Alistair Barr is the author of Business Insider's Tech Memo newsletter. Sign up here. Before that, he was BI's Global Tech Editor and the Big Tech team leader at Bloomberg, following a reporting career at The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Reuters, and MarketWatch. Alistair won a Gerald Loeb Award in 2007 for coverage of short selling and was a finalist in 2013 for scoops on the Facebook IPO. More recently, he won a 2024 San Francisco Press Club award for commentary. Got a tip? Reach out using the secure messaging app Signal (+1 415-341-4927) or via email on [email protected].
Expertise
Alistair oversees all things Big Tech, along with startups and venture capital. He writes analysis and columns about topics including generative AI, large language models, cloud computing, semiconductors, online search, e-commerce, EVs, robotics, and autonomous vehicles.
Popular Stories
Artificial Intelligence:
It's getting harder to make big leaps at the frontier of AI
OpenAI's AI-adjusted earnings numbers have echoes of Groupon and WeWork
Death by LLM: Stack Overflow's decline, and its plan to survive, shows the future of free online data in an AI world
Cloud computing:
Amazon dominated the first cloud era. The AI boom has kicked off Cloud 2.0, and the company doesn't have a head start this time.
In cloud, there's AI (which is hot) and everything else (which is not)
Chips:
Why Intel is still so important: Real countries have fabs
Apple's made-in-the-USA chips signal a turnaround for the US's big semiconductor bet
EVs and Tesla:
Tesla's AI supercomputer has a Silicon Valley town rushing to meet surging electricity demand
Tesla's Cybertruck is outselling almost every other EV in the US
Online Search:
Google is losing its status as a verb
A simple way to fix search: Bright pink ads
AI
2025-10-17T15:01:01.753Z
Jascha Kaykas-Wolff leverages AI to build a new brand, transforming traditional processes with tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, and ElevenLabs.
AI
2025-10-17T14:31:01.456Z
Three charts reveal AI adoption trends across the tech industry. Uptake is widespread but implementation varies.
AI
2025-10-17T14:02:01.376Z
The rise of Cloud 2.0 in the generative AI era is diverting early startup budgets away from Amazon Web Services toward AI models and tools.
AI
2025-10-14T09:00:02.543Z
Richard Murby, director of business development at Devpost, assesses OpenAI's chances.
AI
2025-10-13T15:31:07.847Z
Explore how Wall Street's intricate financing fuels the AI boom, raising concerns about structured credit risks in the tech industry.
AI
2025-10-13T14:57:28.443Z
Kanban boards are offered by software companies including Atlassian, Asana, and Monday.com.
AI
2025-10-13T14:38:30.251Z
Cloudflare plans to hire 1,111 interns in 2026, and Shopify aims for 1,000 engineering interns this year, defying AI disruption fears.
Tech
2025-10-13T09:01:01.386Z
Tesla already has the scale to be profitable. In the US, other EV makers may struggle as federal incentives evaporate.
AI
2025-10-08T09:00:01.843Z
Some AI executives are predicting huge job losses. Yet, AI companies are hiring so much it's boosting Silicon Valley's office market.
AI
2025-10-07T21:13:49.062Z
Inflation soared during the COVID-19 pandemic. Was that enough to make Musk's $25,000 EV prediction true? We crunched the numbers.
AI
2025-10-07T02:15:39.791Z
OpenAI acquired Jony Ive's startup earlier this year, sparking speculation about future AI devices the former Apple designer is working on.
Tech
2025-10-06T21:51:09.161Z
The startup revealed more details on its AI-powered internal software tools, including a sales assistant and a customer service agent.
Tech
2025-10-06T12:00:01.891Z
New Indeed data reveals AI's role in redefining tech jobs, emphasizing the need for new 'skill clusters,' while traditional coding roles see cuts.
AI
2025-10-06T09:00:02.211Z
CEO Ali Agha is getting robots out into the world quickly to feed a data collection flywheel that just started spinning faster.
AI
2025-10-03T15:30:01.538Z
Anthropic's Alex Albert reveals how he uses Claude for life management, diagnosing tech issues, creating memes, and other tasks.
AI
2025-10-03T15:00:01.261Z
OpenAI products and ideas are spooking investors and redefining industries like SaaS, e-commerce, and digital advertising.
Tech
2025-10-03T14:30:01.993Z
Tech employers want specialized talent, and opportunities advertised specifically to beginners have been scarce lately.
AI
2025-10-02T19:25:25.437Z
OpenAI showed off new AI tools for sales, support, and contracts, posing a direct threat to software-as-a-service leaders like Salesforce and HubSpot.
Tech
2025-10-02T09:00:01.626Z
Investors worry that generative AI will disrupt software business models. These companies could fend off the threat.
AI
2025-09-29T17:01:01.376Z
The startup says Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the world's best model for AI coding tasks, and a leap forward in applied artificial intelligence.