The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 83 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 4 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Jessica Lessin: Stripe is attempting to acquire PayPal
“The Information has a big Stripe financial scoop that is worth discussing because. We have not discussed Stripe in a while and it is trying to buy PayPal.”
Lessin: OpenAI is preparing to confidentially file for an IPO soon
“Breaking news from the information and other outlets is that OpenAI confidentially filing soon.”
Lessin: China Instructed Tech Industry Not to Buy Nvidia H200 Chips
“Overnight breaking from the information China has said to its tech industry, no H 200. You may not buy H 200.”
Vinod Khosla: The majority of current AI venture investing will fail
“Bottom line, bargain hunting will be a poor bet in AI, but firms putting money to work who invest in all high valuations indiscriminately will do poorly, and that is the majority of the investing that is happening.”
Lessin: Lilian Weng Rejoined OpenAI After Leaving Thinking Machines Lab
“Well, guess I read in the information today that she started at OpenAI.
Started back up at OpenAI.”
OpenAI burned $4 billion on $5.7 billion revenue in Q1 2026
“We reported, by the way, last night that OpenAI burned four billion in the first quarter on revenue of 5.7.”
Lessin: SpaceX has filed its S-1, targeting June 12 IPO
“Well, and also we have SpaceX IPO S one is out confirming numbers previously reported by the information. June 12th, guys, is the rough date for liftoff.”
Jessica Lessin: Enterprises will reject seat-based AI pricing for usage models
“But eventually all these companies are going to say, I'm not going to buy, you know, however many thousand dollars seat for all of my employees. I'm going to want usage based pricing, or I'm going to want some kind of outcome thing.”
Jessica Lessin: Altman warned OpenAI staff 'vibes are going to be tough'
“We published a memo week or so ago, or details from a memo, quotes from a memo in which Sam Altman, ahead of the Gemini launch, but clearly when the team had been testing it, needed to rally his troops. And he said, the vibes are going to be tough out there. O…”
Jessica Lessin denies AI startups leak financial numbers to The Information
“I will say they don't give them to us. Like people always come up to me. They're like, oh, doing open AI's dirty work for them by publishing their numbers. I'm like, yeah, not really. But so VCs assume that these companies like beg us to do this. I can, I will…”
Lessin: The Information reported weak margins on Oracle GPU rentals
“We reported on Oracle some of their numbers around renting out GPUs and the margins don't look great.”
Lessin: Anthropic has surpassed $4 billion in annual recurring revenue
“We reported yesterday the information that Anthropic is at more than four billion in ARR”
Jessica Lessin: The Information allows reporters to use AI for copyediting
“There is no reason, like AIs are excellent. And applying AP style when that's all you need. And so I'm announcing this new policy. I'm going to get so much shit at my all hands, which actually happens before this pod. So that's good. But like on the margin, li…”
Lessin: Apple teams are internally divided between incremental AI and frontier LLMs
“There's different teams inside the companies relates to AI who have different strategies. There's a more incremental let's play to our strengths. Let's keep evolving around the on device stuff. Let's partner to make our services better. There's a group that sa…”
Lessin: Internal reporting reveals Apple's LLM efforts are in complete disarray
“Apple really It needs, if it's going to be in the sort of LLM type game in search and AI, as opposed to like optimizing cool on device use cases, it's really got up its game. And by all accounts, all our reporting of the information just shows a huge freaking …”
Jessica Lessin: OpenAI is projected to lose $44 billion through 2028
“They're only projected to lose forty four billion between. 2023 and 20 28, according to the information.”
Jessica Lessin predicts Nike-SKIMS partnership will fail within 24 months
“I think this won't end well. I, I'm predicting, you know, the 24 month information expose on what went wrong.”
Jessica Lessin: OpenAI and Google face slowdowns in AI model training
“The information has led the charge on reporting about how in particular OpenAI, but also Google now are reaching slowdowns in the rate of training their models.”
Jessica Lessin: Apple Is Suspending Production of Vision Pro Version One
“Also, according to the information, we've known the Vision Pro hasn't exactly been a rocket ship, but it does appear like they are suspending production on version one.”
Jessica Lessin: How a wrong number sparked a feud with Bill Gurley
“We thought we had Bill Gurley's cell phone. It turned out we had his gatehouse phone. So upon calling it, our reporters in our newsroom were just calling it, and he thought we were hiding in the bushes.”
Lessin: Bolt Founder Ryan Breslow Pitching Self-Dealing Return Proposal to Investors
“Ryan Breslow, the founder of Bolt, who had left the company, is staging a comeback with a very audacious proposal that he's pitching investors on for him to return.
Includes a lot of self-dealing, as reported in the information.
Also reported that investors se…”
Jessica Lessin: The Information reported Apple paused next Vision Pro
“The information is reported there, they're not even working on the next version of it.”
Jessica Lessin: China holds a board seat in a secretive ByteDance subsidiary
“I thought of this because the reason the world knows that actually the Chinese government owns ByteDance is because Of some of the great reporting of my colleagues in Asia that actually broke the news of not just this idea that Chinese companies are controlled…”
Jessica Lessin: Leaked documents show Microsoft's cloud business is smaller than thought
“Information also had a story this week that Microsoft accidentally released some documents that showed its cloud business is not as big as people think it is”
Jessica Lessin: Davos is an effective boondoggle that drove business
“I am now on record as a fan of the boondoggle known as Davos. Because I did a shit ton of business there this year. So I am like, I was so productive in those three days. That I said, I helped so many parts of my team by being there for three days.”
Elon Musk to get massive comp plan in SpaceX IPO
“The information reported this week, not only unsurprisingly, is he getting super voting shares in the SpaceX IPO, but he now Elon has a really aggressive comp plan as well that will give him tens of millions of shares if I think the market cap goes to 6.6 tril…”
Lessin: Energy reporter believes AI energy crisis narrative is overblown
“She thinks this whole, like, energy crisis is way overblown, and that we are only using half of the energy we have in the-”
Lessin: OpenAI is pivoting to enterprise and coding, cutting side quests
“Following the information's reporting about the code red
Several months ago in terms of competing with then Gemini, they're sort of entering this another strategic review period where they're going to focus on enterprise and coding and get rid of what they cal…”
Lessin: Subscriber sentiment data correlates with tech stock performance
“I did some really cool analysis of years of information, subscriber sentiment data that has to do with showing correlation to how public stocks move and newsflash turns out there is a correlation between the sentiment data and what public stocks, tech stocks d…”
Lessin: The Information broke that Amazon may invest $10B in OpenAI
“Did you guys see, by the way, the information breaking this week that Amazon is in talks to invest ten billion dollars in OpenAI?”
Lessin: Google Ads are The Information's best subscription acquisition channel
“Google, I will say Google's ads are wonderful for the information. Like, I will go on record saying that they are the best performing driving quality subs.”
Jessica Lessin: OpenAI has discussed developing a productivity suite
“The information broke this week that OpenAI has been discussing. We don't know exactly the status, but sort of a Doc's productivity, like, sweet product.”
Lessin: Scale AI reached nearly $1B in ARR by September 2024
“So as of September of last year, there were nearly a billion in ARR. In the first half of last year, they were at 400”
Lessin: Enterprises are pausing AI spend increases due to DeepSeek efficiency
“We've done a lot of reporting at the information about businesses that sort of say, you know, we're not increasing our spend right now because we're getting efficiency gains from deep seek and all these other models.”
Jessica Lessin: OpenAI is on track to hit $12.7B in 2025 revenue
“I mean, we reported their revenue target this year is 12.7 billion up from four last year, and they're on track to hit it.”
Jessica Lessin: Alibaba and Chinese Government Proposed Investing in DeepSeek
“The information did break the news today that Alibaba and the Chinese government are proposing that they invest in DeepSeq.”
Jessica Lessin: Subscriptions work for news while micropayments make no sense
“Subscription is the right model because you're selling access, you know, it's not, this is why, like, micropayments don't make any sense, right? It's not about any one piece of content. It's about trusted access to the answer when you need it.”
Lessin: People Will Not Want to Consume News Through Chatbots
“Do I think it's how people are going to want to consume their news? No”
Lessin: Lowering software technical barriers only solves 10% of building businesses
“And I think there's some marginal advantage to it. But in my mind, that's like a five to 10% problem of like more great businesses, not like the 90% problem.”
Lessin: AI chatbot summaries will not kill The Information's business
“Texting a chat bot for a piece of information, like, it's not, I mean, That is not going to kill our business. If we continue to do that well, we're going to have an amazing business and it's much, much deeper than that.”
Jessica Lessin: TikTok Pays Microsoft $20M a Month for Azure OpenAI
“I read in the information that TikTok is paying Microsoft Twenty million dollars a month to access open AI through Azure.”
Jessica Lessin: OpenAI Generates $1 Billion Annually Selling AI Model Access
“Yeah, I mean, as my colleagues at The Information have reported, OpenAI is making a billion dollars a year in selling access to its model.”
Jessica Lessin: Media Companies Riding Tech Waves Create No Lasting Value
“We've seen a lot of media companies whose thesis has been to ride a tech wave, and that has, by definition, is not where value will be created. And that doesn't mean you don't leverage new tech waves, turbocharge your superpower as an organization, but it just…”
Lessin: Camera-off Zoom board meetings make sources easier for reporters to reach
“As a reporter, it's gotten a lot easier to get sources on the phone, especially, like, sources who are in a lot of board meetings, because their boards are just them with their camera off on Zoom.”
Jessica Lessin says Bloomberg newsroom employees must badge in for bathroom breaks
“Bloomberg does that. You have to badge in and out of the bathroom. Don't work at Bloomberg. Work at the information. It's true. The newsroom. You have to badge in and out of your desk, including, like, bathroom breaks, so.”
Lessin: People will not want to consume news through chatbots
“Do I think it's how people are going to want to consume their news? No”
Jessica Lessin: Sam Altman and Jony Ive are discussing an AI device
“Myself and my amazing colleagues at the Information Broker story recently that Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, and Johnny Ive, the former Apple designer and designer of the iPhone, Have been deep in conversations about building a hardware device together that k…”