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 abarr@businessinsider.com.
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
JB Straubel's startup launches Redwood Energy to turn used batteries into energy storage systems for surging AI data center power needs.
AI coding tools like Bolt and Replit are disrupting the SaaS business model by lowering barriers to building custom software.
Tech
2025-06-20T14:14:50Z
Explore the evolving tech job market as AI reshapes career paths, with insights from Gen Z job seekers.
Two coding novices created a soap business website using Bolt in about 6 hours, integrating Stripe for payments and deploying via Netlify.
How a former Google vet used Replit to test a cat-purring app and the limitations they faced in fine-tuning and customization.
Tech
2025-06-13T17:35:03Z
The lack of a Siri upgrade at WWDC 2025 creates a potential "intelligence gap" with competitors and puts pressure on Apple's future AI strategy.
Evercore analyst Mark Mahaney used ChatGPT and Gemini to predict Google's antitrust case outcomes, showing AI's potential to transform legal analysis.
EY is developing AI agents with Nvidia to try to make the accounting field more engaging and tackle a nationwide accountant shortage.
DeepSeek's latest R1 model update brings enhanced performance at a low cost. The tech industry doesn't really care this time. Here's why.
Amazon's adoption of the Cursor AI coding tool marks a pivotal moment in the race among startups including Anysphere, Replit, and Cognition AI.
Granola, an AI notetaking app, integrates with Microsoft Teams and Google Calendar for seamless meeting summaries, yet lacks audio recording.
Reddit started a legal fight against AI giant Anthropic over data scraping, highlighting issues of content ownership and copyright in the genAI era.
Exclusive
Globant is trying a new pricing model. CEO Martín Migoya calls it a "radical departure" from the way consulting firms usually operate.
Tech
2025-06-04T10:04:01Z
As AI content floods the web, researchers are preserving pre-2022 human datasets. Like how low-background steel was salvaged from sunken warships.
Tech
2025-05-30T19:25:46Z
The highs and lows of 5 months using Tesla's FSD software, highlighting key experiences, surprises, and the evolving promise of autonomous vehicles.
Tech
2025-05-30T18:54:32Z
In Tech Memo this week, we share an exclusive look at Amazon's secret "Bend the Curve" project, and scoopy numbers on a big Microsoft cloud customer.
To win in AI, you need many expensive, technical building blocks. Google has almost all of these. Apple has very few.
Former Apple design chief Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are creating a mystery device for ChatGPT, sparking speculation, memes, and jokes.
OpenAI's acquisition of Ive's io startup could disrupt Google and Apple's strategies, impacting the tech landscape and raising stakes in the AI race.
Anthropic, a leading AI startup, is reversing its ban on using AI for job applications, after a Business Insider report on the policy.