The telecast, which has aired on ABC since 1976, has a contract with the Disney owned-company through 2028. Before that, the show alternated between NBC and ABC since it was first televised in 1953.

NBC, which carried the Oscars for most of the 1950s and 1960s, is also a suitor, Bloomberg reported. But two people familiar with the inquiry told the outlet that YouTube is also actively interested.

The most-watched video platform in the world has been open about its interest in streaming high-profile live events, and the Academy Awards would certainly be a crown jewel in its stable, which now includes the NFL Sunday ticket and a small but growing roster of live sports.

Messages sent to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which is in the middle of negotiations for the telecast beyond 2028, were not immediately returned Sunday. Inquiries sent to Google and YouTube were also not immediately returned.

YouTube offers a huge audience on streaming, but it lacks the broadcast component of other companies – all of which also have their own streaming platforms. And at least three active bidders own major movie studios that send product to movie theaters – a huge priority for the Oscars and the films they showcase.

The 97th Academy Awards, which aired on March 25, drew an average of 19.6 million viewers across TV and streaming, according to Nielsen, a slight uptick from 2024, and the highest viewership in five years.

The post YouTube Inquires About Becoming Next Home of the Academy Awards | Report appeared first on TheWrap.

It’s no secret that YouTube, a major platform for creators, has a kids problem. Even though viewers aged two to 11 years old make up about 17% of YouTube’s audience, the platform has been called “impossible to monitor” by some parents, and for good reason. YouTube estimates that a staggering 20 million videos are uploaded to the platform every day.

But starting Wednesday, YouTube has taken its children’s safety precautions a step further, implementing an AI age verification tool in the U.S.

The new tool uses YouTube activity and how long the account has been active to determine the potential age of the user. If they’re deemed under 18 years old, YouTube will notify the user and put in safeguards to make the account more age appropriate. That means implementing non-personalized ads, limiting posting and implementing the platform’s digital well-being tools. Users who are incorrectly identified as under 18 will have to prove their age using a government ID, selfie or credit card.

YouTube is far from the first company to use AI to ramp up its age restrictions in the wake of the Online Safety Act being passed in the U.K., a law that requires websites and apps to verify users are over 18. Roblox has them for its unfiltered chat option. Both Bluesky and Discord are using facial recognition technology to confirm their users’ ages (That’s led to some tricksters using video game characters, like Norman Reedus in “Death Stranding 2,” to bypass the system).

For all their good intentions, these more invasive measures have left a sour taste for some. Albert Fox Cahn, an anti-surveillance advocate and lawyer, called facial surveillance and ID checks a “flawed” idea in The Atlantic. 

“A website with sensitive content arguably becomes less safe to use, because the stakes of a breach become much higher,” Cahn wrote.

Yet, specifically when it comes to YouTube, it’s difficult to think of better ways to protect kids from this virtual wild west. The company does offer the safeguarded YouTube Kids, one of the company’s youth products that roughly 100 million users interact with each month. But before this new age verification policy, there was very little preventing a kid from potentially seeing something they shouldn’t.

“Our first responsibility, always, is to create a safe experience for our youngest, most vulnerable users,” Katie Kurtz, global head of youth and learning for YouTube, told me last year. Here’s hoping this new measure works.

Now onto what you may have missed the rest of the week.

Kayla Cobb
Senior Reporter
kayla.cobb@thewrap.com

P.S. You don’t want to miss a livestream roundtable I’ll be moderating, “Creator Power: The Business of Influence presented by Adobe,” at noon PT on Aug. 26. Sign up today here. 

What’s New

Alan Chikin Chow launches a new scripted show with Laneige

“Beauty and the Beat” is more than just a new shortform series. This partnership between Chow and the Korean beauty company Laneige marks a step towards the future as brands are trying to figure out how to monetize scripted content. Once the industry figures that out, Hollywood really needs to start watching its back.

Travel videos just got easier thanks to TikTok Go

Creators can now get hotel vouchers through the platform. It’s all part of TikTok Go, a new creator monetization program that lets local merchants, such as hotel and restaurant owners, either pay creators a commission or offer them vouchers for promoting their business. Creators have to be over 18 years old and have at least 1,000 followers to qualify. But it’s a big step in letting creators monetize services rather than just relying on products. For now, only hotel bookings are available in the U.S., but the program in Indonesia and Japan includes vouchers for restaurants and local experiences.

Tubi taps former TikTok head Kudzi Chikumbu as its VP of Creator Partnerships 

Do you know who in Hollywood really gets the creator space? Tubi. And the Fox-owned ad-supported streamer is betting even more on this industry by hiring TikTok’s former global head of creator marketing, Kudzi Chikumbu. The company also announced its adding several titles from MrBeast, CelinaSpookyBoo and more to its Tubi for Creators program. It’s a win-win. Tubi gets new desirable content for its 100 million monthly users, over half of which are millennials or Gen Z, and in turn these creators get to stand out from the YouTube pack.

By the Numbers

StubHub says creators, podcasters and authors sold nearly 500% more tickets this year

This is compared to sales in 2024 and continues the trend of creators turning their digital followings into real-life events. The most in-demand creator tours were a slew of podcasting favorites — Alex Cooper’s “Unwell” tour, the Crime Junkie’s podcast tour and Mel Robbins’ “Let Them” tour. Additionally, creator tour prices were about 40% less than traditional live events. That lower cost and the fact that creator tours are more likely to travel to areas often ignored by bigger artists are major reasons for the uptick.

YouTube has removed over 179 million videos from its platform in the past six years

That’s not all that a new report from Video Advertising Bureau found. YouTube also removed 139 million channels and 25 billion comments from its platform, all of which violate the company’s community guidelines. YouTube noted that some of the top reasons for removal are child safety issues, harassment and hateful or dangerous speech. Really puts into perspective just how massive YouTube is.

2025 may set a new record for mergers and acquisitions in the creator economy

In the first half of the year, 52 M&A deals were completed, a 73% increase compared to the first half of 2024 according to the advisory firm Quartermast Advisors. Publicis’ $150 million acquisition of Captiv8 was one of those big deals. As brutal as this landscape may seem, it’s another sign that the creator economy is maturing to become a media powerhouse rather than just a big number. But speaking of big numbers, an eMarketer report found that if all U.S. creators moved their brand deals to a single imaginary app, that app would be worth $10.5 billion and would be the fourth-largest social platform in the country based on brand investments.

Who to Watch

Areq

Little is known about the TikTok creator Areq other than they are a hell of a great editor. So far the creator’s “Creed” edit has amassed over 114 million views and nearly 15 million likes, and it’s easy to see why. It slaps.

Areq’s other edits are equally as impressive as the “Creed” one, and the creator has even sparked a TikTok trend of other creators editing shows and movies to LoVibe’s remix of Kendrick Lamar’s “untitled 05” (The “Snowfall” edit from farquaad.films is also remarkable). I’m not in the business of hiring editors, but if I was I would be sliding into some DMs, pronto. 

Bonus Content

• A Right-Wing Influencer Tried to Be a Tradwife. It Almost Broke Her (via The New York Times)
• Why Creators Are Building Hollywood-Style Studios to Make TV-Ready Content (via TheWrap)
• Nobody Wins on “Surrounded” (via The New Yorker)

Want more? Explore WrapPRO now.

This report provides a weekly deep dive into the creator economy. It highlights key trends, political and technological developments, data points and industry leaders all with the goal of making you smarter about this constantly evolving space.

The post Creatorverse: YouTube Hopes AI Will Solve Its NSF-Kids Problem appeared first on TheWrap.

On July 29, the company announced the tool would be coming to the United States in the coming weeks after it was tested in other markets. The goal is to better protect younger users from watching age-inappropriate content.

The AI verification tool will only work once a user is logged into their account and will be utilized regardless of the birthdate a user enters when creating their account, the most common way younger users trick platforms into letting them access more mature content. The age estimation tool uses several signals like YouTube activity and how long the account has been around to determine the potential age of the user.

If a user is deemed to be under the age of 18, they will be notified, and their YouTube experience will be modified to be more age appropriate. That means enabling digital well-being tools — such as bedtime reminders, break reminders and a time watched function — as well implementing non-personalized ads. Younger users will be able to post videos but only privately to selected friends. Privacy warnings and restrictions on video recommendations will also be implemented on these younger accounts.

Users who are incorrectly flagged as younger will have the option to verify their ages by providing a government ID, selfie or a credit card.

“YouTube was one of the first platforms to offer experiences designed specifically for young people, and we’re proud to again be at the forefront of introducing technology that allows us to deliver safety protections while preserving teen privacy,” James Beser, director of product management for YouTube Youth, wrote in a blog post that introduced the change in July. “Families trust YouTube to provide a safe and enriching experience, and we’ll continue to invest to protect their ability to explore safely online.”

YouTube isn’t the only tech giant that’s been using AI tools to determine the age of users. The Meta-owned Instagram unveiled a similar strategy in April of this year.

The post YouTube Starts Testing AI-Powered Age Verification System for Restricted Videos appeared first on TheWrap.

As first reported by The Wall Street Journal, several investors, including large venture capital funds, have stepped in to back Perplexity’s bid for Google Chrome, which has an estimated value of between $20 billion and $50 billion. Perplexity’s value is $16.5 billion shy of the money its offering to put up for Chrome.

Breaking down the formal terms of its official bid, Perplexity said it is committed to:

• Ongoing and substantial investment in Chromium, noting 3B over the next two years
• Never changing user defaults without giving users the choice
• Never stealthily replacing the default search engine of Chrome (Google)
• Making offers to a substantial portion of Chrome talent
• 100 months of availability and support for Chrome users

“For Perplexity, this is an important commitment to the open web, user choice and continuity for everyone who has chosen Chrome,” a spokesperson for Perplexity told TheWrap.

Perplexity’s bid is the latest in Google’s legal battle with the DOJ, which sued the tech giant in October 2020 over alleged antitrust violations, claiming it held a monopoly over fair competition in the search and advertising markets.

In November 2024, after finding that Google did in fact break antitrust laws in an effort to maintain a monopoly on web searches that same year, the DOJ pushed for a federal judge to dismantle Google to boost competition.

“The playing field is not level because of Google’s conduct, and Google’s quality reflects the ill-gotten gains of an advantage illegally acquired,” DOJ lawyers wrote in a filing with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. “The remedy must close this gap and deprive Google of these advantages.”

The DOJ tasked Judge Amit Mehta, who sided with the department in August 2024, with prohibiting Google from making deals with Apple and Samsung. Google, the department claimed, pays Apple $20 billion per year to be the default search engine on iPhones.

In April 2025, a U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema found that Google again violated antitrust law by maintaining a monopoly over online advertising technology that “substantially harmed” its customers and stifled competition.

The DOJ, over the course of a three-week trial, has “proven that Google has willfully engaged in a series of anticompetitive acts to acquire and maintain monopoly power in the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets for open-web display advertising,” the ruling read.

Judge Mehta, according to WSJ, may decide this month on how competition should be restored, which could involve forcing Google to sell Chrome — and that’s where Perplexity comes in. The WSJ report said that Perplexity wrote a letter to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai with an offer to buy Chrome, framing the plan as one “designed to satisfy an antitrust remedy in highest public interest by placing Chrome with a capable, independent operator.”

The post AI Startup Perplexity Bids $34.5 Billion to Acquire Google Chrome appeared first on TheWrap.

“The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately. There is no other solution to this problem,” he wrote in between ads on his social media platform. “Thank you for your attention to this problem!”

The demand followed a letter sent by Senate Intelligence Chairman Tom Cotton on Monday. He wrote to Intel Chairman Frank Yeary to “express concerns about the security and integrity of Intel’s operations and its potential impact on U.S. national security.” The senator pointed directly to a recent criminal case involving Tan’s former firm, Cadence Design Systems.

The letter claimed that Tan allegedly controls dozens of Chinese companies and has stake in hundreds of Chinese advanced manufacturing chip firms — eight of these allegedly have ties to the Chinese military. Tan invested at least $200 million into these firms, according to Reuters.

Intel was granted $8 billion from the CHIPS and Science Act, the largest grant to a single American company. Tan, a technology investor and veteran of the semiconductor industry, was appointed as CEO of Intel in March. He previously led Cadence, an American chip design company based in California, from 2009 to 2021.

This push to resign comes after Trump threatened a 100% tariff on foreign-made computer chips, to push tech firms to invest more in the U.S., which would benefit American-made Intel.

The post Trump Says Intel CEO ‘Must Resign, Immediately’ Over Alleged China Ties appeared first on TheWrap.

“President Trump’s America First economic agenda has secured trillions of dollars in investments that support American jobs and bolster American businesses,” a White House spokesperson told TheWrap. “Today’s announcement with Apple is another win for our manufacturing industry that will simultaneously help re-shore the production of critical components to protect America’s economic and national security.”

The White House plans to reveal the manufacturing agreement with the company later on Wednesday, in addition to a new American Manufacturing Program (AMP) initiative.

“We are bullish on the future of American innovation, and we’re proud to build on our long-standing U.S. investments with this $500 billion commitment to our country’s future,” Apple CEO Tim Cook originally said in February. “From doubling our Advanced Manufacturing Fund to building advanced technology in Texas, we’re thrilled to expand our support for American manufacturing. And we’ll keep working with people and companies across this country to help write an extraordinary new chapter in the history of American innovation.”

That investment included plans to expand both staff and facilities in Arizona, California, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, Washington and Texas, which is getting a new factory in Houston to house Apple Intelligence. Apple Inc. is also set to double its U.S. Advanced Manufacturing Fund and launch a manufacturing academy in Detroit, while remaining focused on AI and silicon engineering.

“The $500 billion commitment includes Apple’s work with thousands of suppliers across all 50 states, direct employment, Apple Intelligence infrastructure and data centers, corporate facilities and Apple TV+ productions in 20 states,” the company further noted.

“Apple has just announced a record $500 billion investment in the United States of America,” Trump celebrated on Truth Social at the time. “The reason, faith in what we are doing, without which, they wouldn’t be investing 10 cents. Thank you Tim Cook and Apple!!!”

In May, however, the president also noted he “had a little problem” with Cook doing so much business in India, telling reporters in Qatar: “‘Tim, you’re my friend. I treated you very good. You’re coming in with $500 billion, but now I hear you’re building all over India. I don’t want you building in India. You can build in India if you want to take care of India.’”

The post Apple to Invest Additional $100 Billion in US Production appeared first on TheWrap.

“Our conviction that AI will change every customer experience is starting to play out,” Jassy said in a statement accompanying Amazon’s report.

The 57-year-old chief executive, who took over the top job after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos stepped down in 2021, pointed to several examples where AI is now integral to the company, from its updated Alexa voice assistant to its updated shopping agent. Jassy also said AI is helping write code and will be critical towards Amazon reaching its goal of using 1 million robots to ship packages quicker.

“Our AI progress across the board continues to improve our customer experiences, speed of innovation, operational efficiency, and business growth, and I’m excited for what lies ahead,” Jassy added.

Despite topping what analysts were looking for when it came to sales and earnings, Amazon’s stock price still dropped after its report came out; more on that in a moment.

First, here are the key figures from Amazon’s report:

Net Sales: Amazon reported $167.7 billion in second quarter revenue, up 13% year-over-year and topping the $162 billion that Wall Street analysts had projected.

This was Amazon’s second-best quarter ever in terms of sales, only trailing the holiday quarter of 2024, when it reported $187.80 billion in revenue.

Two segments that stood out: advertising, where sales increased 23% year-over-year to $15.69 billion, and Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud business, which grew 17.50% annually to $30.90 billion.

The bulk of Amazon’s sales continue to come from North America, where revenue was up 11% to $100.10 billion between April and June.

Earnings Per Share: Amazon’s $1.68 EPS also came in well ahead of the $1.33 analysts were looking for.

Net Income: $18.20 billion, which was $4.70 billion more than the company reported during the same quarter a year ago.

Jassy’s latest comments come after he told employees in a May memo that Amazon will be prioritizing AI development in the years ahead — similar to what tech executives like Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg have said this week; Meta’s stock, after it topped sales and earnings projections from analysts on Wednesday, raced to a new all-time high on Thursday.

Investors were not as bullish on Amazon in after-hours trading, though, with its stock dropping 3.08% to $226.91 per share about a half-hour after its report came out. Heading into Thursday afternoon, Amazon’s stock was up 6.31% since the start of the year.

One reason for Amazon getting a different response from investors, at least at first glance, could be its forecast for the third quarter. Amazon projected sales would be between $174 billion and $179.50 billion, and it warned “changes in global economic and geopolitical conditions” and “tariffs and trade policies” make its performance “inherently unpredictable.”

On the AI front, Amazon launched Alexa+, the AI-powered “next generation” of its trademark virtual assistant, earlier this year. And in more recent AI news, Amazon on Wednesday invested in Fable Studio, the company behind the Showrunner platform, which allows users to create TV shows with its artificial intelligence model. You can read more about that deal by clicking here.

An interesting bullet in Amazon’s report said the company enjoyed its “biggest Prime Day” ever, without sharing specific sales figures. That stands out, considering there were reports sales on the first day of Prime Day — the event now spans four days in early July — were down 41%.

Jassy, on the company’s earnings call on Thursday afternoon, pointed to Amazon’s “momentous partnership” with Roku in June, which he said gives its advertisers access to “80 million connected TV households.” And the company said the growth of its cloud services business was accelerated in the second quarter thanks to new deals with Warner Bros. Discovery Sports, PepsiCo, and Airbnb.

Amazon did not have much to say about its entertainment business, but it did note that Amazon MGM picked “Dune” filmmaker Denis Villeneuve to direct the 26th James Bond film at the end of June.

The post Amazon Surges to $168 Billion in 2nd Quarter Sales as CEO Andy Jassy Says AI ‘Will Change Every Customer Experience’ appeared first on TheWrap.

Hippeau this year is marking a quarter of a century as a top venture capitalist and he shows no signs of slowing down, having raised another new seed fund, the firm’s ninth. Hippeau started the company, which now counts 400 companies in its portfolio, with Ken Lerer and his son, Ben, all of whom came from the media industry. Ken Lerer at AOL, then AOL Time Warner, and Ben at Thrillist.

Hippeau was publisher of PC Magazine and chairman and CEO of its parent company Ziff-Davis. Hippeau was also CEO of The Huffington Post, where he was an investor. He was a managing partner at SoftBank Capital, serving on the Boards of Yahoo, GeoCities, Danger, and Buddy Media, among others.

Through the years, Hippeau has developed a unique lens on the investing landscape, not just in media but across all sectors, from robotics to defense to healthcare, a view that makes him much sought after by outlets like CNBC (and TheWrap!) to share his perspectives from time to time.

When asked about the secret to successful investing, he has always said it’s about the people, the founders. That, and “we make decisions based on a million small signals,” he said.

We were able to pin down Hippeau from his crazy-busy schedule to answer a few of our questions recently. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

This year marks your 25th year as a VC, and 15 years of Lerer Hippeau, the early stage fund you co-founded. Before that, you operated public and private media companies for several decades. How did your days as a media executive inform your successful early stage investing career?

In innumerable ways. I’ll try to keep the list concise. For one, media is, and always has been, about encountering new information, synthesizing it and condensing it. The core exercise for both media operators and venture capitalists is to parse the truly significant platform shifts from that which is merely novel — so it’s made me better at choosing the right companies and leaders with that filter applied. Further, media’s volatile, and has been especially in recent years. That’s taught me not to be surprised or perturbed by much — one just has to keep moving forward, stay laser-focused on tasks at hand, and bring a balanced, empirical mindset to what could otherwise be deeply stressful and emotional.

This perspective is hugely helpful in the business of early-stage company building. I’d also emphasize the importance of storytelling, which is obviously a component to any media business, and one whose importance in the VC world cannot be overstated. Founders must be able to tell their stories. They have to communicate clearly about what they are doing, why it matters, how it will reshape their markets, and how it solves a real human need — at scale. Finally, working in media has also made me significantly more comfortable with the unpleasant business of knowing when to cut bait. As VCs, we can’t be afraid to let our companies pivot, or close down and return money to investors. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it isn’t existentially scary. It’s a part of business and we all move forward.

Lerer Hippeau’s portfolio is much more than media companies. What is your formula for deciding which startups to invest in?

You’re right that we had some major wins in media and consumer in our early years at Lerer Hippeau, so we’re fortunate to be known for our prowess there. And, as you say, our portfolio of over 400 companies has always comprised many B2B businesses as well, across robotics, climate, fintech, healthcare and so many other critical sectors.

Choosing the right companies to invest in is an almost laughably challenging proposition, particularly at the earliest stages of investing, where our firm operates. More often than not, we’re looking at nothing more than a piece of paper and some rough projections. Sometimes our only task is to evaluate a founder and believe them when they say they are the right person to build whatever they’re attempting. “Formula” suggests a sort of science, and I would say that our business is equal parts art and science. We make decisions based on a million small signals. For us, it always comes down to the people. Do they have a sophisticated and proprietary sense of their market, product, and timing? Do we believe they’re equipped to build an enormous business? Do we trust them? These are the sorts of questions we consider, and the answers, typically, do not come purely from analyzing an early model. They come down to the founders in front of us. 

M&A has been tepid so far this year, and IPOs aren’t much better. How has that affected your strategy on exits from your investments?

The short answer is that our focus is on finding great companies — rather than exiting them—agnostic of market conditions, so our core business of being a founder’s first and most aligned institutional partner is largely unaffected by later-stage market machinations. That said, we take an active role in helping our founders generate liquidity for early employees, investors, and themselves, through later-stage transactions, M&A, and IPOs. Everyone in our business wants to see a more robust IPO market, which typically spurs more M&A activity as well, and we feel strongly that we need to adjust several factors that are currently making it difficult for companies to go public. Adjusting regulatory and compliance requirements, for instance, for mid-cap public companies will encourage more activity and lower financial burdens that make the option unattractive. There isn’t a silver bullet for this issue and a lot of small changes will accumulate to make a big difference, but what’s non-negotiable is that we must have public markets that are robust and accessible to maintain our place as the world’s most innovative country.

Let’s circle back to media and entertainment. We’ve been reporting a lot on Hollywood’s slow embrace of AI but there are still lots of skeptics. How do you look at AI in this space and what have you invested in?

We think AI will play a critical role in media and entertainment in a manner akin to how it will change other key industries — that’s to say, we’re bullish on companies using AI to augment and complement human ability rather than replace human ingenuity. AI should be used as a tool that unlocks new efficiencies. In the case of Hollywood, we are looking at opportunities that use amazing AI tooling for production alongside human creative and artistic talent. We’ve recently invested in a company — more on that soon — that marries AI and human talent to produce studio-quality movies at a fraction of the cost — allowing independent filmmakers to compete and get their stories told. I’ll call out a couple of other interesting early stage investments we’ve made in media and entertainment as well: TollBit is a tool to help companies monetize the AI agents scraping their content; Mother Games is  an emergent gameplay media and entertainment studio soon to broadly debut its first title.

Besides AI, name two trends in media and entertainment that excite you in the next year or two?  And on the other side of that, what worries you the most?

We think it is difficult at this stage to disentangle AI from the future of media and entertainment. Ultimately we believe that most companies in this space will to some extent be AI companies, much like how every media company today is also an internet or streaming company. So we are deeply interested in the ways AI can be applied to positively shape quality content generation. At the risk of repeating myself, I would also note here that we aren’t interested in AI that aims to replace human talent. We are bullish on the application of AI as an augmenting factor for the processes involved in content production. But to hone in on your question a bit more, two trends we are beginning to see emerge are, (1) an emphasis on individual talent and, (2) hyper-personalized content. We think that media and entertainment will continue to shift more and more toward smaller, independent teams or individual talent and solo creators. The result will be twofold: continued fragmentation, but also hyper-personalization. Consumers flock to content that speaks directly to them. One additional consequence of this will be that loyalty to big brands will fade away — and that pattern has already started.

We think that media and entertainment will continue to shift more and more toward smaller, independent teams or individual talent and solo creators. The result will be twofold: continued fragmentation, but also hyper-personalization. Consumers flock to content that speaks directly to them.

Now, we see a particular downside to this, which I’ve already briefly touched on. We are concerned about what will happen to the quality of content with uncontrolled AI bot scraping. We believe creators and publishers need to be compensated for the writing and content they produce — or we’ll all experience a complete dearth of quality content sooner than we can possibly imagine. Companies like TollBit are working hard to ensure publishers are able to monetize AI bots scraping their content. We are hopeful that an increased industry focus on this space will result in a sustainable solution.

How does the creator economy evolve from here? 

There remains tremendous upside in the creator economy. It’s a natural corollary to our thesis that content production will continue to shift to individual talent and solo practitioners. In other words, AI will serve to amplify what social media started. More and more creators will feel empowered to produce the sort of high-quality, hyper-personal content that commands a returning, sticky audience.

Lerer Hippeau recently raised a new fund. Can you talk about your plans for it? 

With our ninth seed fund, we’ll do what we’ve always done: support early stage founders by serving as their first and most aligned institutional partner. Fund IX is $200 million focused expressly on early stage companies (pre-seed and seed), which we’ll deploy with a singular focus on “finding the best founders before they’re famous,” as we like to say. Though Lerer Hippeau remains well known for our success in early consumer investments, we have always invested across the enterprise and consumer landscapes. With Fund IX, I expect us to invest more in healthcare, fintech, dev-ops and infra tooling, robotics, climate, defense and a number of other sectors. As always — if you’re building something interesting and early, we’d like to know you.

The post Veteran VC Eric Hippeau on What He’s Looking for in AI and Creator Startups appeared first on TheWrap.

The big jump comes a day after Meta, led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, reported $47.52 billion in second quarter revenue — easily topping analyst projections. Meta also estimated it would report up to $50 billion in third quarter sales, which also pleased investors, while Zuckerberg and CFO Susan Li, on the earnings call, reiterated that the company is focused on investing heavily in artificial intelligence.

And on the topic of AI, Zuckerberg said “superintelligence” — where AI models beat humans in nearly all tasks — is “in sight.”

His comments on continuing to invest in artificial intelligence come after he said in January this would be a “defining year for AI.” That same month, Zuckerberg said Meta would spend between $60 billion and $65 billion to “significantly” expand its AI team; the company then updated that projection during its first quarter earnings call in April, saying it planned on spending up to $72 billion this year on the tech — a figure Meta once again noted in its second quarter report on Wednesday.

Zuckerberg has already put Meta’s money where his mouth is, with the company investing $14.3 billion in Scale AI, a company that offers a platform and training data for developing AI models, in June. Meta also recently poached four top OpenAI researchers for its AI team, as the company has been extending multiyear offers that reach up to $300 million.

Meta’s previous all-time high was $747.90 per share, set just a month ago. The Menlo Park, California-based company’s stock dipped in the weeks leading up to its Wednesday earnings report, but on the year, Meta’s stock is now up 31%. You can take an up-to-the-minute look at Meta’s stock price, below:

Other standout figures from Meta’s report included net income of $18.34 billion — up 22% year-over-year — and the company said 3.48 billion people now use one of its apps on a daily basis, although Meta did not share specifics on how each of its platforms is performing.

Meta’s big run on Wall Street stands out, considering where the company was just a few years ago. In 2022, Meta’s stock price dropped to $90 per share, after Zuckerberg heavily pushed the “Metaverse” — but the masses ended up not being as excited about the virtual world as he was.

Other tech giants will be sharing their latest earnings reports in the upcoming days, including Apple and Amazon, which are both set to report their Q2 financials on Wednesday afternoon. Check TheWrap.com later to see how they did.

The post Meta Stock Jumps 13% to All-Time High as Zuckerberg Touts AI Ambitions appeared first on TheWrap.

The tech giant reported growth across multiple sectors in the period: 3.48 billion people now use at least one of Meta’s apps on a daily basis, up 6% from a year ago, while Meta now has nearly 76,000 people working for it — up 7% year-over-year. Meta also reported its net income surged 36% to more than $18 billion during the second quarter.

Wall Street seemed to love Meta’s report, with the company’s stock price surging 9.61% in after-hours trading to $762 per share. If those gains hold on Thursday morning, when markets open, it would represent a new all-time high for Meta. (Its current all-time high is $747.90, which it hit in June.)

CEO Mark Zuckerberg, on the company’s earnings call on Wednesday afternoon, said Meta had a strong quarter that will help it continue to “invest heavily” in artificial intelligence. Zuckerberg has made it clear several times this year that AI is his key focus, and on Wednesday he said Meta is making “good progress” on the latest versions of its Llama AI model.

Here are the key results from Meta’s second quarter report:

Revenue: Meta reported $47.52 billion in second quarter sales, up 22% annually; that easily surpassed the $44.80 billion analysts had projected. It also came in narrowly behind the fourth quarter of 2024, when Meta reported $48.39 billion in revenue, for the company’s best sales quarter ever.

As is usually the case with Meta, most of its sales — 97.9% to be exact — stemmed from advertisements.

Net income: Meta reported $18.34 billion in net income, which was 36% higher than a year ago. That was also the second-best profit in Meta history, following the $20.84 billion it reported during the fourth quarter of 2024.

Daily active users: Daily users of one of Meta’s apps — which includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads– increased 6% to 3.48 billion. Meta did not share an update on how each platform is performing individually, after reporting Threads had hit 350 million users during its first-quarter report.

Earnings Per Share: $7.14, which topped the $5.92 EPS analysts projected.

Reality Labs — Meta’s division focused on artificial intelligence, virtual reality and augmented reality technology — continues to be the one sector of the business that is losing money. Meta reported a loss of $4.53 billion for Reality Labs during the second quarter, after it had lost $4.21 billion between Jan. and March.

Zuckerberg’s comments on continuing to invest in artificial intelligence come after he said in January this would be a”defining year for AI.” That same month, Zuckerberg said Meta would spend between $60 billion and $65 billion to “significantly” expand its AI team; the company then updated that projection during its first quarter earnings call in April, saying it planned on spending up to $72 billion this year on AI — a figure Meta reiterated in its second-quarter report on Wednesday.

Zuckerberg has put Meta’s money where his mouth is, with the company investing $14.3 billion in Scale AI, a company that offers a platform and training data for developing AI models, in June. As part of the deal, 28-year-old Alexandr Wang, Scale’s chief executive and co-founder, joined Meta to spearhead its new AI research division, dubbed the “Superintelligence” lab. Meta also recently poached four top OpenAI researchers for its AI team, as the company has been extending multiyear offers that reach up to $300 million.

On Wednesday, Zuckerberg said he wants to keep his AI team “small” and “talent dense,” which he said he is the “optimal configuration” for driving research.

Meta CFO Susan Li, in her comments accompanying Meta’s earnings release, said the company has spent about $30 billion so far this year; for comparison, Meta spent $39.23 billion in 2024. Li said Meta plans on continuing to spend big, both this year and in 2026, to fund its AI ambitions. She noted that operating expenses for the year will be between $113 billion and $118 billion, a slightly higher range than before.

“While the infrastructure planning process remains highly dynamic, we currently expect another year of similarly significant capital expenditures dollar growth in 2026 as we continue aggressively pursuing opportunities to bring additional capacity online to meet the needs of our artificial intelligence efforts and business operations,” Li said.

Heading into Wednesday, Wall Street has been on board with Meta’s AI push, with the company’s stock price up 16% since the start of the year — and up 50% since July 2024.

Li, on the company’s earnings call, said Instagram is focused on “promoting original content” and being more creator-friendly. She said two-thirds of the posts recommended to American Instagram users are now original posts, and that the company is prioritizing the “freshness” of its recommendations.

Looking ahead, Meta projected its third quarter revenue will be between $47.50 billion and $50.50 billion.

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