Google faces mounting evidence of its search monopoly. A federal judge recently ruled – for the second time in a year – that Google illegally maintains a monopoly in ad tech. Google's response?
The United States set out to win a trade war with China. It failed. Years of tariffs, tech restrictions, and tough rhetoric have backfired, leaving America in a weaker position while China charges ahead with innovation and global influence.
Good Morning from San Francisco, Meta just kicked Apple's AI tools to the curb. All of them. 🥾 No
Good Morning from San Francisco, 🌁
Claude smashed through its knowledge walls to roam the internet. OpenAI's bots now chat like your witty friend - not your grandmother's GPS.
Anthropic's Claude prowls the web for fresh intel. One click turns it from bookworm to research beast. Meanwhile, OpenAI's voice tech nails your accent without sounding like a robot having an existential crisis.
Both upgrades hit paid users first. The rest of us peasants wait in line. But the message is clear: AI just got way smarter. And sassier. 🎯
Stay curious,
Marcus Schuler
Two AI heavyweights just unveiled major upgrades. Claude learned to surf the web. OpenAI taught its models to speak like humans.
Anthropic's Claude now prowls the internet for real-time information. One settings toggle transforms it from a knowledge hermit into a research powerhouse. It mines fresh data, cites sources, and delivers insights faster than your colleague's coffee run.
Meanwhile, OpenAI dropped new voice models that actually understand your accent. Their text-to-speech system, gpt-4o-mini-tts, brings personality to synthetic speech. Tell it to sound sympathetic, and it delivers - without the forced cheer of actual customer service reps.
The voice recognition models power through background noise like a bouncer at a quiet library. They resist hallucinating words, unlike their predecessor which invented entire medical treatments mid-conversation.
Claude's search feature targets paid US users first. OpenAI's voice models reach developers through their API. Both companies promise wider rollouts soon, following the classic tech mantra: start small, scale fast.
Why this matters:
Read on, my dear:
Prompt:
royal queen dressed in pastel colors eating pink gelato ice cream from a silverware bowl, in the style of a renaissance portrait painting
Tencent just pulled off a neat trick: they're slowing down their GPU purchases while speeding up their AI. The Chinese tech giant discovered they don't need to stuff their data centers with expensive chips anymore.
The secret? A breakthrough from DeepSeek that wrings more performance from existing hardware. This revelation hit just as US tech giants planned to empty their wallets on AI hardware. Microsoft wants to spend $80 billion this year. Amazon aims for $100 billion.
Tencent, meanwhile, plans to spend about $13 billion total in 2025. They're playing it cool – and smart. Their strategy focuses on squeezing maximum value from each chip rather than stockpiling hardware like their Western rivals.
The numbers tell the story. Tencent's profit jumped 40% to $31.6 billion in 2024. Their social platforms Weixin and WeChat now serve 1.385 billion users. They're rolling out AI features across their empire while spending a fraction of what US companies plan to burn.
Chief Strategy Officer James Mitchell couldn't resist a subtle dig at Western tech's spending spree. He noted Chinese companies prioritize "efficient utilization" over raw procurement. Translation: We're smarter with our money.
Why this matters:
Read on, my dear:
Apple just reshuffled its executive deck. Vision Pro creator Mike Rockwell inherits Siri from AI chief John Giannandrea as CEO Tim Cook grows impatient with the company's sluggish AI progress.
The move strips Giannandrea of his Siri responsibilities but keeps him in charge of broader AI research. It's like a tech version of corporate musical chairs, except nobody's smiling at the music.
Rockwell brings hardware chops to the role. He birthed the Vision Pro headset - a technical marvel that wows critics but struggles to wow customers. Now he'll try to rescue Siri from its current state of promised features and missed deadlines.
The shuffle speaks volumes. Apple's AI efforts trail competitors badly. The iPhone 16's AI platform flopped. Siri's promised upgrades remain stuck in development limbo, with one manager calling the delays "ugly" and "embarrassing."
Why this matters:
Read on, my dear:
The Financial Times reports cyber startup Wiz rejected Google's $23 billion offer last summer, then landed a much sweeter $32 billion deal this week. CEO Assaf Rappaport told his team to trust him – and his bet paid off as Alphabet made its biggest acquisition ever.
Oracle just launched a free AI tool that lets companies build their own digital workers, marking a sharp break from its usual premium pricing strategy. The new AI Agent Studio helps businesses create custom AI helpers that can handle complex tasks like scheduling shifts or processing returns, while Oracle's existing customers can use it right away without paying extra.
Search startup Perplexity talks to investors about raising up to $1 billion at an $18 billion value, showing stunning growth for a two-year-old company. Bloomberg reports the AI search engine, backed by Jeff Bezos and Nvidia, already makes nearly $100 million yearly while battling Google and OpenAI for users.
Swedish startup Rerun just landed $17 million to bridge the gap between AI and physical machines. The company builds open-source tools that help developers track and fix problems when AI-powered robots, cars, and drones meet the real world.
China's internet watchdog says companies must stop forcing people to use facial recognition for everyday tasks like checking into hotels. But Reuters notes a glaring omission in the new rules: they don't touch the government's own sweeping use of face tracking to monitor citizens and minorities.
European venture capital showed its maturity in 2024, investing $52 billion more selectively while demanding stronger protections and board seats in 80% of deals. In an ironic twist, venture debt providers got so greedy with equity-like demands that founders fled to simpler funding tools, pushing SAFEs and ASAs to capture 63% of convertible deals.
A Cambridge researcher just turned weather forecasting on its head with AI that runs on a desktop computer. The new system beats traditional supercomputers while using thousands of times less power – and even outperforms the US Weather Service with just 10% of the usual data.
Google ran a sneaky test by hiding news from 1% of European searchers and found something shocking: news content adds nothing to its ad revenue. While the tech giant hopes this finding will help dodge payments to publishers, regulators in France and Germany aren't amused – they've already slapped Google with heavy fines over similar tactics.
Wired reports a growing exodus from US tech services as Meta and Google align with Trump's policies. The magazine explains how to become a "digital expat" as European businesses and privacy-conscious users seek safer data havens outside America's reach.
Elon Musk tried rallying Tesla employees through "stormy weather" as the company's stock plummeted more than 50% in three months, but his jokes about burning cars and promises of self-driving updates landed flat. While mockingly noting he "can't walk past a television without seeing a Tesla on fire," Musk urged workers to hold their shares even as the stock price dropped to $233.06 – far below December's peak of $479.86.
Notion Labs, Inc. transforms how teams organize information with its flexible all-in-one workspace platform. Born in 2013 as a "LEGO of productivity tools," it's now a $10 billion unicorn reshaping knowledge work across industries.
The Founders: 🚀
Founded 2013 by Ivan Zhao and Simon Last in San Francisco, now 400+ employees. Started with vision to create customizable workspace tools for non-coders. Nearly failed in 2015 before rebuilding from scratch during a make-or-break retreat to Kyoto.
The Product: 💻
All-in-one workspace combining notes, wikis, databases, and project management. Users build custom workflows with modular blocks. Integrates AI assistant for drafting, summarizing, and answering questions. Cross-platform with real-time sync. Clean, minimalist interface drives viral adoption.
The Competition: ⚔️
Competes across multiple categories: note apps (Evernote, OneNote), team wikis (Confluence), and project tools (Asana, ClickUp). Most direct rival is Coda. Tech giants now copying Notion's features—Microsoft launched Loop, Google updated Docs with Notion-like functionality.
Financing: 💰
Raised $343M total across several rounds. Notable investors include Sequoia Capital, Coatue Management, Index Ventures. Current valuation: $10B (2021). Deliberately cautious early fundraising approach, with dramatic valuation jump from $2B to $10B between 2020-2021.
The Future: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Market trends favor Notion as remote work continues growing. AI integration positions it at productivity's cutting edge. Must balance adding features with maintaining simplicity. Faces competition from both nimble startups and tech giants. International expansion underway with offices across multiple continents. 🚀
Good Morning from San Francisco, Meta just kicked Apple's AI tools to the curb. All of them. 🥾 No
Good Morning from San Francisco, OpenAI's AI just learned to think in pictures. Their new o3 model doesn&
Good Morning from San Francisco, OpenAI wants to play social media kingmaker. Sam Altman's crew is quietly testing
Good Morning from San Francisco, OpenAI just fired another shot in the AI race 🎯. Their new GPT-4.1 devours text
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