MSN: Escape from the BC
Google's Pixel Event • Superintelligent Podcast • Anthropic & SPVs • Duffer Brothers Bolt • Meta's AR Glasses • GPT-5 Backlash • New Paramount Logo
I wrote this in an update to my post about MSNBC's wonderfully awful new name, MS NOW, but to flesh it out slightly: wouldn't it have made so much more sense to either try to buy and/or license 'MSN' from Microsoft? That service that was actually the other half of MSNBC's name (it wasn't just Microsoft, it specifically was MSN, which flowed nicely into NBC – each got two letters with one shared 'N').
We're a few days away from the 30 year anniversary of the launch of MSN – because it rolled-out alongside a much bigger launch: Windows 95. 'The Microsoft Network' was originally their answer to AOL – the dial-up variety, which is, of course, just about to be laid to rest. But over time, it morphed into a website for news. It still exists, and these days it's a pretty generic homepage for aggregated news and a lot of ads. Microsoft must still make decent money from it, but wouldn't they rather put all such efforts into Bing – or having failed to make Bing the mass consumer AI service – perhaps now the Copilot site?
Throw your old partner a bone, Microsoft? How great would 'MSNBC' morphing into simply 'MSN' be? It would seem like a new, major three-letter player in news. Take that, NBC.
• Written on an M4 MacBook Air 💻
• Sent from London, England 🏴 I Wrote…
👾 Google's Distractingly Smarmy Pixel Event
Next time, let's not use the talk show host or infomercial set?
🧠 Super Ultra Megaintelligence™
A podcast conversation looking into such things...
I Think…
💸 Anthropic to Investors: No SPVs for You!
Hardly surprising given the level of interest in their fundraise – even at $150B+. Most startups (and certainly their finance teams) dislike them, as it's just more elements to manage. Also, Anthropic in particular clearly cares about who is in their investor pool – well, up to a point. Also, this is the company that had SBF as a large investor, no? Still, investors like such vehicles because they allow them to cut others into deals, such as their LPs directly. And, as was seemingly the case with Menlo, it let them "flex up" in terms of the amount of capital they could deploy to lead a round. And yes, they get fees for these SPVs, naturally. [BI 🔒]
📽️ The Duffer Brothers to Paramount
Skydance is wasting no time making moves (and I have more ideas), now stealing the Stranger Things creators from Netflix. Not a huge surprise given that it was Cindy Holland, then a Netflix exec and now a Paramount exec, who gave them that shot. Still, the main deal dynamic may be the fact that Paramount not only offers theatrical releases to their talent – they're clearly doubling down on that aspect of the business. Whereas Netflix well, they're the opposite in that regard. But this is another data point for why I believe that Netflix will eventually change their tune here. As much as Ted Sarandos may hate it, at some point you have to play the game on the field. And with the pandemic in the rearview, the game has shifted back, certainly from a talent wish list perspective. Also, it's just a great way to market a marquee release! [THR]
🤓 Meta's $800 AR Glasses
Buried at the bottom of Mark Gurman's latest newsletter, under all the talk about the Vision Pro needing more immersive content (which, duh), is a tidbit about Meta's next phase of their Smart Glasses iniative. The 'Hypernova' wearables – due next month – will be sort of in-between the current Ray-Ban Metas and the 'Orion' high-end AR prototypes. And yes, they'll apparently use the new neural wristband as well. A sub-$1,000 price – roughly double the current smart glasses price point – seems key for these to get any traction. Also key: they have to be good. Even more so than with the Ray-Bans, which are more akin to Snap Spectacles, users will immediately draw comparisons to Google Glass here, which will be a tough stigma to overcome. More broadly, if Meta is to make headsets happen, this will be a key step. [Bloomberg 🔒]
I Quote…
"When you have 700 million weekly active users, you start to find people are very opinionated."
– Sarah Friar, OpenAI's CFO, answering a question about the GPT-5 roll-out backlash. To which I say, yes. More importantly, she noted that the company hit their first $1B revenue month in July. It also sounds like they really, really need Stargate – any of them – to come online...
I Note…
According to market forecasts, NVIDIA's earnings (due next Wednesday after market close) are now more important than anything the Fed has to say. The $4.3T stock now makes up about 8% of the S&P 500. [NYT]
It feels awfully whiplash-y over at Meta at the moment. Following the 'Godfather' offers to lure top AI talent (well to try, anyway) and a seeming desire to spare no expense, there's apparently now a hiring freeze in the division following another, more granular, reorg. [WSJ 🔒]
WSJ also has an updated poaching tally thus far: 20 from OpenAI, 13 from Google, 3 from Apple, 3 from xAI, 2 from Anthropic.
The most interesting element of Alexandr Wang's memo about the Meta AI re-org may be that Nat Friedman, who Zuckerberg previously said would be co-leading the 'Superintelligence Lab' with Wang will now instead be reporting to him. Something to watch. Too many cooks, so the ($14B) chef laid his foot down? [BI]
Sign of the times as SoftBank is buying a Foxconn plant in Ohio that was built for electric vehicle manufacturing, but now will be an AI server plant – part of Stargate, to try to jumpstart those efforts per OpenAI's needs above. [Bloomberg 🔒]
It's only one data point, but it's a big one: ChatGPT's mobile app is said to have raked in $2B in consumer spending – which is roughly 30x the lifetime amount that Claude, Copilot, and Grok have pulled in, combined. It's not exactly apples-to-apples because of launch dates and stand-alone apps. But again, 30x combined! [TechCrunch]
Speaking of apples, perhaps this points to why Elon Musk has been threatening a silly lawsuit against Apple around ChatGPT promotion and App Store rankings... [NYT]
Tangential to the above, for all the talk about open source AI, some internal numbers suggest that most customers still just want access to the (closed) models from the big three: OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. [Information 🔒]
One interesting element of the new ESPN streaming service roll-out today: they're not doing a new app, but it will be a part of the old app – the one for checking scores and such – now updated with more video, gambling, fantasy, Tik Tok-style "Verts", the sports TV Guide thing, etc. [Verge]
Meanwhile, if you subscribe, you'll also have access to all the content within the Disney+. Slightly confusing to start, but probably the right strategy?
While it's the old app, they have a new mascot for the app, App-E. [THR]
Lutnick strikes again! Why did China pump the breaks on buying up NVIDIA's H20 chips after Trump cut his deal (to get his cut) to approve the export? Because of the commerce secretary's public comments bragging about how inferior the chips were, which Beijing found "insulting". [FT 🔒]
I Spy...
I just realized I haven't yet commented on the new Paramount logo post-Skydance deal close. It's... good! They seemingly took my advice about keeping the iconic 'P' in place alongside the all-important mountainscape (and even about perhaps simply swapping in Skydance branding below!). But really, in the end, they didn't overthink it – which they very nearly did. Well done.
I still think I liked keeping Paramount as the name of the studio while Skydance was the overall company, but this is very close to that. Now I just wish they would rename 'Paramount+' to 'Showtime' (which they also now own, of course)...
