Content is queen: CEO Susan Wojcicki is calling time on her tenure at YouTube

2/19/23 7:00PM

Broadcast Yourself

‍CEO of YouTube, Susan Wojcicki, announced last Thursday that she would be stepping down after 25 years at Google, with 9 at the helm of the world’s largest video sharing platform.

Wojcicki is Google royalty. She was initially the search engine’s first landlord, when she rented her garage out to co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998. She went on to become the company’s first marketing manager and helped to drive the development of AdSense, which transformed the web by enabling websites to make money through displaying Google ads. Then, in 2006, she convinced the board to spend $1.65bn acquiring a startup called YouTube after noticing the company was outcompeting her unit — Google Video.

‍Content is queen‍

‍Wojcicki officially became CEO of YouTube in 2014. She maintained the early focus on creators, keeping YouTube’s near 50:50 split of advertising revenue, helping to ensure the platform always had the content that people wanted to watch, even if it sacrificed some earnings in the short term.

That focus brought the usual problems associated with user-generated content, such as moderation and how to handle bad actors, but it's ultimately propelled YouTube to second place on the list of most visited websites. Its popularity has seen YouTube become the birthplace of enormous media empires like that of Mr. Beast. One of the site’s most popular creators, he's racked up a total of 22.7 billion views on his main channel, earning some $50m+ last year, per Forbes.

Jon Keegan2h

Report: Google is backstopping Anthropic’s $35 billion data center deal

Google and Anthropic have always had close ties. The search giant invested early in the maker of Claude, which boosted Google’s investment returns last quarter.

But the two companies appear to be closer than we knew. According to a new report from Bloomberg, it turns out that Google is backstopping $35 billion worth of data center leases for Anthropic.

Last fall, Anthropic announced that was getting into the data center business, pledging $50 billion in a partnership with Fluidstack.

The revelation adds to concerns of so-called “circular deals,” which could lead to a domino-like collapse if one company fails.

Google’s Backstops Underpin $35 Billion Chip Deal for Anthropic

Last fall, Anthropic announced that was getting into the data center business, pledging $50 billion in a partnership with Fluidstack.

The revelation adds to concerns of so-called “circular deals,” which could lead to a domino-like collapse if one company fails.

Jon Keegan

Anthropic releases Claude Fable 5, a locked-down, safer version of Mythos

Claude Fable 5 will cost twice as much as Claude Opus 4.8, Anthropic’s current flagship model. The company also released Claude Mythos 5, but only for trusted partners for testing.

Rani Molla5h

Amazon shatters record in Canada’s “maple bond” market

Amazon has set a record in the Canadian corporate bond market by issuing CA$14 billion ($10.04 billion) of Canadian dollar-denominated notes, according to a new Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The five-part deal officially eclipses the previous record of CA$8.5 billion established just last month by Alphabet.

This massive push comes as hyperscalers aggressively diversify funding to bankroll historic AI capital expenditure, a strategy mirrored by Alphabet’s parallel expansion into European debt markets to fuel its soaring infrastructure demands.

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Apple wants to finally give smartphones a brain

Releasing the iOS 27 developer beta is a start, but Siri can’t rescue us from app overload until it can run the third-party apps we actually use.

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Jon Keegan6/8/26

OpenAI files confidentially for IPO

Today OpenAI announced it has filed confidentially with the SEC to go public. The company said in a blog post that it filed the draft S-1 form.

OpenAI’s filing comes a week after archrival Anthropic — now valued at $965 billion — also filed a confidential S-1 for its own public offering. Both IPOs are expected to be among the largest in US history.

In a press release, OpenAI wrote:

“We expect it to leak so we’re just announcing it. We have not decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company. But it’s a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best.”

Confidential submission of draft S-1 to the SEC