Insider

eBay doubles down on live shopping after record quarter

eBay said during its second-quarter 2026 earnings call that eBay Live’s gross merchandise volume (GMV) increased roughly eightfold year-over-year across seven markets, with upticks in viewers, watch time, and items sold. The company plans to expand eBay Live to more international markets and recently moved from invite-only to self-service onboarding for eligible sellers across 300+ categories. eBay reported that over 90% of regular streamers saw GMV growth, live-streaming sellers sell about three times more than non-streaming sellers, and first-time collectibles buyers spend ~70% more via Live. eBay also highlighted product improvements to discovery, event creation, inventory prep, and bidding responsiveness. The company faces competition from players such as Whatnot, StockX and TikTok Shop as live shopping gains traction in the U.S.

Creators Are Becoming Media Conglomerates

ADWEEK's cover teaser describes a growing industry trend: digital creators are evolving into diversified media companies. Using MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) as a leading example, the piece highlights creators expanding beyond platforms into product lines, studios, events, financial services and telecom offerings. Data cited from eMarketer and industry sources show accelerating brand spend on creators and narrowing revenue gaps with traditional publishers. The newsletter section also reports personnel moves and corporate activity across legacy and new-media firms, including Hearst, Business Insider, Track Star, Smooth Media and Perfectly Imperfect.

Anthropic hiring custom AI chip design team

Anthropic is assembling an internal “Custom Silicon Team” of hardware and software experts to co-design custom AI chips and models intended to make its Claude models faster and more efficient, confirming earlier reports. The company has held talks with Samsung to manufacture a chip it designs and is reported to be collaborating with Broadcom and Google on specialized Tensor Processing Units. Anthropic still relies on infrastructure and hardware relationships with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Nvidia and AMD, but sees in-house silicon as necessary to scale. Industry estimates cited by Reuters put the cost of designing a modern AI chip at roughly $500 million, and timing for a first Anthropic-designed chip remains unknown. Google has also agreed to invest in Anthropic under a multibillion-dollar arrangement announced in April.