Imagine buying a house from someone who refused to show you the interior. The roof might be leaking, but the sellers don’t want you to know. ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
Jul 18, 2025
The Briefing
By Martin Peers
Thanks for reading The Briefing, our nightly column where we break down the day’s news. If you like what you see, I encourage you to subscribe to our reporting here.
Greetings!
Imagine buying a house from someone who refused to show you the interior. The roof might be leaking, but the sellers don’t want you to know. That’s what it’s like buying shares in many of the biggest tech companies, which refuse to disclose key details about their business. More strikingly, many of these companies—such as Netflix and Apple—steadily reduce what they disclose as they mature. The only conclusion: They don’t want you to know what’s going wrong internally.
This thought comes to mind regarding Netflix’s second-quarter earnings report on Thursday, in which the video-streaming giant reported revenue growth of 16%, a little higher than it had projected. Netflix said the growth was “primarily a function of more members, higher subscription pricing and increased ad revenue.” But you’ll have to take the company’s word for it, as Netflix no longer discloses its subscriber numbers. It stopped reporting that metric, historically the most watched number, at the end of last year. That also means it stopped reporting average revenue per subscriber, and it has never reported ad revenue.
Why did Netflix stop revealing its subscriber numbers? Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters claimed that the subscriber count was “increasingly less accurate in capturing the state of the business.” How thoughtful—Netflix didn’t want to confuse investors with a misleading number. Instead, it reports less information, which means investors have at best an incomplete idea of what’s going on!
Not that this is unusual. Roku, the streaming device player, did the same thing at the end of last year, as we noted today in this deep dive into Roku’s business—it stopped reporting the number of households using its service and the average revenue each produced. Roku used to say in securities filings that the average revenue per user number “represents the inherent value of our business,” but now the company feels other metrics are more important. Huh. Roku’s average revenue number had stopped growing when it made the decision—which the company blames on its expansion into international markets, where prices are lower. Fair enough. But that’s not a reason not to report the metric!
Lots of companies have taken this tack. If you go back a decade and look at Apple’s financial reports, for instance, you’ll see that the company used to provide more details about all sorts of things in its business. That includes the number of iPhones and iPads it sold, as well as details of capital expenditures, including for the forthcoming year. Its decision to stop reporting unit sales of products was possibly the most problematic: That means price increases can mask any deterioration in unit sales.
It’s doubtful anyone is fooled by maturing companies turning shy about their inner workings. Notably, shares of Netflix fell 5% on Friday, perhaps because investors weren’t impressed with the quarter. If investors had more information, though, they might have a different view about the company’s prospects.
The Information’s Stories of the Week
How would you feel if you walked into a room for a meeting and found Google co-founder Sergey Brin sitting there, ready to double your pay if you come and work for Google! That was the scene that greeted some staff at Windsurf last week, according to our look back at the events that led up to Google’s hiring of Windsurf’s CEO and some staff, instead of OpenAI’s purchase of the company.
The Windsurf deal was one example of how Google is catching up in artificial intelligence. Another example was this story about Google Cloud winning some AI startup business from Amazon Web Services, “thanks to Gemini and other capabilities AWS doesn’t have.”
The Information founder Jessica Lessin’s interview with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, on our new TITV video show, gave new insight into his thinking about his hiring spree of AI talent. Check out the video or the transcript. Meanwhile, we delved into how Meta’s new superintelligence lab is developing.
OpenAI continues to edge ahead of its competition, with plans to turn ChatGPT into a place where workers can create spreadsheets and presentations, we scooped this week. That puts it in competition with companies including Microsoft, one of its biggest backers.
OpenAI rival Anthropic is showing improving profit-related metrics—and some investors are showing interest in funding the company at a valuation of more than $100 billion, we reported this week.
Crypto won a big victory this week as Congress passed the stablecoin bill. But crypto, like fintech, is fighting efforts by banks to charge fees for access to customer data. Here’s our deep dive on that subject.
Microsoft said Friday it will end a program involving China-based employees who worked on cloud servers that the company rents out to the Pentagon and other agencies.
Meta Platforms will not sign the European Union’s code of practice for artificial intelligence, a voluntary framework meant to help companies comply with the EU’s AI Act, Meta Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan said on Friday in a post on LinkedIn. He said the code is a form of overreach.
President Donald Trump on Friday signed stablecoin legislation, the Genius Act, into law, delivering the first major legislative win for the crypto industry.
Substack, the publishing platform for writers, has raised $100 million at a valuation of $1.1 billion, according to the New York Times.
The White House is preparing an executive order targeting artificial intelligence companies whose models the administration deems too “woke,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Today on The Information’s TITV
Check out our latest episode, which dives into the winners and losers of stablecoin legislation, how Netflix can reignite growth, and the future of flying cars.
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