Alistair Barr

Tech Anchor

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

2026-06-26T09:01:02.029Z

Sarah Friar speaks during a conference in New York

This new research challenges nearly every big AI narrative of 2026

RBC's latest CIO survey finds no AI token panic, no SaaSpocalypse, and surging enterprise AI spending, led by OpenAI.

3 min read

2026-06-25T09:00:08.180Z

Why is Google suddenly losing AI talent? The lure of pre-IPO equity is strong.

Google is losing top AI talent to Anthropic and OpenAI. The biggest draw may be the promise of lucrative pre-IPO equity.

3 min read

2026-06-25T09:00:06.912Z

A RW robot lays on the ground after falling during the VivaTech technology startups and innovation fair at the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, in Paris on June 19, 2026. (Photo by SIMON WOHLFAHRT / AFP via Getty Images)

So much for the AI jobs apocalypse. Demand for tech talent is rising.

AI hasn't triggered a tech jobs collapse. New data shows hiring demand is strong across much of the tech industry.

3 min read

Future of Capitalism

A US $100 banknote on top of Chinese 100-yuan banknotes depicting the late Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong.

The miracle of capitalism, with Silicon Valley characteristics

Silicon Valley's equity-powered brand of capitalism is minting millionaires. Here's how techies are avoiding big tax bills when they cash out.

2 min read

2026-06-20T14:00:01.239Z

The math behind Silicon Valley's millionaire factory

How stock awards at OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX grew into life-changing fortunes.

1 min read

2026-06-18T09:00:01.232Z

SpaceX employees going to work on the day of their company's IPO.

3 strategies to help newly wealthy Silicon Valley techies diversify and avoid huge tax bills

Tech workers with big stock gains can use 3 strategies to diversify, sell shares, and reduce painful capital gains taxes.

6 min read

2026-06-13T14:10:01.242Z

New AI-powered puppy KPIs: Key Potty Indicators

ChatGPT turned weeks of handwritten puppy potty logs into data-driven KPIs, revealing patterns that helped reduce accidents.

2 min read

2026-06-12T17:02:48.716Z

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei arrives for meetings with President Donald Trump's administration officials at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 17, 2026.

This week's Anthropic-inspired AI freakout, explained

Anthropic limits AI model use, citing safety concerns. But it's also trying to stop open-source models from competing.

3 min read

2026-06-12T09:01:01.244Z

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shows off the company's Blackwell system on stage.

Why AI token prices are about to plummet

Nvidia's Blackwell systems could flood the market with cheap AI tokens, driving down costs and reshaping the economics of AI.

3 min read

2026-06-11T09:00:01.239Z

Vivek Natarajan, a Research Scientist at Google DeepMind

After seeing Parkinson's take his father, this Googler found a new mission: teaching AI to chase cures

Vivek Natarajan is using AI to help doctors and scientists chase new cures, inspired by his father's battle with Parkinson's disease.

7 min read

Exclusive

Kylan Gibbs, CEO and cofounder of Inworld

This leading AI model provider just slashed prices by more than 50%

Kylan Gibbs, CEO of Inworld, tackles AI model costs threatening startups. Inworld slashes prices to help consumer AI applications' profitability.

3 min read

2026-06-10T00:46:46.533Z

Anthropic's Co-Founder and CEO, Dario Amodei on stage at the Code with Claude developer conference in San Francisco

Anthropic purposely made its new Mythos-based models bad at AI research, and developers are fuming

Anthropic faces backlash as Mythos-based models intentionally limit help for AI research, raising transparency and ethical concerns.

3 min read

Vibe Mode

Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI Inc., during BlackRock's 2026 Infrastructure Summit in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, March 11, 2026. The event brings together leading voices to answer how governments and companies can work together to build the infrastructure America needs. Photographer: Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg via

ChatGPT is no longer OpenAI's most important product. Here's why.

ChatGPT may no longer be OpenAI's most important product as the company chases stickier, higher-margin businesses.

3 min read

2026-06-05T14:31:01.929Z

OpenAI and Anthropic's next lock-in play: Databases of coding intent

Samuel Colvin, CEO of Pydantic, sees the top AI frontier labs creating databases of coding intent.

4 min read

Data Centers

The AI boom is running into a copper problem

As AI systems grow larger, photonics is emerging as a faster, more efficient alternative to copper connections.

5 min read

Vibe Mode

Code Puppy: Walmart's secret weapon against AI lock-in

Walmart's viral Code Puppy AI tool helps avoid vendor lock-in, cut costs, and reduce dependence on Claude Code and Codex.

7 min read

Data Centers

Short memory? The most dangerous words in investing are back

AI demand and industry consolidation are driving a memory chip boom. Is this time really different for Micron and rivals?

3 min read

2026-05-27T19:56:30.524Z

Oregon Ducks mascot The Oregon Duck stands on the sideline with cheerleaders during the College Football Playoff Semifinal at the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl against the Indiana Hoosiers on January 09, 2026 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia.

Some users may be giving Google's AI search the bird, and DuckDuckGo is benefiting

DuckDuckGo says installs surged after Google's AI search overhaul, hinting some users may want less AI in search.

2 min read

2026-05-27T14:42:10.279Z

Tech Memo author Alistair Barr with Yossi Matias (right), head of Google Research, at Google I/O.

AI curing cancer has become a meme. This Google researcher is actually trying to do it.

Google Research chief Yossi Matias explains how the company's AI Co-Scientist tool could accelerate breakthroughs in disease research.

4 min read

2026-05-27T09:00:01.269Z

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman arrives at the 12th Annual Breakthrough Prize Ceremony 2026 held at the Barker Hangar on April 18, 2026 in Santa Monica, Los Angeles.

OpenAI is building a new kind of ad machine. Early data suggests Google should worry.

How ChatGPT ads turn conversations into buying intent, and why OpenAI may have a massive new revenue engine

4 min read

Alistair Barr

Articles by Alistair Barr