Listen : Watch : Read #26
Originally Posted: June 8, 2025 here
🎙️Listen 🎙️
This week the Andreessen Horowitz General Partner Erik Torenberg is joined by the a16z Consumer team—General Partner Anish Acharya and Partners Olivia Moore , Justine Moore, and Bryan Kim —for a conversation on the current state (and future) of consumer tech.
Super interesting given we have Apple WWDC this week and expect all the new announcements for IOS26 (you read that correctly) - although early reports from Mark Gurman suggest its about to be an AI Let Down, again.
📺 Watch 📺
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis along with Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google join Alex Kantrowitz at Google I/O for a fascinating conversation! There has been some Incredible Gains, yet inventing new things all the time! and a few more breakthroughs are needed before we get to AGI! That said, AGI is a complex concept with ongoing debate about its definition and timeline. Equally, using the term AGI itself is kind of a taboo - and being inflated right now!
Demis also digs into Agents and the history of Deepmind, plus why Google's UI is not always the desktop, but the camera or Smart Glasses! Including what we learned from Google Glass all those years ago! [30 mins]
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg joins Stripe President John Collison at Stripe Sessions for a fun an fascinating discussion about how advanced technologies are reshaping the global economy - from Business Agents to how strategy is driven by the need to avoid being constrained by existing platform providers.
Interestingly equally how Meta prioritises building strong, interconnected teams and a non-hierarchical culture, how he doesn't like managing people! His disbelief in Delegation!, not having 60 direct reports (Jensen). Getting things done is a people exercise, so its important to have folks that are densely connected. [47 mins]
Finally, this is a genius Ad from Andrex (Kimberly-Clark) - First School Poo! Maybe it's just my childish humour, but equally highlights a really important issue!. The anxiety is really for many people. Humour is my armour, a brilliant way to get the message across [60 seconds]
📚 Read 📚
Given the Andreessen Horowitz podcast last week, I thought it would be useful to dig more into what the Kingdom of Saudi are up to, in launching HUMAIN. I love their tag line - The end of Limits!. Their partnership with NVIDIA and other strategic allies including - AMD Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cisco Luma AI and Qualcomm to name but a few.
Sticking with the UAE, and following a conversation over lunch last Sunday with Emma and the kids about how AI is important for all, but Emma wished it was used for things that matters, not AI dolls or other stuff that takes resources. It then got into a debate about how having access to AI would help differentiate the haves and have nots, the rich and poor. Well thanks to Linas Beliūnas I noticed this - the UAE will be the first country to offer Free ChatGPT Plus Access under a new major deal.
You've heard of Universal Basic Income - now we have Universal Basic AI!
There were two huge AI presentations released in the last week or two, one from Benedict Evans who released his annual presentation, and a very pleasant surprise return from Mary Meeker from BOND.
Benedict, returns with his 'AI eats the World' - I think it should be 'AI eats the world again' - given it was the same title last year. A fascinating look at where we are, and whats changed in the last 12 months, and where we are headed from Platform Shifts, Startups unbundling everything to AV's finally may be about to work after a decade of promises! [59 pages]
While Mary lands back with a bumper (340 pages) report on Trends in AI. I'm still going through it to be honest - It’s huge. It’s chart-heavy (much easier for me).
There are plenty of summaries out there now including this from Nate Jones, which in itself is super detailed, but pulls out some key points. Following on from last weeks 'demos not memos', Mary also calls out speed. with - Focus on Speed over Caution. Nate's summary below, thanks to Blake McConnell and Vidya Balakrishnan for sharing.
highlighting that Google “couldn’t have launched a product that hallucinated like OpenAI did” and that startups can do crazy things. This perspective implicitly defends the “move fast and break things” approach in AI
The real headline winner this week goes to Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic that there is about to be a white collar bloodbath in an interview with Axioss Jim VandeHei & Mike Allen stating that
AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs
Equally, the AI train can't be stopped - at best, we can just steer it!
Others including Allison Morrow at CNN share that this is all part of the AI Hype Machine! I like to try and share both sides of the debate.
Not quite a bloodbath, but this is good from Rex Salisbury a real life example how he is using the new available tools instead of hiring people. I have a very practical take on these - my role I started out in 20+ years ago doesn't exist today, however equally there are plenty of new roles that didn't exist either. No matter what the revolution, work moves regardless if its an industrial revolution or an AI revolution.
Finally - many of you have heard me say before, where there's risk there is opportunity. This is a great example from Ellesheva Kissin in the Financial Times. As organizations rush to leverage AI, we of course will need to audit these and ensure they are consistent, clear and safe. Thanks to Paul Ridge for highlighting this one.
AI assurance was “critical” to AI adoption, said Richard Tedder , audit partner at Deloitte.
👀 Quick bites 👀
We've already seen an agentic Insurance Broker with Flow Speciality - here comes the Agentic Banks with Griffin
AA weighs options as valuation tops £4 billion - more PE activity
North Face and Cartier customer data stolen in cyber attacks - more cyber attacks
And thats It! See you next week!