Factory's $50M bet on "agnostic" AI coding agents arrives as the market consolidates around single vendors. With Nvidia and J.P. Morgan backing their multi-LLM approach, the startup claims enterprise gains that challenge typical adoption curves.
Good Morning from San Francisco, Google flipped the switch on conversational search. Voice and video queries now run standard across
Google transforms search from typing queries to live conversations with AI. The feature exits experimental status and becomes standard across US mobile apps, forcing competitors to match conversational capabilities or risk appearing outdated.
Good Morning from San Francisco,
Google flipped the switch on conversational search. Voice and video queries now run standard across the US—no experimental flags needed. Eight billion daily searches just became eight billion potential AI conversations.
Meanwhile, Trump will sign the TikTok handover today. Oracle's Larry Ellison scores the hosting contract and algorithm oversight. His son David owns CBS through Paramount. One family will control TikTok's infrastructure and broadcast news. Convenient.
Stay curious,
Marcus Schuler
Google's Search Live officially launched across the United States, bringing real-time voice and video conversations to the core search experience.
The feature exits Google Labs and becomes standard in the Google app for iOS and Android.
From Washington's perspective, this represents controlled AI advancement within existing frameworks. From competitors' view, it's Google leveraging its 8 billion daily searches to force platform evolution. From users' angle, it's hands-free assistance for troubleshooting, travel planning, and learning—without adopting new apps.
The technical implementation runs on Project Astra through custom Gemini integration, but maintains search DNA by surfacing web links alongside AI responses. Unlike standalone conversational platforms, Search Live embeds multimodal AI directly into the world's most-used search engine.
The integration approach creates immediate distribution advantages while expanding data collection to include continuous audio streams and live camera feeds. Competitors must now match conversational search capabilities or accept positioning as legacy text-based platforms.
The transformation is measured but decisive: search evolves from information retrieval into interactive consultation.
Why this matters:
• Platform competition shifts from standalone AI products to AI integration depth, advantaging companies with existing infrastructure and user bases
• Search behavior fundamentally changes from query-response to ongoing conversation, reshaping information discovery patterns across the web
Robert Brown
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Prompt:
cute little star boy in blue overalls and a yellow hat with large white stars, felt-style, felt world, needle felting, pastel background, cute village landscape with houses, sun, clouds, small birds, cute cartoon design "ai_tl", colorful, 3d effect, high resolution, high detail, bright colors, natural lighting, handmade doll made of wool, bright and vivid color tone.
President Trump signs an executive order today declaring TikTok's handover to American investors a "qualified divestiture."
Oracle gets the cloud hosting contract for 170 million U.S. users, algorithm oversight responsibilities, and a central consortium role acquiring roughly 80% ownership. ByteDance retains under 20% while licensing its recommendation engine to the new American entity.
The arrangement transforms national security divestiture into strategic positioning. White House negotiators curated the investor roster—Oracle, Silver Lake, Trump donors including Jeff Yass—rather than allowing market selection. Larry Ellison's simultaneous TikTok infrastructure control and son David's CBS ownership through Paramount creates unprecedented cross-platform media influence.
The technical challenge remains unproven. No precedent exists for successfully licensing social media algorithms while maintaining engagement quality. Meta's Reels and YouTube's Shorts both struggled to replicate TikTok's pull despite massive engineering resources.
The sequence reveals political capital converting directly into market advantage.
Why this matters:
• Infrastructure as influence: Control over algorithms and hosting proves more strategically valuable than traditional content ownership, shifting media power toward technical platforms
• Precedent for restructuring: Government-directed ownership changes establish template for politically-guided industry consolidation that rewards administration allies
Marcus Schuler
Jerry uses AI to help drivers find the lowest car insurance rates from 50+ providers and manage all aspects of car ownership. The app eliminates spam calls while providing personalized quotes, driving rewards, and repair estimates in one place.
Tutorial:
URL: https://jerry.ai/
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI chief Sam Altman are reportedly attempting to strengthen their relationships with President Trump following a deterioration in relations between the president and Elon Musk, according to sources cited by the Financial Times. However, White House officials remain deeply skeptical of both technology executives as they seek to build closer ties with the administration.
Meta has recruited Yang Song, who previously led OpenAI's strategic explorations team, to serve as research principal at Meta Superintelligence Labs, according to sources cited by Wired. The high-profile hiring occurred earlier this month, marking another significant talent acquisition between major AI companies as competition intensifies in the artificial intelligence sector.
A controversial app called Neon has climbed to the #2 position among social apps on the US App Store by offering to pay users for recording their phone calls, which it then sells to artificial intelligence companies for training purposes. The app's rapid rise in popularity highlights growing questions about privacy and data monetization as users willingly exchange personal conversations for compensation.
OpenAI CEO of Applications Fidji Simo is actively interviewing candidates for a senior role focused on monetization strategies, including the potential introduction of advertising within ChatGPT. The move signals OpenAI's intent to diversify revenue streams beyond subscription models as the company seeks new ways to capitalize on its popular AI chatbot platform.
London-based artificial intelligence data center startup Nscale has successfully raised $1.1 billion in Series B funding, with Norwegian industrial conglomerate Aker leading the investment round and chipmaker Nvidia also participating. Aker is investing $285 million for a 9.3% stake in the "neocloud" company, which develops AI data centers and represents one of the largest funding rounds in the European AI infrastructure sector this year.
Qualcomm has announced its latest flagship mobile system-on-chip, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, featuring substantial performance improvements over its predecessor. The new processor delivers a 20% year-over-year increase in CPU performance and a 23% boost in GPU performance, positioning it as the company's most powerful mobile chipset to date.
JPMorgan Chase has reached a data access agreement with financial technology company Plaid that establishes pricing for customers' financial information sharing. The deal could potentially strengthen Plaid's market position if similar arrangements are extended to other data aggregators, as the company may leverage cost advantages to further consolidate its share of the financial data aggregation market.
SAP is projected to reach €22 billion in cloud sales this year, representing nearly triple the revenue levels achieved in 2019, as the German enterprise software company experiences significant growth in its cloud business transformation. However, the company now faces intensifying competition from other technology giants and must strategically pivot toward artificial intelligence applications as cloud growth is expected to decelerate in the coming years.
The European Commission has launched an antitrust investigation into German software company SAP, examining potential anticompetitive practices related to its enterprise resource planning (ERP) software maintenance and support services. If found guilty of antitrust violations, SAP could face a substantial fine of up to 10% of its annual global sales revenue.
Copenhagen-based fintech startup Light has secured $30 million in Series A funding led by venture capital firm Balderton Capital to expand its AI-powered software platform that automates financial tasks including accounting and bookkeeping. The funding round positions Light among a growing number of European technology companies attracting significant investment as venture capitalists actively seek opportunities in the artificial intelligence sector.
Spotify announced comprehensive updates to its artificial intelligence policy on Thursday, introducing the upcoming DDEX standard to properly label and identify AI-generated music on its platform. The streaming service is also rolling out an enhanced music spam filter as part of its broader effort to maintain content quality and transparency for users regarding AI-created musical works.
Meta has announced the global expansion of enhanced teen accounts with additional safety controls across Facebook and Messenger platforms. Additionally, Instagram is now allowing all US middle schools and high schools to participate in its program for reporting bullying and other safety concerns directly to the platform.
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Neon Mobile pays you cash for your phone call recordings, then flips that audio to AI companies hungry for real conversation data. It's either brilliant arbitrage or a privacy nightmare with a referral program 📱
Alex Kiam launched this NYC operation in 2024 after stints at Protégé and finance roles at Eminence Capital. Company size unknown, but they're hiring fast after hitting App Store charts. Founded on the simple premise that if tech giants profit from your data, you should too.
Core play: Record your side of phone calls, earn $0.30-0.45 per minute, capped at $25-30 daily. Neon strips identifiers and sells "anonymized" transcripts to AI trainers who need messy, real-world speech data. One-sided recording sidesteps most wiretap laws. Users grant Neon exclusive, transferable rights to everything they submit.
No direct rivals blend call recording with cash payouts. TapeACall and Rev handle recording without payment. Pogo and Reklaim pay for data but skip phone calls. Neon owns this weird intersection of voice capture and data monetization.
Pre-seed from Upfront Ventures and Xfund. Amount and valuation undisclosed—standard early-stage opacity. Both are solid names: Upfront's a veteran LA firm, Xfund has Harvard roots.
Smart timing as AI training data gets expensive and voice cloning sparks regulatory attention. The "pay users directly" angle feels honest compared to sneaky data harvesting. But exclusive licensing terms are broad, buyer transparency is thin, and voice regulations could tighten. Success depends on balancing user payouts against AI company budgets—nail that exchange rate and Neon stays bright 💰
Good Morning from San Francisco, Voice typing finally works. OpenAI burns $400 billion on data centers that need nuclear plant-level
Good Morning from San Francisco, AI adoption doubled. Productivity didn't budge. MIT finds 95% of organizations see zero
Good Morning from San Francisco, Trump's $100,000 H-1B visa fee sparked weekend chaos. Foreign workers abandoned flights.
Good Morning from San Francisco, Two stories define today’s AI landscape. Musk's xAI hit turbulence—500+ layoffs,
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