach might not be too intrusive for users, while still being attractive to advertisers, Mahaney said.

“OpenAI’s move directly challenges this core revenue stream by offering an alternative, highly engaging platform for users to discover products and services,” Mahaney wrote. “If ChatGPT can successfully integrate ads that are helpful rather than intrusive, it could siphon off valuable commercial queries that traditionally go to Google.”

The analyst also warned that if OpenAI can develop a “conversational” ad format, where users research and discuss potential purchases within ChatGPT, that could prompt advertisers to shift some of their marketing budgets because this is “high-intent engagement.”

Even if ChatGPT goes all-in on ads, though, don’t expect the chatbot to take Google’s share of the market overnight, Mahaney added.

OpenAI will still have to compete with the tech ecosystem that Google has spent years creating, such as its Chrome web browser, as well as web users’ habit of Googling stuff when they need an answer, Mahaney wrote.




Source link

What-is-Manus-the-Chinese-founded-AI-startup-Meta-is-buying.jpeg

What is Manus, the Chinese-founded AI startup Meta is buying for over $2 billion?

by with No Comment Xpandfy

Manus is back in the spotlight.

The Chinese-founded artificial intelligence startup is being acquired by Meta in a deal reported to be worth more than $2 billion — one of the most high-profile instances of a US tech giant buying an Asian AI company.

Manus grabbed headlines in March when it unveiled an AI agent designed to autonomously execute tasks like résumé screening and stock analysis.

The startup was founded in China and moved its headquarters to Singapore in mid-2025.

What does Manus do?

Launched in March by the Chinese AI product studio Butterfly Effect, Manus has been pitched by its creators as the world’s first “general” AI agent — a system designed to carry out tasks independently.

Since its launch, the startup has continued to expand what the agent can do, rolling out features that allow users to use Manus for design work, slide creation, and completing tasks directly through a web browser.

Manus can independently execute complex tasks, such as market research, coding, and data analysis, Meta said when it announced the acquisition on Monday.

Business Insider tested the tool in its early stages in March and found it ambitious but uneven in execution, including instances where it hallucinated data.

Earlier this month, Manus said it had surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue, with its total revenue run rate — including usage-based fees and other income streams — exceeding $125 million.

The company in April raised $75 million in funding led by Benchmark, at a valuation of about $500 million, Bloomberg reported. Manus said in an update this month that it now employs about 105 people across Singapore, Tokyo, and San Francisco, and plans to open a Paris office soon.

Who are its founders?

Manus was founded by Xiao Hong, a Chinese entrepreneur and software engineer who is also the CEO of Butterfly Effect.

Known as “Red” in China’s tech circles, Xiao was born in 1992 and studied software engineering at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in central China.

After graduating, Xiao founded Nightingale Technology in 2015, where he developed enterprise productivity tools, including the Yi Ban assistant for WeChat, which gained millions of users in China.

In 2022, he launched Butterfly Effect and rolled out Monica, an AI-powered browser extension that aggregates multiple large language models. Following the acquisition, Xiao will take on a vice president role at Meta.

Xiao was joined at Manus by co-founder Ji Yichao, also known as “Peak Ji,” who was chief scientist at Butterfly Effect. Ji leads technical and infrastructure development at Manus.

The 32-year-old Ji was the public face of Manus at launch, introducing the AI agent in its debut video in March. Ji has a long track record of building consumer technology products, and was named to MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 list this year.

The founding team also includes Zhang Tao, who leads product at Manus. He was head of global product at ByteDance from 2022 to 2023 and has held multiple product roles, including serving as a product manager at Tencent, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Why did Meta buy Manus?

Meta said the acquisition is part of its effort to scale general-purpose AI agents across its apps and services.

The company said in its announcement on Monday that it plans to keep Manus running as a stand-alone product while integrating its technology into Meta’s wider AI offerings.

Manus said the deal would not be disruptive for its customers and that it would continue to sell and operate its subscription service. The company will also continue to operate from Singapore.

“Joining Meta allows us to build on a stronger, more sustainable foundation without changing how Manus works or how decisions are made,” said Xiao.

Buying Manus could give Meta an AI revenue boost and give it a distribution advantage, Business Insider’s Hugh Langley wrote.

What about Manus’ ties to China?

Manus’s links to China have drawn scrutiny.

In May, Sen. John Cornyn questioned US investment in Manus in a post on X. He asked whether American capital should back AI companies with ties to China as competition with Beijing intensifies.

In a statement to Business Insider on Tuesday, a Meta spokesperson said the deal would fully sever Manus’s remaining ties to China.

“There will be no continuing Chinese ownership interests in Manus AI following the transaction, and Manus AI will discontinue its services and operations in China,” the spokesperson told Business Insider. This includes shutting down the AI assistant, Monica, and relocating relevant employees.

Manus employees who join Meta will not have access to customer data, and Meta will continue to geo-block access to its AI models, the spokesperson added.




Source link

Paramount-wanted-to-use-24-billion-in-Middle-Eastern-money.jpeg

Paramount wanted to use $24 billion in Middle Eastern money to help buy WBD. That’s not why Netflix won.

by with No Comment Xpandfy

Larry and David Ellison, who own Paramount, want to use $24 billion in Middle Eastern money to finance their bid for Warner Bros. Discovery. Is that a problem for WBD?

You might think so — especially since $10 billion of that came from the Saudi government. That’s the same government that US intelligence said killed a Washington Post journalist in 2018. The kind of partner you might think a major American media conglomerate would want to keep at arm’s length.

But that’s not a problem WBD raises in its newest communication to shareholders, where it urges them to take the deal offered by Netflix instead.

What actually worries WBD about the Ellisons’ bid isn’t the Ellisons’ particular partners. It’s that the Ellisons had partners.

In a regulatory filing that tells the backstory of the proposed WBD sale, WBD execs and their reps repeatedly told the Ellisons they wanted a firm commitment that Larry Ellison — currently the world’s 5th-richest man, with an estimated net worth of $243 billion — would guarantee the deal himself.

Instead, WBD argues, the Ellisons never gave them the assurances they wanted.

The filing does bring up the fact that money from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds would likely complicate regulatory issues for a proposed Ellison/Paramount deal. (Ditto for a proposed $1 billion investment from China’s Tencent, which the Ellisons later took out of their proposal.) But those are presented as technical hurdles. Not moral or patriotic dealbreakers.

And they’re just part of a laundry list of complaints WBD makes about the Ellisons. Among them: A December 2 tweet from New York Post reporter Charlie Gasparino, which WBD said violated a confidentiality agreement Paramount had signed.

And when it comes to the main pitch WBD is making to investors, all of that stuff disappears. It just boils down to “we did our homework, and the Netflix deal is better.”

That’s not shocking: If you’re a WBD investor, you are (supposedly) only interested in getting the maximum value for shares. And WBD’s filing argues that Netflix is the one that can pay the most.

Now we’re waiting to see what the Ellisons do next: Many observers believe they’ll return with yet another, higher bid. Will this one have Gulf money, too?




Source link

Trump-sues-the-BBC-for-5-billion-alleging-defamation-over.jpeg

Trump sues the BBC for $5 billion, alleging defamation over January 6 documentary

by with No Comment Xpandfy

President Donald Trump sued the BBC for defamation.

On Monday night, Trump’s lawyers filed a civil complaint in a federal court in Florida and are seeking at least $5 billion in damages from the British broadcaster.

The lawsuit claims that the BBC has defamed Trump in a Panorama documentary that aired about a week before the 2024 election. The complaint alleges the program presented a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction” of Trump.

The suit’s allegations focus on how the documentary was edited with regard to footage of Trump’s January 6, 2021, speech near the White House.

The White House and BBC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

This is a developing story; please check back for updates.




Source link

Elon-Musk-just-hit-Sam-Altman-with-an-800-billion.jpeg

Elon Musk just hit Sam Altman with an $800 billion counterpunch

by with No Comment Xpandfy

If Elon Musk and Sam Altman like each other, they hide it well.

In the latest turn in the rivalry, the two are battling over the top spot on the list of the world’s most valuable private companies.

While the two cofounded OpenAI together back in 2015, the partnership has frayed spectacularly since.

Musk left OpenAI in 2018 and later founded rival startup, xAI. Musk or his company, xAI, has filed lawsuits against OpenAI.

OpenAI held a secondary share sale in October that valued it at $500 billion, taking the lead from Musk’s SpaceX by a cool $100 billion.

Not one to cede ground to a rival, Musk is now planning his own secondary share sale at SpaceX, according to an internal letter to employees seen by multiple outlets. It would value the company at a whopping $800 billion. If that happens soon, it means Musk would have only let Altman hold the mantle for a couple of months.

Musk also confirmed on X this week that the company is exploring a blockbuster initial public offering, which might be the only way OpenAI can regain its lead as a private company. OpenAI this year restructured its business, which would allow it to also pursue its own eye-watering IPO in the future.

While this valuation battle between the two billionaires is maybe cringeworthy theater for the average earner, it underscores a significant shift: investors are pouring unprecedented money into technologies once viewed as speculative science projects.

SpaceX, which aims to make life multi-planetary and colonize Mars, and OpenAI, which seeks to develop a theoretical AI that can reason like humans, are two of the most visible examples, but they are part of a broader surge in frontier-tech valuations. AI, robotics, and defense tech startups have all notched multibillion-dollar valuations in the past year — bubble be damned.




Source link

Shopify-experienced-instability-for-hours-on-one-of-the-busiest.jpeg

Shopify experienced instability for hours on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Last year, it handled $11.5 billion between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

by with No Comment Xpandfy

It was a tough day for one of the nation’s largest transaction platforms to experience instability.

Shopify suffered an outage on Cyber Monday, freezing some merchants out of their accounts and point-of-sale systems during one of the busiest shopping days of the year.

The financial impact is still unclear. A spokesperson directed Business Insider to the company’s status page.

Many small business owners posted on social media to tell shoppers that their shipping labels could not be generated and that they may experience issues during checkout.

Outage tracker Downdetector showed a spike of roughly 4,000 problem reports at 11 a.m. ET, with thousands more pouring in around 1:15 p.m. ET.

The Canadian e-commerce transaction giant said early afternoon on its status page that some sellers were “experiencing issues” with Shopify admin, Point of Sales, Mobile, and Shopify Support.

By mid-afternoon, Shopify reported that services were recovering after engineers fixed an issue with the company’s login authentication flow, though pockets of disruption remained.

“We are seeing signs of recovery for admin and POS login issues now,” Shopify said in a 2:31 p.m. ET update, adding that teams were still monitoring the situation.

By 3:38 p.m. ET, Shopify said in its most recent status update that its Help Center is still “experiencing longer than normal wait times.”

As of 9 p.m. ET, Point of Sale, API & Mobile, and Support are still considered to have “degraded performance.”

Shopify powers more than 10% of US e-commerce sales. The company’s President, Harley Finkelstein, said in a press release on Saturday that the platform processed $6.2 billion in gross merchandise volume on Black Friday, up 25% year over year, led by cosmetics, activewear, fitness, and nutrition.

Shopify’s stock closed 5.8% down on Monday.




Source link