Yahoo!: The digital dinosaur has a lot of life left in it

8/29/23 8:00PM

A dotcom dinosaur reborn

‍Yahoo, an early internet trailblazer, yesterday announced its acquisition of venture capital-focused media startup StrictlyVC to bolster its tech news site, TechCrunch. The deal adds to Yahoo's recent shopping spree, following its acquisitions of the social investing platform CommonStock earlier this month, sports betting app Wagr in April, and “unbiased news platform”, TheFactual, last year.

Yahoo was big tech before big tech was the size of countries. In 1994, the company's founders launched "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" — the first version of a directory and web portal that, as Yahoo, would go on to offer search, email, shopping, news and more, propelling the company’s valuation to $125bn during the peak of the dotcom bubble.

Of course, Yahoo stumbled soon after, as fierce competition — particularly from Google and nascent social media sites — ate into at its user base. As the wave of “web 2.0” washed over the world, Yahoo was increasingly left behind. In 2013, the company acquired Tumblr for $1.1bn — which didn’t work out — and eventually, Yahoo itself was bought by Verizon for $4.5bn.

‍Under new management

‍Since then, Yahoo has changed hands again, and today is owned by private equity giant Apollo after a deal in 2021. Now, the company wants to reinvent itself. Management are looking to get competitive again in the world of search, leveraging the core profitability of its legacy businesses, and the 4 billion (!) visits that Yahoo.com still reportedly receives every month.

Claire Yubin Oh

waymo’s world

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Waymo’s now serving more than 500,000 paid robotaxi rides every week

The Alphabet-owned company grew its ridership more than tenfold in less than two years.

Waymo Self-Driving Electric Car Sighted In London

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Judge blocks Pentagon’s move to blacklist Anthropic

A federal judge in Northern California has granted a preliminary injunction blocking the Pentagon from labeling Anthropic as a national security supply chain risk.

The ruling temporarily prevents the Defense Department from restricting the AI company’s access to federal contracts amid a dispute over its refusal to allow certain military and surveillance uses of its technology. The designation could also have shifted lucrative government work toward competitors, including OpenAI.

Earlier this month, Anthropic, the company behind Claude, sued 17 federal agencies and their heads, alleging the government exceeded its statutory authority.

Rani Molla3/27/26

Report: SpaceX’s record IPO may grant preferential access to retail investors and Tesla shareholders

SpaceX’s impending IPO could raise $40 billion to $80 billion and rank as the largest ever — as well as one of the most unconventional.

The Wall Street Journal reports several ways CEO Elon Musk is considering breaking with IPO norms:

Investors in his other companies, including Tesla, could receive preferential access to shares.
Individual investors may get a third or more of the allocation, far above the typical ~10% mark.
Instead of a traditional road show, Musk wants investors to visit SpaceX facilities in person.

Exclusive | The SpaceX IPO Will Be Just as Unconventional as Musk Himself

Investors in his other companies, including Tesla, could receive preferential access to shares.
Individual investors may get a third or more of the allocation, far above the typical ~10% mark.
Instead of a traditional road show, Musk wants investors to visit SpaceX facilities in person.

Rani Molla3/26/26

Tesla released estimates for Q1 deliveries and they’re lower than analysts expected

Ahead of first-quarter earnings next month, Tesla released its own company-compiled Wall Street consensus estimate for deliveries: 365,645 vehicles. While that’s lower than the 382,000 FactSet consensus estimate, it represents a nearly 9% jump from Q1 2025, when Tesla sold 336,681 vehicles.

Tesla started releasing its own consensus estimates to the public — not just institutional investors — for the first time in Q4 2025. The move was seen as a way to temper investor expectations, as other estimates were too high. Last quarter, Tesla’s compilation was closer to actual numbers, which fell 16% year over year.

The market-implied odds from event contracts suggest 64% of traders think Tesla’s Q1 deliveries will be more than 350,000, 44% think it will be higher than 360,000, and just 21% have it at higher than 370,000.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

The toughest AI benchmark just got a whole lot tougher

ARC-AGI-3 is the latest version of a clever benchmark that challenges AI models to solve mini video games with no written instructions.

Jon Keegan3/26/26