Alistair Barr is global tech editor at Business Insider. Before that, he was 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
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How the heck is a brand new startup worth $10 billion? Here are 2 explanations that revolve around how VC funds and Big Tech companies operate.
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EV sales in the US climbed strongly in 2024 and are projected to keep growing this year, despite challenges facing Elon Musk's Tesla.
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2025-04-10T17:01:01Z
Elon Musk's DOGE activity has already hurt Tesla sales. But what about the Cybertruck specifically? New estimates shed some light.
Even Google's own Gemini model performed worse on Android than iOS, according to a new study.
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2025-04-10T09:00:02Z
As tariffs threaten global trade, Redwood Materials is building the first major domestic US supply of crucial EV battery ingredients.
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Tariffs are an attempt by Donald Trump to reorder the global economy away from Chinese manufacturing. Taiwan is at the heart of the current system.
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Tariffs might drive up tech prices, affecting electronics imported from China and other countries. Is now the time to lock in pre-tariff deals?
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A Tesla bull expects the company's Q1 deliveries to be down 7% from a year earlier. He said Musk's DOGE antics and brand problems are partly to blame.
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AI advancements could shorten the useful life of CoreWeave's Hopper-based Nvidia GPUs.
OpenAI's 4o controversy: Ghibli-style image generation raises questions about copyright policy differences in free versus paid ChatGPT services.
Huang's joke at Nvidia's big AI conference this week highlights potential billion-dollar impacts on tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and Meta.
Jensen Huang, Nvidia's CEO, envisions companies as 'AI factories' churning out millions of tokens. This is what he's talking about.
Tech
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Apple's utility-like evolution keeps iPhone sales steady, driving massive market value growth, even as AI delays leave fanboys disappointed.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang paid homage to Denny's at the company's GTC AI conference, highlighting Silicon Valley's penchant for humble origin stories.
Tech
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There are only so many hours in the day. The tech industry may soon bump up against the limits of time, and sleep could be the next frontier.
AI's $3 trillion debate centers on whether the Chinchilla approach will remain critical for building massive AI systems or if new methods prevail.
ChatGPT's growth has soared, with 100 million new users in two months, making OpenAI a formidable competitor to Google in generative-AI adoption.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman showed up at Morgan Stanley's tech conference last week in San Francisco. Here are some highlights.
exclusive
Google's self-driving cars emerged from the DARPA Grand Challenge. Amazon's picking robots were inspired by a similar competition a decade ago.