Good Morning, everyone

While I’m trying my best to post a bit less with AI news saturation happening, some days do…

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Good Morning,

The buzz around AI coding is reaching a feverish race for AI Supremacy in mid 2026. Just weeks from the onslaught of the biggest AI IPOs in history, the future of vibe-working is shaking the foundations of our anticipation of what becomes possible with this technology.

As much attention as Anthropic is getting, Cursor is the AI startup that I find most intriguing. While Anthropic needs to extend its partnership with Amazon (AWS) for more capacity, Cursor who famously refused to be acquired by OpenAI, is in a unique position.

Cursor (the flagship product of the startup Anysphere) is building one of the most viable “vibe-working” platforms in the world. This is the sort of interface and tech that can enable one high performing employee to do the job of what would have taken entire teams just a few years ago to accomplish.

Download Cursor for Windows

In a shocking turn of events, SpaceX is claiming a deal with Cursor giving it the right to acquire it for $60 Billion. Is that so?

But I doubt very much Anysphere, the team behind Cursor would let itself be acquired. I asked to explain for us one of the key new things Cursor is building. While Cursor has a reputation as one of the best AI coding tools out there, it’s building something far more valuable to various kinds of professionals. I personally think it’s worth a lot more than $60 Billion.

Separately and before this was announced, Cursor (Anysphere) is seeking $2 Billion in more funding at a $50 Bn. valuation. Now this week, SpaceX said it has struck a deal with Cursor to develop a next-generation “coding and knowledge work AI,” which includes a surprising provision — an option to buy the popular software development platform for $60 billion later this year. But it sounds to me like just a model training partnership.

Cursor’s new funding round is likely to be led by Andreessen Horowitz where Nvidia and Thrive Capital are also expected to participate. I would be fairly disappointed if Anysphere was acquired just as it is showing so much momentum. They have youth and talent on their side.

So four MIT students who bet that the "AI extension" model was fundamentally broken could all be Billionaires by the end of the year. Or they could go on to build the future of Enterprise AI.

What do you think?

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What a Crazy Partnership - but it makes total sense for both parties

writes the AI Augmented Engineer.

The AI-Augmented Engineer

Accelerating software engineering careers with AI workflows. I show you how to use AI to write better code, ship faster, and get ahead.

By Jeff Morhous

• Cursor’s recent pivot is just like Codex

• Claude Mythos is genuinely terrifying

• Tokenmaxxing at Meta

• You’re only using 20% of Opus 4.6

View Cursor Docs

Cursor’s Momentum now has SpaceX Funding

SpaceX working with Cursor gives it an edge to catch up to Anthropic in Coding AI, while Anthropic benefits from the API usage and reliance of Cursor users on Claude models. Google Deepmind also created a “strike team” to catch up in Coding AI. Code red for OpenAI’s Codex is good for the future of AI coding which powers the momentum of Agentic AI.

• On April 20th, Alibaba Qwen recently announced Qwen3.6 Max Preview that brings stronger world knowledge and instruction following, along with significant agentic coding improvements across a wide range of benchmarks

As much attention as Claude Code, Cowork, Design and other versions of its product get, Cursor is building a very integrated platform that is quickly getting more usage, but less attention. Anysphere doesn’t have to worry about pre IPO marketing or capacity issues.

Read the Story

Anysphere is Nailing AI Product

Unlike OpenAI, where Cursor really shines is in product innovation. You can feel the difference in talent. Cursor has recently transitioned from being an AI-enhanced code editor to what they describe as an "Agent-First Interface." The pivot is a vibe-working masterpiece.

1. A week ago Cursor announced Interactive Canvases (Cursor 3.1).

2. On April 13th they announced Tiled Layout Interface and improved Voice input.

3. In early April Cursor announced the new Cursor. With Cursor 3, they took that a step further by building this new interface from scratch, centered around agents.

The Best Interface for AI

Cursor Glass is the codename for Cursor version 3.0, a major evolution of the AI code editor released in March 2026

Try to wrap your mind around what this means Cursor is becoming. It’s in some ways better than Codex and Claude Code. It’s the best unified platform for vibe-working and I believe its ARR over the next 18 months will reflect that. Listen to them 1 year ago on Lex.

Anysphere is the one company where the smartest young people in the world are building the future of AI.

Key Features of “Cursor Glass”

• Agents Window: A dedicated space where you can run multiple agents in parallel. For example, one agent can refactor your backend while another builds a new frontend component, each operating in its own execution thread with isolated context.

• Cloud Handoff: This allows agents to switch seamlessly between your local machine and a cloud environment mid-task. A “Cloud Agent” can continue working on complex computations or long-running tasks even after you close your laptop.

• Composer 2: The underlying engine (powering the “Glass” interface) that delivers faster coding performance and better coordination for multi-file edits.

• Design Mode: A visual-to-code feature where you can point at a UI element and describe changes in natural language; the editor then generates the code and provides a live preview for approval.

• Unified Interface: Instead of standard menus, the interface prioritizes a prompt box and an integrated “Mission Control” grid view of all active agent sessions and task threads.

The Big Picture

While Cursor is raising more funding as first reported by Bloomberg it’s now working with SpaceX, it’s already in close partnership with Anthropic. Cursor and Anthropic have historically had a close, collaborative relationship, often described as a form of "co-opetition"—simultaneously being partners/customers and competitors.

While Codex claims that it’s getting a surge in users or customers, OpenAI is in a downward spiral. Anysphere could be the major winner of Enterprise AI, not named Anthropic.

Last week, it was reported that xAI would begin renting computing power from its data centers to Cursor.

Cursor to me is more than just an AI-native code editor by Anysphere in 2026. It’s becoming valuable to professionals outside of just SWEs, like Product Managers, Designers, vibe-coders and agent orchestrators of various kinds including solopreneurs.

According to the deal, If SpaceX chooses not to exercise the buyout (at $60 Bn.), they have committed to paying Cursor $10 billion as a fee for joint development work. Honestly I don’t think SpaceX will be able to afford that acquisition due to how much money xAI is burning each month. Due to how costly orbital compute is going to be. I’m highly skeptical SpaceX can exercise the buyout option even if it wanted to.

This is easily the biggest AI news that happend this week by the way. Simply because Enterprise AI and vibe-working is the biggest AI trend of the mid 2020s.

SpaceX described the partnership as a project combining Cursor’s “product and distribution to expert software engineers” with SpaceX’s Colossus supercomputer…

In my opinion Cursor will grow revenue in 2027 like Anthropic is growing its revenue in 2026, a huge acceleration. It’s insane to give away the company for 60 Bn. It’s possible that OpenAI Startup Fund (Sam Altman) and a16z have pressured them into taking this deal. The only buyer that I would be satisfied with is if Nvidia acquired it.

SpaceX’s founder and CEO, merged the company with his AI startup xAI in February in a deal he valued at $1.25 trillion. But who knows how much the SpaceX IPO will be and likely in June, 2026, just weeks away. xAI is really behind and losing momentum in B2C since their switch to AI coding and a more Enterprise AI approach. Google, OpenAI and China is also going after the same TAM (total addressable market).

Jeff is a senior software engineer but teacher at-heart. He spends his working hours solving hard software problems using AI tools, but spends the rest of his hours teaching other developers how to do the same.

The Deep Dive into Cursor Glass

Jeff goes step by step why the new interface and platform Cursor has built is different. As a SWE and writer/teacher he has a more much nuanced understanding of this than most sources.

Cursor’s partnership with SpaceX is a compute story. Cursor will use Colossus—which utilizes roughly one million H100-equivalent GPUs—to train its next-generation "Composer" models.

With access to this level of compute, will Anysphere become a hub within SpaceX or will it build something else entirely with its own trajectory? We’re at a significant cross-roads in what the future interface of AI even looks like in 2026.

Cursor Glass is by all measures a deviation from all that has come before. Essentially, it marks a shift from a standard IDE with an AI sidebar to an "agent-first" workspace designed for parallel development. This agent first workspace is what I call a vibe-working native platform.

Cursor is the likely tool that makes mainstream Multi-Agent Parallelization. So instead of one AI working sequentially, different agents can now handle specialized tasks (e.g., one on database schema, another on API endpoints) simultaneously. That’s the point where vibe-working makes companies more productive at scale.

There, I actually said it. It doesn’t surprise me that the talent rich team at Anysphere are the ones to build it.

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Good Morning,

I want to do a visual tour of some of my favorite infographics and updates of the AI Index report. I think it would be fair of me to suggest that this year’s report emphasizes that while AI capability is accelerating, the governance and safety frameworks meant to manage it are struggling to keep pace.

The reason this exists is the AI Index came out of a project of the One Hundred Year Study on AI at Stanford to serve as a faster-paced annual lens on advancing AI capabilities.

Browse the Slides

The jagged frontier speaks of a quickly developing industry that is a great lens on the State of AI over the past year 2025-2026 and the big picture. While a lot of the AI reports I read are from Venture Capital funds whose job it is to make AI look amazing, with an academic institution we can hope to find a less biased snapshot. I am not sure if that turns out to be true however. The AI Index that was established in 2019 as an independent project claiming to provide unbiased, rigorous data on the progress of AI. You can follow the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI) here. View their latest news here.

AI News in a Nutshell

Last week Anthropic released:

• Claude Opus 4.7

• Claude Design

What to use Claude Design For?

Initial test use cases for the tool are as follows:

• Realistic prototypes: Designers can turn static mockups into easily-shareable interactive prototypes to gather feedback and user-test, without code review or PRs.

• Product wireframes and mockups: Product Managers can sketch out feature flows and hand them off to Claude Code for implementation, or share them with designers to refine further.

• Design explorations: Designers can quickly create a wide range of directions to explore.

• Pitch decks and presentations: Founders and Account Executives can go from a rough outline to a complete, on-brand deck in minutes, and then export as a PPTX or send to Canva.

• Marketing collateral: Marketers can create landing pages, social media assets, and campaign visuals, then loop in designers to polish.

• Frontier design: Anyone can build code-powered prototypes with voice, video, shaders, 3D and built-in AI.

You can also use Cursor for Designers that integrates with Figma.

Opus 4.7 is built to be a "digital employee" rather than just a chatbot, not the same as the Mythos model they are still studying. In general, Anthropic recommends Opus 4.7 for demanding use cases where you need frontier intelligence — particularly production-ready code, sophisticated AI agents, and complex document creation. In particular I will note that Opus 4.7 seems to have improved a lot in:

Opus 4.7 as the first “Digital Employee” Type Model

• Instruction following.

• Improved multimodal support: like vision.

• Real-world work; like Finance.

• Memory and using file-system based memory.

• Long-running tasks.

Opus 4.7 is a “Doer”

Opus 4.7 handles complex, long-running tasks with rigor and consistency, pays precise attention to instructions, and devises ways to verify its own outputs before reporting back and as such its fine-tuned to be especially good at agentic coding and related tasks.

It’s likely to be one of the more capable global models of the Spring of 2026.

At its best, the AI Index is a distillation of thousands of articles, research papers, and model data, carefully organized and synthesized.

• 12 Takeaways from the Report

• Want to understand the current state of AI? Check out these charts. (MIT)

Which Companies are Leading in AI?

Furthermore Forbes just released their 2026 (8th annual) edition of their “AI 50” read it here. Supposedly, the iteration of the Forbes 2026 AI 50 list highlights a significant shift in the industry, as leading startups demonstrate a transition from experimental technology to sustainable, revenue-generating businesses. Indeed a few on this list will go public in the next 18 months.

A lot of these have indeed seen ARR growth in the last year that’s surprising to say the least and/or seen valuations grow very quickly. I’m going to link to their LinkedIn profiles so you can quickly learn a bit more about them:

1) Legora - legal automation software (Stockholm)
2) Cursor - AI coding platform (Bay Area / NY)
3) Reflection - open source AI models (NY)
4) Physical Intelligence - AI models for robotics (Bay Area)
5) Speak - AI language tutor (Bay Area)
6) Chai Discovery - AI drug discovery (Bay Area)
7) Black Forest Labs - Image and video generation software (Freiburg)
8) World Labs - Spatial AI model developer (Bay Area)
9) Skild AI - AI systems for robotics (Pittsburgh)
10) Sierra - AI agents for customer service (Bay Area)
11) Mistral AI - Open source AI model developer (Paris)
12) Mercor - Data labeling service (Bay Area)
13) Lovable - AI app and website builder (Stockholm)
14) Listen Labs - AI market research tools (Bay Area)
15) Thinking Machines Lab - AI research and products (Bay Area)
16) Genspark - AI tools for knowledge workers (Palo Alto)
17) Decagon - AI agents for customer service (Bay Area)
18) Together AI- AI cloud provider (Bay Area)
19) Suno - Music generation software (Cambridge)
20) Rogo - AI finance tools (NY)
21) Perplexity - AI search engine (Bay Area)
22) OpenEvidence - AI search for doctors (Miami)
23) krea.ai - Image generation software (Bay Area)
24) HeyGen - AI video generation (LA)
25) Harvey - Legal automation software (Bay Area)
26) Fireworks AI - AI app development software (San Mateo)
27) ElevenLabs - Voice generation software (NY)
28) Safe Superintelligence - AI research (Palo Alto)
29) Midjourney - Image generation software (Bay Area)
30) fal - Generative media infrastructure (Bay Area)
31) Cyera - AI data security (NY)
32) Notion - productivity software (Bay Area)
33) Surge AI - Data labeling service (Bay Area)
34) Gamma - AI graphic design tools (Bay Area)
35) Glean - Enterprise search engine (Palo Alto)
36) Cohere - AI model developer (Toronto)
37) Baseten - AI app deployment software (Bay Area)
38) Runway - Video and image editing software (NY)
39) Crusoe - AI data center builder (Denver)
40) Abridge - AI notetaker for doctors (Bay Area)
41) Synthesia - AI avatar and video generator (London)
42) SambaNova - AI chipmaker (San Jose)
43) EliseAI - AI agents for housing and healthcare (NY)
44) Clay - AI go-to-market tools (NY)
45) Applied Intuition - Self-driving software (Sunnyvale)
46) Cognition - AI coding agents (Bay Area)
47) Replit - AI app and website builder (Foster City)
48) OpenAI - AI models and products (Bay Area)
49) Anthropic - AI models and products (Bay Area)
50) Databricks - Data storage and analytics (Bay Area)

My own take on the slides may include text from the slides and my own commentary at times. I might at times also include slides from other sources that may be related which I will credit. I often will add subtitles to the slides themselves to help the reader orient themselves and to make an editorial point that may differ from the original.

When possible I will show the infographic in a wide-view, resolution permitting. To make it a bit easier on the eyes.

As AI advances rapidly, can the systems built around it keep up?

Let’s begin the first iteration of the summary.

The AI Index 2026

INTRODUCTORY SLIDES:

Three Years into the Generative AI Era, a Multitude of Models Perform Exceptionally Well and are Frontier (SOTA, i.e. state of the art)

OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI Funding Skewed the Charts for 2025 in Private Investment

M&A finally picked up. 2026 and 2027 are widely considered IPO years of note.

While U.S. Leads in Closed Models, China leads in Robotic Companies and humanoid robotic products

U.S. Lead in Venture Capital Private Investments in AI is Significant 2013 to 2025:

• Yet China leads in Open-source LLMs and while it has vastly less AI infrastructure, it has more Energy (that’s considered a bottleneck)

• However the above graph is deceptive because of how funding takes place in China. That is, the private investment figures likely understate China’s total AI spending, as government guidance funds have deployed an estimated $184 billion into AI firms between 2000 and 2023.

The AI Index is one of the best annual resources for tracking real progress beyond the headlines.

Which Industry leaders do you trust? 👀

• See the results of a version of this Poll on LinkedIn.

I hope you enjoy the exploration and AI landscape of insights that it provides. 🗺️

Get the Free Trial

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Good Morning,

I envision a world where LLMs are complemented by many types of AI, Quantum computing and a convergence of new kinds of computing architectures. For all the book smarts of LLMs, they currently have little sense for how the real world works and there’s a growing list of “world model” AI startups trying to fill the gap. People won’t trust a one dimensional AI, more on this at the end.

While Generative AI models have their uses, I believe the next decade will fill in some of the physical AI gaps, and allow for things that were previously not possible. Yann LeCun, Fei-Fei Li and others are working towards this end. The likes of Google, Meta, Tencent, Nvidia and others are of course also developing world models.

Robotic brain startups like Physical Intelligence (π) are building general purpose models for physical AI that are basically foundational models for the physical world to help robots learn among other things. Language isn’t enough and models trained on text have inherent limitations. The token based way of predicting the world is just one perspective. A world-model based AI could have advantages over LLMs that understand casualty, and maintain mental models that are more human-like and grounded. This could enable more efficient decision making AIs, to actually make the world a better place inspired by cognitive neuroscience and grounded in empirical experience.

Yann LeCun, , Packy McCormick and many others make a lot of good points about the inherent limitations of LLMs and the merits of World Models, and I think this is important to point out even as Silicon Valley fuels capex that isn’t rational compared to what the future AI will actually be like. Of course that is just my opinion.

My guest contributor today is of Weighty Thoughts Newsletter, a VC on AI and DeepTech. 📚 His book What you Need to know about AI, recently won this year’s American Legacy Award Best Nonfiction . It was also a finalist in the business technology category. Congratulations to James.

Weighty Thoughts ∘˙○˚.•

Weighty Thoughts

VC on AI, deep tech, startups. Former Bridgewater, Google[x], startup founder. Read by top engineers, fund managers, and policymakers.

By James Wang

My Weights Thoughts of the day ⚗️

A little Quantum tangent on our World Models exploration today:

• Nvidia recently announced Nvidia Ising that the company says might be the world’s first open AI models to accelerate the path to useful Quantum computing. It’s exciting because it’s being piloted by the likes of Academia Sinica, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Infleqtion (that is now a public company under the ticker ) , IQM Quantum Computers, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Advanced Quantum Testbed and the U.K. National Physical Laboratory (NPL).

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As you know watching BigTech has always fascinated me. In 2026 with the “SaaS Apocalypse” and OpenAI, SpaceX (now including xAI) and Anthropic about to go IPO in months, the hyperscaler incumbents are beginning to come under significant pressure. This is a big deal for the future of technology.

On April 9th, 2026 Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy, wrote a very interesting shareholder letter. I’m not the type ot typically pause over shareholder letters or earning calls. By the time you read this article you will understand why I think it’s significant. It tells you more about the future of AI than most realize. I think it’s worth analyzing and today I’m going to try to do that. How under threat are the BigTech hyperscalers? Clearly, some more than others.

I really enjoyed digging into the tidbits about Amazon’s evolution in the AI era. If anything it drives home the point of what an “inflection point” these companies believe the Generative AI era represents. They are making calculations that impact many moving parts of their businesses in an evolving competitive landscape.

I go into quite a lot of details trying to model how new aspects of Amazon’s growing business models engages with surging demand (demand for connectivity, infra, model training and more). Whatever is the case, Amazon is pivoting and I consider this capex surge comes at a time of great opportunity for the company that is well positioned in multiple areas with products that directly challenge SpaceX, Nvidia and Google.

The market has had nearly a week to digest the shareholder letter (5 days ago), and Amazon’s stock is up over 13% during this time, hovering around a $2.6 Trillion market cap. In this article I give a sweeping analysis of my key takeaways from the shareholder letter and my own thoughts on what this means for the future. I try to leave no stone unturned. The year of 2026 is a big year for what Amazon has planned. I’m by no means an expert on Amazon but I acknowledges that the drivers of the Generative AI era are potentially a generationally unique window of opportunity for them.

Since Amazon is such a big employer of American workers and such a big part of the lives of American consumers, its rising Capex is as concerning as it is impressive. This article tries to uncover how/if this $200 Billion capex is justified and the Who, What, Where, When, Why it all means. After this read I hope to give you a better 360 degree understanding of what Amazon is trying to accomplish.

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Anthropic is in the Zeitgeist, no longer a glorified AI research lab startup. Now a full on product explosion is happening. This is what AI Supremacy in coding models, agentic AI and maybe even reasoning models looks like (revenue growth is staggering). Upgrade.

1. “Anthropic: (in philosophy and cosmology) involving or concerning the existence of human life, especially as a constraint on theories of the universe.

   “anthropic reasoning is only interesting in a scientific sense if it can help us understand how the universe came to be the way it is”

2. (typically of environmental degradation) caused by human beings; anthropogenic.

   “anthropic climate change”

What is even Anthropic?

It’s mid April, 2026. Everywhere I look recently I see articles about Anthropic and its many Claude updates. I get it, Anthropic is making a huge push into Enterprise AI, will go IPO in about six months, and just released a preview of one of the most impressive models we’ve seen called Mythos. Anthropic is surging ahead of OpenAI and it has repercussions on the entire Tech stack, and incumbents. Tech layoffs feel different this year. (Oracle, Disney, Epic Games, Atlassian (look at the stock), Block, Workday, etc…)

Fastest Growing Enterprise AI Company Ever

Anthropic is arguably the fastest-scaling software company ever, with diversified compute on Nvidia GPUs but also Amazon and Google AI chips. It’s the foundational Agentic AI-as-a-Service company of the Generative AI era (2023-2026, so far). Its API benefits from the explosive growth of Cursor and it’s getting a lot more Enterprise customers with contracts over $1 Million dollars.

What is this List?

But since most of my readers are primarily AI Enthusiasts, their product release timeline lately has been a bit daunting and snappy. I wanted to list some of the best article resources and guides I could find on this platform. This is essentially a Friday listicle, mostly around Claude guides. Clicking on one of these links supports some of its top AI navigators, educators, analysts, enthusiasts.

In a staggering window between February and April 2026, Anthropic's run-rate jumped from $14 billion to $30 billion.

This week Anthropic announced their solution to Managed Agents.

Read the Blog

According to Deedy Das, a partner at Menlo Ventures who invest in Anthropic:

“Claude Mythos just obliterated every single benchmark in AI.”

It might take some time for us to get our hands on the model, since they are prioritizing trust and saftey.

Claude’s Good Times Begin

Hilariously it’s turned every AI creator I know into a booster for this company. Instead of simply repeating another guide, I wanted to give you my readers a kind of directory to some of the best content I could find around Claude’s various list of new products.

Remember, Claude Code only became widely available to users by May 22, 2025, not even a year ago.

What are Managed Agents?

Just a small note on the latest product:

Claude Managed Agents is a suite of composable APIs for building and deploying cloud-hosted agents at scale, handling sandboxed code execution, checkpointing, credential management, scoped permissions, and end-to-end tracing for you. These are suitable for businesses of all sizes, but especially large companies.

It's best for workloads that need long-running execution (tasks that run for minutes or hours with multiple tool calls), cloud infrastructure with secure containers and minimal infrastructure.

So that’s my intro and here’s my list: (I will try and be brief but also give you some weekend reading if you want to catch up on your AI skills):

Click the links to learn more. (I try to keep paid articles to a minimum in the below list, for learning purposes)

A Short Claude Learning Directory:

I think if you read and scan through some of these articles, it’s fair value for your time. Keeping up to date with Claude AI in practice is likely a good idea.

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Today I actually want to talk about Datacenters, but there are some digital airwaves AI news to cover first. This is going to be a lot of curation and a lot of infographics but a measure of the State of AI as it is today, including AI Infra gridlock that seems to have a media ban. This kind of content takes me hours and hours to compile but is meant to be nibbled on. So bookmark it for weekend reading if it’s your style.

Anthropic’s latest model Mythos is getting a lot of scrutiny (okay fine, outlandish praise) as a massive “step-up” in model capability in coding and reasoning. We now leave behind the “Opus” family of models for Capybara models that are bigger and more capable. Anthropic released a Mythos System Card Preview that’s fairly interesting.

Mythos Models are so good they are Dangerous

Anthropic has developed a New Protocol for Releasing Models in a more Safe way: Project Glasswing

In essence, Anthropic's new model, Claude Mythos, is so powerful that it is not releasing it to the public. Instead, it is starting a 40-company coalition, Project Glasswing, to allow cybersecurity defenders a head start in locking down critical software.

Anthropic’s Revenue (ARR) Surges in Early 2026

This as Anthropic’s ARR has hit $30 Bn. and is about to overtake that of OpenAI. The following are true stories:

• Anthropic added the combined ARR of Palantir, Anduril, and Databricks—in one month. (via Lenny) - we had said 2026 would be a key year for Anthropic’s growth overtaking that of OpenAI.

• Between February and April Anthropic went from $19B in February to $30B in March, 2026.

• Anthropic’s revenue grew 30x in 15 months.

• Said another way: They added $6B in ARR just in *February*. Companies like Palantir and Atlassian took 15-20 years to reach ~$5B ARR. Anthropic is adding that every month. (Lenny).

• Anthropic dominates Enterprise AI and that lead is accelerating. It now has 1,000 companies spending $1M+ each. A figure which doubled in under two months.

• Anthropic by having the top AI coding model displayed around 1000% CAGR over the last 2.5 years.

Visualize It

The revenue growth at both Anthropic and Cursor demonstrate that vibe-working might have a sustainable future. Curiously OpenAI, Google and neither Microsoft or Meta are really in the picture. Anthropic’s Enterprise AI revenue began to step up just as their coding models have.

I think it was Claude 3.5 Sonnet that changed everything and established Anthropic as SOTA in coding. A bigger impact that even GPT-4 if you look at it historically many years from now. By the time Opus 4.0 was released, Claude Code was released in May, 2025 and Claude Cowork in January, 2026.

SOTA Opus Models, Claude Code and Claude Cowork changed everything. Who even knows what Mythos can unlock?

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Sam Altman Exposé Goes Viral

New Yorker bombshell exposes OpenAI's Sam Altman as untrustworthy manipulator.

Why read this? The New Yorker published an 18-month investigation into Sam Altman. The conclusion, from his own former leaders: he cannot be trusted.

Not news to us, but with looming IPOs it’s a problem for the AI ecosystem and AI bubble. OpenAI needs to change leadership, or risk everything! Both Sam Altman and Elon Musk are reputational risks to their companies now.

Read the Story

AI and Jobs

The Forecasting Research Institute completed what they call the most comprehensive study of how economists and AI experts think AI will affect the U.S. economy.

Read the Report

A majority of respondents anticipate significant advances in AI capabilities by 2030 with relatively stable historical trends for jobs and the labor market. That is, they predict major AI progress—but no dramatic break from economic trends in the next two decades: similar GDP growth rates to today, and a moderate decline in labor force participation.

What stood out to me? Labor Force Participation (LFPR): Under rapid progress, the LFPR is projected to drop from roughly 62% to 55% by 2050. Way more gradual than more biased economic reports insinuate.

Average Probability of AI Scenarios by 2030

I like how they modeled things: (although still a bit skewed to the Tech optimistic side). Nearly everyone is skewed to the AI optimism side now.

Helium Strait of Hormuz Bottleneck Intensifies

This is awkward?

• Helium prices have skyrocketed since the start of the Iran war.

• Qatar, which supplies a third of the world’s helium, has had production disrupted.

• Helium is a critical input for industries like semiconductors, healthcare, and aerospace.

This so-called cease-fire notwithstanding, Helium’s impact to the semiconductor supply-chains is causing HBM prices to rise suddenly faster.

The semiconductor, medical-imaging, and aerospace sectors all rely on helium as a crucial component.

A third of the world’s helium is (was?) trapped. Qatar is the source of 34% of global helium supply. I’m fairly pessimistic about Trump’s ability to get a deal done with Iran and consider the Iran war a major threat to the AI bubble.

• Helium prices are skyrocketing: early reports cited a 50% spike in the early going of the war, while more recent estimates say helium has doubled since late February.

• Helium is as far as the Iran War and the semiconductor supply chain goes: as close to a “fundamental physical constraint” as we can get.

• Qatar Energy announced in March it was halting production of liquefied natural gas and "associated products" following attacks on its facilities in Ras Laffan and Mesaieed. A 2-week ceasefire doesn’t change this, or anytime soon.

OpenAI over-invested in Compute and have a mediocre path to profitability

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Good Morning,

With NASA’s Artemis II mission (April 1st to 11th, 2026) going around the Moon right now, there’s a lot of buzz for the aspirational Lunar economy that’s coming. But what does thi…

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Good Morning,

Are we entering the autonomous AI era? From seemingly useful tools like Claude Cowork to Microsoft’s own spin on a researcher agent called Critique as part of its rath…

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Good Morning,

The year 2026 is in many ways the year of AI datacenter and semiconductor bottlenecks. As Nathan Warren over at Exponential View has noted:

⭐ The Helium Shortage

“The Iran War has creat…

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In this article I’m going to try to illustrate and think about AI anxiety from a number of different perspectives.

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We shouldn’t seek to quell AI anxiety, we should embrace and analyze it. The truth is, the U.S. labor market is in serious trouble, and it has little to do with AI so far. It’s hard to think seriously about the future of knowledge-work when we have a labor market with so many issues.

The U.S. job market is the worst in decades. And the main cause of this is a completely incompetent government. Tariffs, questionable immigration policies, geopolitical self-harm, weaponizing trade in diplomacy, unpopular interference, starting unjustified wars, peculiar Government reform, maybe you have seen this infographic? Clearly this is not an Administration that cares about the economic well-being of Americans nor the future of Americans and the post graduation job experience.

It’s the job of technology executives to make decisions that benefit shareholders, even if that means blaming AI for other problems in the business. Maybe you’ve seen this infographic too?

Are Tech layoffs about to spike? (2026-2027)

How popular is citing AI for layoffs going to get in 2026 and 2027? We are prone to anxiety because FOMO and FUD are two sides of how marketing works for a democracy without a functioning media. If a democracy no longer has a functioning media, is that still a real democracy? AI anxiety is real, especially when recessions become more likely and young people begin to have more trouble finding a job. Especially when the tools the financial elite are saying augment them, are actually hurting their critical thinking abilities. Young people today are going to grow into a different world.

Matt Zieger analyzed @karpathy‘s AI jobs exposure dashboard (which was taken down, then restored), but it bugged Matt that it didn’t include actual labor market dynamic fields such as:

• Industry adoption speed

• Worker adaptability

• Demand elasticity (if cheaper, people buy more)

• Complementarity (does AI replace or boost)

• Beyond Exposure: What Actually Predicts Displacement

AI Anxiety with Recessionary Characteristics

The odds of the US entering recession are rising:

The probability of a recession over the next 12 months jumped to 48.6% in February, the highest since the 2020 pandemic.

American consumers might even blame AI, far from embracing it. 🤔

Chief Economist Mark Zandi recently reported that Moody’s AI-based economic model now places the odds of a recession at 49%. However, Zandi cautioned that this figure was calculated just before the full impact of the recent conflict in Iran and the resulting spike in energy prices. He expects that once these factors are fully integrated into the next data release, the probability will exceed 50%. Just a bit over fifty percent, is that really something to be anxious about?

It’s totally normal to be anxious about the potential for technological automation, but throughout history it’s also fairly common to have periods of uncertainty about the future. Leaders messing things up is also nothing new to civilization.

Venture Capitalists have infiltrated the U.S. Administration

Leaders testing AI targeting and the tools powerful Venture Capitalists betted on years ago who have now won significant lobbying in Washington and that should make you anxious. Military AI is worth being anxious about. If you give Anduril, Palantir or OpenAI more money, I can bet on the future impact on the world it will have. Maybe Polymarket should consider which scenarios of AI dystopia are now most likely.

AI Anxiety the Post Boom World and Opportunity Collapse

Young people in China where the youth unemployment has spiked noticeably in the past five years, have a legit right to feel anxious. But in the U.S., poor policy, changing demographics, less immigration and tech panic is leading to a frozen labor market are a toxic combination:

“Employment rates for young workers, whether college educated or not, have both been in roughly equal decline for the past two years….Going back to 1976, the share of 20-somethings in the workforce has declined ~12%.” - a16z

Blogger recently noted that in 2026 and over the past few weeks, the phrase “AI anxiety” kept showing up in the podcasts, articles, and videos in Chian he came across, picking up pace especially after the OpenClaw mania swept the country. More Autonomous products launching include just recently: a strange brand of new products that insist they should be in control of our computers.

AI Anxiety and the Autonomous Machines Wave 🌊

Giving over computer control to Autonomous Agents is supposedly the golden path to AGI

But do we want to give over control of our computers to autonomous AI and personal assistants?

• Manus AI Desktop

• Perplexity Personal Computer

• OpenClaw Personal AI Assistant

• Alibaba Wukong Work Platform

• Claude Cowork Dispatch

• OpenAI Operator

• Google Project Jarvis

• Anthropic Compute Use

• OpenAI "Computer Using Agent" (CUA)

• OpenAI Research Scientist (What Prism becomes)

• Google Project Astra

With gigantic IPOs related to AI involved companies like SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic on the way in mere months, hype must be continued at all costs.

AI anxiety is converging with many other macro trends, and it’s making us question the future of jobs and our place in the world. AI anxiety is also coming at a peculiar time of geopolitical disruption where trust in leadership and institutions is on the decline.

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This Newsletter usually goes out at 05:30 AM EST. On rare occasions it’s a bit late (like today).

Good Morning,

I wanted to update you on some of Google’s AI improvements that caught my attention. You can follow the NotebookLM Twitter. At the beginning of March we learned that NotebookLM is introducing Cinematic Video Overviews, a major update to its AI-powered video creation capabilities.

• NotebookLM leverages Gemini 3, Nano Banana Pro, and Veo 3 to offer “fluid animations and rich, detailed visuals to help you learn and engage with the topics you care about. Users with a Google AI Ultra subscription can turn their notes into personalized, fully animated videos. Users can also only generate a max of 20 cinematic video overviews per day.

• Google is saying that NotebookLM has moved beyond a simple “research assistant”, evolving into a full "Research-to-Content" pipeline. Read how to do it.

Read Blog

Google Maps Getting a Huge AI Update

Ask Maps is a new way to get answers to your complex, real-world questions with a simple conversation. These updates to Google Maps look fairly useful. They are calling this “its biggest upgrade in over a decade.” By combining Gemini models with a deep understanding of the world, Maps now unlocks entirely new possibilities for how you navigate and explore. Learn more.

Ask Maps

The first big change is a conversational feature called "Ask Maps", which is designed to let you ask Google Maps more complicated questions that it never could have handled before.

I asked for ideas for beginners on using Gemini with NotebookLM.

The AI-Augmented Engineer

The vibe-worker’s guide to software engineering, AI workflows and coding interfaces.

The AI-Augmented Engineer

Accelerating software engineering careers with AI workflows. I show you how to use AI to write better code, ship faster, and get ahead.

By Jeff Morhous

NotebookLM And Google AI ecosystem related Articles

• Using NotebookLM to learn new things

• 3 Hidden NotebookLM Features Most People Don’t Use

• The ultimate NotebookLM tutorial

• 58 Nano Banana 2 Prompts for Infographics (With Examples)

• 9 NotebookLM Prompts That Supercharge Productivity

• We Blind-Tested ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini — Here’s the Winner (2026)

• Every Google AI Tool in 2026: What Each One Does and When to Use It

• How Google Workspace CLI Made My Claude Code Setup 10x More Powerful

• How I Connected NotebookLM to Claude and Changed How I Do Research Forever

Gemini Embedding 2:

Google’s first multimodal embedding model. It can map text, images, video, audio, and PDFs into a single unified space, which is a massive leap for developers building advanced search and RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) systems.

The model is based on Gemini and leverages its best-in-class multimodal understanding capabilities to create high-quality embeddings across:

• Text: supports an expansive context of up to 8192 input tokens

• Images: capable of processing up to 6 images per request, supporting PNG and JPEG formats

• Videos: supports up to 120 seconds of video input in MP4 and MOV formats

• Audio: natively ingests and embeds audio data without needing intermediate text transcriptions

• Documents: directly embed PDFs up to 6 pages long

As you might know, Embeddings are the technology that power experiences in many Google products. While many people have been switching from ChatGPT to Claude, I think Gemini’s offering is worth it now in 2026 if you use Google’s ecosystem.

Considering upgrading your Gemini

Let me just say I love the idea of a smarter Google Maps.

In a Nutshell what does it mean for just the average person though?

If you know someone who uses Google Maps and would want to know, feel free to share it with them.

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So convenience wise what’s actually changed or changing?

New Experiences in Google Maps

I’ve tried my best to break down the key new experiences you can expect over the coming months if you are an Android and Google Maps user.

• Ask Maps: A new conversational assistant powered by Gemini. Instead of just searching for keywords, you can ask complex, natural-language questions like, “Where can I charge my phone without a long wait for coffee?” or “Find a restaurant with vegan options and easy parking along my route.”

• Immersive Navigation: This replaces the traditional flat 2D map with a vivid 3D view of your entire route. It uses AI to stitch together Street View and aerial imagery, showing realistic buildings, overpasses, and terrain to help you orient yourself better in unfamiliar areas.

• Enhanced Road Details: During navigation, the map now highlights specific details like lane markings, crosswalks, traffic lights, and stop signs. This is designed to help drivers prepare for tricky turns and lane changes well in advance.

• Transparent Buildings: As you approach complex turns, nearby buildings can become translucent on the screen. This “X-ray” style view allows you to see the road ahead even if it curves behind a large structure.

• Contextual Route Comparisons: When Maps suggests an alternate route, it now explains the trade-offs in plain language—for example, telling you a route is “3 minutes longer but avoids heavy highway construction.”

• Arrival Guidance: To simplify the “last mile” of a trip, the app now highlights the specific entrance of a building and provides recommendations for nearby parking as you get close to your destination.

• Natural Voice Guidance: Voice directions have been updated to sound more human and use landmarks. Instead of “In 500 feet, turn right,” you might hear, “Go past this exit and take the next one for Illinois 43 South.”

Google Gemini is Taking Marketshare

According to Similarweb, Gemini (in pink) continues to make strides in terms of worldwide traffic and active users.

Gemini has been taking ChatGPT Marketshare in some domains

We like to talk about the Claude vs. ChatGPT rivalry lately, but Google is the one that’s made the most progress in terms of building a full-stack AI ecosystem.

More ChatGPT Users are also using Gemini

As Gemini, Claude, Grok and others reach near parity with ChatGPT, it becomes more about preference, tone and the “personality” of the chatbot (or brand of the company) for many everyday users.

• Simliarweb has a lot of recent data they have shared on this here (in mid March, 2026).

NotebookLM Overtook Perplexity is Website Visits in Early 2026

Using NotebookLM with Gemini

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🌟 In Partnership with Roboflow. Grateful to have occasional sponsors that enables this article to be free for all.

Among all the very well funded AI coding startups, Anysphere’s Cursor really does stand alone as the best in class. Since their seed round by OpenAI Startup Fund (i.e. Sam Altman) and Series A led by , it’s hard to fully appreciate what they are building as a leader in Enterprise AI.

Cursor has achieved one of the fastest growth trajectories in the history of SaaS, reaching $2 billion in ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) as of early 2026. It took Anysphere just 33 months from its founding in 2022 to surpass the $2 billion ARR milestone in February 2026.

The ARR was evident right from the start. But their pivot to Enterprise was the major driver. They have reputedly doubled their revenue in the last three months (December, 2025 to February, 2026). Even in the early days there were signs this was going to be good product.

Cursor are now in talks to raise at a $50 Billion valuation. I believe Cursor and not OpenAI will end up being Anthropic’s biggest Enterprise AI competitor. I asked to look into their plugins, marketplace and so forth. You might recall she wrote about Claude Cowork plugins in February.

Share this post if you know someone that would be interested in this guide and overview of Cursor’s momentum.

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AI Blew my Mind

Guides, how-to AI systems and introductions.

AI blew my mind

Turn your decades of experience into AI systems that work 24/7 so you don’t have to. Every week, I help you rethink how you operate and build workflows that run for you. (So good, readers say they cancel their day when a new issue drops.)

By Daria Cupareanu

• Make the Most of Claude AI

• OpenClaw Use Cases That’ll Make You Rethink What AI Agents Can Do

• Claude Cowork Scheduled Tasks: 6 Ways I Automated My Work on Repeat

Cursor News

• Cursor AI has undergone a massive transformation in early 2026, shifting from a "smart editor" to a platform for autonomous cloud agents.

• Recent blog: Securing our codebase with autonomous agents

• Cursor’s Automations feature launched on March 5th. Their plugins on February 17th. Read docs on plugins here.

View Marketplace

• Now they have launched security automations, like an Agentic Security Review that catches security problems in new code before it goes live.

Why I’m so Bullish on Cursor

Cursor is one of the fastest-growing startups ever in the AI/dev tools space scaling at just the right time in history of Generative AI. They are backed by the likes of Google and Nvidia. Their CLI is already legendary but it’s how they are adapting to Enterprise AI that raises their ceiling so much.

Cursor’s Enterprise Ceiling is Without Limit

Cursor is currently one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies at a time when legacy SaaS companies have had a massive loss of confidence. The threat of Claude Code and Opus 4.5 did something to this young startup, it made them leap ahead. 2026 is the key year for Anysphere’s development as a company.

Cursor was founded in 2022 by 4 MIT graduates—Michael Truell, Aman Sanger, Sualeh Asif, and Arvid Lunnemark. Now in 2026, Cursor makes about 60% of its revenue from Enterprise customers where large engineering organizations (like those at Nvidia, Uber, and Shopify) transitioned from pilot programs to full-scale deployments. Anysphere is just one year younger than Anthropic and by far the most promising AI coding startup getting into Enterprise autonomous agents.

Cursor has demonstrated unprecedented scaling in the AI dev tools space, outpacing competitors like GitHub Copilot or Devin. I believe Cursor’s Enterprise AI suite will become a peer of that of Anthropic. In short, I don’t see them as just an AI coding startup any longer.

“Anysphere’s (Cursor) annualized recurring revenue (ARR) has skyrocketed from $200 million in mid-2025 to over $2 billion by early March 2026, doubling in just the last three months alone.”

How Product Managers use Cursor has been eye opening in recent months. Podcast interview really caught my attention on this.

Download Cursor

Automations already run thousands of times per day inside their own codebase! The March 5th, 2026 video on Automations:

Prediction: Anysphere Becomes a Peer of Anthropic

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Good Morning,

I’m really bullish on the future of the Voice AI interface.

• Once agentic AI and AI wearables mature, that dream of “ambient computing” is going to be closer to reality for many consumers.

• Generative AI is enabling new convenience for consumers that will reshape how we access services, find information and deal with recurring tasks.

• This has big implications in both B2C and B2B.

AI Wearables will transform Voice AI Convenience

I believe once better AI wearable devices are launched next year in 2027 including AI pins (wearables) and smart glasses form factors, it could be a breakthrough year for consumer AI voice experiences. From smart glasses to new kinds of pendants and pins, I expect Apple to dominate. Mid to late 2027 is the time this should really come to the foreground or around 18 months from now. For details about Apple’s upcoming AI devices read here.

To wrap your head around the ecosystem:

Voice AI Experiences will improve dramatically in 2027

Smart glasses are going to be good enough to strike a chord with consumers with strong offerings of both AI (and later AR) capabilities from Meta, Google, Alibaba, Xiaomi, Xreal, RayNeo (雷鸟创新) and of course Apple, among others.

The interface of how we interact with AI will become more multi-sensory, hands-off and accessible. The dream of ambient computing has a lot of potential to evolve in the decade ahead.

Since the below infographic was made, there’s been dozens of AI Voice agent startups rewriting the future that are scaling now. We’ll list some of the major ones later on. They begin to mature in the late 2020s.

I asked of Why Try AI Newsletter to help me us understand Genspark’s new voice agent in Genspark Workspace 2.0. They have even introduced AI calling partnering with Twilio. This is the point in the week where I think we need to summarize some AI news events too of the last couple of weeks.

✨ Your AI News Brief 💼

Around 9 min.

Key Trend Analysis among Generative AI Apps and AI Tools

Recently ’s Olivia Moore released their Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps, a series that I’ve been following religiously. While Claude saw a spike recently, it still only has about one 20th the daily active users of ChatGPT.

Olivia Moore Breaks down the AI Consumer Highlights

March 11th, 2026.

Voice AI News

• Claude Code rolls out Voice mode capabilities.

• ElevenLabs released Scribe v2.

• Read Claude Voice Mode.

• Promising Voice AI startup Hume AI was gobbled up by Google.

• Voice AI agents are going vertical.

ChatGPT’s Marketshare is Eroding

While OpenAI’s ChatGPT still has a huge base, Gemini, Grok, Claude and others are gaining marketshare too. A trend that appears to be accelerating.

Why Try AI

Hand-on AI for non-techies. Stay grounded with the latest AI tools. By

Why Try AI

Hype-free, hands-on AI for non-techies.

By Daniel Nest

• Here Are My Go-To AI Tools

• Sunday’s AI News Rundown

• Build Your Second Brain With Claude Code & Obsidian

Consumer Paid Subscriptions 2026

I expect Gemini, Claude and Grok to have big years in 2026 and 2027 regarding consumer premium subscriptions putting pressure on OpenAI and slowing down their ARR (revenue growth). This is Anthropic and Cursor (Anysphere)’s Enterprise ARR keeps accelerating.

I’ve been impressed by the pace of innovation at Genspark and while I miss their Perplexity like AI search product, they are also entering the voice AI picture.

Genspark Workspace 2.0: What’s The Big Idea?

of Why Try AI takes a deep dive into Genspark’s evolution of their AI Workspace and their Voice AI capabilities in particular. With explainer videos.

Since we wrote this piece Genspark has already released Workspace 3.0 just yesterday. Mere months after its Series B funding and “unicorn” status, Genspark launched the latest iteration of its agentic concept: AI Workspace 2.0.

AI Workspace 2.0 brings improvements to several existing agents as well as new features:

New launches:

• Speakly: A new dictation assistant (think Wispr Flow and Superwhisper) that you can download for macOS or Windows. It lets you interact with all of Genspark’s agents and tools via voice instead of typing.

• AI Music Agent that can create custom music (think Suno).

• AI Audio Agent that does voiceovers and narration (think ElevenLabs).

Upgrades:

• AI Inbox now supports automated workflows that perform specific actions like creating daily inbox digests, interacting with external messaging platforms like Slack, analyzing social media performance, etc

• AI Creative Slides, AI Image Agent, and AI Video Agent are all more capable and incorporate the improved powers of newer, better underlying models.

While the under-the-hood upgrades and new music/audio agents are neat, what Genspark is leaning heavily into is Speakly and the promise of hands-free agentic work. Simply say what you need done, and Genspark’s Super Agent does it.

At least, that’s the idea.

To better understand Genspark’s vision, I tested the three new features and also conducted a written interview with the company’s COO, Wen Sang.

Read on to find out if Genspark can be more than the sum of its parts.

Testing the new tools

Let’s start with my hands-on tests and demos of the three new features.

1. Speakly: The voice agent

On the surface, Speakly is yet another voice dictation app. You speak into the microphone, and text comes out on the other end.

But what makes Speakly a great fit for Genspark’s infrastructure is the “agent” shortcut that sends your spoken request directly to Genspark’s Super Agent and the baked-in, intelligent processing of spoken input.

I demonstrate Speakly’s main features in this 7–minute hands-on video:

Watch it to learn:

• How regular voice dictation works

• How Speakly can auto-correct filler words and backtracking

• Agent mode: Send a request or task to Genspark Super Agent from any screen

• Translation mode: Speak in any language (or combination of languages), get English text.

• Custom modes: From “Buzzwords” mode to “Twitter” mode, Genspark can process and rework your speech into any style or format. You can customize this to your needs.

If you want to try Speakly for yourself, grab it here:

[DOWNLOAD SPEAKLY FOR MAC OS OR WINDOWS]

2. AI Music: From requests to music tracks

If you have toyed with AI music sites like Suno or Udio, you already have a good idea about how this works. The agent can use different third-party AI music models to execute your task:

But because Genspark agents can coordinate their work with other agents, you can have more elaborate requests that require additional pre-processing. So I tried this:

Prompt: Watch this video about the launch of Genspark AI Workspace 2.0 and create a grand soundtrack worthy of this announcement:

Ed: All to say Genspark has a lot of exciting new products and features (not a Sponsor). Just a really innovative case study that I like to cover since nobody else is.

Try Genspark

Voice AI is Evolving in the 2020s

Where are we seeing concentrations of voice agent startups and products? 🤔

• Customer Support

• Sales & Lead generation

• Recruiting & Human Resources

• Finance

• Insurance and Legal

• Logistics

• Home Services & Small Business Operations

• Healthcare

• Personal Voice Agents

• In this article the Genspark deep dive continues with more Voice AI insights and infographics.

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Thank you for your support on my last article: The U.S. Labor Market and its AI problem. I’ve been writing about AI for well over four years, well before the latest Generative AI craze. A special thanks to Michael Burry who shared the piece. It made my week.

Good Morning,

While I am a contrarian and realist in my coverage of AI as my baseline, there are however times when my own exuberance and optimism for a better path in AI research shines through. An alternative to the deceptive AGI marketing (by Sam Altman) is one of those moments.

To be sure Generative AI has ushered in an era where Artificial intelligence has made substantial progress over the past decade (2017 to 2022 being a fairly nascent period). Predictive and generative systems have transformed how we analyze, retrieve knowledge, and create content at global scale. But this isn’t enough. The Machine Economy ahead will demand more.

Like many of you I’ve been following the criticism around LLMs by the likes of Yann LeCun, Gary Marcus and many others in the last few years. Yann LeCun, a Turing Award winner and a pioneer of modern AI, has become one of the most prominent critics of the current "LLM-centric" path and his alternative is to me fascinating. Instead of AGI they propose Superhuman Adaptable Intelligence, or SAI.

“SAI points toward self-supervised learning for acquiring generic knowledge from unlabeled data, and world models for planning and zero-shot transfer.” - Ravid Shwartz Ziv

Read the Paper

The reality is we need a second wave of more practical AI startups that focuses on Physical AI, world models, robotics and real automation and that’s exactly what we are seeing with Prometheus Project, Core Automation, World Labs and many others. AGI startups, World model centric AI startups, Physical AI & robotics startups and physical science AI startups all can push the frontiers.

In this article I explore what the Machine Intelligence Economy will require and in particular try to chart the origins, characteristics and announcement of Europe’s own AMI. I argue that we are moving into a new era of Physical AI, specialized AI startups, robotic brain and world model origin labs. I consider 2027 as the nascent start to the Physical AI era.

“AI agents need world models that allow them to predict the consequences of their actions before they take them. This is key to enabling agents that can plan, remember, and reason about complex observations.” - Michael Rabbat

There’s now in 2026 a second wave of AI startups that are offering complementary directions to the approach of LLMs.

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Europe’s Biggest AI Startup Came out of Stealth

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Just a reminder I’ll be working on my Emerging Tech Investments Newsletter a lot more in 2026 to discover speculative high-growth and buy the dip opportunities. The cadence of that Newsletter should increase in the weeks and months ahead. There I’m exploring themes like Neo Clouds, Space-tech, micro cap AI related names, Quantum computing SPACs and more.

Good Morning,

This is going to be a long report with a lot of infographics and context.

Analyzing Friday jobs data, nonfarm payrolls fell by 92,000 in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, far below consensus expectations of roughly 50,000. It was the third time in five months that the economy lost jobs in the U.S. Outside of Healthcare jobs, there’s really not much growth at all with low hiring. We are in a “jobless” growth economy, with K-shaped characteristics.

With the U.S. putting the breaks on immigration and Tech companies doing agentic AI pilots, more layoffs in the Tech sector are highly likely. Oracle needs to shed at least 30,000 jobs due to the debt they have taken on for OpenAI’s compute facilities. Even as OpenAI’s Stargate facility won’t be expanding any time soon.

A Low Hire Economy with Grave Consumer sentiment

• Hiring is down 20% lower compared to the pre-pandemic baseline of 2019 according to Karin Kimbrough of LinkedIn, their head economist.

• People are staying unemployed for 7 months on average.

Labor market impacts of AI

AI is Lowering Entry Hiring in the Most Exposed Professions

Anthropic economists say they have developed a new way to track how AI will upend the workforce.

Their economists Maxim Massenkoff and Peter McCrory are selling a pre-IPO pitch, that exposed knowledge workers could be more impacted by the technology that Anthropic building. As has pointed out, they are pulling old data and making some huge rationalizations. The likes of Anthropic and OpenAI say the red will inevitably fill the blue. But how likely is that really?

According to Anthropic, AI is far from reaching its theoretical capability: actual coverage remains a fraction of what’s feasible. Occupations with higher observed exposure are projected by the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) to grow less through 2034.

While the circle graph went viral on social media, the bar graph is an easier way to visualize this:

Outside of coding, and some aspects of administration and finance, Generative AI doesn’t seem very capable of automating tasks in most areas of knowledge work. The deeper problem appears to be that the tech is not a meaningful job creator or increasing productivity outside of a few roles even in technology companies. While massive layoffs are not occuring, some redesigning of jobs internally at tech companies have been noted. Less managers, more hybrid roles, more product managers and designers doing vibe-working on the job.

Hiring slowed in January, 2026 significantly with U.S. hiring falling 3.3% from December and is down 5.7% compared to January 2025. - source. Hiring in 2025 was already anemic.

Generative AI does not appear to be a Job Creator

The GDP gains of the investments going to datacenter, inference and compute campuses and building isn’t being spread equally in the U.S. economy. The low-hire labor environment has other issues as well.

Monthly U.S. Job Creation is Nearly Non-Existent outside of Healthcare in 2025 & 2026

• Healthcare is the main driver of new jobs created in 2026.

• Cognitive displacement, labor talent and youth deskilling (College) and “cognitive surrender” are now AI risks are that are moderate to high in such an environment.

A broader measure of unemployment that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time positions for economic reasons moved lower, to 7.9% or 0.2 percentage point below the January level. Where the 4.4% unemployment rate is deceptive, compared to the low-hire environment job seekers are facing.

Then there is the AI pressure on hiring. Young people have reason to be more nihilistic or discouraged with regards to the current U.S. labor market trends.

Generative AI is Destroying White Collar Opportunity

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Today something a little bit different. I’m a big fan of journalists who cover the AV sector. I’ve been watching the smart car sector for what feels like decades. From Apple’s failure to build a smart car to Xiaomi’s success, it’s been quite a journey. In the later half of the 2020s, there’s finally light at the other end of the tunnel. Advanced autonomy, improved sensors, millions of miles more experience, integrated software and embedded AI have all improved considerably in the last decade.

That world of robots, delivery drones, robo-taxis and consumer ambient intelligence: well, it’s finally coming.

A Physical AI Wave Begins in 2027

I’m hugely optimistic about the coming Physical AI wave. When Rivian had their AI & autonomy day back in December, 2025 I had the distinct impression this is what the entire world is heading towards. The physical AI devices of 2027, emphasis on humanoid robotics, and the evolution of autonomous vehicles finally will appear tangible by the end of the decade.

Rivian’s CEO also recently appears on the No Priors Podcast, a fairly good AI startup podcast. It’s been a long road for Rivian but I see them turning the corner this year where the company has moved from being a niche, high-end truck maker to a serious mass-market contender, primarily driven by the launch of the R2 platform. I’ve always liked the look of their vehicles but finally they are more affordable too, the Rivian R2 is a new, more affordable midsize electric SUV built on a dedicated, highly efficient, and compact platform, starting around $45,000.

But it’s the AI & Autonomous work they are doing that is the deal maker for me.

Video: The Leap | Autonomy & AI Day | Rivian - YouTube.

Autonomous Vehicles are Closer to Mainstream Adoption

Rivian is one of the most promising EV startups in the U.S., at a major turning point this year in 2026 as they pivot more to AI and autonomy, which I find fascinating. They are backed by the likes of Amazon and Volkswagen Group and I believe will become a major alternative to Tesla even as the demand for electric vehicles has waned. I more or less see 2027 as the date civilization enters the age of Physical AI and I think Rivian represents an interesting case study in its emergence.

As Waymo, the leading AV moonshot by Google expands, it’s an exciting time in autonomous vehicle evolution.

I watched the entire Rivian AI and Autonomy Day live, and I was impressed. I asked of the Newsletter The AV Market Strategic, for his insights on Rivian and a deep dive on their AI & Autonomy strategy.

The AV Market Strategist

If you are interested in smart car developments, this is a great publication. Autonomous vehicles are improving and expanding to more cities near you.

It’s, finally happening.

The AV Market Strategist

The AV Market Strategist breaks down strategic developments, market dynamics, and competitive moves in the autonomous vehicle industry to reveal where the market is truly heading.

By Daniel Abreu Marques

• Wayve Raises $1.5B, Waymo Now In 10 Cities And Uber Builds the AV Platform Layer

• Waymo’s Shocking Data Release, Uber Invest $100M in Robotaxi Infrastructure

• Tesla All-In Autonomy: 7 New Robotaxi Cities, $20b CAPEX, $2b Investment in xAI

Learn More

In March, 2026 we’re going to learn a lot more about Rivian’s R2 in just a couple of weeks. Spring, 2026 is going to be their coming out party.

Daniel’s deep dive is a serious look into Rivian and their prospects.

Rivian’s AI & Autonomy Highlights ✨

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Good Morning,

This week Anthropic took the top spot on Apple iOS download leaderboards with its Claude App as consumers are rewarding it for standing up to the Department of Defense. It’s a hot-button topic for how AI is likely to become in charge of military autonomous drone swarms in the not-so-distant future. The idea that humans will always be “in the loop” is quickly fading. National defense ethics is giving way to new engineering reinforcement learning optimizations.

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As many of you know, I’m fairly concerned Generative AI is accelerating wealth inequality. But how would that take place in a deteriorating labor market? What if we are witnessing history, but not the uplifting kind. 😕

While Tech owned social media and with Venture Capitalists boosting AI tech optimism narratives (disconnected from both workers and the K-shaped economy), what’s the more realistic side to all of this? And could AI disrupt some of how capitalism and capital markets work themselves? What if AI is not a great collaborator like we are being promised that empowers, but a great destroyer?

I’ve been reading and contemplating the influential report by Citrini Research: "The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis"that is a fairly speculative "memo from the future" that explores a scenario in 2028 (you know because AI 2027 was already taken) where AI succeeds so rapidly that it “breaks the modern economic engine.”

This report actually did lead to IBM’s worst stock drop in 20 years doing down over thirteen percent ( ). Among other companies named in the report as being more vulnerable on Monday. What worries me is the question of whether the lack of job creation from Generative AI is transitory or permanent. It’s debatable to me whether the Global Intelligence revolution is even real, and if the AI movement can lead to negative growth. If you care about humanity and actual people, these issues are concerning regarding AI’s impact.

But if you are in the business of exaggerating and speculating, why not do some fear-mongering while you are at it. Markets don’t care about the affordability crisis of real people, but they do about the prospect of potential business disruption and automation that could lead to negative feedback loops impacting stocks where they store their wealth. The Citrini Report led to some fairly elaborate Twitter commentary, and actually appeared to move markets on Monday February 23rd, 2026. Today I’m watching Anthropic’s event: The Briefing: Enterprise Agents. Do they time this stuff?

The Enterprise AI Acceleration

Are Cowork plugins the beginning of a wide range of customized workflows towards a more agentic AI? Let the “plugin games” begin. Who needs hunger games when you have AI.

Plugins make AI more Accessible to Automate Tasks

Claude with plugins re-imagines some of what can be automated in some companies changing roles and responsibilities within early adopters. We will soon see dozens of companies offering similar productivity enhancing capabilities. Cursor already has a similar competitor marketplace and available on Github. You can only imagine Google and others have their own. (see above poll, or LinkedIn version).

Scenario Concerns ✨ (June 2028 Hypothesis)

The Citrini Report does highlight some potential risks: (what follows is an outline of their 2028 hypothesis):

• In the Citrini thought-experiment, AI could creates an “Intelligence Displacement Spiral”

• White-collar sectors and some knowledge workers face severe disruption first

• The Rise of "Ghost GDP": While nominal GDP and productivity appear strong due to AI efficiency, the report describes "Ghost GDP"—output that shows up in national accounts but fails to circulate in the real economy because AI agents do not spend money on discretionary goods, housing, or services.

• Macroeconomic fallout intensifies: Unemployment rises to 10.2%, JOLTS job openings plummet 15% YoY, initial jobless claims surge (mostly white-collar), and labor’s GDP share falls to 46% from 56%.

• Financial system comes under strain: Private credit sees cascading defaults (e.g., $18B software debt downgraded, Zendesk facility marked down sharply); the $13T mortgage market risks impairment as prime borrowers in tech hubs face income shocks, driving delinquencies and home value drops (e.g., 11% YoY in San Francisco).

• Please read the full Report and share your own opinions about it if you are so inclined.

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Are we destined for AI-driven negative displacement spirals?

In my search for whether AI will lead to accelerated wealth inequality, I found one of the best sources I could in of American Inequality Newsletter. Jeremy Ney is an author, researcher, and data scientist best known for his work on the "American Inequality" project.

American Inequality

Data on U.S. inequality and regional divides. Covering all things housing, healthcare, poverty, education, tech and more.

American Inequality

Data on U.S. inequality and regional divides. Covering all things housing, healthcare, poverty, education, tech, and more.

By Jeremy Ney

Jeremy is a serious academic researcher, whose primary thesis is that inequality is interconnected and goes far beyond simple income figures. He also holds extensive Substack Live interviews and sessions.

Few people on the planet have such a nuanced and data-driven understanding of American inequality than Jeremy. He’s now working on a book as well. His commitment to the niche of American inequality goes deep.

• Why does inequality matter?

• American Inequality | Income Maps

• Public Data Is Under Siege: Why It Affects You

• Why poverty is rising in America

• Why homelessness just hit a 15-year high, rising 12% from last year

If you think American inequality is an important issue, consider supporting the author with a paid contribution to access all of his data and research.

Support American Inequality Project

If you prefer listening on the go:

Generative AI and Inequality

By Jeremy Ney, February, 2026.

Jeremy Ney is the author of the American Inequality Substack and a professor at Columbia Business School.

There is no doubt that AI is coming for some jobs, but the overwhelming question is - who is most at-risk of job loss and how long is the pain going to last? Are Amazon warehouse workers first in line for job loss or are the consultants, software developers, and financial analysts going to feel the pain of the first wave? A new consensus is emerging that focuses on jobs “exposed to AI” and identifying workers who have the skills to land back on their feet when AI comes knocking at their door. New data analysis of these AI-exposed jobs reveals that there are 3 categories of workers who face the biggest threats from this technological shift. Regardless of the worker category though, there’s a more sinister inequality that is taking shape.

The Age of the AI Aristocracy

A small number of people are getting incredibly wealthy off this AI revolution. During the AI surge of the past two years, the top 10% of households saw their wealth increase by $5 trillion in a single quarter (Q2 2025), while the bottom 50% saw a gain of just $150 billion, or a 33x gap. The bottom 50% of Americans own just 1% of all U.S. stocks, meaning that the gains accruing to Nvidia or Microsoft don’t flow through to millions of households. A new AI Aristocracy seems to be emerging, fueling the rise of a handful of ultra-wealthy households. In 1910, the richest 0.00001 percent of Americans owned wealth equivalent to 4 percent of U.S. national income. Today, that number has risen to 12 percent. The wealth and power of oligarchs far exceed their Gilded Age peak. In other words, we’ve passed peak robber baron.

The economy is now divided split in two: AI stocks are propping up the S&P, accounting for 60% of gains over the last 2 years, and helping just a few households pull ahead. When we talk about robber barons, AI datacenter investment is still only one-sixth the railroad investment of the 1880s, but the returns for just a few Americans is now far higher. Corporate profits are at some of their highest levels in the last 80 years even though American workers just took home their smallest share of the nation’s wealth since 1947. The money is there, it just isn’t going to most Americans who are now having to pay higher electricity bills while getting paid less for the same work. For the rest of America outside of the AI Aristocracy, here are those who are going to face the biggest threats of inequality posed by this technological shift.

People at the Extremes of the Age Distribution Are Losing Their Jobs

Recent college grads are facing one of the worst job markets in decades. For the first time in our recorded history, recent college grads have higher unemployment rates than all other workers and have faced a worsening job prospects at finding jobs. Stanford economists found that young workers aged 22–25 in “highly AI-exposed” jobs, such as software developers and data analytics experienced a 13% decline in employment since the advent of ChatGPT. These young workers haven’t yet built the skillsets to transfer into other jobs, and their lower set of skills overall means that advanced AI tools can often accomplish the same type of work that a company once had to pay a college grad $50,000-$150,000 to accomplish.

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