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Greetings! Welcome to summer, particularly for those in cities like New York that are enduring 100-degree temperatures today. And it was hot in a different sense on Wall Street, where all those worries about tariffs seem to have faded into the background, judging by the recent stock market frenzy. The Nasdaq 100 index, for instance, rose 1.5% on Tuesday to hit a new record. Yippee! The market is doing so well that some companies left for dead years ago are coming out of the woodwork and considering going public—well, at least one: scooter rental firm Lime, which, according to Reuters, has hired bankers to prepare for an IPO. Lime, as longtime readers of The Information might recall, was part of the scooter boom of several years ago that ran out of steam during the Covid-19 lockdowns. As this story from that era explained, Lime had to raise money from Uber and others at a valuation of $510 million, 79% lower than its previous number, to stay alive. The gambit worked. Scooter rentals, despite the clear and present danger they represent to both users and pedestrians, appear to have become a thriving business. Bloomberg reported in February that Lime had its second year of positive free cash flow in 2024. Exactly what Lime will be worth in an IPO isn’t yet clear. Reuters’ report said only it would be “significantly higher than its valuation in 2020 when Uber led a funding round,” which isn’t saying much. Whatever IPO price Lime fetches, you can understand the company’s enthusiasm to leap now, given how strong the market has been. It’s hardly the only one to jump in—Wealthfront, a 17-year-old fintech, said on Monday it had filed paperwork for an IPO. But these companies should be realistic about their prospects. Sure, some IPOs have been blockbusters, like that of stablecoin firm Circle, whose stock is up more than 600% since its public debut in early June. Others, not so much. Take fintech Chime. While its stock rallied 36% from the IPO price in the two days after its offering two weeks ago, the company has lost most of those gains since then. On Tuesday, Chime stock closed at $29, $2 above its IPO price. This market has its favorites—crypto and AI related—and others have to take their chances. Who said there’s not enough innovation in smartphones? The Verge reported today that Chinese firm Unihertz has announced a BlackBerry-like smartphone with a physical keyboard, the Titan 2. As that name implies, this phone—available in October—is a follow-up to an earlier BlackBerry-like device. There’s been chatter for a while that younger people are increasingly opting for dumber phones, including flip phones, so it’s predictable that some would also want a BlackBerry-like device with a physical keyboard. So despite the energy companies like Apple and Google are putting into adding new artificial intelligence features to their smartphones, there’s obviously a portion of the market that wants to go backward. What next? Phones with a long cord stretching back to the kitchen? - Cybersecurity company Snyk said it had acquired Swiss AI security research startup Invariant Labs for an undisclosed price. Founded in 2024, Invariant Labs develops tools to build secure and reliable AI agents.
- Walmart will begin testing so-called “dark stores” that aren’t accessible to the public but act more like mini warehouses as the company tries to compete more on quicker deliveries, according to Bloomberg.
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