Reporter @theinformation. previous @washingtonpost, @nytimes, @NBCNews. dm for signal
Bay Area
Joined July 2009
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Eli M. Rosenberg retweeted
Who is Zach Frankel?
The question has been circulating around X over the past few days.
I wrote the first-ever profile of the secretive Ramp and Cognition investor, who is considered a cofounder of multiple of his portfolio companies -- covering everything from how he meets founders to what his unusually hands-on help consists of.
Features interviews with the likes of @eglyman, @alextaubman & @ScottWu46.
Some highlights:
-- Editing college essays for the siblings of founders
-- Air Frankel, the private jet sometimes used by his founders
-- "Capitalism with friends"
-- More insight into his $185 B + in portfolio companies
-- A $70 M Juul dividend
-- A passion for pandemics
-- Recruiting much of Team USA from the International Olympiad in Informatics
Still lots of mystery here, especially how he went from six months of interning at Founders Fund to solo investing in his 20s.
theinformation.com/articles/…
when you give someone cash to do something for you wsj.com/real-estate/every-ho…
Eli M. Rosenberg retweeted
Scoop: Anthropic, Google and OpenAI have been holding regular discussions about creating an AI industry standards body, meeting as recently as this past week even as efforts in the White House stalled.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also discussed moving the idea forward without the government in a company town hall this past week
theinformation.com/articles/…
I wrote a profile of @AnjneyMidha, one of the first investors at Anthropic. He's on a streak.
Anj told me about:
-the early days fundraising for the company, and how most mainstream VCs turned them away
-why he thinks technical knowledge is a prerequisite for success right now
-his plans to create an endowment, the Grid Trust, to provide compute to smaller startups and researchers
theinformation.com/articles/…
the mathematicians who made progress on the Navier-Stokes problem before OpenAI solved it this week said they asked the company whether the work they had done on it through Codex had been visible to them 👀
scientificamerican.com/artic…
Eli M. Rosenberg retweeted
Some pubs devote their fall previews to the finest flannels and the coziest stews. Lame!
Ours has:
💰 Anthropic's IPO
💻 OpenAI's sagging consumer business
🏭 TSMC's chipmaking capacity
💸 Nvida's new sales honcho
🫤 Amazon's lackluster models
👑 Meta, the wannabe enterprise AI king
And much more! theinformation.com/articles/…
Eli M. Rosenberg retweeted
I started writing a LinkedIn post about our new Asia hire and ended up writing this and getting just a wee bit teary.
Oh what we can learn from our younger selves...
theinformation.com/articles/…
it would good to differentiate AI writing vs human but a little dismaying to let ... this one company's AI decide it
wired.com/story/pangram-has-…
I was talking to a longtime SpaceX employee who struck gold in the IPO. This person told me that they started getting nonstop pitches from financial firms about something called 'tax loss harvesting' as the offering neared.
That took me down the rabbit hole into the bubbling world of tax minimization and avoidance — now known as 'tax alpha' — where advisors pitch aggressive strategies juiced by modern software and analytics to help create losses for clients that offset the taxes from liquidity events like an IPO.
Data I got showed that this type of investing is now the single most popular category for professionally managed portfolios, and continues to rise. My latest this weekend for @theinformation
theinformation.com/articles/…
Direct indexing, the most popular tactic, now makes for a whopping 40% of the investments in professionally managed stock portfolios, dwarfing bonds and traditional stock investments
NEW: I profiled Forrest Liu, the activist behind @garrytan's political ops, as the group gears up for a big fight against the billionaire tax, NIMBYs and other progressive issues in the Nov. election.
Liu told me about:
-A digital tool for making AI political ads, akin to those that helped boost @spencerpratt's campaign, they're hoping to release to supporters in a few weeks
-His relentless work hobnobbing with billionaires who oppose the tax measure and other issues
-How the group believes they can use the Asian-American community in CA as a wedge to drive other political priorities, like opposition to the wealth tax, forward
theinformation.com/articles/…
Eli M. Rosenberg retweeted
Silicon Valley’s enormous surge in riches has turbocharged the market for new and used planes, energizing startups that offer innovative ways to gain access to an aircraft.
Read more: thein.fo/3T7gA5k
there is a private plane shortage
-used market up 15-20% year over year
-new jets waitlisted until 2029 or beyond
-driven by growing silicon valley wealth + IPOs
-new startups / clubs emerging for UHNWI to provide even more luxury planes
-private planes have also become a tool for tax avoidance
theinformation.com/articles/…
Eli M. Rosenberg retweeted
It's been one year of TITV 🚨
🎯 950+ interviews
🎯 1M new followers
🎯 25M video views
Ready for year two 🚀
NEW: The Trump admin asked OpenAI to stagger the release of its new model, GPT 5.6, over security concerns:
-Sam Altman received a call from Commerce Sec. Howard Lutnick cautioning the company against launching without receiving approvals from other agencies, a source said.
-Altman told staff in a memo that the government would be “approving access customer by customer during this preview period” for GPT 5.6. "We’ve made clear to the U.S. government that this is not our preferred long term model," he wrote.
exclusive reporting via @leomschwartz, @steph_palazzolo and @amir
theinformation.com/articles/…
