Meta's Cash Cannons
Microsoft Layoffs • A New SVB • Figma's S-1 • 'The Odyssey' Teaser • Robinhood's Startup Equity Tokens • Mac Finder Icon
It feels like we’re all getting a bit lost in the smoke of Meta’s incredible cash cannons being fired at AI talent right now. The fact of the matter is that their largest offers have yet to be accepted, which is itself incredible, and speaks to the problem Meta faces here now and going forward…
💰 Can Meta Buy the Future of AI?
No.
• Written on an M4 MacBook Air 💻
• Sent from London, England 🏴 Thoughts On…
🤖 The Best of AI Times, the Worst of AI Times
Microsoft is laying off another 9,000 people – sure, maybe it's "less than 4%" of the overall workforce and yes, it's the start of the new fiscal year, but it also means that they've now laid off 15,000 people since May. Even though they're reporting record earnings and the stock market is at all-time highs. Meanwhile, people are getting $100M+ job offers from Meta. It's just quite the dichotomy. And while a lot of it is seemingly related to AI (or companies using it as cover to "streamline" and drive better "efficiency"), Microsoft has their own particular issues with Xbox/gaming after years of strategy shifts (and, um, $69B acquisitions – that deal looked crazy at the time and now looks insane in hindsight). [NYT]
🐉 Erebor, a New Silicon Valley Bank Of Sorts
I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner. In part because of its name, many people outside of Silicon Valley assume the bank failed because of "risky" lending to startups and the like. But it was a (historically) bad macro bet that brought it down. Sure, its asset balance contributed once the run started, but that's a relatively straightforward fix. The bank (I was a client pre-collapse) provided vital functions for startups and while some of the neobanks have stepped in to fill in some of the gaps, there's still a hole in this particular market. Presumably an increasingly lucrative one as banking itself morphs. One thing that may help any lingering perception issues here: being based in Ohio versus Silicon Valley. Especially helpful since it's being named – as many such Peter Thiel-adjacent properties are – after the mountain in The Hobbit that the dragon inhabits. Of course – nearly 90 years spoiler alert – after Smaug is slain, the dwarves reclaim the mountain and return it to glory. [FT 🔒]
🎨 Figma Filing for an IPO
The S-1 is now formal with much better timing (and market) than the confidential filing back in April. We'll see how things look in late August/early September when they'd presumably list, but this sets the stage for a solid IPO. Which would be an amazing recovery after the failed Adobe deal. Now they just have to beat that $20B price – or, at the very least, the $12.5B valuation reset last year. Current market comps suggest it may come in between those two numbers, but it could very well command a premium as a high-profile new tech name. 13M MAU. Revenue was just under $750M in 2024, which was up 48% y/y ($228M in Q1 2025, up 46% y/y – so growth is slowing, but only slightly). The company wasn't profitable last year due to stock compensation, but was in Q1 with a net income of just under $45M. AI tells me that "AI" appears 54 times in the S-1. "Adobe" just 8 times. (Worth noting that Adobe's stock is one of the worst performing of the past year – down 30%.) Fun ticker symbol too: FIG. [CNBC]
🏛️ The Leaked 'Odyssey' Teaser
I appreciate The Hollywood Reporter trying to follow Christopher Nolan's wishes (and presumably legal threats) in not even linking to the teaser, even though it's pretty hard to avoid on social media, and so instead they describe the minute-long clip. But yeah, feels like a bit of a self-defeating strategy to not release the clip online when the versions floating around are of awful quality. (If you must, here's a half-decent one, at least – with Spanish titles.) Even worse, there are plenty of fake ones – increasingly a problem on YouTube (which they're trying to combat). Yes, I watched it (sorry, Chris). And yes, it looks (and sounds) great. Yes, even in shitty resolution. [THR]
🤑 Robinhood's Startup Equity Tokens
Tangential to the Figma news, this is a fascinating move by Robinhood (and others) to meet the clear demand for buying into well-known but still private startups. All sorts of risks involved, of course, but this is the latest inevitability in this space given the general lack of IPOs in recent years. And as AI becomes more central to everyones' lives, and given that almost all of the companies involved in AI are still private, the demand is seemingly only going to go up. Such demand has obviously boosted NVIDIA and Microsoft (which, in a way, has been a proxy to invest in OpenAI) and some ETFs, but this is more direct – albeit obfuscated through financial instruments on the back-end, like SPVs, which is how Robinhood says they're able to do this. OpenAI, for one, disagrees. So that will be a fun new little battle. I would say startups may start restricting their stock sales even more, but so many of them need any and all capital (and liquidity for employees, early investors, etc), especially in AI. [CNBC]
Spyglass
🕊️ Meta's 'Godfather' Offer
Which, amazingly, everyone has seemingly refused – so far...
Loose Leaf
RIP Laptop Mag, one of the OG tech publications. I recall being a kid plowing through it – in magazine form – in the bookstore as I dreamed of one day being able to buy a notebook computer (like many families in the 90s, we were a desktop household). The same entity that shut down AnandTech is doing the dirty deed here too. [Verge]
Xitter is about to let AI publish Community Notes. But it's not AI run by the company, but rather bots created by other developers (that will be vetted). Any notes will be human reviewed before being published. I don't know if this will be good or bad but it's another step towards bots thanking bots. [Bloomberg 🔒]
Grammarly, after buying Coda and raising more money (in a strange structure that hinted at such deals), is now buying the email productivity tool Superhuman to try to Voltron their way into being an AI productivity suite. I have no idea if the strategy will work, but it's a clever way to try to avoid inevitable disruption. [Reuters]
It's no OpenAI vs. Meta or OpenAI vs. Microsoft or OpenAI vs. The World, but Anthropic vs. Cursor is morphing into a fun little conflicted battle as the latter continues to grow and picks off two of the former's key leaders for Claude Code. [Information 🔒]
Also, it sounds like Anthropic just hit $4B ARR, just about a month after OpenAI hit $10B ARR. [Information 🔒]
The foldable iPhone is slowly but surely making its way through the early production cycle, on track for release next year, it seems. One device that's not: a foldable iPad – which was never going to happen (at the same time) despite analysts' assurances. [DigiTimes 🔒]
Is China forcing Foxconn to pull back staff from India to hurt Apple's plans to expand their manufacturing footprint? Seems likely. [Bloomberg 🔒]
The cast of the Highlander remake continues to grow, with each addition moving it closer to reality. How did I miss that Russell Crowe signed on for Sean Connery's iconic Juan Sánchez Villa-Lobos Ramírez role?! [THR]
I hate to always be the cold water box office guy, but since they're already trying to frame Jurassic World Rebirth as some huge hit, I'll just note that a $127.5M five-day opening, while ahead of tracking, would be less than the $208M, $148M, and $145M openings for the three previous movies in the franchise. Oh, and those were three-day openings. And not adjusted for inflation. It's great that this movie cost slightly less to produce but my god, let's frame this correctly. The reviews? Sadly middling, as feared. [THR]
Tesla sales shit the bed once again, though Wall Street, still buying the "robotaxi" story, seems far more concerned about Elon Musk's (always inevitable) feud with President Trump. [NYT]
That mystery $30B contract that Oracle announced which sent their stock soaring to an all-time high? Likely a new OpenAI commitment for the Stargate Project. And presumably, it will mostly be SoftBank's money paying for it. Yes, those are the three key Stargate partners. The layer cake keeps expanding even before any part of Stargate is actually enabled... [Bloomberg 🔒]
I Quote…
"Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S."
– Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford, during an interview with at the Aspen Ideas Festival last week.
Kudos to Farley as "literally half" seems both comically vague and oddly precise at the same time; I didn't think that was possible. It also, of course, is an overstatement. It's almost like the legacy company CEOs are looking at what the newer company CEOs are saying and just upping the ante and rhetoric. Overall, I think it's good that they're "saying the quiet part out loud" as the WSJ frames it, but can we say useful things on this topic and not just the best soundbites?
I Spy...
Of all the change with the new Apple OSes, people are most big mad about the Finder icon changes – so much so that they've already had to change back, sort of.
