Skip to Content
Silicon Valley

Cambridge Analytica is closing its doors

The data broker is shutting down, saying its connection to the Facebook data scandal killed its business.

See ya never: On Wednesday, Cambridge Analytica said it and its lesser-known parent company, SCL Elections, filed to begin bankruptcy proceedings in the UK and would shutter all its operations. The companies will also start bankruptcy proceedings in the US.

What happened: In March Facebook suspended Cambridge Analytica from its platform over violations of the social network’s data-use policies.

Most of those violations stemmed from an outside researcher named Aleksandr Kogan. Kogan created an app called My Digital Life, which was used to gather information about roughly 87 million Facebook users. This data was then passed on to Cambridge Analytica.

After being kicked off Facebook, Cambridge Analytica suspended its CEO, Alexander Nix, and said it would launch an independent investigation into the allegations of data misuse.

Since then, both Cambridge Analytica and Facebook have been the subject of government probes in the US and the UK.

And now: Cambridge Analytica says that the ensuing media coverage caused nearly all of its customers and suppliers to flee.

Also on Wednesday, the company posted the results of the promised independent investigation on its website; it concluded that various allegations against the company were not “borne out by the facts.” The closure of the company, however, seems to suggest it’s not going to spend too much time fighting to clear its name.   

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.