Hail Hail
Throwing Money at AI • Microsoft's Many Copilots • OpenAI's Odyssey • Super ChatGPT • Super Gemini • Jensen Selling • TikTok Payola • No TriFold • Dune 3!
I saw Project Hail Mary last night. It was great. Yes, a lot of parallels with The Martian, with some Interstellar sprinkled in. But it was just nice to see a mostly optimistic movie about technology and the future. Perhaps more thoughts after I see it again as the lord intended: on an IMAX screen.
The Inner Ring…
💰 Maybe You Can’t Just Throw Money at AI
How and why Meta AI and xAI have failed in AI thus far...
🛩️ Microsoft Adds More Copilots to Help Copilot Copilot
Their consumer and commercial AI efforts clearly haven’t worked...
⚔️ OpenAI’s Odyssey
Can they get down to business while maintaining ChatGPT’s lead?
Thoughts On…
💪 "Super" ChatGPT
Just last week I wrote about how OpenAI was in its "bundling" phase, with Sora and other services seemingly on the verge of being folded into ChatGPT itself. And sure enough… This reads as if they’re going to bundle ChatGPT and Codex around Atlas, the browser OpenAI launched to much fanfare last year but the company has been quiet about since (as it turns out, it’s really, really hard to compete against Chrome). That could obviously spur Atlas usage, but would also match what Anthropic has done in baking Claude Code (and Cowork) into the Claude app itself. It’s not a bad idea — and such a bundle should help them (up)sell into enterprise and push the agentic narrative — as the company tries to focus, but there’s so very real product bloat risks here, obviously. We’re way beyond Microsoftian toolbars… [WSJ 🔒]
💎 Super Gemini
Native AI apps, so hot right now. Google’s move to make a native Mac app for Gemini is long overdue. I pay for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini (to test each) but I always end up using Gemini last because it’s stuck in the browser. Google clearly thought this would be their strength — again, Chrome! — but as we move more into agentic workflows, it’s clearly holding the product back. "Desktop Intelligence" should change that. And it seems like the shake up of 'Project Mariner' may be related to all of this as everyone seeks to get their Claude Cowork and OpenClaw answer. But if Google can’t get enough people to download this new app, how much do you want to bet we see it as a full-on payload and part of Chrome? Could be worse: could be Apple, which refuses to have a stand-alone AI app at all. Even now. I suspect they’ll change their tune there too — in 2027. [Bloomberg 🔒]
🤑 Jensen Selling AI Inevitability
While I do think Jensen Huang is the best MC of these massive keynotes since Steve Jobs, and the command is similar, the approach is actually totally different, as Jim Prosser points out. NVIDIA’s keynotes are less about selling products — because they’re basically no longer selling to individuals and with the businesses buying, they’re already selling more than they can make anyway — it’s more about selling a movement. Many probably thought the effusive praise of OpenClaw was a bit odd (or, at least, a bit much), but it wasn’t really about OpenClaw, it was about boosting the latest and greatest that furthers the narrative that your underlying product is essential. You don’t have to state the obvious. In fact, it’s far more potent if you don’t. Basically the entire keynote is praise for others (so long as they’re using NVIDIA). Of course, as Prosser notes, this approach only works if you have the actual business to back it up. Which, of course, NVIDIA does. [Person Familiar]
🤑 The $10B TikTok Taste
Remember how ridiculous it was when the US version of TikTok was sold for $14B? Well, it turns out the price was actually $24B — but with $10B of that going to the Trump administration. No one is talking about it too much due to deal exhaustion and well, everything else going on in the world. But that’s absofuckinglutely ridiculous. Of course, any sort of fee is ridiculous here, but that’s also par for this particular course. But even bankers usually only get 1% — not 41%. I remain very curious where TikTok goes from here. Obviously, there have been some initial bumps in the handover, but the app is now all the way down to 22 in the App Store after being in the top 5 for much of the past many years. Could it possibly just slowly fade away? [WSJ 🔒]
🥉 Samsung 'TriFold' — as in Sold for 3 Months
They’re framing it as just a "test" — one that "sold out". But then why did they even bother rolling out the $2,899 gimmick to the US at all? How silly and embarrassing. All they had to do was listen to Dr. Ian Malcolm, not the Gillette guy. [Bloomberg 🔒]
🪱 Dune 3
One thing you can’t tell from the (obviously excellent) trailer: this third film is set 17 years after the second one. It’s a little tricky because they’re clearly showing flashbacks to some seemingly happier times. But to hear Denis Villeneuve tell it, "It will be a very different film, very different — a Dune movie, but with a different tone, with a different rhythm, with a different pace. It’s a more action-packed and more tense film, more muscular than the two others, I will say." He also called it a "thriller" Just in case the primal screaming didn’t make that clear… And he shot the movie on film, a first for him, except for the desert scenes to distinguish the "brutality" there. Are we about to witness a Return of the King-style celebration that culminates in next year’s Academy Awards? The Oscars ratings could sure use that! In an era where you have to wait years and years between streaming show seasons (including ones based on Dune!), it’s sort of wild how fast we’re getting this third Dune. But Villeneuve had to move fast, as now all eyes turn to Bond… [Deadline]
I Quote…
"AI can be very dangerous, we have to be very careful with it."
— President Trump, accusing Iran of using the technology to spread disinformation. What a weird, wild, and yes, dangerous time we live in.
I Wrote…
🗡️ Jensen in the Arena
The ‘Token King’ enters the Age of Inference...
🔥 Amazon’s Novel Approach to a Newfangled AI Device: a Phone?
It’s perhaps not as crazy as it sounds. Just don’t say “Fire Phone”...
🏆 Warner Bros Wins the Oscars
And by proxy, Paramount...
❤️🔥 Firefly Flies Again
Serenity now... animated.
💛 Actually, MacBook Neo Is For Me
I didn’t expect to, but I’m keeping it...
Asides…
Yeah I mean in an age where companies are raising billions of dollars in "seed" funding, who wouldn’t give Jeff Bezos $100B? (Unless, perhaps, if it’s for journalism.) [WSJ 🔒]
(Also his 'Project Prometheus', which seems related to this new fund, is perhaps raising a separate $6B in seed funding.) [NYT]
Meanwhile, 'Project Sunrise' (sensing a theme here), is Blue Origin’s attempt to launch 52,000 satellites for "data centers in space" and other endeavors to battle SpaceX/Elon Musk. And yes, this is different from Amazon’s efforts. [WSJ 🔒]
Moxie Marlinspike — best name in tech — is once again helping Meta with encryption. His new Confer project aims to do for their AI what Signal did for WhatsApp. This is all sort of oddly framed as M&A but not? [Wired]
Jonah Peretti is invoking 'Founder Mode' to try to save BuzzFeed. The plan? AI, naturally. But also Nintendo? It’s currently worth $25M in the public markets. Yikes. [NYT]
The head of Apple’s hardware for the home had bolted to Oura. Seems like another unfortunate casualty of the Siri shithow. [Bloomberg 🔒]
But hey, surprise AirPods Max 2? [Verge]
The SEC is now formally preparing the proposal to (give an option) for companies to move from quarterly reporting to twice-a-year earnings reporting in the US. I’m firmly in the camp of this being a good thing. [WSJ 🔒]
Is a change to the S&P 500 rules going to let SpaceX be included on day one after going public? Seems like one hell of a hack to make Elon Musk the first trillionaire. [Yahoo Finance]
A new, rising problem for data center build-outs: insurance. [FT 🔒]
Perplexity’s AI Comet browser is live for iOS and it’s good! Still surprised more haven’t jumped on this to try to grab some market share. [MacRumors]
Meta has a new flagship store in NYC, which will be critical to sell actual AI hardware going forward if they hope to combat Apple entering the space. Also, they have a coffee shop, which I always wish Apple would have done — but they also don’t lack the foot traffic… [WWD]
I Spy…
The Dune Part Three cast posters, collect them all!
