Tech Brew Ride Home

So, have you hit the ads in ChatGPT yet, cause they’re there. Spotify comes out of nowhere with killer good earnings. The coming tidal wave of Chinese AI launches. The coming deluge of social media trials. And does AI usage reduce the amount of work you do, or actually compound it?


OpenAI begins testing ads in ChatGPT (Mashable)


Spotify Shares Surge After Adding Record Number of New Users (Bloomberg)


Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance Offer AI Red Packets to Lure Users (Bloomberg)


New Mexico lawsuit accuses Meta of failing to protect children from sexual exploitation online (AP)


AI Doesn't Reduce Work, It Intensifies It (HBR)

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Sam Altman assures staff that OpenAI has a good week, but is Anthropic definitively growing faster at this point? Is the CapEx spend about to eat ALL of Silicon Valley’s free cashflow while Apple sits out the party? And the Crypto.com guy runs the same playbook but now with Ai.com.


Sam Altman touts ChatGPT’s reaccelerating growth to employees as OpenAI closes in on $100 billion funding (CNBC)


How Capex Ramp Up Will Squeeze Google, Amazon, Meta (The Information)


Apple is the only Big Tech company whose capex declined last quarter (Sherwood)


A New AI Video Model From ByteDance is Making Waves (PetaPixel)


Claude Code is the Inflection Point (SemiAnalysis)


Crypto.com CEO unveils new AI agents to millions during Super Bowl (CoinTelegraph)


From Svedka to Anthropic, brands make bold plays with AI in Super Bowl ads (TechCrunch)

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Claude Opus 4.6 arrives to crown Anthropic’s very good week, at least, for them it was good. You thought tech was spending big to build out for AI, but this week we’ve seen how big. Crypto seems to have really hit a sharp bear market. And in the Weekend Longreads Suggestions, tv piracy is back, baby!


Anthropic Releases New Model That’s Adept at Financial Research (Bloomberg)


Anthropic debuts new model with hopes to corner the market beyond coding (The Verge)


Big Tech to Spend $650 Billion This Year as AI Race Intensifies (Bloomberg)


Europe Accuses TikTok of ‘Addictive Design’ and Pushes for Change (NYTimes)


Bitcoin Falls Below $70,000 as Market Faces a ‘Crisis of Faith’ (Bloomberg)

Weekend Longreads Suggestions:


Inside Elon Musk’s $1.25 Trillion AI and Space Megamerger (WSJ)


Everyone is stealing TV (The Verge)

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Alphabet earnings. Claude goes to the Superbowl. Why AI brand loyalty isn’t even remotely a thing yet. And is the whole Marc Andreessen theory of software eating the world in the process of being eaten by AI? Wall Street is worried about that very scenario.


Google set to double AI spending to $185bn after strong earnings (FT)


OpenAI Frontier is a single platform to control your AI agents (The Verge)


Anthropic says ‘Claude will remain ad-free,’ unlike ChatGPT (The Verge)


Microsoft’s Pivotal AI Product Is Running Into Big Problems (WSJ)


New Data: OpenAI’s Lead Is Contracting as AI Competition Intensifies (Big Technology)


Threat of New AI Tools Wipes $300 Billion Off Software and Data Stocks (WSJ)


AI Won’t Kill the Software Business, Just Its Growth Story (WSJ)

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Check out Jaime's book: Ding Dong: How Ring Went From Shark Tank Reject To Everyone's Front Door
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