The AI Battle For You Face 📧
Just when Meta thought they finally had a credible hardware answer to the iPhone, here comes Apple, with a number of advantages that are likely to make the "iGlasses" versus Meta Ray-Bans a fight in the way that Vision Pro versus the Quest was not (mostly because seemingly no one cared about that battle). Namely, the iPhone itself...
M.G. Siegler
I Note...
💰 OpenAI's Path to $100B in Ad Revenue – Look, extrapolating future growth for startups is hard, if not impossible. Especially for high-growth startups and especially when launching new business lines. But suggesting that OpenAI's ads business will surpass $100B in revenue in 2030 – which is just four years from now – seems reckless? Even for internal projections. That would be 36% of the business that year as modeled. What if they don't hit it? What if they don't even come close? It's just a wild number. I mean, maybe they hit it, but there's basically no way they can no that now as again, they just started rolling out ads in tests on ChatGPT. So either this is an extremely loose model or they're planning to absolutely cram ads into the service over the next few years, perhaps regardless of the ROI. I will say, given Anthropic's very public – as in Super Bowl ad public – stance on ads, it's one area OpenAI can absolutely own versus their rival. Then again, there's Google sitting right there. Oh yes, and Meta. [Information 🔒]
💫 The Government Tries to Tackle Sports Streaming Rights – Well this will be a fun one for legal scholars. The DoJ is looking into if the NFL is being anticompetitive by spreading their games across so many different streaming options. Yes, in a sense, there is too much competition for their rights, which is spreading them wide, thus making it harder for consumers to watch. The old school networks, consumers, and the government will be on the same side of this, while the tech companies and the NFL will be on the other side. This was all inevitable given the splintered mess that everyone now sees because there is no true unifying layer to make this consumer-friendly – like, you know, cable. And because of the myriad streaming options, we're likely now paying more, certainly to far more players, than we ever did to... cable. But how might the government tell the NFL that they can't maximize their profits? By no longer allowing the teams to band together for such rights packages? Regardless, this all just delays the inevitable: Big Tech will fully control sports rights in a decade or two. [WSJ 🔒]
💻 MacBook Neo as the Best Thing to Happen to Windows – Tom Warren makes the case that Apple's new low-priced computer will force Redmond to wake up to the reality that the PC market is sort of a mess and Windows in particular, sucks. As he notes, Microsoft and the broader PC industry has historically performed better when a true challenger enters the picture – such as was the case with the shift to Apple Silicon. I mean, maybe. But it's also possible that Apple just eats the PC market's lunch here after years and years of refusing to compete at these price points. The MacBook Neo is that good, and the current state of Windows is that bad – in particular as Microsoft keeps trying to shove Copilot on to all surfaces – literally on the Surfaces. They're now pulling back after (predictable) backlash. But what other answer do they have here? [Verge]
I Wrote...
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
I Quote...
"We’re not investing approximately $200 billion in capex in 2026 on a hunch."
– Andy Jassy in his annual letter addressing the notion that Amazon may be overextending themselves by ramping up CapEx to such levels – to the point where the company may flip into negative cash flow.
Asides...
- Not one but two vibe checks at the HumanX AI conference in San Francisco confirm "Claude Mania" is the thing right now. [CNBC]
- Tubi is the first streamer to let you query what to watch natively within ChatGPT, which seems like a good "app" use case. (Though yes, many, including Netflix, are doing this within their own apps.) [TechCrunch]
- Investors in World Liberty Financial are shocked – shocked! – to learn that there may be gambling going on inside the casino in which they invested. [Bloomberg 🔒]
- At least part of The Economist's "pivot to video" is to showcase real people behind the words – for a publication famous for no bylines this seems potentially important in the Age of AI. [NYT]
- Um, the market seems to think that NVIDIA could buy Dell or HP? Unclear how much to read into this SemiAccurate report, but as the largest company in the world, it does feel like NVIDIA eventually will want to be more forward-facing (beyond, you know, the graphics cards). [Bloomberg 🔒]
- Aston Martin is rapidly running out of money, who might bail them out? How about Amazon as a literal marketing vehicle for the James Bond film franchise going forward? I mean the company is valued around $500M... [FT 🔒]
- Tesla is working on a smaller, cheaper EV – again. Unlike SpaceX, this isn't rocket science, that's obvious what the market wants. As well as shareholders. Not the myriad other distractions until they inevitably merge with SpaceX. [Reuters]
- Google's TurboQuant algo, if it can scale, sure feels like a classic Jevons paradox situation and not the end of the memory business (or woes). [FT 🔒]
- Meta may have lost the would-be Stargate campus to Microsoft, but they nabbed some of OpenAI's Stargate leadership... [Bloomberg 🔒]
- Was Nine Inch Noize – Nine Inch Nails + Boys Noize – the best Coachella set ever? Some people are making the case. Hard to argue with this version of "Heresy". My god, quite literally. [SFGate]
Below, members of The Inner Ring will find thoughts on:
• OpenAI is Sweating Anthropic
• Meta's Max Headroom Mark Zuckerberg
• The 'iPhone Fold' as the 'iPhone Ultra'
• and more...